Category Archives: Women’s Rights

Freeheld

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Running Time: 40 min
Laurel and Stacie

Laurel and Stacie

Freeheld is about New Jersey police officer Laurel Hester and her partner Stacie. Laurel is dying of lung cancer and wants to transfer her benefits to Stacie. Counties can extend pension benefits to domestic partners and Laurel’s county has done so for men and their wives previously. Although New Jersey allows for gay and lesbian individuals to pass their benefits to their partners, counties get to decide case by case. All of her fellow officers support her and have made speeches to the court as well as during interviews. The freeholder director said he could not do anything because of the legislation. Another freeholder John Kelly believed that giving benefits to domestic partners “violated the sanctity of marriage.” Pressure continues to be put on the freeholder committee with trial hearings and other counties also changed their legislation to allow for giving benefits to partners that are not married. 

The documentary is a mixture of scenes from the trials, old photos of Laurel, and personal interviews. Wade’s depiction of the heartbreaking progression of Laurel’s illness is devoid of any background music, and instead focuses on the faces, emotions and the relationship between Laurel and Stacie. Wade’s depiction of their relationship is beautifully done as a lot of it belongs in the quiet moments between them, or their “ordinary” conversations. Along with depicting the relationship, Wade shows clips of several people either protesting or speaking about how Laurel should be allowed to transfer her benefits to Stacie. The documentary is both inspirational as well as somber, showing that there is yet much work to be done to achieve a society that is inclusive to all. 

Bibliographic Item:

Marshall, Peter D. “A Conversation with Cynthia Wade.” The Director’s Chair, Issue 85, April 25, 2008, http://actioncutprint.com/ezine-85/

Feminists: What Were They Thinking?

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Running Time: 86 min

Cynthia MacAdams in Feminists: What Were They Thinking (2018)

Women involved in the Second Wave Feminist movement in the USA reflect on their experiences as self-identified feminists. The documentary is centered around a 1977 photobook containing photographs of each woman as a young adult and is crosscut with candid interviews with the same women four decades later. The women highlight the impact their movement had on history while addressing the shortcomings of the largely white, middle-class, exclusionary movement.

Suggested further reading:

The Decentering of Second Wave Feminism and the Rise of the Third Wave by Susan Mann and Douglas Huffman, section: THE EARLY THIRD WAVE: INTERSECTIONALITY AND POSTMODERNISM/POST-STRUCTURALISM

 

 

 

Citation:

Demetrakas, Johanna. “Feminists: What Were They Thinking?.” Netflix, Feb 19, 2018. https://www.netflix.com/title/80216844.

Mann, Susan Archer, and Douglas J. Huffman. “The Decentering of Second Wave Feminism and the Rise of the Third Wave.” Science & Society, vol. 69, no. 1, 2005, pp. 56–91. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40404229.

Visions of Abolition: From Critical Resistance to a New Way of Life

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Running Time: 92 min

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(image from amazon.com)

This two part documentary was designed by activists and community organizers directly impacted by the violence of incarceration, as a tool to educate communities about the prison industrial complex and the prison abolition movement in the United States.

Part one, “Breaking down the Prison Industrial Complex,” provides a critique of mass incarceration, tracing its history to the war on drugs and its roots in slavery and capitalism. It “weaves together the voices of women caught in the criminal justice system, and leading scholars of prison abolition, examining the racial and gendered violence of the prison system” (visionsofabolition.org). Part two, “Abolition: Past, Present & Future,” discusses examples of prison abolitionist ideologies and frameworks in practice. Visions of Abolition features interviews with scholars, activists, and previously incarcerated women, including Angela Y. Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Susan Burton, Melissa Burch, Dylan Rodriguez, and Andrea Smith. 

Importantly, Visions of Abolition was not made by trained filmmakers, nor was it made with the specific intention of creating a film. It began as a community research project with LEAD (a branch of a grassroots organization called Critical Resistance), wherein interns interviewed people about their experiences with the prison industrial complex. It was then made into a full length documentary by student activists at UC Riverside, who determined that documentary would be the most effective way to synthesize and present information about the cause for which they were advocating. Thus, rather than an artistic or creative endeavour, documentary as a form was seen by these directors as a means to an end–a tool for the goal of political education. 

Since the documentary was released in 2013, women have become the fastest growing group in the US prison population, and it has been reported that between 70 and 90% of people incarcerated within women’s prisons have experienced sexual and/or domestic violence prior to being incarcerated.

Bibliographic item: https://survivedandpunished.org/

This bibliographic item is the website for a prison abolitionist group called Survived and Punished, which focuses on ending the criminalization of survivors of sexual and domestic violence and abolishing all forms of gender violence. The group has a nuanced analysis of the ways the Carceral State perpetuates gender violence, criminalizes survivors, and relegates people to places where gender violence is routinized and state sanctioned (prisons, jails, and detention centers). The website contains many toolkits, curricula, publications, projects, and resources. It can help elaborate on and complicate the documentary’s discussion of the ways in which the Carceral State perpetuates gender violence and has more up to date statistics and resources.

