“Passing a looped and knotted string between their hands”. The Bible, the Women’s Liberation Movement and Women’s Bonds in Michèle Roberts’s The Wild Girl

This paper claims that through a feminist rewriting of the Bible, Michèle Roberts’s novel The Wild Girl (1984) articulates the ambivalences and insecurities that emerged in the British Women’s Liberation movement after its initial period of great energy, hopefulness and enthusiasm of the 1970s. By rewriting the biblical insistence on female rivalry and competition, and revising biblical “gynotypes” and “fragmented women”, the novel not only exposes the patriarchal discourses of the Bible, but also critically revisits the WLM’s utopian visions of unity, and re-imagines the ways in which women can cooperate while preserving their differences. When juxtaposed with more recent women’s rewritings, often driven by (and catering to) market economy and consumer culture, Roberts’s novel is a useful remainder of the still consequential need to “look back in order to move forward” (Plate 406). The novel’s small-scale, grass-roots level sisterhood, never altogether free from tensions, is a quietly optimistic vision of women’s bonds, a “secret gospel” proclaiming the good news about the precarious and changeable relationship among women, and about the need of its incessant reworking.

The Anti-Rape and Battered Women’s Movements of the 1970s and 1980s

The anti-rape and battered women’s movements of the 1970s and 1980s grew out of the women’s liberation movement. Early grassroots organizing around responding to rape and domestic violence relied heavily on community-based strategies including the creation of shelters and safe houses and feminist self-defense classes. Using the new vocabulary of the women’s liberation movement, feminist advocates soon began to critique existing rape and domestic violence law. Some advocates moved away from the grassroots community-based strategies to push for greater state intervention in rape and domestic violence via the criminal legal system. But the movement was not united in embracing such strategies. Feminist organizing reflected the tensions between competing visions of the role of the state in addressing gender-based violence., With the passage of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994, feminists favoring state intervention had successfully implemented their carceral agenda—a policy choice that is being reexamined today.

Who were the Hackney Flashers? The history and importance of a British Feminist Collective, 1974-1980

The purpose of this project is to provide a resource for museum professionals who are working with materials related to the Hackney Flashers. The Hackney Flashers were a radical socialist-feminist collective that was active in northeast London in the 1970s. The goal is to provide a well-researched history of the collective, as well as address current issues surrounding exhibiting and archiving related materials. This has been done by balancing written sources with oral histories by surviving members of the collective. Imbedded in the Women’s Liberation Movement and the radical-feminist politics of 1970s Britain, the Hackney Flashers used photography to document women in their community in order to expose social inequality. Heavily influenced by the photomontages of John Heartfield, the collective collaged documentary photographs with cartoons, advertisements and text in order to provide a wider context than what documentary photography could provide on its own.

Who were the Hackney Flashers? The history and importance of a British Feminist Collective, 1974-1980

The purpose of this project is to provide a resource for museum professionals who are working with materials related to the Hackney Flashers. The Hackney Flashers were a radical socialist-feminist collective that was active in northeast London in the 1970s. The goal is to provide a well-researched history of the collective, as well as address current issues surrounding exhibiting and archiving related materials. This has been done by balancing written sources with oral histories by surviving members of the collective. Imbedded in the Women’s Liberation Movement and the radical-feminist politics of 1970s Britain, the Hackney Flashers used photography to document women in their community in order to expose social inequality. Heavily influenced by the photomontages of John Heartfield, the collective collaged documentary photographs with cartoons, advertisements and text in order to provide a wider context than what documentary photography could provide on its own.

Who were the Hackney Flashers? The history and importance of a British feminist collective, 1974-1980.

The purpose of this project is to provide a resource for museum professionals who are working with materials related to the Hackney Flashers. The Hackney Flashers were a radical socialist-feminist collective that was active in northeast London in the 1970s. The goal is to provide a well-researched history of the collective, as well as address current issues surrounding exhibiting and archiving related materials. This has been done by balancing written sources with oral histories by surviving members of the collective. Imbedded in the Women’s Liberation Movement and the radical-feminist politics of 1970s Britain, the Hackney Flashers used photography to document women in their community in order to expose social inequality. Heavily influenced by the photomontages of John Heartfield, the collective collaged documentary photographs with cartoons, advertisements and text in order to provide a wider context than what documentary photography could provide on its own.