In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution - Hardcover

Brownmiller, Susan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385314868 ISBN 13: 9780385314862

Publisher: The Dial Press, 1999

Synopsis

There once was a time when the concept of equal pay for equal work did not exist, when women of all ages were "girls," when abortion was a back-alley procedure, when there was no such thing as a rape crisis center or a shelter for battered women, when "sexual harassment" had not yet been named and defined.  "If conditions are right," Susan Brownmiller says in this stunning memoir, "if the anger of enough people has reached the boiling point, the exploding passion can ignite a societal transformation."

In Our Time tells the story of that transformation, as only Brownmiller can.  A leading feminist activist and the author of Against Our Will, the book that changed the nation's perception of rape, she now brings the Women's Liberation movement and its passionate history vividly to life.

Here is the colorful cast of characters on whose shoulders we stand--the feminist icons Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, Germaine Greer, and Gloria Steinem, and the lesser known women whose contributions to change were equally profound.  And here are the landmark events of the era: the consciousness-raising groups that sprung up in people's living rooms, the mimeographed position papers that first articulated the new thinking, the abortion and rape speak-outs, the daring sit-ins, the underground newspaper collectives, and the inventive lawsuits that all played a role in the most wide-reaching revolution of the twentieth century.

Here as well are Brownmiller's reflections on the feminist utopian vision, and her dramatic accounts, rendered with honesty and humor, of the movement's painful internal schisms as it struggled to give voice to the aspirarations of all women.  Finally, Brownmiller addresses that most relevant question: What is the legacy of feminism today?

About this title

Review:

Susan Brownmiller was a Gucci-clad, 33-year-old writer grappling privately with the decidedly masculine preserve of feature journalism when she attended her first consciousness-raising session in 1968. Her first impression? Oh, brother! But as other women around the room told their stories, they resonated with something deep in Brownmiller's psyche, and when it was time to tell her own--"I've had three illegal abortions"--the ambitious reporter experienced something akin to a road-to-Damascus conversion.

Brownmiller's 1975 classic, Against Our Will, changed the nation's perception of rape and turned her into a feminist icon overnight. In Our Time, though, is less an argument for transformation than an encyclopedic look at the forces that shaped the social movement of late-20th-century feminism, from occasional clashes of colorful personalities like Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Germaine Greer (who, 30 years later, have a tendency to seem larger than life) to the methodical, often unexciting, day-by-day planning behind the landmark sit-ins, lawsuits, and other headline events. Sisterhood's call to arms was most persuasive when the enemy was economic oppression and the battle cry "equal pay for equal work!" Solidarity was harder to muster, Brownmiller reports, when it came to targeting social injustices, particularly those pertaining to sex. Were Clarence Thomas's raunchy remarks to Anita Hill business as usual or a type of harassment? Was pornography a male counterreaction intended to degrade newly liberated women or an effort to make sexual pleasure available to fantasists of all persuasions? These arguments persist today--and In Our Time reminds us that they must be viewed in historical context. --Patrizia DiLucchio

From the Back Cover:

Male-only admissions policies. Back-alley abortions. The pervasive belief that rape was a woman's fault. These were the shocking conditions that stirred students, mothers, businesswomen, and grandmothers to activism in the latter half of the twentieth century. In this stirring memoir, Susan Brownmiller, feminist activist and author of the landmark work on rape, Against Our Will, draws upon her four decades on the front lines of the women's movement to chronicle the startling inequities, groundbreaking campaigns, and colorful cast of characters that ignited one of the most transformational movements in American history.

In Our Time takes us behind the scenes to meet the passionate and provocative "foremothers" who steered the rising tide of feminism in America: Germaine Greer. Kate Millett. Betty Friedan. Gloria Steinem. Rita Mae Brown. And it reveals the real stories behind the headlines that heralded womankind's quest for freedom. The Miss America protest of 1968. The sit-in at the Ladies' Home Journal. Karla Jay's table-turning Wall Street "Ogle-in". Lucy Komisar's "This Ad Insults Women" sticker campaign. The conception and creation of Ms. magazine. And every skirmish, standoff, and highlight of the thirty-year struggle for equality -- as told by a woman who was at the center of the action.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Dial Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0385314868
• ISBN 13: 9780385314862
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368