Week 8 · Feminism and Community Health Activism in the 1970s

The title of Carol Hanisch's "The Personal is Political" provided one of the key phrases of the feminist movement -- the idea that personal experiences had political significance -- and became a key impetus for the creation of what were called "consciousness raising" or CR groups (the kinds of groups she mentions in the first paragraph). How does Hanisch seek to distinguish the activities of these early discussion groups from "therapy" and why does it matter? In what way does Hanisch see women's personal experiences as having collective or political meaning?

"The Woman Identified Woman" written by the New York group Radicalesbians was an extremely influential rethinking of what it meant to be a lesbian -- one that centered lesbian desire within the women's movement. What did the Radicalesbians think was so important or potentially impactful about lesbian desire? How is the essay a larger critique of male power? And how would you compare it to Carl Wittman's "Gay Manifesto"?

The Combahee River Collective Statement was one of the first major statements of what we would now call intersectional feminist theory. How do the authors' own experience as black lesbian feminists inform their analysis? What are some of the major problems that they identify, and how do they seem similar to or different from some of the other major manifestos we've read so far this semester?

In what ways do the women testifying about abortion at the Speak-Out (discussed by Susan Brownmiller in the primary source) and the writers and readers of "Our Bodies, Ourselves" (as discussed in the secondary source by Wendy Kline) engage with and act upon the feminist principle that the personal is political? How did activism building on this principle also potentially limit their activism? 

One of the key arguments of the Young Lords takeover of Lincoln Hospital was that the Latinx/Puerto Rican community of the Bronx should have control over their healthcare. Based on the short documentary, why was self-determination/community control so important to the Young Lords? And what are the parallels in the women's health movement?

The three texts together represent different kinds of strategies of health activism -- how would you name or define these strategies, how do they relate, and what kinds of change do you think these strategies made possible?