A Retrospective on Radical Feminism

This week on From the Vault, guest host Lynn Ballen, producer of Feminist Magazine heard on KPFK in Los Angeles, introduces A Retrospective on Radical Feminism, produced in 1980 by Moira Rankin and co-produced by Deborah George for Sophie’s Parlor Collective, the oldest women’s radio collective on the air at Pacifica’s youngest station, WPFW in Washington D.C. A Retrospective on Radical Feminism is composed of interviews, actuality, and music, and includes:

– Alix Kates Shulman, activist and author of Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen is interviewed and reads from her book, Burning Questions.

– A woman from the Emergency Brigade recounts the 1937 Great General Motors sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan.

– Fannie Lou Hamer, founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party recalls the physical abuse she suffered in prison in a 1966 KPFA interview.

– Leslie Cagan, then-Chair of the New York University Committee to End the War of Vietnam describes the beginning of an autonomous women’s movement that grew out of the anti-Vietnam war movement.

– Joan Byron, a member of the Furies, one the first radical lesbian separatist groups describes, their reasons for organizing.

– Betty Friedan renounces her position on the lesbian issue and supports the sexual preference resolution at the 1977 United States International Women’s Year conference in Houston, Texas.

– Carol Downer, one of the founders of the Los Angeles Feminist Health Clinic speaks about the need for women to control their own bodies and have access to abortions.

– Edith Barksdale Sloane, Executive Director of the National Committee on Household Employment, is interviewed about the need for basic services for women.

– Donna Keck, a founder of Women: A Journal of Liberation, speaks about race within the women’s movement.

– Activist Cynthia Washington speaks about all the aspects of oppression including racism, classism, elitism, sexism, and ageism.

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