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Home , Faye Wattleton, Gloria Steinem

The Media and the Movement: A User's Guide

GLORIA STEINEM

DICTATORS KN.OW what they're doing when they seize control of the media even before seizing control of land or people. Image and narra- tive are the organizing principles on which our brains work, and the media deliver them with such power and speed that they may over- whelm our experience, actually make us feel less real than the people whose images we see. But media are not reality; reality is reality. After thirty-plus years of traveling as an organizer, I've learned that nothing replaces the experience of being there, Social justice movements (lived experience) will probably always be struggling with the media (derived impressions), and vice versa, yet neither can be credible for long-without the other. Two notes: I've defined "media" here as everything that represents reality, from newspapers and talk shows to the Internet.Movies, novels, poetry, ads, and other works of the imagination are crucial, too, but that's a different story; Second, I've used past examples that might offer ideas for the future. After all, if we don't learn to use the media, main- stream and alternate, global and local-and by "use" I mean monitor, infiltrate, replace, protest, teach with, create our own, whatever the sit- uation demands-we will not only be invisible in the present, but absent from history's first draft.

Lesson 1:How the Movement Changed the Media

In the , on the cusp of , women were identified in print as "Miss" or "Mrs.," "divorcee" or "widow," "blonde" or "brunette," not to

103 THE MEDIA AND THE MOVEMENT 105 ~ A ~ A .•.••• " •• \J \J 1J 1" r U K.t. V .t. 1{

'4 mention by what we wore. "Women's Pages" in newspapers featured so- ~~~the.media rarely report on their own inner workings; the Women's cial notes often written to please advertisers-a level of journalism that ,~'Movement is as bad as are women in general at taking credit for success; would have been a scandal on the (male) news pages. Radio and televi- ~~.andthe mainstream distorts what movements do anyway, so that others sion refused to hire women to read the news, on the premise that nothing ~tiwillbe less likely to follow. Thus, suffragists were depicted as cigar- spoken in a female voice would be taken seriously. 1 Classified ads were "'; ~~i;,smokingharridans in the newspapers of their day, only to become im- ,! divided into "Help Wanted-Male" and "Help Wanted-Female." .~. possibly saintly in history. Civil-rights advocates now are portrayed as Marriage-announcement pages in newspapers looked like meat markets, . seeking special privilege, and only in retrospect are viewed as righteous. with photos of brides only. The rare woman who made news in men's My generation of feminists was first ridiculed as oversexed "women's terms still might get a headline like, "Grandmother Wins Nobel Prize." libbers," then opposed as "anti-male," "anti-family," and even "anti- At Time magazine, where men wrote and women researched, the most sex."l We haven't yet reached the safe and saintly stage. No wonder frequent female cover subject was the Virgin Mary. "Lesbian," "gay," or feminists get less approval than do the issues we support; as in, "I'm not "homosexual" were words rarely used to describe anybody, partly be- .:a feminist, but ... "4 cause they could be considered libelous. On NBC's Today Show, Barbara The plain truth is that nothing changes without change-makers. Walters was still off-camera writing a script for men to speak, beauty- , Media problems like those listed above yielded to tactics like these: contest winners served coffee, and the only female host was a trained chimp. Rape was described only by such euphemisms as "attacked" • Employment ads were sex segregated until the National Organi- or "interfered with." When African American women were raped and zation for Women (NOW) petitioned the Equal Employment murdered by European Americans, they were not counted as victims Opportunity Commission in 1966, picketed of racially motivated crimes. Even counterculture, Left-wing, anti- in 1967, and joined such pioneers as Joanne Evans Gardner of Vietnam-war kinds of media exempted women from their radical Pittsburgh in pressuring local newspapers. Stylebooks began to change: "chicks," staff positions, and sexual service to draft resisters (as change only after feminist writers suggested alternatives to sex- in "Girls Say Yes to Men Who Say No") symbolized our role. Mean- ist language, and more women journalists invaded newsrooms while, women's magazines enshrined the "feminine" role, and often ran and unions. Grooms turned out to have faces-and brides to by formula: every marriage could be saved, only white women could be have occupations-after feminists complained to newspapers on the cover, and, except for Helen Gurley Brown's Cosmopolitan, women and picketed Bridal Fairs. "Interfered with" and other obscuran- who had sex outside marriage were doomed to suffer a sad end. tisms began to disappear once rape