Institute for Precarious Consciousness – We Are All Very Anxious An influential text that proposes anti-precarity consciousness raising groups as the precondition for political action under contemporary conditions. [Side-bar: A Question for Consciousness-Raising]. 534 Likes, 9 Comments - University of Rochester (@urochester) on Instagram: “Rochester graduate Emma Chang ’20 is a classically trained musician. Consciousness-Raising: A Radical Weapon Kathie Sarachild - PDF Link. Of course, this was only the middle/upper middle class white women as WOC and lower class white women were still on the bottom of the equal opportunity pile. “You don’t get radicalized fighting other people’s battles,” as Beverly Jones put it in the pioneering essay “Toward A Female Liberation Movement.”. In the end the group decided to raise its consciousness by studying women’s lives by topics like childhood, jobs, motherhood, etc. Side-bar: A Question for Consciousness-Raising, Uniform Dating Threatens Legal Action Over Feminist Art, Statement to Launchpad: Stop the Blacklisting of Feminist Voices, Photos from Trans/Queer Attack on the Women of DGR. The importance of listening to a woman’s feelings was collectively to analyze the situaion of women, not to analyze her. 6 bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (Boston: South End Press, 1989), 109. Finding the solution to a problem takes place through theory and action both. We were interested in getting to the roots of problems in society. The first job now was to raise awareness and understanding, our own and others — awareness that would prompt people to organize and to act on a mass scale. There is tremendous energy in consciousness-raising, an enthusiasm generated for getting to the truth of things, finding out what’s really going on. The idea was not to change women, was not to make “internal changes” except in the sense of knowing more. How to approach it? Published in full in Notes from the Second Year: Women’s Liberation, Shulamith Firestone, editor, 1970, NY (out of print). There turned out to be tremendous resistance to women’s simply studying their situation, especially without men in the room. A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century - PDF Link. This stuff happens in chueches and synagogues, or at least certain curches and synagogues, and they have always been a basis and system of consciousness raising long preceding base communities. The first job now was to raise awareness and understanding, our own and others — awareness that would prompt people to organize and to act on a mass scale. The classic early text on Consciousness Raising from the Women’s Liberation Movement. Consciousness-Raising: A Radical Weapon "The following represents a compilation and expansion of text, notes and comments from a talk Kathie Sarachild gave on consciousness-raising to the First National Conference of Stewardesses for Women's Rights in New York City, March 12, 1973. We were applying to women and to ourselves as women’s liberation organizers the practice a number of us had learned as organizers in the civil rights movement in the South in the early 1960’s. The paraphernalia of rules and methodology — the new dogma of “C-R” that has grown up around consciousness-raising as it has spread — has had the effect of creating vested interests for the methodology experts, both professional (for example, psychiatrists) and amateur. We’ve all done it. It was a means for the organizers themselves to make an analysis of the situation, and also a means to be used by the people they were organizing and who were in turn organizing more people. had been. The decision to emphasize our own feelings and experiences as women and to test all generalizations and reading we did by our own experience was actually the scientific method of research. “You don’t get radicalized fighting other people’s battles,” as Beverly Jones put it in the pioneering essay “Toward A Female Liberation Movement.”. The group's name is derived from bluestocking, a term used to disparage feminist intellectuals of earlier centuries, and red, for its association with the revolutionary left. We’d do any outside reading we wanted to and thought was important. Worse yet, the lies prevented some women we would have liked to reach from learning about what we were really doing. In the beginning we had set out to do our studying in order to take better action. Our group was growing rapidly. “Raising consciousness?” I wondered what she meant by that. The purpose of consciousness-raising was to get to the most radical truths about the situation of women in order to take radical action; but the call for “action” can sometimes be a way of preventing understanding — and preventing radical action. She's also a YouTube star.…” Our group’s first public action after putting out a journal was an attempt to reach the masses with our ideas on one of those so-called petty topics: the issue of appearance. The Establishment is trying to change consciousness-raising, weaken, dilute, and take away its strength so its won’t cause any more changes.Going to the sources, the historic roots, to the work that set the program in motion, is one of the ways to fight this process. But any corrections in the original idea must be done to make the weapon of consciousness-raising in the hands of women sharper, not duller. And when we attempted to describe the realities of our lives in certain ways, however logical — for instance, when we said that men oppressed women, or that all men were among the beneficiaries in the oppression of women — some people really got upset. But our starting point for discussion, as well as our test of the accuracy of what any of the books said, would be the actual experience we had in these areas. Consciousness-Raising: A Radical Weapon The following represents a compilation and expansion of text, notes and comments from a talk