Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975 is an academic monograph by Alice Echols, published in 1989. As the title suggests, the book offers a detailed account of the rise and fall of radical feminism in America from late ‘60s to ‘70s. Echols vividly depicts the achievements, struggles and conflicts within radical feminism, identifies and categorizes different theories and activists’ groups emerged from the movement, and attempts to explain how radical feminism eventually came to its doom. The book organizes a complex half-decade of political history into an easily comprehensible timeline, while summarizing many scholar ideologies towards radical feminism. It serves as an accessible scholarly introduction to readers who lack significant knowledges about this topic.

Echols contends that radical feminism, several years after its establishment, was eclipsed by cultural feminism, which was a “tendency that grew out of radical feminism” (5) Whereas radical feminists called for a political confrontation with the government and a subversion of the male supremacy society, cultural feminists were keen on creating an alternate counter-culture with only women. These are not the only two tendencies shared by women of the radical movements. Echols also introduces other categories of feminist ideologies, such as politicos, liberal feminists, new left women, socialist-feminists. She focuses on how, in the movement, radical feminism gradually dissipated, along with fatal flaws within the movement that prefigure its end. In her opinion, if one successfully articulates the reason for the popularity of radical feminist movements in ‘60s as well as their lethal flaws, it might be possible for she and her contemporaries to revitalize the movements.

As Echols concludes herself, her work is “not simply an intellectual history, a social history, or a collective biography” but “the combination of three”. (19) Her academic approach in this book is primarily historiographical. Employing a large number of direct quotes from speeches, interviews and writings, Echols presents a wide range of narratives from scholar’s and activists’ views from 1967-1975. Her sources of evidence consist of multiple types of texts, since her emphasis is not solely on the feminism theories, but also their practice, the interpersonal relationships between feminists, the engagement with other ongoing movements black movements, as well as media response. As the radical feminist movement was, in her own words, “factious”, she often introduces each sub-group and its theories in separate sections of a chapter, accompanied by a micro biography of their founders and leaders. However, her work is not uncritical. Though the historical narratives are kept objective and impartial, she presents her analysis on the feminists’ theories and approaches as conclusions.

The book is divided into 6 chapters, ordered chronologically. Each chapter marks a certain time period with distinct features attributed to it, such as 1973-1975 and the flourishment of cultural feminism. Generally, the radical feminism history in the book can be divided into three parts: the early days radical feminism as an affiliate to other radical movements, the rise of many radical feminism theories and organizations, and radical feminism’s decline that started the development of lesbian feminism and cultural feminism.

Beginning from 1965, the prototype of the actual radical feminism that appeared after 1967 emerged. As early as 1965, women activists still worked inside male-dominating movements, such as the new left and civil rights movement. Women’s issues were not taken seriously, as ““Male chauvinism” was a phrase that one did not utter unless one was ready to be laughed at.” (26) At the same time, the growing gender tensions on sex roles forced (SDS) to start holding workshops on women’s roles. Later on, women activists like Jo Freeman and Shulamith Firestone from the Chicago’s group embarked on the earliest women liberation movements by forming small independent women groups and issuing a manifesto about “defining their own struggles” (49) Echols argues that the black power before 1967 ultimately inspired the statement that “it was only valid form women the organize their own oppression and to define the terms of their struggle.” The radical feminists’ struggle begins with a fundamental “politico-feminist schism.” (52) “Politicos” and “Feminists” occupied opposing theoretical positions inside the women liberation groups by 1969. Politicos viewed capitalism as the main enemy of women’s liberation and claimed women’s movements as an important sector of the leftist movements at the time. By contrast, feminists believed male supremacy to be the biggest problem faced by women and refused to be in only a subordinate position under male-dominating movements. The earliest women liberation groups included D.C. Women Liberation, The Westside Group of Chicago, and New York Radical Women. Together, they articulated the early radical feminist theories and organized events and protests, such as consciousness-raising meetings. In chapter two, Echols demonstrates in detail how problems arose within women liberation groups. Besides the clashes between politicos and feminists, the theories divided on questions like whether men should be challenged or rejected, and whether consciousness-raising groups should demand for actions. In addition, Echols argues that the premise of consciousness-raising, as well as the largely embraced theories at the time, was dismissive of class and sexuality differences, as they contended that “differences still had the same root.” As the white upper- and middle-class women of liberation groups based their theories on assumptions that all women shared universal experiences which united them, bringing up differences was discouraged. The inner conflicts, the unorganized groups, as well as the growing sizes, all contributed to the early failures of radical feminism such as the dissolution of a large group like NYRW.

