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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 March 2020
Feminist philosophy is now an established subdiscipline, but it began as an effort to transform the profession. Academics and activists worked together to make the new courses, and feminist theory was tested in the streets. As time passed, the “'second wave” receded, but core elements of feminist theory were preserved in the academy. How can feminist philosophers today continue the early efforts of changing profession and the society, hand in hand with women outside the academy.
1 The SWIP archives are in the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College.
2 I'm using the passive voice here as a dodge. The “tyranny of structurelessness” was operating, and it would simply be false to say that “feminists” or “local feminists” felt theory groups were necessary, if that means that each woman believed it, or even that most of the women at the women's centers believed it. Certain women in leadership moved in that direction (and “leadership” here doesn't necessarily mean holding office—recall the tyranny of structurelessness). The rest needed to be swayed, or at least somehow got to go along.
3 Making abstract theory in isolation also played a role in the conflict that dissolved the women's union movement. For example, dogmatic Marxists arrived at the Chicago Women's Liberation Union and the Boston Women's Union, producing position papers that gave the “correct line” and derailing discussion that might have been more meaningful to service-oriented feminists that were “women centered.” In the Valley Women's Union, the hardest-felt conflict was over heterosexism—which seemed to me a conflict over whether a socialist or a patriarchal analyses of women's oppression was to be emphasized.
