How feminists have long viewed violence as means for oppression of women

These figures draw attention to the persistent and evolving nature of violence against women and reaffirm the long-standing concerns raised by feminists about the systemic nature of such crimes. Feminists have long argued that acts like rape and pornography are very important means for the oppression of women. This perspective was reiterated by Susan Brownmiller, the feminist author, journalist and activist, who calls for the eradication of all those elements in culture which promote the ideology of rape. 

Although these concerns were raised during the second wave of feminism, the persistence of violence against women across patriarchal societies underscores that they continue to hold urgency even today. As these critiques demand renewed attention to and action on women’s rights issues, it’s worth revisiting the insights offered by the second wave of feminism. 

What are the major issues raised by Second Wave?

The second wave of feminism started in the US in the turbulent decade of the 1960s and reached other European countries with many feminist organisations and protest groups fighting to take up the issues of women, identify their problems, and demand redressal. From the very beginning, this wave was linked to civil rights movements, Vietnam War protests and the New Left movement, as many important feminist figures were part of these movements. 

From the civil rights movement in the US, feminism learnt the strategies of protests and an understanding of the relationship between race, class and gender. However, feminism’s relationship with these movements was not always very smooth. Discovering the sexism in the New Left, many women left the movement, announcing “women are the real left”.

Important issues taken up by many activists, writers, and thinkers associated with the second wave feminism included what Maggie Humm, in her short anthology, Feminisms: A Reader (1992), identifies as reproduction, experience and difference. She emphasised that “Reproductive rights are to second wave feminism what productive rights were to first wave feminism”. 

During the 1960s and 1970s, various factors prepared a favourable ground for the reception of feminist ideas, activism and scholarship. Some of these factors are: 

— Greater number of working women.

— Weakening of religious and other traditional belief systems.

— Rise of education.

— Political lobbying for women and their issues.

— The availability of contraceptives.  

Pioneers of Second Wave 

Among the pioneers of the second wave of feminism, the contributions of Betty Friedan, Kate Millet, Shulamith Firestone, Germane Greer, Susan Griffin, and Andrea Dworkin are especially remarkable. Friedan was the co-founder and first president of the National Organisation for Women, founded in 1966, which advocated gender equality vigorously. She opposed the dominant belief that women felt fulfilled merely by their housework, marriage, and raising of children. 

Articulating the feeling of angst and unhappiness that many women underwent in the 1950s which she called as “the problem that has no name”, Friedan begins her book The Feminine Mystique (1963), which heralded the second wave, very evocatively: 

“The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night – she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question – “Is this all?”” 

Friedan also held the media and the education system responsible for projecting the wrong images of women.

Political roots of personal problems 

Moreover, many slogans and catchphrases used by activists and writers captured the focus of the second wave feminism and provided it with energy and momentum. The feminist slogan of the 1960s – “the Personal is political” – stressed the link between the personal problems of women with the wider social, political, and patriarchal structures of society. 

“Consciousness-raising”, another popular phrase, referred to an important method of activism aimed at bringing about change in society. It laid stress on talking about the personal problems of women’s oppression within a group and raising awareness about their collective and communal nature and their political roots. 

Kathie Sarachild’s phrase, “Sisterhood is powerful”, yet another popular slogan, emphasised universal sisterhood and the unity and solidarity of women. It was used as the title of a book Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement (1970), edited by Robin Morgan, one of the founders of New York Radical Women, a feminist protest group formed in 1967.

Social construction of femininity

Drawing upon interdisciplinary sources, Millett unveiled the social construction of femininity and the dominance of patriarchal ideology in all walks of life in her influential book Sexual Politics (1970). She defined the relationship between the two sexes as “a relationship of dominance and subordinance… However muted its present appearance may be, sexual domination obtains nevertheless as perhaps the most pervasive ideology of our culture and provides its fundamental concept of power.” 

Millett did not spare literature either. In her readings of D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Norman Mailer, and Jean Genet, she found no objectivity and accused them of perpetuating a patriarchal ideology, degrading women, and using a language which supported violence against women. She noted that the sex scenes in D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover have been written “according to the ‘female is passive, male is active’ directions laid down by Sigmund Freud”. 

Further, she wrote that “Lawrence is a passionate believer in the myth of nature which has ordained that female personality is congenital, even her shame not the product of conditioning, but innate”. Millett’s book also has had a great influence on the course of feminist literary criticism and her insights and methodology have been extended to the work of many male writers.

Reproduction, mothering, and violence

In The Dialectic of Sex (1970), an important work of the second wave, Shulamith Firestone blamed mothering, menstruation and women’s reproductive processes for their oppression. Believing in the use of technology to free women from their bondage, she wrote that “the reproduction of the species by one sex for the benefit of both would be replaced by (at least the option of) artificial reproduction” with children born to both sexes. She talked about a sexual revolution, which was inclusive of the socialist revolution, “to truly eradicate all class systems”.

Many second wave feminists have talked about rape and pornography as very important means for the oppression of women. In her book Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (1975), Susan Brownmiller makes a case against pornography and “the toleration of prostitution” in the fight against rape. She describes rape “not a crime of irrational, impulsive, uncontrollable lust” but a “deliberate, hostile, violent act of degradation and possession on the part of a would-be conqueror, designed to intimidate and inspire fear”. She asks for the eradication of all those elements in culture that promote the ideology of rape. 

In their long fight for women’s rights, the Second Wave made some notable strides, evident in some legislative reforms, including The Equal Pay Act of 1963 in the United States, which prohibited employers from making discrimination for the payment of wages on the basis of sex; Title IX of The Education Amendments of 1972 in the United States prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in educational institutions getting federal aid. An important contribution of Second Wave feminism has been the growth of women’s studies as an interdisciplinary academic discipline in colleges and universities. 

Post read questions

How does the persistent and evolving nature of violence against women reaffirm the long-standing concerns raised by feminists about the systemic nature of it? 

Susan Brownmiller, the feminist author, journalist and activist, called for the eradication of all those elements in culture which promote the ideology of rape. Comment. 

What are the major issues raised by Second Wave of Feminism? Why did many women leave the New Left, announcing “women are the real left”?

During the 1960s and 1970s, various factors prepared a favourable ground for the reception of feminist ideas, activism and scholarship. What were those factors? Evaluate them. 

Examine the relevance of the feminist slogan of the 1960s – “the Personal is political” – in the present context.

(Mohammad Asim Siddiqui is a Professor in the Department of English at Aligarh Muslim University.)

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