The women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s transformed American society and the lives of many individuals. Electrifying both to participants and to onlookers, feminist activism challenged what was taken for granted, articulated what was unspoken, and left an indelible mark on a generation. Thousands of women participated in radical feminist organizations across the country.¹ They talked to each other about their most personal experiences in consciousness-raising groups and began to think about their lives in new ways. They discussed issues, argued with each other, picketed, protested, and created a new definition of what it could mean to be a...

Organizing around women’s issues in Columbus, Ohio, in the early days of the movement was much like the organizing that went on in many similar cities. Originating with New Left women who formed consciousness-raising groups, radical feminist organizations by the mid-1970s were developing feminist theory, providing services to women, and staging cultural events and frequent public protests. Housed in a shared space, women’s movement organizations collaborated on projects, and participants lived within an extensive movement community.¹ In the late 1970s, although participation was decreasing, many organizations survived. But by the early 1980s, funds dried up and the groups that hung...

The women’s movement in Columbus led to the creation of many new organizations and a constant stream of events that promoted feminist causes. But the experience of working for social change is about more than organizations and events. It is about the amazement of new insights, adrenaline and exhaustion, camaraderie and conflict, and, at least for awhile, it colors everything in your life. What it meant to be a woman, a feminist, or a lesbian was critical to the forms that radical feminist mobilization took and to participants’ interactions and experiences. These definitions were neither self-evident nor clear-cut. Rather, they...

An antifeminist movement gained strength throughout the 1970s and was bolstered by Ronald Reagan’s election to the presidency in 1980. Reagan’s presidency and the rise of the Religious Right were a watershed for the women’s movement and other movements for social change. On one hand, the intense battles around the ERA, the attempt to pass a right-wing federal Family Protection Act, and attacks on abortion rights spurred feminists to increased efforts. On the other hand, cutbacks in funding for social services decimated feminist organizations, and American culture grew more hostile to feminists. Columbus was no exception to the national picture:...

So said a woman in her late thirties who joined WAC in the late 1970s, was very active in that group, in the Association of Women Students, and in Central Ohio Lesbians, and came to believe that radical social transformation was necessary. But fifteen years later she worked in higher education, confessed to shaving her legs in order to gain credibility on her job, and noted that she occasionally felt uncomfortable with her feminist students’ militance. Another woman, a few years older, also joined WAC in the late 1970s, where she served briefly as house manager and was a staunch...

For a supposedly conservative, apathetic decade, the 1980s witnessed a lot of upheaval in Columbus and around the country. Environmentalists protested against toxic waste in their communities; peace activists mobilized in huge numbers for a freeze on nuclear weapons. Protests erupted over U.S. intervention in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, and Iraq, and religious activists offered sanctuary to illegal political refugees in their churches. Antiapartheid protests prompted South African disinvestment by colleges, universities, and businesses. Gay men and lesbians organized—separately and together—more visibly and militantly than ever before, both on behalf of their own rights and in response...

Throughout my conversations with longtime feminists, “the Eighties” loomed as a grim symbol of antifeminism. Yet even as veterans left women’s movement organizations in the 1980s, they sustained a feminist challenge in their work and daily lives and within other social movements. In short, women who joined the movement in the 1960s or 1970s remained active feminists, but, as we have seen, most were no longer core participants in the organized women’s movement. What, then, became of the organized women’s movement in the 1980s? Women’s movement organizations and feminist culture survived through the decade, staffed by some longtime activists along...

The radical women’s movement did not survive the 1980s unchanged, but it did survive. As the movement entered the 1990s, it began to grow again. Columbus and national organizations gained new members and mounted visible campaigns, and a new political generation of feminists came of age as activists. Where is the radical women’s movement going in the 1990s and beyond? Part of the answer to this question is contained in the preceding chapters: Veterans of the 1960s and 1970s movement are still active and influential feminists shaping the direction and outcomes of the challenge. As we have seen, longtime feminists...

When radical feminism emerged from the New Left in the late 1960s, it brought with it the notion that politics and culture were inextricably linked.¹ To change the world meant both to change social structures and to change the ways that people lived, interacted, and thought about themselves and others. Among feminists, the development of consciousness raising took the connection between daily life and social change one step further. The notion that “the personal is political” meant both that “personal” problems had political roots, and that making feminist revolution entailed constructing new communities and identities. From the very beginning, cultural...