survivors held speak-outs, I offer all that as a reminder of how far we've come=-and therefore how far we can go. However, the idea that the media change as reality 3. "Women's liberation" was confused with 1960s "sexual liberation," but once we does is a myth. They need the same prodding tactics we've directed at} were seen as being serious about equality per se, a deep cultural assumption took over: sex is so presumed to be passive/dominant that feminists must therefore be say, academia, government, or big business (which, of course, the media anti-sex, Such an attitude won't end until equality is eroticized. are).' The myth of automatic change persists for at least three reasons: 4. In public opinion polls, about a third of U.S. women identify as feminists, 1. See "Standing By:Women in Broadcast Media," by CarolJenkins, p. 418.-Ed. roughly the same proportion as identify as Republicans. When polls include a defi- nition of feminism-"the belief in the social, economic, and political equality of 2. See "Climbing the Ivory Walls: Women in Academia," by Jane Roland Martin, malesand females"-this rises to over 60 percent. (If pollsters included such multi- p. 401; "Running for Our Lives: Electoral Politics," by , p. 28; cultural equivalents as "womanist" or "mujerista," that number would be even "Women and Law: The Power to Change," by Catharine A. MacKinnon, p. 447; higher.) Given the Right-wing demonization of feminists-including "femi-Nazi," and "Up the Down Labyrinth: Ins and Outs of Women's Corporate and Campus the word popularized by radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh-this could be seen Careers," by Ellen Appel-Bronstein, p. 387.-Ed. asa major victory. 106 THE MEDIA AND THE MOVEMENT lU/ \

feminist legal scholars changed the laws to reflect degrees of sex- tactic of closing some press conferences to male reporters- ual assault, rape-crisis centers pressed for media guidelines that despite cries of reverse discrimination-had its effect. (Neither protected a survivor's privacy, and rape came to be understood as side seemed aware that had closed her White a criminal act of violence, racial or otherwise, not of sex.' In- House press conferences to male reporters for the same reason: deed, the pages of The New York Times allowed "Ms." as a form of to force the media to employ women.) Coverage of issues like address only in 1986, fourteen years after Congress had passer. welfare and the (ERA) expanded 's "Ms. Bill" that forbade the federal government when women's groups briefed editorial boards on their impor- from using prefixes indicating marital status, and after an equal tance. New subjects and women leaders got covered when ac- number of years of petitions and protests from women inside tivists arrived with lists of newsworthy story ideas. Some and outside the Times. feminist groups issued press releases with no individual names, • High-spirited feminist sit-ins riveted the attention of the almost to keep the media from designating leaders and creating stars. totally male editors at Newsweek and The Ladies' Home Journal, Others recognized the media's need for someone to quote, but resulting in major coverage and Journal articles by and about the rotated spokeswomen. A surprising number of women founded Women's Movement. A feminist seizure and occupation at Rat, new media, from volunteer-run newspapers and public-access the counterculture newspaper, first yielded an entire issue writ- TV to radio shows, news services, and book-publishing houses. ten by women, then permanent control of the paper by women. Between 1968 and 1975, more than 500 feminist publications Sex-discrimination suits were brought against the Associated began, including off our backs in Washington, D.C., Ain't I a Press, Newsweek, Life, Time, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, and The Woman in Iowa City, Iowa, It Ain't Me, Babe in Berkeley, Califor- New York Times. Media actions across the country included nia, Sojourner in , Massachusetts, and Ms. in New York lunchtime demonstrations in 's Loop, the invasion of a City, the largest feminist magazine and the only one available on San Francisco newspaper by seventy-five women from Berkeley national newsstands. More than thirty years later, off our backs Women's Liberation, and a demonstration by women from the and Ms. are still publishing. So is The Feminist Press, founded United Auto Workers that caused a Detroit TV station to cancel in 1970 to publish new and classic books by women, a harbinger a show in which secretaries and wives competed to see who knew of smaller, women-owned presses that have been cropping up more about the wishes of their bosseslhusbands. ever since. But whatever their duration, all were testimonies to • The Women's Movement became a change agent in itself, by how hard it is-and how nece~sary-for a movement to have creating and redefining news. In 1968, the Miss America media of its own, both as independent sources of information Pageant Protest in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was the first time and as ways of changing the mainstream. feminists announced they would recognize only newswomen, ex- plaining that this was not to elicit more sympathetic coverage Lessen 2: Surviving a Backlash (on the contrary, they knew that some women reporters would bend over backward not to seem sympathetic), but rather to Bythe 1980s and '90s, this is what success looked like: "Women's Pages" pressure editors to hire women reporters and to assign women had turned into lifestyle sections, newswomen were visible on local and to stories other than fashion, society, and flower shows. This national television," and Phil Donahue had demonstrated that daytime

