Sunday, April 24, 2011

The Bad Old Days of the Women's Liberation Movement

Over at Forbes' She Negotiates, Victoria Pynchon is thinking about the 1970s and the impact of the women's liberation movement on her life:

Why I Returned to the Women’s Movement – Part I

Excuse Me While I Go Spend a Few Decades Becoming a Man - I made a consciously clean break with the women’s movement and feminist politics in my first week of law school when when I decided not to join the Women’s Caucus – now King Hall’s Feminist Forum. I did not want to be a “woman lawyer.” I just wanted to be a lawyer. And the farther away from women’s issues I was, the easier I assumed it would be for me to become something I know only in retrospect was impossible – a genderless professional.

Photo: 1972 Sexist 'Keep Her Where She Belongs' shoe ad UPDATE: Weyenberg Massagic Footwear, 1972, the sexist ad was reprinted in the 'No Comment' section of Ms., December 1974 after appearing in Playboy magazine. The vintage sexist ad appeared in Sociological Images last year. According to Feminist Phoenix: the rise and fall of a feminist counterculture , after N.O.W. protested the sexist ad in 1972, Weyenberg responded by claiming the shoe company was taking a stand for masculinity and against the women's liberation movement! N.O.W. subsequently shamed Weyenberg with its 'Keep Her in Her Place' award.

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