Hooligan Sparrow

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Running Time: 81 min
Women's rights activist, Ye Hiayan (AKA Hooligan Sparrow), holds a sign which reads, "All China Women's Federation is a Farce. China's Women's Rights are Dead."

Women’s rights activist, Ye Hiayan (AKA Hooligan Sparrow), holds a sign which reads, “All China Women’s Federation is a Farce. China’s Women’s Rights are Dead.” Source: https://hooligansparrow.com/

Synopsis:

CW: sexual abuse

In Hooligan Sparrow, Chinese-American filmmaker Nanfu Wang documents the experiences of contemporary women’s rights activists in China, namely Ye Haiyan (aka Hooligan Sparrow). After the Chinese government refused to investigate a case of six elementary school girls who were sexually abused by their principal, Hooligan Sparrow and her fellow activists decide to protest in the streets of Hainan Province, calling attention to China’s legal loopholes that allow rapists to claim child victims should be charged with underage prostitution instead of being held accountable for their crimes. Once the women speak out, they are labeled enemies of the state and are met with intense government surveillance and intimidation. Despite multiple altercations with undercover government agents (in which some of her cameras were destroyed), Wang is able to smuggle the film’s guerilla-style footage, shot with concealed body cameras and secret-camera glasses, back to the United States.

One key element of Hooligan Sparrow is Wang’s presence throughout the film. From the very beginning, she situates herself as the filmmaker, explains who she is, and why she traveled back to China after completing film school in the United States. Multiple times in the film, the audience sees Wang’s reflection in mirrors and windows with her camera in hand, or hears her voice in audio recordings; the audience is always aware that Wang is behind the camera. Given Wang’s presence, the film is also able to capture the relationship between the filmmaker and the film’s key characters, adding another layer of depth to the work.

Bibliographic items:

https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/04/23/hooligan-sparrow-conversation-with-wang-nanfu/ – An interview conducted by journalists Zeng Jinyan and Tan Jia with Nanfu Wang about the editing process and the filmmaker’s perspectives on China.

The Politics of Looking: A Critical Exploration of Hooligan Sparrow

An interview and critical analysis conducted by journalist Rebecca Anderson with Nanfu Wang, which puts Hooligan Sparrow in conversation with the work of French philosopher Jacques Ranciere. Ranciere writes that images produced and circulated by society’s dominant culture shape the public’s perception of what is normal and possible, which helps to explain why authoritarian governments put so much effort into censoring images and other forms of media. Those who wish to disrupt the status quo, therefore, might employ images to inspire political change. Anderson argues that Wang might be considered one such example, given that she weaponizes film to document China’s human rights atrocities and create counternarratives to those of the Chinese government.

— by Allison Naganuma

Yours in Sisterhood

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Running Time: 101 min
Yours in Sisterhood movie poster

Yours in Sisterhood

Yours in Sisterhood gives life to the voices of women living in the 1970s while showing the ways that being a woman has and has not changed over time. The film shows a selection of interviews in which a person is asked to read a letter that was penned in the 1970s to Ms. Magazine but was never published and then answer questions about the letter. Almost every interview is shown as a continuous shot, or as at most three shots cut together. Every reader is from the same town as the author of the letter and has personal experience with the issues being discussed in the letter. The topics of the letters include environmental justice, race, sexuality and gun control and are all about the experience of women in America. They discuss the opinions of prisoners, sex workers, children, and senior citizens. Their are readers who sympathize deeply with the writers of their letter and there are readers who critique or scoff at the author of the letter they read. Many of the letters contain perspectives or opinions that would have been considered to devient in their time and that were not published by Ms. Magazine to avoid alienating the mainstream readership or distracting from what Ms. perceived to be the main issues. The film draws attention to whose voices we are not hearing in feminist and womens spaces, both then and now.

A book by the same name as the film which also explores unpublished Ms. letters can be found by members of the TriCo at: https://tripod.swarthmore.edu/permalink/01TRI_INST/j0hcq8/alma991010485049704921

A citation of the book follows:

Farrell, Amy Erdman. Yours in Sisterhood?: Ms. Magazine and the Promise of Popular Feminism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Print.

Citation of the movie poster:

Lusztig, Irene. “Yours in Sisterhood Poster.” Women Make Movies, Women Make Movies, https://www.wmm.com/catalog/film/yours-in-sisterhood/.