5. See "Landscape of the Ordinary: Violence Against Women," by Andrea 6. They are still required to be better-looking and younger (by an average of fifteen Dworkin, p. 58.-Ed. years) than their male counterparts, and a woman anchor still is almost always"bal- iu« ~1S T E RHO 0 D I S FOR EVE R ~.,. THE MEDIA AND THE MOVEMENT 109 \ :~,:. , I The media were beginning-just beginning-to look at the world as if women viewers were interested in subjects other than food and fashion, l a discovery tha t helped pave the way for Oprah.' Female reporters could women mattered. finally enter locker rooms to interview male athletes, and coverage of fe- But backlash follows success as night follows day. Remembering that isthe key to surviving. Employers want to retain women as the biggest male athletes and women's sports had improved." Women journalists were allowed to attend the roasts and banquets of their own profession. source of underpaid labor (or, in the case of homemakers, as unpaid workers and full-time consumers). The religious and secular Right Unemployment rates were no longer only taken seriously if they were' for white male heads of household, and child care was covered as an issue wants to control women's bodies as the means of reproduction, which is why they punish anything that allows the individual to separate sexual- of social policy. Though women's magazines had very few pages left ity from reproductionY (This helps to explain why the same Right- after all those praising fashion and beauty products in order to obey wing groups pressure the media not to publicize contraception and advertisers-such are the rules in a publishing industry that treats. lesbianisa, and sex education.) 12 Together, economic and cul- women's magazines like product catalogues-they did expand health tural forces make a potent lobby, in and out of the media, that normal- and fitness coverage, and concede that women were sexual beings. After President Reagan's call to overturn Roe v. Wade in 1985,9 People maga- izes inequality. For insight and detail of this backlash that began in the 1980s (and is still with us at this writing), read 's Backlash zine featured well-known women who told their abortion stories, a fea- (see Suggested Further Reading, below), then update it by turning on ture modeled on the Ms. pre-Roe v. Wade petition signed by women Rupert Murdoch's Fox N ews (the Pravda of the Republican Party D), or declaring they had had (then illegal) , and demanding that other TV news and magazine shows, network and cable, that are to the abortion be decriminalized; in 1992, Glamour won a National Magazine right of majority opinion. Even CNN, which under Ted Turner had a Award for its abortion coverage. 10 By 1994, the editor-in-chief positions at all the major women's magazines were held by women (a first), just-the-facts attitude and employed a higher than usual proportion of though such magazines were still male-owned. Naming such hitherto female executives, is giving way to the macho culture of AOL, owner of invisible problems as "domestic violence," "homophobia," "date rape," Time Warner and now CNN. Backlash tactics are often so surreal that just naming them can go a and ""-and such new goals as "reproductive free- dom" and "women in development"-honored women's experiences in long way toward defeating them. Here are some examples: the and '80s. By the 1990s, such subjects were entering into gen- • Declaringfeminism dead. In 1998, EricaJong reported in The New er~l coverage of crime, economics, human rights, and foreign policy. York Observer that Time magazine had pronounced feminism anced" by a male; how often have you seen two women as a team? [SeeJenkins, op. cit.-Ed.] 11. See "Combating the Religious Right," by Cecile Richards, p. 464, and "Danc- 7. The Donahue Show was often the first place viewers saw feminists being inter- viewed, and learned that they were not alone in their experiences as women. By the ing Against the Vatican," by Frances Kissling, P: 474.-Ed. 1990s, Oprah was a multimedia phenomenon, with TV shows, feature films, a book 12. Also why many anti-abortion, "pro-life" groups have supported coerced sterili- club, and a national magazine. zation (usually of women on welfare), or the death penalty. As with any authoritari- anism, who has the power to decide is more important than what gets decided. 8. See "Women in Sports: What's the Score?" by Barbara Findlen, p. 285.