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Dear feminist fighters,
Women have long been at the cutting edge of social movements. They were the Suffragists who won women the right to vote; they were among the leaders of the Abolitionist Movement, which fought to end slavery. They were active in the Labor Movement, Civil Rights, Women's Liberation, and more r ecently, Black Lives Matter, as well as what's been dubbed The Resistance.
As Women's History Month comes to a close, we've been spending a lot of time thinking about these women: the trailblazers, rabble rousers, persistent women, nasty women, who refused to back down, who proudly proclaimed themselves feminists at a time when they faced jail, beatings, and sometimes worse, for standing up for equality and justice. We've also been thinking about the way that women's history needn't been relegated to a single month, as it is happening every day, all around us, in our classrooms, offices, and public lives, especially right now. So here's to women continuing to make history every month of the year -- and to lifting each other up along the way.
Yours in the struggle <3,
Feminist Fight Club
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"We fight patriarchy not each other."
—Third rule of the Feminist Fight Club
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THE PROBLEM: A man gets credit for a woman's work, a convenient reality of being born male, where credit is often assumed. (Yes, women are less likely to have their ideas correctly attributed to them, and we have a centuries-long history to prove it. Among the female inventions credited to men: DNA; computer code; the corn mill, Monopoly, and nuclear fission. NBD, right?)
THE FIGHT MOVE: Try out the "thank-n-yank," where you thank that overzealous bro for "picking up on your idea." Or enlist a wingwoman – or wingman – to amplify your ideas. That's what the women of the Obama White House did when they felt they weren’t being taken seriously in meetings. They’d commit beforehand to having each other’s backs, then walk into the meeting and make sure they repeated one another’s ideas -- with credit to their author.
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Fight Club of the Week: W.I.T.C.H.
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Each week on Instagram, we highlight a real-life feminist fight club—collectives of women and girls who are working together to create change and lift each other up.
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Proclaiming witches to be the original female rebels — hounded, persecuted, and burned at the stake — W.I.T.C.H., or the Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell — was a group of feminist hell-raisers from the 1960s who devoted themselves to hit-and-run style guerrilla theater called "zaps." Among the group's most famous protests: a 1968 Halloween "hex" on Wall Street, in which the women snuck downtown in the early morning hours and crazy-glued the doors to the New York stock exchange shut (the following day, the Dow dropped 5 points); and releasing 100 white mice into a Valentine's Day bridal convention, to protest antiquated roles for women. "We were outrageous, and deliberately witty and insouciant — but also deadly serious," says the writer Robin Morgan, one of W.I.T.C.H.'s founding members, who spoke with FFC about W.I.T.C.H.'s origins for LennyLetter. "Sweetly and firmly, we took matters into our own hands."
From the WITCH manifesta:
“WITCH is an all-woman Everything
WITCH lives and laughs in every woman.
She is the free part of each of us, beneath the shy smiles, the acquiescence to absurd male domination, the makeup or flesh suffocating clothes our sick society demands.
There is no ‘joining’ WITCH
If you are a woman and dare to look within yourself, you are a WITCH.
You make your own rules.”
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💪 Are You Subtly Sexist? (Most Likely, Yes) — Goop
💪 A Speech Coach Taught Me About 'Speaking While Female' (And Why It's BS) — Fast Company
💪 FFC Live: Jessica Bennett & WBEZ Radio's Lauren Chooljian talked practical hacks to workplace sexism on International Women's Day at 1871 Chicago. Watch the video. |
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Is it Happy Hour Yet?
Women's History Edition
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About the FFC Newsletter
We are a semi-regular digest inspired by
the book Feminist Fight Club by Jessica Bennett.
FFC chief of staff: Sharon Attia.
Illustrations: Hallie Bateman, Libby Van Der Ploeg.
Want to buy the book?
Shop here.
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Copyright © 2017 FEMINIST FIGHT CLUB, All rights reserved.
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