Kathie Sarachild gave on consciousness-raising to the First National Conference of Stewardesses for Women’s Rights in New York City, March 12,1973. In our consciousness-raising sessions, for example, we have in many ways gone beyond white women’s revelations because we are dealing with the implications of race and class as well as sex. In Morgan (mistakenly attributed to New York Radial Women). In Firestone; Agel. Our idea in the beginning was that consciousness-raising — through both C-R groups and public actions — would waken more and more women to an understanding of what their problems were and that they would begin to take action, both individual and collective. Besides, the question is what we want to be, what we think we are, not what some authorities in the name of science are arguing over what we are. The purpose of hearing from everyone was never to be nice or tolerant or to develop speaking skill or the “ability to listen.”  It was to get closer to the truth. In Firestone; Tanner; Morgan. Of course, with greater unity and organization more can actually be accomplished and solved. The phrase "consciousness raising" was coined to describe the … This journal… Consciousness-raising seemed to be what was needed. In 1968 she took the name Sarachild, after her mother Sara, and coined the phrase "Sisterhood is Powerful" in a flier she wrote for the speech she gave at the convocation of the Jeannette Rankin Brigade for New York Radical women's first public action. The topics we were talking about in our groups were dismissed as “petty” or “not political.” Often these were the key areas in terms of how women are oppressed as a particular group — like housework, childcare and sex. Learning the truth can lead to all kinds of action and this action will lead to further truths.But no particular change in a woman’s personal behavior, nor any particular action or strategy, are presupposed. “Redstockings Manifesto” (July 7, 1969). I like thinking, as someone suggested, that all females belong to the caste of “female” and we have an uphill road to breaking out of that caste, which is always less than males. It was to produce truer ones. Common issues include diseases (e.g. Consciousness-raising — studying the whole gamut of women’s lives, starting with the full reality of one’s own — would also be a way of keeping the movement radical by preventing it from getting sidetracked into single issue reforms and single issue organizing. Consciousness Raising Groups This WMST-L discussion from February 2010 concerns consciousness-raising groups of the 1960s and '70s, including participants' recollections and ways in which people are using c.r. For instance, on the subject of women’s intelligence. Worse yet, the lies prevented some women we would have liked to reach from learning about what we were really doing. As one woman, Michal Goldman, put it, “I get tired of those people who are always experimenting, never discovering anything, always examining, but never seeing — always changing, always remaining the same.”Nor does consciousness-raising, as some have implied, assume that increased awareness, knowledge, or education alone will eliminate male supremacy. She wrote "Consciousness-Raising: A Radical Weapon," which was presented to the First National Conference of Stewardesses for Women's Rights in 1973 in New York City. This only happened after 1968, when the new and more radical groups formed, with a mass perspective. Although we had taken radical political action and risks many times before, and would act again and again, when we discussed male chauvinism, suddenly we were just women who complained all the time, who stayed in the personal realm and never took any action.Some people said outright they thought what we were doing was dangerous. We protested and picketed the Miss America Contest, throwing high heels, girdles and other objects of female torture into a freedom trash can. Our study groups were radicalizing our own consciousness and it suddenly became apparent that women could be doing on a mass scale what we were doing in our own group, that the next logical radical action would be to get the word out about what we were doing. It was a means for the organizers themselves to make an analysis of the situation, and also a means to be used by the people they were organizing and who were in turn organizing more people. But we also saw it as an ongoing and continuing source of theory and ideas for action. She was one of the founders of New York Radical Women in 1967 and was an early Redstocking. Men are oppressed, too! groups today in the classroom or elsewhere. There have been a number of formalized “rules” or “guidelines” for consciousness-raising which have been published and distributed to women’s groups with an air of authority and as if they represented the original program of consciousness-raising. Methods are simply to serve this purpose, to be changed if they aren’t working. I know, because I’ve done it. Anything less than a radical approach to feminism wouldn’t interest other women any more than it did us, wouldn’t seem worth the effort. Consciousness raising: a radical weapon. of consciousness generates political agency; Schniedewind, Nancy. “False Consciousness” by Jennifer Gardner (Oct., 1969). General Roy Schwasinger and the military pioneered it. And women discriminate against women!” Now it would seem to go without saying that if women have a secondary status in the society compared to men, and are treated as secondary creatures, then the beneficiaries would be those with the primary status.Our meetings were called coffee klatches, hen parties or bitch sessions. This only happened after 1968, when the new and more radical groups formed, with a mass perspective. We knew radical thinking and radical action would be necessary to do this. The kind of actions the groups should engage in, at this point, we decided — acting upon an idea of Carol Hanisch, another woman in the group — would be consciousness-raising actions … actions brought to the public for the specific purpose of challenging old ideas and raising new ones, the very same issues of feminism we were studying ourselves. It was and is the conditions women face, it’s male supremacy, we want to change. Sarachild outlined the original program for “Radical Feminist Consciousness-Raising” which was presented at the First National Women’s Liberation Conference outside Chicago, November 27, 1968. “Redstockings Manifesto” (July 7, 1969). We’d do any outside reading we wanted to and thought was important. In Tooth and Nail, 1969, Berkeley Calif.; Firestone; Tanner. And women discriminate against women!”  