Dorothy Marder's Activism in Historical Context
Women Strike Peace |Vietnam War Protest | Anti-Nuclear Proliferation |Women's Liberation and Peace |Lesbian and Gay Activism
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Women Strike for Peace
Women Strike for Peace (WSP) was formed in 1961 after over 50,000
women across the United States marched for peace and against the above ground testing
of nuclear weapons. The women behind WSP wanted to protect their
families from the threat of nuclear weapons and growing militarism. Leaders of the organization, including
Dagmar Wilson and Bella Abzug, and many more are featured in Dorothy
Marder's photography.
WSP is significant among peace organizations for its lack of official
hierarchy and exclusive dependence on the volunteerism of women. Composed of mostly white, educated,
middle-class women, the WSP utilized the socially aceptable, domestic roles of mother and wife to call women to
advocate for peace for the sake of their children. Because of this core
tenet of familial protection, WSP leaders believed they could
convince the “average woman” to work for peace. In doing so, WSP
women challenged Cold War era notions of militarism and gendered
roles.
Counted as a important success for WSP, the passage of the 1963
Test-Ban Treaty agreement between the Soviet Union and United States
prohibited above ground nuclear testing. By 1964, WSP members
re-focused their energies on protesting the Vietnam War. Among their
activities during the War, WSP women organized countless public
demonstrations and rallies across the United States, met with women from
North and South Vietnam, organized boycotts, met with United Nations
and political figures, and counseled draft resisters. The group
maintained a strong and concerted opposition until the War’s end in
1975.
Although WSP was led by strong women, feminism and Women’s Liberation were not facets of the organization until the late 1960s. But as the Women’s Liberation Movement grew in the 1970s, some WSP members became even further radicalized. In January of 1969, WSP joined with younger women from other parts of the anti-war movement and the Women’s Liberation movement to organize the first all-women’s march in Washington, D.C. to protest the war. Calling themselves the Jeannette Rankin Bridgade, after the first woman elected to Congress in 1917, hundreds of women marched in the nation’s capitol. Rankin herself joined the march and helped the women gain access to members of Congress. After the Vietnam War, WSP returned to its original focus, working against nuclear proliferation. Today, WSP's legacy of peace activism lives on in contemporary women peace organizations such as Code Pink. Today,
Literature:
Amy Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace, Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1993. Print.
Harriet Hyman Alonso, Peace as a Women’s Issue, Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press, 202-210, 221-222. Print.
Bella Abzug and WSP
From the second month of WSP, New York activist Bella Abzug was
integral to the political direction of the organization. Throughout her life
Abzug was a vocal proponent of civil rights, feminism, and anti-nuclear
proliferation. A Columbia University Law School graduate, Abzug
was a powerhouse for social justice in the male-dominated of New York,
and later national, political scene. Abzug successfully ran for the House
of Representatives in 1970, with the strong backing of
WSP support.
Literature: Amy Swerdlow. Women Strike for Peace.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993. Print.
Vietnam War Protest
The Vietnam conflict originated between the formally French-backed
Indochina Bao Dai government in the south of Vietnam and the communist
Viet Minh of the northern Democratic Republic of Vietnam, led by Ho Chi
Minh. The French withdrew from their former colonies in IndoChina
by the mid 1950s. As part of Cold War strategy to control the
spread of communism and Chinese influence in Asia, the United States
began sending aid to South Vietnam in 1955, in support of their
opposition to the North Vietnamese. In 1960, President Kennedy
sent some of the first U.S. troops to South Vietnam, as advisors to the
government in Saigon. U.S. economic and military aid to South
Vietnam increased throughout the War.
Although never officially declared a war by Congress, in reality, U.S.
involvement in the Vietnam was recognized internationally as war.
