For The Record
The WLM also had an interesting relationship with academic women's - and then 'gender' - studies. The history and analysis of feminism in the 1970s and 80s is now mostly done by academic researchers, who may or may not have experienced it, or fully grasped what provoked and propelled women to organize within it.
One source for the earliest days of the more radically feminist roots of the WLM is Alice Echols, Daring to Be BAD: Radical Feminism in America 1967 - 1975 (1989). She describes the first explicit 'women's liberation' groups forming in 1968 in the USA. It makes little sense to talk about the WLM existing in any form before then.
An important reference for the more radical impulses of the WLM later on is the Trouble and Strife Reader, published in 2010, and its Introduction on both the magazine and its political context from 1983 to 2002.
A good more general history of the WLM has yet to be written. Several groups attempted at the time to capture history from its living actors; and the Feminist Library in London as well as the University of Wisconsin at Madison (which had a tireless feminist librarian in the 1970s and 80s) are good sources for original material.
Read more about this topic: Women's Liberation Movement
Famous quotes containing the word record:
“When our kids are young, many of us rush out to buy a cute little baby book to record the meaningful events of our young child’s life...But I’ve often thought there should be a second book, one with room to record the moral milestones of our child’s lives. There might be space to record dates she first shared or showed compassion or befriended a new student or thought of sending Grandma a get-well card or told the truth despite its cost.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)