Now it would seem to go without saying that if women have a secondary status in the society compared to men, and are treated as secondary creatures, then the beneficiaries would be those with the primary status. What really counts in consciousness-raising are not methods, but results. Published in full in Notes from the Second Year: Women’s Liberation, Shulamith Firestone, editor, 1970, NY (out of print). “You can’t say that men are the oppressors of women! New York: Random House. There is also more to do about clarifying our goals and defining the obstacles — making connections between the oppression of women and other systems of oppression and exploitation. Redstockings, also known as Redstockings of the Women's Liberation Movement, is a radical feminist group that was founded in January 1969 in New York City. Our group’s first public action after putting out a journal was an attempt to reach the masses with our ideas on one of those so-called petty topics: the issue of appearance. The decision to emphasize our own feelings and experiences as women and to test all generalizations and reading we did by our own experience was actually the scientific method of research. “Consciousness-Raising: the world and social justice. We protested and picketed the Miss America Contest, throwing high heels, girdles and other objects of female torture into a freedom trash can. We can’t limit our thinking or our action only to that which we can do immediately. Of course, with greater unity and organization more can actually be accomplished and solved. We were interested in getting to the roots of problems in society. How best to do this came up in the women’s liberation group I was in — New York Radical Women, one of the first in the country — shortly after the group had formed. If women fear they have to take action on what they are talking about, especially action alone, as individuals, they won’t talk about anything they’re not ready to take action on, or they won’t be honest. We were planning our first public action and wandered into a discussion about what to do next. It would be a way of carrying theory about women further than it had ever been carried before, as the groundwork for achieving a radical solution for women as yet attained nowhere. One woman in the group, Ann Forer, spoke up: “I think we have a lot more to do just in the area of raising our consciousness,” she said. One woman in the group, Ann Forer, spoke up: “I think we have a lot more to do just in the area of raising our consciousness,” she said. The whole group was moved as I was, and we decided on the spot that what we needed — in the words Ann used — was to “raise our consciousness some more.”. This kind of study would be part of what was necessary to achieve the liberation of women on a mass scale. Malcolm X Speaks, George Breitman, editor, 1965. It can be concluded, therefore, that at least for approx. I found myself angered by that idea.“I think it would be a waste of time,” I said. Sarachild outlined the original program 5 Kathie Sarachild, "Consciousness-Raising: A Radical Weapon," in Feminist Revolution, ed. Now I didn’t consider that I had just started thinking about the oppression of women. What really counts in consciousness-raising are not methods, but results. See Appendix. And that is what we meant by calling ourselves radicals. The purpose of women’s liberation was to defeat male spremacy and give women equality. Action comes when our experience is finally verified and clarified. In: Redstockings of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Consciousness-raising — studying the whole gamut of women’s lives, starting with the full reality of one’s own — would also be a way of keeping the movement radical by preventing it from getting sidetracked into single issue reforms and single issue organizing. There have been a number of formalized “rules” or “guidelines” for consciousness-raising which have been published and distributed to women’s groups with an air of authority and as if they represented the original program of consciousness-raising. See Appendix. 50 per cent of the learners in the experimental group the instruction through grammar consciousness-raising tasks lead to noticing scores of the target structure (i.e. Consciousness raising (also called awareness raising) ... New York Radical Feminists organized neighborhood-based c.r. Now the oppositionsto consciousness-raising frequently comes under the guise of support or partial support. One woman — Peggy Dobbins — said that what she wanted to do was make a very intensive study of all the literature on the question of whether there really were any biological differences between men and women. Some people said outright they thought what we were doing was dangerous. Our meetings were called coffee klatches, hen parties or bitch sessions. There is tremendous energy in consciousness-raising, an enthusiasm generated for getting to the truth of things, finding out what’s really going on. We felt this was such a monumental task. Most of these issues the National Organization for Women (NOW) wouldn’t touch. In its radical understanding of the role-playing required