I recently saw a great documentary, on Netflix, about the second wave of feminism in the 60's and 70's that occurred with the advent of Betty Friedan's THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE, the formation of the National Organization of Women (N.O.W.) and led into the struggle for equal pay and equal rights, the right to birth control and abortion, and openly addressing the universal violence toward women.
I remember it well, because I was there! I met some of these women, they were my heroines. I marched in San Francisco, I attended consciousness raising groups.
I've seen so very much change in my lifetime because of that time, and those leaders, and there is still so much farther to go. An important film, beautifully made.
http://www.shesbeautifulwhenshesangry.com/
https://youtu.be/Oc6zT4mVVuc
5 comments:
Will have to check this out! Netflix carries some great movies and documentaries.
Last month, Aussie activists in the 'second wave' women's rights movements - Lynn Beaton - popped her clogs (as we affectionately say). In 2013, Lynn had written a Reflection on the Feminist Movement that is quite sobering as how difficult it was/still is for us down under.
I was there, going through high school, taking in those influences and I hadn't even heard the term patriarchy or even knew how insidious and invisible it was. It had been the air I breathed. If I hold my breath long enough, I might turn blue - like Shiva.
Germaine Greer is originally from Australia. THE OBSTACLE COURSE is by her, about the difficulty faced by female artists throughout his-story.
Greer's writings were the fluff of feminism. She was too much of a self-serving middle-class school prefect to have gotten her hands dirty in the front-lines. She started a discourse in Australia that was way over the heads of the women she claimed to represent. Greer will go down in her-story as a fraud.
Fraud is a reactive word that has no place in this blog. I am a great admirer of Germaine Greer, for both THE FEMALE EUNUCH and THE OBSTACLE RACE, important books for me in finding my way as a woman and as an artist. There was nothing "fluffy" about her work, and your reactionary statements demonstrate how little you know about her work.
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