Revolutionary Feminists

The Women's Liberation Movement in Seattle

Barbara Winslow

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781478019916
  9781478017219
• eBook ISBN:
  9781478024491
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Social Sciences

Revolutionary Feminists tells the story of the radical women's liberation movement in Seattle in the 1960s and 1970s from the perspective of a founding member, Barbara Winslow. Drawing on her collection of letters, pamphlets, and photographs as well as newspaper accounts, autobiographies, and interviews, Winslow emphasizes the vital role that Black women played in the women's liberation movement to create meaningful intersectional coalitions in an overwhelmingly White city. Winslow brings the voices and visions of those she calls the movement's "ecstatic utopians" to life. She charts their short-term successes and lasting achievements, from organizing women at work and campaigning for subsidized childcare to creating women-centered rape crisis centers, health clinics, and self-defense programs. The Seattle movement was essential to winning the first popular vote in the United States to liberalize abortion laws. Despite these achievements, Winslow critiques the failure of the movement's White members to listen to Black, Latina, Indigenous, and Asian American and Pacific Islander feminist activists. Reflecting on the Seattle movement's accomplishments and shortcomings, Winslow offers a model for contemporary feminist activism.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acronyms
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. It’s Reigning Men
• 2. From the Woman Question to Women’s Liberation
• 3. Let Him Her Live
• 4. Freed Up and Fired Up
• 5. The Rising of the Women
• 6. Antiwar, Antidraft, and Anti-imperialist Feminist Activism
• 7. The Multiplicity of Us
• 8. Flow and Ebb
• Epilogue
• Appendix. Seattle Activists: Where Are They Now?
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index