by women's effort to participate in the mainstream of literary culture, the pseudonym is a … In Masculine/Feminine (Rozak & Rozak); The Other Half (Epstein and J. Goode), 1971; Firestone; Morgan; Tanner. The name calling and attacks were for us a constant source of irritation and sometimes of amazement as they often came from other radicals who we though would welcome this new mass movement of an oppressed group. From it we can also discover what may have been wrong in the original thining that allowed some organizing to go off the track. Knowledge and information would make it possible for people to be “able” to speak, The purpose of hearing people’s feelings and experience was not therapy, was not to give someone a change to get something off her chest … that is something for a friendship. It often takes the form of a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group on some cause or condition. We responded by saying, “Yes, bitch, sisters, bitch,” and by calling coffee klatches a historic form of women’s resistance to oppression. From Feminist Revolution: An Abridged Edition with Additional WritingsRedstockings of the Women's Liberation Movement, Random House, New York: 1978. The view of consciousness-raising as an end in itself — which happens when consciousness-raising is made into a methodology, a psychology — is as severe and destructive a distortion of the original idea and power of the weapon as is seeing consciousness-raising as a stage. In the end the group decided to raise its consciousness by studying women’s lives by topics like childhood, jobs, motherhood, etc. To be able to understand what feminist consciousness-raising is all about, it is important to remember that it began as a program among women who all considered themselves radicals. The purpose of women’s liberation was to defeat male spremacy and give women equality. The methods and assumptions behind consciousness-raising essentially grew out of both the scientific and radical political traditions, but when we applied them to women’s situation, a whole lot of otherwise “scientific” and “radical” people — especailly men — just couldn’t see this. We also believed it necessary to form Women’s Liberation groups which excluded men from their meetings. When we merely brought up concrete examples in our lives of discrimination against women, or exploitation of women, we were accused of “man-hating” or “sour grapes.”  These were more efforts to keep the issues and ideas we were discussing out of the realm of subjects of genuine study and debate by defining them as psychological delusions. groups in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, involving as many as four hundred women in c.r. Before we go any further, let’s examine the word “radical.” It is a word that is often used to suggest extremist, but actually it doesn’t mean that. | Tags: Carol Hanisch, Chicago, Consciousness raising, Feminist movement, Kathie Sarachild, New York City, New York Radical Women, Women. “Defining Reality” by Lynn O’Connor, Tooth and Nail, ibid.“Redstockings West Manifesto” (March 20, 1970), Rozak & Rozak. Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967—1975, University of Minnesota Press 1990; Karen Kampwirth, Feminism and the Legacy of Revolution: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Ohio UP 2004; Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy, Oxford University Press 1994 The pattern of obstacles to consciousness-raising was also getting quite clear. Before we go any further, let’s examine the word “radical.”  It is a word that is often used to suggest extremist, but actually it doesn’t mean that. By the very logic of the idea no action can be required ahead of time in consciousness-raising unless a group is using consciousness-raising specifically to brainstorm for an action. The discussion also considers the allegation that c.r. But new knowledge is the source of consciousness-raising’s strength and power. Shulamith Firestone, who wrote the book The Dialectic of Sex, Anne Koedt, who wrote the essay “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm,” Pat Mainardi, who wrote the essay “The Politics of Housework,” Carol Hanisch, who wrote the essay, “The Personal is Political,” Kate Millett, who wrote Sexual Politics, Cindy Cisler, who led the ground-breaking abortion law repeal fight in New York, Rosalyn Baxandall, Irene Peslikis, Ellen Willis, Robin Morgan and many others participated in these discussions. [9] Viochita Nachescu, “Radical Feminism and the Nation: History and Space in the Political Imagination of Second-Wave Feminism,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism vol. Malcolm X Speaks, George Breitman, editor, 1965. It was to hear what she had to say. For instance, the aim of going around the room in a meeting to hear each woman’s testimony, a common — and exciting — practice in consciousness-raising, is to help stay focused on a point, to bring the discussion back to the main subject after exploring a tangent, to get the experience of as many people as possible in the common pool of knowledge. The idea is to study the situation to determine what kinds of actions, individual and political, are necessary. Our role was not to be a “service organization,” we decided, nor a large “membership organization.”  What we were talking about being was, in effect, Carol explained, a “zap” action, political agitation and education group something like what the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (S.N.C.C.) Analyzing our experience in our personal lives and in the movement, reading about the experience of other people’s struggles, and connecting these through consciousness-raising will keep us on the track, moving as fast as possible toward women’s liberation. As one woman, Michal Goldman, put it, “I get tired of those people who are always experimenting, never discovering anything, always examining, but never seeing — always changing, always remaining the same.”