Angry Women by Lynne Harne

from the FiLiA Not Dead Yet session 16th October 2021

Sexual Politics

It needs to be recognised that in some ways the Women’s Liberation Movement was a response to a libertarian male sexual revolution which developed from the 1950s onwards. It included the promotion of pornography in the growing number of top-shelf male magazines such as Playboy as well as the creation of global bunny clubs in the 1960s. Women who worked in these clubs were humiliated by being forced to wear semi-naked highly sexualised costumes and have bunny ears on their heads. They were often pimped by the man who created these clubs, Hugh Heffner. This blatant sexual misogyny towards women, then called male chauvinism, was not limited to male magazines but was taken on by male literary writers such as Norman Mailer as was highlighted in Kate Millet’s ground breaking book Sexual Politics, first published in 1970. One impetus for this so- called revolution was the invention of the contraceptive pill and other forms of contraception such as the dangerous drug DepoProvera that was usually offered as a form of contraception only to black women. These contraceptives were promoted as giving women a new sexual freedom, without the fear of becoming pregnant. However, the reality was that they licenced men to become far more sexually predatory, since they no longer had to take any responsibility for women getting pregnant. The consequence of this meant that women became defined as passive, ornamental sex objects existing only to sexually service men and provide them with other material services, such as, in the new left movement, making their coffee and reproducing their leaflets.

I became aware of the Movement in 1971 when I was pregnant with my daughter and watched the first UK national women’s liberation march on television. Some women on the march were in a group parodying the song ‘Stay Young and Beautiful if you want to be loved.’ This ideology about beauty immediately hit home, although it remains a strong influence on many women’s lives today. Later I met up with some of the women involved in taking direct action at the Miss World protest in l970, who have been speaking about this at this conference. Their main slogan was ‘We’re not Beautiful, we’re not Ugly, We’re Angry’ and I was very influenced by how powerful women could be in challenging male supremacy when taking such actions together.

What was valuable about Women’s Liberation: Grassroots organising and activism

Women’s liberation was a grassroots collective movement where women got together locally in women only groups in cities and large towns. Some of these groups were consciousness raising discussion groups, others were direct action groups or a mixture of both. These small groups enabled many women to participate and gain confidence to speak out as well as to organise together. There was no passive sitting back and allowing a few women to speak for us; every woman had a voice.  When women began writing papers for newsletters and national conferences, these were often jointly written.   

Men had been allowed into the first national conference, but the second one held at Skegness had been taken over by maoist men calling themselves the Maoist Women’s Liberation Front. Many women walked out and got together to have their own discussions with other women (Jane Dixon, Radical Records; Routledge, l987)   As a result, the third national conference held in Acton, London, was women only. From then on the movement became autonomous; that is without men. By this time the majority of lesbians had left the Gay Liberation Front due to gay male sexism and committed themselves to organising with other women. As a  grassroots women only movement we were able to organise a large number of actions together across different aspects of women’s oppression. These included economic issues such as in the early days single mothers being deprived of social security benefits because we were supposed to be supported by men. A number of women also went on strike against low and unequal pay. As early as 1968 women machinists at the Fords motor company led the way in striking for equal pay, and forcing their male dominated union to support them. This achievement, which changed  the law on equal pay is now depicted in the film ‘Made in Dagenham’.

There were other actions against  blatant discrimination towards women.  For example Wimpey bars denied womens’ access to their coffee bars after 10pm at night if they were unaccompanied by men. But they were soon made to change this policy when groups of women occupied their bars. As the movement developed over the 1970s, women began to take action over sexual harassment and male violence towards women, and reclaim the night marches were established. By the beginning of the 1980s an anonymous group called Angry Women was taking action against the increasing the liberalisation of violent male pornography, which was being shown in cinemas and sold in the newly established sex shops. I became a part of this group, when I temporarily moved to Leeds. We spray-painted sex shop windows and glued sex shop doors so that they could not be opened, as well as targetting cinemas which were showing horrific sexual murders of women in films. We also went out late at night to spray paint advertisements that were encouraging the sexual harassment of women, changing the slogans to show how angry we were.