Opposition to U.S. involvement in IndoChina coalesced into a broad
anti-war movement by the mid 1960s. It grew out of a coalition of groups
previously opposed to atmospheric nuclear testing, the growth of
militarism during the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement, and
student-led social justice organizations. As U.S. military
commitments increased in Vietnam and spread to Cambodia and Laos, so too
did the anti-war movement gain support across a broader spectrum of the
American public. Objections to the war included moral opposition,
concern for the fate of thousands of young American men killed or
wounded, horror at the killing and maiming of millions of Vietnamese
civilians and ecological destruction of that nation, practical concerns
about the feasibility of defeating the North Vietnamese, and concerns
over increasing international political instability.
Protests against the war included political lobbying,public
demonstrations, destruction of draft and FBI records, and
bombings. These protests ranged in scale from huge national
demonstrations with tens of thousands attending, to a few people
gathered on a corner block. Thousands of protests across the
United States occurred during the decade of 1964 to 1974.
Dorothy Marder’s photography during the period of the early 1960s to mid
1970s documented the “real” anti-war movement, particularly in New York
City. Marder believed that the large news corporations covered
only national demonstrations, distorted the reality of the anti-war
movement, and neglected the small or local protests. Her
photographs in the Vietnam War section document this more local face of
anti-war activism. In addition, there are images of more Vietnam
war era demonstrations on display in the Women Strike for Peace
section.
Literature:
Charles DeBenedetti, Charles Chatfield. An American
Ordeal. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990. Print.
Anti-Nuclear Proliferation
After the end of the
Vietnam War in the mid 1970s, peace groups, such as Women Strike for
Peace, renewed their focus on protesting nuclear testing and the
escalating Cold War arms race. Concerned with the survival of the
human race, activists aimed to educate the public concerning the harmful
effects of nuclear weapons, advocate for nuclear disarmament, and
legislate nuclear power. With the 1979 Three Mile Island Nuclear
Generating Station accident, outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, many
in the U.S. became aware of the potential dangers of even civilian
nuclear power. Anti-nuclear activists believed that the material created
at civilian-run nuclear power plants could be used by the military to
create weapons. Well-regarded scientists, such as physicist Carl
Sagan and Australian pediatrician Helen Caldicott, spoke out in the
media about the horrors of “nuclear winter” - the complete destruction
of the earth and human life in the aftermath of a nuclear war.
Protest against nuclear weapons was manifested in demonstrations,
legislative efforts, and destruction of military property. The
anti-nuclear movement was the largest social/political movement to date
in both Europe and the U.S., throughout the decade of the 1980s, with
protesters numbering in the millions at some larger events.
As a logical extension
of her Vietnam War protest and feminism, Marder was an activist in the
anti-nuclear movement. She was involved in the movement with WSP,
as well as taking part in some of the more radical protests of nuclear
facilities; including, the Women’s Pentagon Action, the Women’s Peace
Encampment for A Future of Peace and Justice at the Seneca Army Depot in
Romulus, New York (1983), and protests at nuclear power plants such as
at Indian Point in New York (1980), Stoneham in New York (1979), and
Seabrook in New Hampshire (1978). Her photography uniquely
captures the determination and community found in the movement.
Literature:
Harriet Hyman Alonso. Peace as a Women’s Issue.
Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 202-210, 221-222. Print.
Charles DeBenedetti, Charles Chatfield. An American
Ordeal. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1990. Print.
Women’s Liberation and Peace, 1960s,
1970s, 1980s
In the years after
World War II increasingly women entered the paid work force, even after
marriage, despite ubiquitous discrimination and cultural pressures to
remain in the home. A variety of political and cultural shifts in the
1950s revitalized social awareness of women’s roles and the need for a
new emphasis on women’s rights. President John F. Kennedy’s
Commission on the Status of Women (1960) attempted to document
discrimination against women in the work place. Betty Friedan’s Feminine
Mystique (1963) was one book published early in the 1960s which
helped focus attention on the plight of American women. Friedan’s
work a powerful and controversial book exposing the mass discontent of
many middle-class women and challenged post-war ideas of domesticity.
Feminists who had long fought for the Equal Rights Amendment and other
rights for women were able to lobby successfully for the inclusion of
Title IX in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title IX was a huge
victory for women’s rights, making it illegal for institutions or
corporations receiving federal funding to discriminate based on sex.