-Ed. 13. That is, the current Republican Party. Extremists who took it over were often 9. See "Unfinished Agenda: Reproductive Rights," by , p. 17.-Ed. former Democrats-think of jesse Helms and -who left when the Democratic Party became more inclusive. The current Republican Party platform 10. The 1972 Ms. petition was itself modeled on a published declaration signed by doesn't reflect the views of most Republicans, who are, for example, pro-choice and women in France, which led to the founding of the group Choisir, championed by Simone de Beauvoir. pro-environment in public-opinion polls. l1U ,,)1..) 1 t.KHOOD IS FOREVER THE MEDIA AND THE MOVEMENT 111 dead at least 119 times since 1969. The occasion was yet another their views. 17 An issue may be supported by a majority of women, Time cover story asking, "Is Feminism Dead?" 14 60/40 or even 70/30, but confining its discussion to two women • Accusing the media a/being "liberal. "Journalists have been made to arguing will give the impression that women are divided 50150, overreport Right-wing views and leaders by long, loud, strategic also that two women can't get along. Meanwhile, the media have accusations of underreporting them. In fact, many Content been relieved of doing independent reporting. IS analyses show that center-to-progressive views are the ones un- derrepresented.ls • Flat-out lying. The Bible makes very clear that abortion is not murder, as those who would criminalize it contend.'? Similarly, • Inventing Orwellian phrases. "Right to work" -is actually anti- comparative international studies show that sex education and union; "right to life" applies to the fetus but not the woman; contraception do not cause young people to have more sex, nor "preferential treatment" distorts affirmative action 16; "family do they cause people to have first sexual contact at a younger values" is a code phrase that reflects traditional definitions and age. only a minority of contemporary families; "partial birth abor- tion" means the late-term removal of a fetus that is not viable; Fortunately, the numbers of groups practicing such tactics are small. and "homosexual preference" refers merely to ending discrimi- The larger problem is the basic conservatism of corporately owned, nation against lesbian women and gay men. advertising-driven media, which provide fertile ground for their seeds." • Training anti-feminist spokeswomen, and demanding equal time for

17. To get an idea of the sophistication and money that goes into this training, con- 14. For a spirited response, see "Feminists Want to Know: Is the Media Dead?" in sider The Leadership Institute. Founded in 1979 by Morton C. Blackwell, former Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, by Jennifer Baumgartner and head of Youth for Reagan, this multimillion-dollar facility in Arlington, Virginia, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). features state-of-the-art TV and radio studios, briefings on issues, a job-placement bank, and dormitories that keep its trainees isolated for maximum influence. With 15. Media Tenor International, a nonpartisan, Germany-based media analysis firm, its $8 million annual budget, the Institute, as its website explains, "identifies, re- surveyed the three major U.S. TV networks throughout 2001 and concluded that cruits, trains and places" conservative leadership that is "unwavering in its commit- "N,etwork news demonstrated a clear tendency to showcase the opinions of the most ment to free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values." To "pave the powerful political and economic actors, while giving limited access to those voices way for a new generation of conservative leadership," the Institute also conducts a that would be most likely to challenge them." Of news sources, 75 percent were Re- "Boot Camp of Politics" on campuses, where students are taught to "stop liberals in publicans, 24 percent Democrats, and 1 percent Independents. Women were 15 their tracks." With 30,000 graduates, including a brigade of anti-feminist women, percent of all sources, 7 percent, Latinos and Arab Americans 0.6 and such Right-wing stars as the Christian Coalition's Ralph Reed, who now teaches percent each, Asian Americans 0.2 percent, and Native Americans 0.008 (exactly there, the results are probably on your evening news. one person). As with women of all races, men from racial minorities were more likely to be presented as citizens than experts. Union representatives comprised less 18. This is what happened to the ERA. Surveys showed that coverage of it in the than 0.2 percent of sources, while corporate spokespersons were 35 times more media increased confusion. No major media ever did an independent report on what likely to be heard. Of partisan sources on labor issues, 89 percent were Republicans, the ERA actually would and wouldn't do. Many articles didn't even include its word- 11 percent Democrats. (For additional data in this report, contact i.howard. ing: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United mediatenor.com.) States or by any State on account of sex."