No Girls Allowed (dir. Darlene Craviotto, 2011)

Filmmaker: Darlene Craviotto
Year: 2011
Country of origin: United States
Running Time: 52 min.
Original Format: Digital Video, DVD
Tripod
Website

No Girls Allowed 

Up until 1983, Philadelphia’s Central High School enjoyed a longstanding and prestigious reputation as America’s last all-male public school. Darlene Craviotto’s 2011 documentary No Girls Allowed traces the steps taken by seven girls who changed its legacy forever.

The film begins with the court case between Central High and Susan Vorchheimer, who wanted to attend the school because of its superior academic opportunities. Despite a court-ordered mandate to let her in, the school was obstinate in its unisex tradition, and she was not allowed to attend Central. Vorchheimer remained at Girls High, the standard choice for girls in the area. A few years later, a group of six students from Girls High pushed even harder for admittance to the boys’ school and won what Vorchheimer couldn’t; it was not, however, won easily.

In interviews with the women who achieved desegregation at Central, they coolly recount the relentless name-calling, pranks, and the overall sense of heavy isolation inflicted upon them not only by their male classmates but by their male teachers as well. These stories, however, do not infuse the film with the gloominess that may be expected. They discuss the sadness they felt because of these events but seem more excited to recall inspiring moments of resistance: the press conference in which they boldly declared their right to equal education to the media, the astute sense that they were involved in a defining moment for women’s liberation, and the striking image of flowers planted in the urinals of the newly-instated girls’ bathroom (the building had no urinal-free bathrooms, for obvious reasons).

Craviotto’s clear narratorial voice and rigorous incorporation of local newspaper articles and news segments makes No Girls Allowed a valuable resource for anyone seeking a personalized collective account of what happened at Central High. The events that transpired when the Central Six refused to be shut out by the “traditions” so dearly clung to by an ivy-clad institution illuminate feminism’s intersections with educational policy and the patriarchal history of American public schooling.

“The story of the struggle to open Central High School to female students is vividly reconstructed by filmmaker Darlene Craviotto in her engaging documentary No Girls Allowed.”
–  Juliet A. Williams
The Separate Solution? Single-Sex Education and the New Politics of Gender Equality, pp. 167.

Trapped (Dir. Dawn Porter, 2016)

Trapped (Dir. Dawn Porter, 2016)

Director: Dawn Porter

Year: 2016

Initial Release Date: January 24

Country of origin: USA  

Running time: 81 minutes

 

Trapped narrowly presents the legal battle over a woman’s right to choice what they want to do with their body, whether that is to get an abortion or not. This is not a two sided story with commentary from both pro-lifers and pro-choice people. Trapped is direct in its powerful and informative documentary about why women’s health care is under attack from politicians; the analysis of the system that often traps women’s health care facilities to shut down is casual. The portrayal of both observational and participatory modes of film illustrates how doctors, patients, and staff of these clinics are innocent victims to the consequences of politics and the government that are “letting politics trump medicine”.

The documentary is indeed necessary to show that reproductive rights are a person’s decision and not the governments, but this film does not answer a question. It merely presents an answer. This is useless because Trapped will not change a pro-lifers mind about abortion; although it is persuasive for pro-choicers to continue the fight for women’s rights. The film is telling the story of the doctors and owners of women’s clinics in the south; a region that is toughest on abortion laws because of the amount of religious politicians and citizens. A reason why the documentary focused on the doctors and staff is to get the audience to understand that abortion is a human right and is, despite its reputation, safe; the CDC puts “a first trimester abortion as safer than a penicillin shot”.

At the beginning, there is a woman talking about her experience with trying to get an abortion in a state with strict policies. The footage is in a dark setting where the audience can barely see her face. This adds to the real dramatic effect that this woman probably did not want pro-life protesters finding out who she is and where she lives and thus harassing her. Throughout the middle duration, Porter interviews women who are getting an abortion and only shows their bodies from the neck down, usually the women’s fidgeting fingers.  At the end, the director interviews a woman who is getting an abortion, actually showing her face in the light. This is to almost exclaim that “the darkest nights bring the brightest tomorrow”; the transition from the beginning to the end is saying that women should not be shamed or harassed for having abortions. It is their right to decide.

Trapped contains footage from past protests with signs such as “women power”. On the other hand, there is footage of politicians and citizens expressing their belief that abortion is wrong. The documentary shows a few politicians in the south who run on anti-abortion platforms as the central component of their argument. Anti-abortion protesters are seen on the lawns of several clinics yelling and harassing the doctors. So the film is clear in its persuasion that pro-choice is the right choice.

Yet despite this being a serious film, there are comical moments such as June Ayers setting the sprinklers on protesters to get them to leave the premises. The shots in Trapped are repetitive and straightforward, especially with the transition between the clinics in the different states; there is always a shot of a state’s map. There is cuts to direct action sometimes with instrumental music playing in the background. It is not an artistic documentary but is nonetheless important in explaining reproduction rights.   

