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traditionally considered “men’s work.” They demanded equal pay for equal
work. They sought employment in traditionally men’s fields like construction,
as police and fire fighters, dispatchers, in the building trades, and often sued
when denied even the right to apply. Indeed, the original women’s movement
was largely based on economic issues—the right to work, and to get pay equal
to men who were doing identical or similar work. By the mid-1970s, women
would break through and achieve more opportunities than at any time in U.S.
history.
The first time many Americans heard of Women’s Lib was in September
1968 when the “Radical Women of New York” crashed the Miss America
Pageant that year. They set up a “freedom trash can” where they discarded, but
did not burn, bras, girdles, wigs, false eyelashes, and anti-woman magazines—
symbols of women’s oppression, as they explained. They held signs comparing
the pageant to a “cattle auction” and had a poster of a naked woman with
body parts labeled “loin” and “rump” as if she were just a side of beef. And
they chanted “Atlantic City is a town with class. They raise your morals and
they judge your ass.” Using guerrilla theater, these women wanted to intro-
duce their agenda to a national crowd. They criticized not only sexism but
racism, commercialism, and war. Miss America was a “Military Death Mascot,”
they claimed, a “cheerleader” for U.S. troops; “last year she went to Vietnam
to pep-talk our husbands, fathers, sons and boyfriends into dying and killing
with a better spirit.”
Other women struck out on their own and conducted similar and often
more radical or extreme protests. WITCH—the Women’s International
Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell—held a “Halloween Witches’ Dance” on Wall
Street to hex the stock market, which fell five points the next day. Valerie
Solanas wrote an anti-male manifesto for the group SCUM, the Society for
Cutting Up Men. She believed, “life” in this ‘society’ being, at best, an utter
bore and no aspect of “society’ being at all relevant to women, there remains
to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the
government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and
eliminate the male sex.”
Some women took a more philosophical approach to the issue of sex
inequality. One of, if not the, most-respected and fiery feminists was Shulamith
Firestone, who founded the periodical Notes from the First Year in 1968 [and
followed with Second and Third Year editions in 1970-71]. In it, she introduced