However, the tendency of the whole movement became much less politico and much more feminist towards 1969, when feminists faced increasing hostility from the larger movements. The sexism within the leftist movements at the time forced women to organize their movements outside of the left. Starting from 1969, radical feminism grew continuously into even more strains and more radical of theoretical positions. Echols contends that “In the early ‘70s radical feminism seemed to be flourishing” as “there was an explosion of radical feminism literature.” (197) Moreover, she also illustrates several flaws within these groups. For example, Redstockings continued on the previous generalized assumptions of all women by upper class, white women. It failed again, to see the need of specifying class and race differences in consciousness-raising. The in-movement schism still existed, and was expressed in opposition between pro-woman line and gender conditioning theory. The former, represented by Redstockings, believed women were forced by the material reality of the male-dominating society to take oppressed roles, while the latter, represented by Cell 16, maintained that women were “brainwashed.” (161) Accusations of elitism, especially against the most educated member, who were also main theorists and writers, were growing. Organizations like The Feminists and New York Radical Feminists were so obsessed with an egalitarian approach to achieve leader-less structure and a true sisterhood that they became greatly unorganized. In addition, prefiguration of cultural feminism started to appear when arguments from Cell 16 transformed into a more gender essentialism theory. Besides, they also proposed that “women withdraw from men personally as well as politically.” (164) It was also true that in 1970, “the newcomers often lacked the founders’ radical perspective” as they “seemed more interested in self-improvement than in the radical restructuring of society.” Radical feminism, in reality, started to decline.

The start of chapter five, titled “the Eruption of Differences,” marks the turning point of radical feminism. In the winter of 1970, Barbara Mehrhof and Pam Kearon organized the Class Workshop for women activists to discuss class. However, Echols maintains that class workshops were “response to the media’s growing fascination with the women’s liberation movement.” Class and elitism were assessed as a result of the resentment created when only few people(leaders) had attention of the press. The discussion about class equality did not have noticeable positive results; instead, it “had become a tyranny of personal conformity. Imagination, inspiration, and efficient political organization are suspected and throttled.” (210)

Meanwhile, Lesbianism emerged as more and more lesbian-feminists entered the movement and demanded for more inclusiveness within radical feminism. Lesbians faced mostly hostility among the heterosexual women liberationists, for lesbian sexuality was regarded as sexual rather than political. As evidenced by quotes from Roxanne Dunbar, “feminism…to get women out of bed rather than change the gender of their partners,” Most radical feminists were anti-sex. To convince the heterosexual women in the movement, lesbian-feminists like Rita Mae Brown promoted lesbianism with the term “women-identified women.” They legitimized lesbian as a political term and contradicted the stigmatization that lesbians were “male-identified bogeywomen.” (216) To them, their sexuality “involved sensuality rather than sexuality, communication rather than conquest.” Echols comments on the de-sexualization of lesbianism that “the movement’s acceptance of lesbianism was always conditional – contingent upon lesbians’ wiliness to de-emphasize sexuality…Lesbianism was never really legitimated on sexual grounds.” While the eruption of differences was not directly correlated to cultural feminism, she contends that “cultural feminism’s ascendence is in large measure attributable to the turmoil created by lesbianism and class.” From 1969, cultural feminists proposed arguments in “The Fourth World Manifesto” and “Mother Right.” The manifesto declared that the female culture formed a fourth world, since women were essentially a colonized group. In addition, Jane Alpert articulated in “Mother Right” that women exhibited a super power due to female biology, as she explained, “biology is hence the source and not the enemy of feminist revolution.” (250) A vision of women united by their shared “motherhood” (251) was described, and Echols concludes that the reason why cultural feminism was constructed and embraced was a “desire to put an end to the painful and often immobilizing discussions about women’s differences.” Cultural feminism was, inevitably, a logical solution which feminists sought for after a long time of turmoil and an intensifying tendency to essentialism.

Over 30 years after its first publication, Echols’ book is still not outdated and serves as a valuable text for those who are curious about radical feminist movements in 60s and 70s. While the book is relatively accessible so that people without fundamental knowledge in social movements or feminism can understand Echols’ ideas, the ways she structures her material are sometimes misleading. For example, the contradicting theories of pro-woman line and gender conditioning are firstly mentioned in conclusion of chapter 2. Without further explanation in chapter 2, this material is revisited in chapter 4 and finally addressed in detail. As the chapters describe mostly simultaneous events, similar situation happens multiple times and render one particular piece of content quite confusing. Other than that, the book is based on a cis-gender assumption. Mostly limited by ‘80s gender concepts(it was written in 1987), the book fails to address struggle of non-cis-gender women, as well as other non-binary communities. Though Echols provides ample insights into the race and class perspective of radical feminism, gender minorities other than gays and lesbians are ignored.

Work Cited:

Echols, Alice, “Daring to Be Bad”: Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975, University of Minnesota Press, 1989