She's Beautiful When She's Angry Page #2

groundwork for being a feminist.

And to feel that you can

have the power in a group

to do something you think needs to be done

that you could never do on your own...

I think it's what I was

looking for my whole life.

All these other social change movements

that were going on at that time

led to the women's movement.

They gave rise to women's consciousness

of a need to operate on an equal basis.

(pop)

I was a part of the civil rights movement.

I was a big part of the antiwar movement

while I was a graduate student at Berkeley.

And women in the new left started

talking about what we were feeling.

WOMAN:
The women were very

much discriminated against.

The guys, their names went on

things, they became the spokespeople.

We were used to lick the envelopes.

We did the grunt work. We

did the real work, actually.

We often did the real work of organizing.

I had been at an SDS

meeting and was talking,

and I was a leader in the organization,

and one of guys in the group said,

"Aw, sit down and shut up" to me.

WOMAN:
And we started talking

about our role as women within SDS.

Why weren't we in the leadership positions?

From that it just kind of sparked

in everybody a sense of recognition.

Aha! This is like a shared thing.

It's just not me feeling insecure.

So, at an antiwar demonstration

to protest the election of Nixon,

we decided we would come together

as women for the first time

and announce we had a movement.

WOMAN:
And Marilyn Webb

gets up on the stage

in front of this huge

audience of new left men

and she starts trying to talk.

Well, the moment I started, there

was... this crowd went crazy.

(shouting, jeering)

WILLIS:
And the men start

whistling and catcalling

and saying things like, "Take

her off the stage and f*** her."

And people were yelling,

"F*** her down a dark alley!"

It was just... It was insane.

We were like all looking

at each other, like, what?

WEBB:
I didn't expect movement

men to behave like that,

and I was shocked.

People were organizing blacks

and people were organizing welfare mothers,

and then we were organizing women,

and that everybody would see this

as another leg of the whole movement.

But we weren't respected.

WOMEN:
The revolution has come

Off the pigs!

Black is beautiful

Free Huey!

BEAL:
The black liberation

movement had come into its fore,

and we were talking about

liberation and freedom

half the night on the racial side.

And then all of the sudden

men are going to turn around

and start talking about

putting you in your place?

If you don't want any trouble...

BEAL:
That was the contradiction in terms

that we were no longer prepared to put up with.

So, 1968, we founded the SNCC

Black Women's Liberation Committee

to take up some of these issues.

A number of women felt that

we needed to go off on our own

and focus on what we needed to

do in our fight for liberation.

ROSEN:
I was a graduate

student at Berkeley.

And one day I saw a little

3-by-5 card in the student union,

and it said a women's group was forming.

And these consciousness-raising

groups spontaneously grew up

in many areas of the country.

When I first heard about the

women's liberation movement,

I had two little kids under five.

My connection with the

world was, I felt, finished.

During one of my crises of

feeling that my life was over,

I heard some young women talking

about meetings they were having,

and they were talking

about women's liberation,

and they gave the address of a meeting.

So I went to this meeting,

and there were these women

talking about their lives

as I had never imagined people could.

Well, you need to be specially

trained to be a housewife.

You get married, there are

a whole new set of rules.

We still have to look a certain

way and be a certain way,

but there's a whole lot more...

ROSEN:
We went around the room, and

people asked a very simple question.

How would your life have been

different if you had been a boy?

Why do you think being a woman

might limit you as a human

being, your possibilities?

(woman continues, indistinct)

BEAL:
We challenged

concepts of masculinity.

We challenged concepts of femininity.

We talked about skin color,

how young black women would put cream on

in order to make theirself light-skinned.

SHULMAN:
Suddenly, everything

was up for questioning.

Women did all of the family

and housework and cooking,

and the men got to make the living

and get all of the attention in the world.

Why was that?

We don't even realize what goes on

until we sit and compare with other women.

GRIFFIN:
And we heard each other.

We heard each other into speech.

You could sense it. You could feel it.

You could cut it with a knife, as they say.

The room was electric

with whatever was gonna be shared.

So I said, (sighs)

I've had three abortions,

and the last one was within the last year.

And I started to cry,

because I suddenly understood

that I wasn't alone,

that what I had considered

personal embarrassment

was something that was part of

this whole larger experience.

The big insight of the women's

movement was the personal is political.

Problems that you felt

were happening to you alone

probably were your fault.

But if it's happening to other people,

then it's a social problem and

not just a personal problem.

Once you stop blaming

yourself for all this,

it was like somebody had

lifted a rock off of you.

Then here were women around you who were ready

to go out there and do something about it.

(chanting)

You're out on the streets

Lookin' good

- (continues)

- WOMAN:
In Washington, DC,

we were like,

"Have Demonstration, Will Travel."

(continues)

WOLFSON:
We demonstrated

in the halls of Congress.

We demonstrated outside of Congress.

There was a group called

Women's International Terrorist

Conspiracy from Hell... WITCH...

that was the action arm.

People had folding witch

hats and capes in their bag.

And we thought if we

could dress up like witches

and then give a hex to people.

We wanted to challenge the white men's

canon at the University of Chicago.

And so part of the hex went, "Knowledge

is power through which you control

our mind, our spirit,

our bodies, our soul."

- Hex!

- Yeah

What you see here is the

beginning of a movement

that women are human beings

and that we have equal rights.

We intend to go to school, we intend to

have child care so that we can go to school.

We want the university to provide us with

classes that teach us about our history.

ROSEN:
I was in the history department

and I knew zip, nada,

zero about women's history.

And we realized we didn't know very much

about women's literature or women's art.

In fact, we realized that we had gotten

degrees and we knew nothing about women.

Well, a group of us

decided to call the press.

We took our advanced degrees...

some were PhDs, some

were Masters degrees...

and we burned them in public.

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