. The following represents a compilation and expansion of text, notes and comments from a talk Kathie Sarachild gave on consciousness-raising to the First National Conference of Stewardesses for Women’s Rights in New York City, March 12, 1973. Everything we have to know, have to prove, we can get from the realities of our own lives. In all of this, the original purpose of consciousness-raising, its connection with revolutionary change for women, is all too often getting lost. The importance of listening to a woman’s feelings was collectively to analyze the situation of women, not to analyze her. groups in the past were "essentialist." “Defining Reality” by Lynn O’Connor, Tooth and Nail, ibid. We hadn’t realized that just studying this subject and naming the problem and problems would be a radical action in itself, action so radical as to engender tremendous and presistent opposition from directions that still manage to flabbergast me. This is why a look at the origins of consciousness-raising provides such an important perspective. In Masculine/Feminine (Rozak & Rozak); The Other Half (Epstein and J. Goode), 1971; Firestone; Morgan; Tanner. She was also one of the four women who held the women's Liberation banner at the Miss America Protest in 1986. had been. "Consciousness raising" groups were pioneered by New York Radical Women, an early Women's Liberation group in New York City, and quickly spread throughout the United States. Women’s Liberation was started by women who considered themsleves radicals in this sense. What actually went on in the original consciousness-raising program which turned out to be so provocative, the thinking behind it, the literature which the original group produced, form the kernel experience from which all other lessons grew. In fact, I thought of myself as having done lots of thinking about it for quite a while, and lots of reading too. ; New York: Random House, 1978), 144. But people have to learn this, and there is more and more to learn about which methods of organization and action we need. A recent New York Times article referred to a meeting called by Henry Kissinger to talk to the executives of the major television networks about the content of their programs as a “curious ‘consciousness-raising’ session with a Secretary of State.”Even in the women’s liberation movement there are all kinds of proponents of consciousness-raising, people who are looked at as “experts in the field” and people who are drawing up all kinds of guidelines and rules for its use. Experience in consciousness-raising can’t be judged by expertise in any alleged methods but by expertise in getting results, in producing insights and understanding. 1 (Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 2009): 30. We made the assumption, an assumption basic to consciousness-raising, that most women were like ourselves — not different — so that our self-interest in dicussing the problems facing women which most concerned us would also interest other women. Before we go any further, let’s examine the word “radical.” It is a word that is often used to suggest extremist, but actually it doesn’t mean that. Feminist groups and individual women who at first didn’t think they needed it are all doing it. BACKGROUND“The Women’s Rights Movement in the U.S.A.” by Shulamith Firestone (June, 1968). Since informing the populace of a public concern is often regarded as the first step to changing how the institutions handle it, raising awareness … The purpose of hearing from everyone was never to be nice or tolerant or to develop speaking skill or the “ability to listen.” It was to get closer to the truth. See Appendix. But then Ann went on to give an example of something she’d noticed that turned out to be a deeper way of seeing it for me, too. Back then, NESARA had an R which stood for Restoration. The idea was to take our own feelings and experience more seriously than any theories which did not satisfactorily clarify them, and to devise new theories which did reflect the actual experience and feelings and necessities of women. © 2010 Vancouver Rape Relief & Women's Shelter, Criminalizing Male Violence Against Women, Browsing Global Resistance resource library, “The Personal is Political” by Carol Hanisch, “Resistances to Consciousness” by Irene Peslikis. For instance, the aim of going around the room in a meeting to hear each woman’s testimony, a common — and exciting — practice in consciousness-raising, is to help stay focused on a point, to bring the discussion back to the main subject after exploring a tangent, to get the experience of as many people as possible in the common pool of knowledge. “I’ve only begun thinking about women as an oppressed group,” she continued, “and each day, I’m still learning more about it — my consciousness gets higher.”. 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Our meetings were called coffee klatches, hen parties or bitch sessions, 1989 ), 109 involving many... Thinking or our action only to that which we can do immediately Tooth and Nail ibid... York Radial women ) thining that allowed some organizing to go off track... On consciousness-raising: a radical weapon mass perspective to focus the attention of a wider group some. Press, 2009 ): 30 Redstockings Manifesto ” ( July 7 1969., George Breitman, editor, 1965 '' was coined to describe …! Problem takes place through theory and ideas for action Feminist groups and individual women who held the women s... Weapon, '' in Feminist Revolution, ed to the roots of problems in society the.. Of course, with greater unity and organization more can actually be accomplished and solved the! Wondered what she meant by that idea. “ I think it would be part of why consciousness-raising is the women... Are simply to serve this purpose, to be what was needed of time, ” I said NESARA!