Now, there are indications that some city based women’s groups are again taking local action against the male transgender movement, which is basically a sexually violent men’s rights movement that aims to gain access to the bodies of women and children. For example,  groups of women have  picketed Drag Queen Story time sessions being held in local libraries, because these men are sexually grooming very young children.  Safe Schools Alliance (SSA) initiated by mothers with children at school is a grassroots organisation reaching out to supporters all over the country. It has had success in legally challenging some local authorities that failed to keep to the law in safeguarding girls at school through the removal of single sex facilities. As well as this, SSA is active in challenging schools sex education programmes, where watching pornography that normalises anal sex for girls is being promoted as a harmless part of sex education. But none of this enough to bring down the  transgender activists. We need to reach out far more to talk to ordinary women about what is happening, because without a mass movement of resistance we won’t win.

Valuing lesbian feminism

Another key aspect of the movement was the development of lesbian feminism. From early on many women like myself chose to leave male partners to become lesbians. This choice was not only about our dissatisfaction with heterosexuality. It was  a political act, where we could put women first and at the centre of our politics. We became in the words of US Radical Lesbians ‘women identified women.’ Lesbian feminism became so popular that several women in refuges, fleeing male violence also chose to become lesbians. Since many of us were mothers, this led to a war with the patriarchal state over retaining the custody of our children as just being lesbian immediately labelled us as unfit mothers. Today, although lesbian feminism is still a choice for some women the dominant ideology is  different. Women are told we have to be born that way and if you have ever had a sexual relationship with a man, you have to name yourself as bi-sexual. Conversely, heterosexuality is also seen as biologically fixed.

In 1976 Shere Hite a US feminist published her research on women’s sexuality, based on a sample of three thousand women and found that one in eight women defined as lesbians. In the UK a conservative estimate of women who were lesbian was 1 in 10 in the l980s (cited in the London Gay and Lesbian Charter, Greater London Council, l985). Now various ONS surveys  indicate it is more like 1 in 50 and it would seem that lesbians are literally disappearing according to these statistics. But we know that many young lesbians are afraid to call themselves lesbian due to the male dominated queer movement. An even younger cohort of girls who like girls are being pressurised to see themselves as men and to harm their female bodies through medication and surgery, due to transgender ideology and their stereotypes of femininity. As a lesbian mother with grand daughters it seems horrific that they will never get the chance to define themselves as lesbians. But these developments are being resisted by a new wave of younger lesbian feminists and the large number of lesbian detransitioners. As the Lesbian Rights Alliance we are very focussed on what is happening to these girls and young women and working with young lesbian feminists to recreate the positive aspects of being lesbian initially through the website positivelylesbian.org. This website has received praise from a number of gender critical groups internationally and serves as a template for what might be created in their own countries.

The value of women only culture

I finally want to say something briefly  about the creation of a women only culture which sustained the women’s liberation movement. Originally, there were very few spaces where women could meet socially, without men, free from sexual harassment, except in their own homes.  The founding of  women centres in the early l970s did provide some social space. But the real change came with the creation of women only discos and bar  nights often set up by lesbians. As the movement developed women only holiday homes were established in the countryside and one of these is still going today.  Women also began to form their own bands, such as Jam Today and the lesbian feminist band Ova. https://womensliberationmusicarchive.co.uk. Unsurprisingly, the malestream music industry was not interested in recording feminist women’s music and following the US example, women musicians had to create their own record labels in order for this to happen. Another development was that of feminist and lesbian feminist fringe theatre. The latter leading to annual lesbian pantomimes and lesbian cabaret. With the expansion of newsletters and national conferences women were doing a lot of writing but malestream publishers were not interested in publishing radical and lesbian feminist books that critiqued the patriarchy.  Women had to establish their own publishing presses; the first being Onlywomen Press. The creation of feminist publishing led to feminist bookshops being set up, including Sisterwrite in London and other independent feminist bookshops elsewhere. But in the UK feminist publishing no longer exists, nor do the bookshops that stocked their books.  We are very much back to the same situation, especially when books are written from a radical feminist perspective and oppose not only the male transgender movement but also the exploitation of women’s bodies through prostitution and surrogacy.  In some countries such as South Korea young women are developing their own publishing projects. But Spinifex remains perhaps the only international radical feminist publishing house where such books can get published. This situation needs to change as without a sustaining  women only culture, it is hard for any movement to survive.

(for more information about women only culture go to lesbianhistorygroup@wordpress.com)