Finding the movement : sexuality, contested space, and feminist activism / Anne Enke.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Enke, Finn, 1964-

Series:

Radical perspectives

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Feminism--United States--History--20th century.

Feminism.

Feminist geography.

Social action.

History.

Women--Political activity.

United States.

Women--Political activity--United States--History--20th century--Case studies.

Women.

Social action--United States--History--20th century--Case studies.

Feminist geography--United States.

Genre:

Case studies.

Physical Description:

xv, 369 pages : maps ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2007.

Summary:

In Finding the Movement, Anne Enke reveals that diverse women's engagement with public spaces gave rise to and profoundly shaped second-wave feminism. Focusing on women's activism in Detroit, Chicago, and Minneapolis-St. Paul during the 1960s and 1970s, Enke describes how women across race and class created a massive groundswell of feminist activism by directly intervening in the urban landscape. They secured illicit meeting spaces and gained access to public athletic fields. They fought to open bars to women and abolish gendered dress codes and prohibitions against lesbian congregation. They created alternative spaces, such as coffeehouses, where women could socialize and organize. They opened women-oriented bookstores, restaurants, cafes, and clubs, and they took it upon themselves to establish women's shelters, health clinics, and credit unions in order to support women's bodily autonomy.

By considering the development of feminism through an analysis of public space, Enke expands and revises the historiography of second-wave feminism. She suggests that the movement was so widespread because it was built by people who did not identify themselves as feminists as well as by those who did. Her focus on claims to public space helps to explain why sexuality, lesbianism, and gender expression were so central to feminist activism. Her spatial analysis also sheds light on hierarchies within the movement. As women turned commercial, civic, and institutional spaces into sites of activism, they produced, as well as resisted, exclusionary dynamics.

Contents:

Introduction: Locating feminist activism

"Someone or something made that a women's bar" : claiming the nighttime marketplace

"Don't steal it, read it here" : building community in the marketplace

"Kind of like Mecca" : playgrounds, players, and women's movement

Out in left field : feminist movement and civic athletic space

Finding the limits of women's autonomy : shelters, health clinics, and the practice of property

If I can't dance shirtless, it's not a revolution : coffeehouses, clubs, and the construction of "all women"

Conclusion: Recognizing the subject of feminist activism.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [335]-355) and index.

ISBN:

9780822340621

0822340623

9780822340836

0822340836

OCLC:

123029407