The 1960s were an era of social consciousness, political activism,
reform, and radicalization and women were significant activists in the
growing anti-nuclear movement, the Civil Rights Movement and the
protests against the Vietnam War. Women’s Liberation was a
broad-based movement of radical and progressive women, and fostered
female activism. In 1965, feminists including Betty Friedan,
Gloria Steinem, Flo Kennedy, and many others, founded the National
Organization for Women (NOW), an influential, progressive organization
focused on fighting for equality for women in all aspects of U.S.
society. During the 1970s and early 1980s NOW led the fight for the
Equal Rights Amendment to the federal constitution which would have
outlawed discrimination based on sex. Only 35 out of the needed 38
states ratified the amendment, and the ERA did not become law.
Issues women raised in this “Second Wave” of feminism grew to include
equality in education and the workplace, marriage, legalizing abortion
and reproductive rights, questioning of male militarism, and female
sexuality.
More radical feminists, who believed that a transhistorical and
transnational patriarchal system primarily oppressed women were active
on a broad range of issues outside of legislative and institutional
politics, especially after the late 1960s. Throughout this period
Dorothy Marder continued to be active in progressive and radical
feminist circles, as well as more traditional women’s organizations such
as Women Strike for Peace.
Literature: Mary C. Lynn, Ed. Women’s Liberation in the
Twentieth Century. John Wiley and Sons, Inc. 1975.
National Women's Conference, 1975
The re-newed fervor of women activists in the 1960s and
1970s forced the presidential administrations of John Kennedy, Lyndon
Johnson, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter to establish various federal
commissions to explore the issues of equal rights for women.
President John F. Kennedy created a Presidential Commission on the
Status of Women in the 1960s, and President Lyndon Johnson appointed a
Citizen’s Advisory Counsel on the status of women. . The United
Nations declared 1975 to be “International Women’s Year”; and later
declared 1975 to 1985 the Decade for Women. When he became President,
Jimmy Carter appointed Congresswoman Bella Abzug to head the Commission.
Abzug later proposed a National Women’s Conference.
Two years later, the
first National Women’s Year Conference was held in Houston, Texas.
Women from all 50 U.S.
states and territories attended. Notable women in attendance
included Grace Paley, Betty Friedan, Maya Angelou, Corretta Scott King,
Bella Abzug, Margaret Mead, Elizabeth Holtzman, and among others. Later,
Dorothy Marder would write:
"It was the first time in American history
that so many women from so many different backgrounds…were able to
assemble together in one place to talk and to hear each other…We
connected with each other in a profound way." (55)
Conservative women
and men were also a presence at the Conference, including anti-ERA activist
Phyllis Schlafly and her supporters, pro-life supporters, the Ku Klux
Klan, American Nazi Party, and the all-white delegation from Mississippi
(a state with an African American population of over 36% in 1970).
A National Plan of
Action was voted on at the Conference proposing action on important
national women’s issues, such as domestic abuse, welfare, Equal Rights
Amendment, disability, minority rights, reproductive rights, and
education. 25 of the 26 resolutions of the National Plan of Action
were passed.
Dorothy Marder
documented this historic event by photographing what she calls, “the
‘ordinary’ woman, who, of course, was extraordinary”(50) who attended
the conference. Attending the Conference was particularly influential for Marder’s own
personal and political growth. She wrote, “Houston was indeed a
turning point for me. Although I had photographed dozens of
conferences in the [19]70’s, this conference had a very special meaning
for me.”(56) Marder was particularly touched by the testimonies at the
Conference of lesbians oppressed “at work, in school, in the
military…fears of being ‘found out’ by husbands during divorce
proceedings… [and] losing their children.” (56) And she found
empowerment at the Conference in the community of women “all feeling
free to be who [they were]” (57).
Note
After the National Women’s Conference (1977) Marder prepared a
spread for a liberal women’s magazine, The Feminist Bulletin,
and included this photograph. However, the editor objected to
publishing this photograph because of its homosexual content.