16. Despite twenty years of allegations that affirmative action lowers standards (it 19. Exodus, Chapter 21, Verse XXII. In all versions, a man who strikes a woman generally raises them), or requires quotas (it's mainly about assuring an open and causes her to abort has not committed murder, and is required only to pay a fine process), a 1995 Harris Poll found that 68 percent of Americans still supported it. By set by her husband .: contrast, only 11 percent supported "preferential treatment." Therefore, Right- wing media spokespeople-and anti-affirmative action referenda-just switched 20. Control of the media by an ever-diminishing number of corporate owners also phrases. "Racial preference" also concealed the fact that affirmative action benefits means that content is cross-marketed, creating a kind of monoculture. Blockbuster white women as well as racial minorities. movies are hyped by exposure on a TV network, both owned by the same company; a book is promoted into a best-seller by exposure on a TV network that owns the - - ~ ..•.•..•...... , A..'- ..•.••• " .J..:.. ~'- \ T .-IE MEDIA AND THE MOVEMENT 113 For example, it wasn't the Right wing that invented Newsweek's infamous (Iune 2, 1986) report that a single woman in her thirties had more chance ies agree: in the absence of specific knowledge to the contrary, stereo- of getting killed by a terrorist than finding a husband. This bit of misin- types prevail. formation spread like wildfire apparently because many in the media fa- vored evidence that uppity women get punished. On the other hand, Lesson 3: New Media and the Future Right-wing groups had always opposed sexual-harassment law,and tried With the Internet, it's almost as if media themselves had been atomized, to distort and get rid of it-just as they had affirmative-action law-but so that each of us now has our own TV network/radio station/newspa- the media didn't report this background. Instead, they often accepted per. You only have to listen to young girls talk about a home page for the later Right-wing contention that sexual-harassment law forbade all their website and publishing their own 'zine, or discover for yourself a sex in the workplace, or all sex between unequals, even though this inter- community of shared experience in cyberspace, to know that the Inter- pretation was invented only in an attempt to impeach President Clintor •. net has subversive potential. Women who once tried unsuccessfully to (In fact, sexual-harassment law addresses unwelcome sex and the creation look up "feminism" in the phone book can now go to dozens of web sites of a hostile environment in school or in the workplace.21) to connect to the Women's Movement." Nonetheless, a combination of well-financed anti-feminist activism, But the Internet also has a downside. We have become even more the pressure of advertising, increased concentration of media ownership economically polarized by who has access to technology and who in a few corporations, and garden-variety sexism and racism have com- doesn't, and women who rely mainly on the Internet may cocoon-seek bined to make getting coverage for the full range of women's concerns, out the like-minded-while ceding to others control of mainstream news, and leaders very difficult. They also have slowed or stopped the. media that still elect candidates and frame social policy. Furthermore, progress made in absorbing the female half of the world's concerns and there is no such thing as a virtual movement. Our actual lives either leadership into such areas as , politics, and international trade.22 change or they don't. As Pippa Norris noted, this is true even for women in the U.S. Con- For example, I felt comforted after the September 2001 attacks on gress, who are more likely to be covered for their work on health and New York and Washington when I found women on the worldwide web welfare than on foreign policy or military appropriations.23 Media stud- who were condemning terrorism yet calling for a response that wasn't confined to bombing, retribution, and more terrorism. We networked publishing house; radio stations become unpopulated studios with whirring com- puter discs that spew out the same news and music nationwide, eliminating the ex- and created a joint statement-Afghan and U.S. women, Jewish and pense of local reporting and disc jockeys who might discover new artists. For a Muslim women: definitely a good thing. But with hindsight, I'm reason- report and chart of who owns what, see "Big Media," a special issue of The Nation, 7/14,January 2002. ably sure we had no impact at all on the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan that may have killed more victims of the Taliban and AI Qaeda than 21. See "The of the Beast: Sexual Harassment," by , p. 296, members of both groups, not to mention killing some allied peacekeep- .and "Women and Law: The Power to Change," by Catharine A. MacKinnon, p.447.-Ed. ers. On the Sunday political talk shows that shape issues and establish experts, the number of women guests dropped by 40 percent in the same 22. See "Changing a Masculinist Culture: Women in Science, Engineering, and Technology," by Donna M. Hughes, p. 393; "Running for Our Lives: Electoral Pol- period-from one in nine to one in thirteen-so sure were the powers- itics," by Pat Schroeder, p. 28; and "Globalization: A Strategic Advance for Femi- that-be that war and peace were a male affair." In retrospect, we would nism?" byJessica Neuwirth, p. 526.-Ed. .

