THIS JULY, DECLARE YOUR INDEPENDENCE FROM THE PATRIARCHY!

Registration Open Now

OUR RADICAL ROOTS:
A Women’s Liberation Organizing Conference

July 5^th to 7^th 2024 in a beautiful location with gardens, walkways, good food, comfy beds and swimming pool approx. one hour from San Diego

The Program starts Friday night with a plenary on “No More Witch-hunts: Tactics & Strategies for Defending Feminists Jobs, Livelihoods and Public Activism.”  The panel consists of four speakers, Ann Menasche (founding member of FIST), Thistle Pettersen (singer-songwriter & founder of Women’s Liberation Radio News) , Christy Hammer (Univ. of So. Maine professor of Education) and Denise Traina (co-chair of the Georgia Green Party & Green Alliance for Sex-Based rights) who have lost jobs and/or have been subjected to harassment or witch-hunting including within the Left because they recognize that sex exists and support the rights of women based on sex and the rights of lesbians based on sexual orientation. We will discuss strategies for how to fight back successfully against these misogynistic and homophobic attacks.

On Saturday morning after a short walk, we will participate in a plenary “Our Radical Roots: Taking Back the Left for Feminism” with presentations by Max Dashu (feminist historian) Fran Luck (host of WBAI Joy of Resistance multicultural feminist programming), and Kathie Sarachild (one of the founding mothers of Second Wave Radical Feminism).   This will be followed by two workshops to choose from, one on working with other feminists who are not yet gender critical on core feminist issues (Dena and Ann Menasche, both from from FIST), and the colonization of womanhood (Dr. Suzanne Vierling from FIST).

After lunch, FIST members will discuss and vote on a proposal outlining plans for our future work, “Looking Forward;   Proposal for Growing FIST and building a multi-issue radical feminist movement.”  We will then take a two hour break to swim, socialize with our sisters, take a nap, or whatever we’d like to do.  Before dinner we will break up into regional causes to discuss how to carry out the Looking Forward proposal in our local areas.

Saturday night should be great fun. We will begin with an inspiring pre-recorded talk about the importance of the Equal Rights Amendment by ERA attorney Wendy Murphy.  We will then be treated to a concert by Thistle Pettersen performing her original feminist folk music, followed by dancing and socializing.

Sunday, after breakfast, there will be a second set of workshops, one on “Transing Away the Lesbian: Strategies for Ending the Homophobic Practice of Gender Affirming Care”  led by Carol (a detransitioner), and Arianne (LBG Alliance USA); and the second on Defending Women’s Spaces let by Hilla Kerner (Vancouver Rape Relief) and Amie Ichikawa (Women II Women).  There will then be a plenary presentation and discussion on “Strategies for winning back abortion rights”  led by abortion rights pioneer and author Merle Hoffman,  Merle is a founder of one of the earliest abortion clinics in New York, a founder of the National Abortion Federation, a leader of Rise Up for Abortion Rights https://merlehoffman.com/and recently authored a book,  Choices: A Post-Roe Abortion Rights Manifesto. The final plenary will be a participatory exercise in envisioning a future of women’s liberation.  We will enjoy a final meal together and may stay after lunch for a final swim.

Throughout the conference, presentations will be short to allow plenty of time for discussion and sharing of ideas.  We are building a movement and all of our voices and energies our needed.

Sign-up soon as there are limited spaces at the venue.  Deadline for registration and payment is May 31, 2024.

ALSO, HELP WITH OUR FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN TO FUND SCHOLARSHIPS AND SPEAKERS’ TRAVEL EXPENSES FOR THE CONFERENCE!  You can donate here: https://feministstruggle.org/donate/. Please indicate in the notes that it is for the Conference. We aim to raise $5,000 before June 15, 2024.  Individuals, male or female, are encouraged to donate, but we do not take money from right wing groups or corporations. 

SISTERHOOD IS POWERFUL!

by Ann Menasche

The opinion below is that of the author and does not necessarily represent those of Feminists in Struggle.

The contemporary anti-feminist backlash is reaching far back into our nation’s history – the mid to late 19th century – to revive horrible misogynist laws that should have been long dead and buried.  These laws arose during an earlier backlash against the First Wave of Feminism, in response to women organizing against our oppression.  That was a time when women still didn’t have the vote, and could not own property.  However, the birthrate for white women had fallen to 3.5 child per couple from seven in 1800, with abortion commonplace and performed by women.  This was of great concern to the white fathers running the country including those of the medical establishment just consolidating their power.

One such “zombie law” is Arizona’s draconian anti-abortion law which outlaws virtually all abortions, recently upheld by the Arizona Supreme Court.   Under this law passed in 1864 anyone who provides supplies or administers an abortion or abortion drugs can be charged with a crime and if convicted, receive between 2 and 5 years in prison.  The only exception is when the abortion is necessary to save the life of the woman.

Another “zombie law” is the 1873 Comstock Act against obscenity, a law that bans the use of mail to transport “lewd” materials.  This law was used to imprison and deport lesbian Jewish radical leftist Eve Adams in the early twentieth Century for authoring a book containing lesbian love stories. She ended up dying in the Holocaust. The Comstock Act’s anti-abortion provisions are being resurrected by the Christian Right in the case against the FDA currently pending before the Supreme Court aimed at stopping the distribution of the abortion drug, mifepristone.

But it gets worse.  The current backlash is impeding the ability to fight back effectively against this attack.  The strongest argument for abortion rights especially post-Dobbs is the equality argument, i.e., that abortion bans and restrictions discriminate against women as a sex.  This was recognized by Justice Ginsberg decades ago when she wrote, “Legal challenges to undue restrictions on abortion procedures do not seek to vindicate some generalized notion of privacy; rather they center on a woman’s autonomy to determine her life’s course and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature.”  It has been successfully argued in states that have state ERAs such as Pennsylvania where that state’s Supreme Court opined that pregnancy is a sex based condition and abortion restrictions impact women’s status.  The sex equality approach to abortion rights would be even stronger if abortion advocates argued that the fully ratified national ERA should be treated as the law of the land and a strict scrutiny test utilized to challenge anti abortion laws as discriminatory against women.

Yet, abortion rights groups like Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Federation and Trust Women are helping the enemy by disappearing women from the picture, talking about “pregnant people” and “birthing bodies.”  To make matters worse, Trust Women recently force- teamed abortion rights with access to so-called “gender affirming care” the euphemism for the sterilization and mutilation of lesbian/gay and gender non-conforming adolescents and young people  through puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, double mastectomies, and genital surgeries.   This is a kiss of death to the abortion rights struggle.  As the Cass Report issued by the National Health Service in the UK documented, child transition is without a basis in scientific evidence and is far more harmful than helpful.  It is causing untold harm to a generation of mostly lesbian and gay youth who have been indoctrinated to believe their body is “wrong” and in need of these drastic medical interventions to be themselves. “Gender affirming care” has nothing to do with the right to safe legal abortion which is essential for women’s freedom and is shown to save women’s lives.

Abortion is about the fundamental right of WOMEN to decide if and when they will bear a child.  A feminist struggle is what won abortion rights to begin with and it is the only force that can win it back.