Marder, in turn, refused to let her other photographs from the
Conference to be published without this photograph. Marder
explained to the editor that the word lesbian had been used to oppress
all women, who “allowed [themselves] to be strong, independent,
assertive, and yes, aggressive.” (57) To embrace the word
lesbian is empowering for all women because at its core it
means a woman who loves other women (57). This withdrawal of her
photography was Marder’s first public activism for lesbian rights and an
early coming out experience for Dorothy Marder herself.
Literature
Marder, Dorothy. “Houston: IWY
National Women’s Conference 1977.”Dorothy Marder Collection, Swarthmore
College Peace Collection, Folder: Life Experience Portfolio for
Fordham University, 1989.
Mississippi Census Data: <http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0056/tab39.pdf>
Women's Pentagon Action
The Women’s
Pentagon Action (WPA) was an east coast organization founded in the late
1970s by radical feminists who connected the issues of feminism with a
gendered analysis of ecology, peace, and militarism. When the U.S.
government announced plans to deploy in western Europe a new generation
of nuclear missiles capable of reaching Soviet soil within minutes,
nuclear war seemed imminent. In response to this escalation in
U.S. nuclear policy, feminists organized two protests (in November of
1980 and November 1981), during which hundreds of women surrounded the
Pentagon military complex (Washington, D.C.) attempting to close or
disrupt “business as usual.” The members and supporters of the WPA
came from women’s liberation groups, radical feminists, lesbian
feminists, peace activists, and ecofeminists.
Street theater, with
large puppets and mock tomb stones erected on the front lawn of the
Pentagon were some of the powerful tactics employed by the
protestors. Women encircled the Pentagon and closed the front
gates with string, which symbolized the web of connectedness between all
living things that would be destroyed in a nuclear war.
Supporters of the WPA wrote one of the first feminist statements
connecting the patriarchal oppression of women with war and
environmental destruction. Their “Unity Statement” represented the
voice of all women and emphasized outrage at the government’s
militarism and nuclear policies that threatened all human life and
health of the planet. This feminist-organized nuclear protest
fostered women around the country as well as British women to protest
U.S. nuclear policies. Notably, two women from WPA
returned to England and went on to led organization of the Greenham,
England U.S. Air Force base protest. Many women from WPA
continued on to take part in the Seneca Army Depot encampment (see
below).
Literature:
Women’s Pentagon Action Records, Swarthmore
College Peace Collection
Harriet Hyman Alonso. Peace as a Women’s Issue. Syracuse University Press: Syracuse, NY, 202-210, 221-222. Print.
Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and
Justice
The Seneca Army
Depot located in Romulus, New York was a transshipment facility housing
short-range nuclear missiles destined for deployment to western
Europe. Protests by peace activists at the facility began in the
early 1980s. By 1983, feminist peace activists planned for a
summer-long series of protests at the Army Depot. The women were
in part inspired by the 1981 march and subsequent long-term women’s camp
protesting at the U.S. Air Force base at Greenham Common,
England.
In the summer of 1983, thousands of women from diverse backgrounds
and various peace and feminist organizations came together to set-up an
all-women’s peace camp on purchased land next to the Depot in
Romulus, New York. The peace camp was
known to the activists as “Seneca”. These feminists connected militarism with a patriarchal
assault on the environment and human life.
Women went to the
Seneca peace camp both to protest nuclear missiles and to live in
feminist community. They valued environment, peace, cooperation,
and unity and saw the possibility of creating an alternative to male
patriarchal and militaristic society. Protests included jumping
fences to invade the base itself and directly challenging the U.S.
military with a constant oppositional presence.
The sense of community
fostered at Seneca had a lasting impact for many of the women who spent
summers at the peace camp. The camp, drawing in
thousands of women for a few days or the whole summer was run
cooperatively; all of the women were responsible for maintaining
sanitation, food preparation, and logistics. The protests,
political discussions, and community building inspired many women to
carry their feminism and political activism into many other
arenas. Women remained at the camp protesting the nuclear weapons
throughout the 1980s.
In 1995, the encampment
was turned into a retreat center and women’s community called Women’s
Peace Land. As of 2010 Women’s Peace Land reverted to the local
county government for unpaid back taxes. The Seneca Army Depot
closed in 2000 and the land was transferred to the Seneca County
government.