24. See ". Networking the Net," by Amy Richards and Marianne 23. "Women Leaders Worldwide: A Splash of Color in the Photo Op," by Pippa Schnall, p. 517.-Ed. . Norris, in Women, Media, and Politics, edited by Pippa Norris (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 25. "Who's Talking, An Analysis of Sunday Morning Talk Shows," a 2001 survey conducted by The White House Project, noted that all three of the principal U.S. 11.4 SISTERHOOD IS FOREVER THE MEDIA AND THE MOVEMENT 115 have been better off spending less time networking with each other and • Media deal in the unexpected. They report the exception, not more time getting women's protests into mainstream media. the rule. You will greatly increase the chance of getting a general As in the past, the answer lies in surrounding our goals, not just ap- truth or experience covered if you find a surprising person or a proaching them from one direction, whether that's using the Internet, coalition of unexpected groups to espouse it at the press confer- writing a book, holding a press conference, or campaigning for a presi- ence. For example, homemakers and women on welfare who dential candidate who will again appoint a Federal Communications join together because both want to value work done in the Commission that limits media ownership in the public interest. While home, or the relative of a murder victim who opposes capital strategizing to get coverage in the mainstream media, we must also ex- punishment for the murderer, or an admired celebrity willing to pose its Right-wing slant. VVhile using the Internet for all it's worth, we highlight an issue felt by the poor and obscure. need to make sure that women in remote areas have hand-cranked ra- • Remember, language is half the battle. The feminist term "re- dios that require no electricity, much less high-tech expertise, or even productive freedom" was more true to what we had in mind literacy. While we fight for the education of women and girls, who are than "population control." The struggle against religious fas- two-thirds of the world's illiterates, we must also remember that oral cism in Afghanistan wasn't expressed by "discrimination against traditions hold libraries full of wisdom, encouragement, health infor- women," but took a leap forward with the phrase, " mation, and history. The question isn't: which media to use? The ques- ." tion is: how to use them all? • Go back and reread the footnote about the Leadership Institute. What we need 'is a Women's Media Movement that is at least as im- Now ask yourself: what kind of media training are we doing? portant as the Women's Health Movement or as efforts to get women The point is not to imitate the adversary, but to help create ex- elected. It should be coordinated with other progressive movements di- perienced, well-informed, diverse spokespeople. Some may rected at the media, and be as much a part of our consciousness and daily have turned up by accident in the early years of the movement, actions as feminism itself. To that end, I offer some guidelines, from but we can no longer count on on-the-job learning. Every femi- small to large, that I've gathered'over the years as a media worker. Each of you will add to them: ~ nist group needs a media-training component. • Journalism schools should be recruiting feminist faculty. What better place to help a generation of journalists remove the patri- • If you're introducing a new idea that's open to misinterpretation, archallens from their vision than a school that trains reporters, better to use TV or radio first. In print, you and your message editors, and TV producers to look at the world as if everyone will be filtered through the minds, adjectives, and editing of mattered? writers, perhaps even advertisers. On radio, your own words will • Become the change you wish to see in the media. If you are well- be heard. On Tv, the viewer will also see you and get some sense known, try not to speak to the media without bringing along a of intent and sincerity. woman who isn't well-known, preferably one of a race, occupa- • When false charges are made against you-and they will be- tion, or ethnicity different from yours. If you're not well-known, think twice before answering in public. You may just republicize go to an experienced spokeswoman you admire and ask if you the false charges. can assist her while learning. • Organize some creative demonstrations; bring .an imaginative Senate subcommittees on terrorism are headed by