This isn't a diary really, it's a public service announcement. Saw a screening yesterday of She's Beautiful When She's Angry, and our own Denise Oliver Velez is interviewed.
The movie is a history of the so-called 2nd wave of feminism from 1966-1971. Very well done and very inspiring.
I heartily encourage people to find a screening in their area.
It's been very disconcerting to hear so many young women today say "I'm not a feminist." They seem to have no understanding of how many walls feminism broke down not so very long ago. And the media did its best to taint the word Feminism and make it mean a bunch of angry women who want to wear pants and not shave their legs, and who hate motherhood.
As usual, mainstream media will take any concept and shave it down to a caricature devoid of any real history and analysis.
When teaching English at Brooklyn College, one of my students, a religious girl, wrote an essay on Sojourner Truth . . . she talked about issues of slavery, and women's issues like childcare, healthcare, equal pay, etc. In the middle of her essay she wrote "But I'm not a feminist. I don't want to be a fireman or a soldier." Her idea of feminism was that feminists were women who wanted to masculinize themselves.
So it was wonderful to see this excellent documentary. I hope many young women and men around the world will see this and remember the hard struggles all the liberation movements of the 60s-70s pushed forward.
The main problem back then, aside from FBI infiltrations of groups to turn them against each other and to incite violence to discredit the movements, was that the different movements had a hard time learning how to integrate those movement into a strong coalition. Everyone wanted their issues to be first and foremost. Everyone wanted the other movements to dance to their beat, when it would have been far more effective for each movement to contribute it's beat to a polyrhythm where each voice is heard and together, each beat plays a part in something larger than itself.
Please see this documentary. And thank you Denise Oliver Velez, for all you've done.
UPDATE: Denise Oliver Velez wrote a diary about this film. Check it out for more detailed info.
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