Literature cited:
Wendy E. Chmielewski, “Resisting Nuclear Madness: The Utopian
Vision of the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice,”
[unpublished paper], Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, 2001.
Lesbian and Gay Activism
Marder’s photographic career documents the fluid progression of her
activist interests: from Vietnam War protest to anti-nuclear and women’s
liberation to lesbian and gay rights. Although superficially
different participant and cause, Marder’s activist involvement and
photography had the consistent aim for human rights and a concern for
the individual activists. Her photography of Gay Pride Parades,
Dyke Marches, and Lesbian Feminist Display, maintained her artistic eye,
high quality shot, and psychological involvement seen from the
beginning of her career. But by the late 1980s, the woman in front
of her lens had been exchanged from a strong 1970s WSP member in a pea coat
protesting the Vietnam War to a topless, proud lesbian marching for gay rights.
Coming out as a lesbian
was a liberating experience for Marder and was a vehicle for
self-exploration, as well as political activism. Membership in the
gay and lesbian community, political activism, and desire for
visibility is evident in her photography. As with her entire body
of artistic work, Marder documented the people, activism, and events of New York
City Gay Pride Movement during its early years.
Many have
identified the June 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City as the start
of the Gay Rights or Gay Pride Movement. The AIDs tragedy of the
1980s and beyond fostered and renewed unity between gay men and lesbians
in the movement (Stein). However, other historical events also
informed the political stance of many gay and lesbian activists of the
1970s and 1980s. During the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s,
gay and lesbian activists “believed they were waging a revolutionary
struggle to free the homosexual in everyone” (Stein, 32) But the
sexual revolution and 1960s feminism were rarely inclusive of
homosexuality (Stein). In the 1970s, many lesbians identified with
the changing women’s movement instead of the gay liberation
movement. Radical feminists in the 1970s more frequently
identified themselves as lesbians, or rather lesbian feminists – women
who reject the values and culture of men and traditional masculinity,
choosing women and egalitarian values instead (Stein, 43). Some lesbians
believed that women had to separate from men, including gay men, in
politics and in every day life. Women of color were largely excluded
from the lesbian feminist movement, which incurred backlash from the
community (Stein, 125). Bringing race and class into the
conversation of lesbianism shifted focus onto multiple facets of
oppression and broadened the lesbian identity (Stein 125).
Dorothy Marder was
always active on issues of race, class, and gender, and in her personal
life and photography she often bridged several lesbian and gay
identities. Her work as a peer counselor for Identity
House gave her insight and compassion for the whole spectrum of the New
York City lesbian and gay community. Although not specifically
lesbian events, with her images of the Women’s Pentagon Action and
Seneca peace camp,Marder made statements on separatist feminism. Yet, she also documented
Gay Pride Marches which were inclusive of both men and women.
Literature Cited:
Stein, Arlene. Sex and Sensibility: Stories of Lesbian
Generation. 1997. University of California Press, Berkley.
Jeffreys, Sheila. Not a Passsing Phase: Reclaiming
Lesbians in History 1840-1985. 1989. The Women’s Press Ltd, London.
Identity House
In 1983, Marder became a peer counselor at Identity House in New
York City. Identity House was an open door, non-profit organization
offering support for the lesbian, gay, and bisexual community.
Marder invested much of herself into Identity House – counseling,
leading workshops, and organizing events. A sampling of titles of
workshops she led are “Body Image and Personality,” “Lesbians are
Natural Deconstructionists: Books & Life,” “In the Realm of the
Sense: Reading/Writing/Speaking on Desire.” Regina Colangelo,
therapist at Identity House, described Dorothy as “skillfully attuned to
the internal and interpersonal dynamics of the clients.”
Marder, Dorothy. “Counseling.”Dorothy Marder Collection,Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Folder: Life Experience Portfolio for Fordham University, 1989.
Writen by Elizabeth Matlock and Wendy Chmielewski, 2010-2011
This file was last updated on
February 20, 2015