women-Senators Boxer, Fein- lawsuit. Whether or not you win right away, both can raise pub- stein, and Landrieu-yet not one of them showed up as an expert in the way that lic consciousness and become stepping-stones to eventual vic- male senators and retired military leaders did. tory. 111 THE MEDIA AND THE MOVEMENT Jib ::>l~lERHOOD IS FOREVER .'lynchings when she herself might have been lynched for doing so, and • Advertising, the most ubiquitous censor of all, will become less r journalist Nellie Ely risked permanent incarceration by committing of an influence only as we protest its power over editorial con- ~~.herself to an asylum in order to interview wives who had been wrong- tent and/or pay more for our own media. There is always the tactic of consumer boycott. We could stop buying products that ;: fullycommitted. " I could go on and on with such examples of women's historical strug- own or sponsor biased media, magazines that are really cata- glesto be seen and heard. With this inspiration, and with all the world logues, on-line services that litter the screen with ads and sell now only seconds away, can we fail to seize the moment-and the personal subscriber information, and-well, you get the idea. Remember, we have body power, dollar power, and vote power. media? Use them all. is a writer, lecturer, and organizer whose books , include Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (Holt, Rhinehart and Lesson 4: If They Could Do It ... Winston, 1983), Revolution from Within (Little, Brown, 1992), and Mov- ing Beyond Words (Simon & Schuster, 1994). She co-founded Ms. maga- When you get discouraged at the contrast between the media and the zine, the National Women's political Caucus, Voters for Choice, and movement, in imagery or in power, think about women in the abolition- the Ms. Foundation for Women. ist and suffragist era. They rarely owned property, much less a press, be- cause they were property. Learning to read was against the law for slaves, and for all females it was thought to endanger fertility by sending blood Suggested Further Reading to the brain and away from the reproductive organs. Women who spoke Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. in public were breaking the law. The names of upper-class women were New York: Crown, 1991; Anchor Paperback, 1992. supposed to appear in print only when they were born, married, or Russo, Ann, and Cheris Kramarae. The Radical Women's Press of the buried. 18S0s. New York: Women's Resource Library/Routledge (Rout- Yet suffragists' and abolitionists of all races organized "shadow" ledge, Chapman, and Hall, Inc.), 1991. events wherever reporters were gathered for some official one, marched Steinem, Gloria. "Sex, Lies, and Advertising," in G. Steinem, Moving uninvited at the end of official parades, and otherwise made sure they Beyond Words. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. were visible to the media of their day.26They circulated diaries and let- Activist resources: The Annenberg Public Policy Center (Washington, ters among themselves and wrote essays and novels for any available D .c.) monitors the state of women as reported on, decision-makers publication. From , a freed slave, to the Grimke sisters, in, and g:'l.iningownership of, the media: appcdC®appcpenn.org.; Fair- who were white southerners, many traveled and gave speeches that were . ness and Accuracy in Reporting, a national monitoring/watchdog media events in themselves. They even started such subversive periodi- group, issues special reports on women: www.fair.org; The Interna- cals as The Women s Advocate for the Female Industrial Classes, Elizabeth tional Women's Media Foundation (Washington, D.C.) seeks to Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony's The Revolution, and Matilda strengthen women's role in media through education, forums, and Joslyn Gage's newspaper supporting the Native American cause and networking women journalists internationally: www.iwmforg; The documenting the high status of women in Native cultures as an argu- Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press, a national and interna- ment for the equality of all women. Ida B. Wells-Barnett reported tional network, seeks to democratize the media by expanding free- dom of the press, and publishes a Directory of Women's Media: 26. See "African American Women: The Legacy of Black Feminism," by Beverly www.wifp.org. See also Women's E-News (www.womensenews.org). Guy-Sheftall, p. 176.-Ed.