Part IV: 1963-1975

Some critical questions:

“The first women’s studies programs were created in these years [1963-1963], as were rape crisis centers and hotlines, battered women’s shelters, women’s centers, and women’s bookstores” (197).

As the introduction to Part IV says, the establishment of crisis centers, shelters and women’s centers was revolutionary. Why do we seemingly take them for granted then? For instance, why isn’t the Women’s Center at Allegheny used more? I’ve never seen it advertised around campus and I've walked past it numerous times—it never seems to be open much less offer discussion groups or counseling, etc.

Clearly this isn't because women no longer need crisis centers, women's centers or shelters.

Rape and domestic abuse are still pressing issues. While my generation has at least grown up knowing these words as commonly used terms (because they didn't even used to exist) they are still major problems within society. For instance, according to RAINN, 1 in every 6 women will be raped in her lifetime. That means that of the 19 women in this class, 3 or 4 of us have already been raped, or will be at some point in our lifetime.

I'm not naive enought to think that I won't be a statistic; I understand that the chance of rape threatens every woman. Clearly violence against women based on the gendered power structure of our society still exists, even after three waves of feminism. The fight against this violence is not over, but how can we best combat it, and erase sexism and the violence against women it breeds? There are numerous ways to answer this question, but I think my answer is somewhere between the theories of Kate Millet and Shulasmith Firestone.

Millet writes in “Theory of Sexual Politics:” “sex IS a status category with political implications” (219).

And in The Dialectic of Sex Shulasmith Firestone writes: “…the end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings [should] no longer matter culturally” (227).

But how can both of these things be achieved? If sex is a status category with political implications and women need to embrace their difference to become empowered, how can sex distinction be erased entirely? How can embracing difference and erasing privilege be balanced? And how can this balance work towards erradicating violent acts against women--whether they happen at home or elsewhere and whether the assailant is an aquaintance or stranger?