Suggested use:

I suggest this documentary for the educational purposes of already pro-choice individuals. I would not recommend someone showing their pro-life friend or family member this particular film if their intention is to change their friends mind. It is not as emotional or thought provoking as one would need to fully and engagingly realize abortion is a right.  

Bibliographic items:

Information about the film:

http://www.trappeddocumentary.com

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/trapped/

https://www.democracynow.org/2016/1/25/trapped_new_documentary_follows_abortion_providers

Information about the restrictive laws discussed in the film:

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/06/27/us-supreme-court-rules-texas-abortion-case/

http://www.statesman.com/timeline/texas-abortion-law/

 

India’s Daughter (Leslee Udwin, 2015)

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Running Time: 62 min
Indian women participate in a candle light vigil at a bus stop where the victim of a deadly gang rape in a moving bus had boarded the bus two years ago, in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2014. The case sparked public outrage and helped make women’s safety a common topic of conversation in a country where rape is often viewed as a woman’s personal shame to bear. (AP Photo/Tsering Topgyal)

Indian women participate in a candle light vigil on the anniversary of the gang rape in 2012. (AP Photo/Tsering Topgyal)

Synopsis:

India’s Daughter tells the story of an infamous gang rape that occurred in New Delhi in 2012, and the protests and legal action that followed. It succeeds in portraying the heinousness of the crime committed and, through interviews with the victim’s parents and others, representing how horrifying and heartbreaking the event was. In terms of the other tasks that Udwin set out to accomplish — answering the question “why do men rape?” and unpacking the incident’s connection to its cultural context – the film not only comes up short, but constructs an actively problematic narrative. The film ties, sometimes implicitly but often explicitly, the rapists’ mentalities and motivations to their Indianness and to their poverty, a dangerously inaccurate representation.  It also focuses heavily on the story of the rape and the lives of the convicted rapists, and very little on the organizing and activism undertaken by so many Indians in the months after the attack (only three people involved in protests are interviewed, each is on screen only once, for a minute or two).

After the first few minutes, in which the gang rape case is briefly described in voiceover, the film contains almost no overt narrative voice, in voiceover or on-screen text. The film is largely made up of interviews, the most prominent and controversial among them being an interview with Mukesh Singh, one of the men convicted of Jyoti Singh’s rape and murder (though he maintains that, while his brother and friends committed the assault and rape in the back of the bus, he was driving the entire time and did not commit the crimes himself). Much of the narrative work, then, is done through the juxtaposition of particular moments in different interviews. An exemplary instance of this narrative strategy is when Jyoti’s friend recalls Jyoti saying “A girl can do anything,” and the film cuts to Mukesh Singh saying “Boy and girl are not equal” (this quote is drawn from the English subtitles because Mukesh is speaking in Hindi – it is interesting to note that, though Hindi does not have articles, they chose not to supply them in the translation, making his speech appear improper or uneducated) and then shows shots of crowds of Indian men in public while Mukesh continues to recount his sexist views. While Jyoti and her family are heralded as progressive, the subtle work of the filmmaker presents Indian men, in general, as sexist and archaic. Besides interviews, the film contains a small amount of footage from the massive protests that occurred in the months following the rape, and some shots of the rapists being transported after their arrests and convictions. It also utilizes a vague form of reenactment — interviewee’s accounts of the rape itself are played over dark, blurry shots of a bus, the back of a driver’s head and hands, a religious figurine bouncing on the dashboard. These formal choices suggest a tendency of the filmmaker to amplify­­­ dramatic effect, perhaps at the expense of accuracy.

At the end of the documentary – over a still black and white shot of candles and a blood-spatter graphic – a list of statistics about gender-based violence in different countries scrolls across the screen. While this is presumably an effort to demonstrate how widely rampant violence against women is globally, it instead highlights the complete lack of international context given in the entirety of the film preceding. This last ditch attempt to broaden the film’s scope seems somewhat disingenuous in light of the overarching message that violence is the specific cultural product of a uniquely Indian misogyny.  Though an account of the event itself would not necessarily need to incorporate an international context, the film’s fixation on Indian culture and its omission of any other contextualization creates the impression that rape is India’s problem.  Particularly because this film was made for English-speaking audiences, i.e. primarily for outsiders to Indian culture, its myopic view leads to dangerous and counterproductive conclusions.

Suggested Uses:

I would only advocate the use of this documentary in very specific settings, among viewers already equipped with a background in intersectional and global feminism, wherein it might be consciously consumed and critiqued. It should not be turned to as an objective source of information on the facts of the case, as they are not carefully explained and one would do better reading about the incident.

Bibliographic Items:

Courting Injustice: The Nirbhaya Case and its Aftermath: A book by Rajesh Talwar on the legal changes made in India since 2012, the reasons the changes have not affected enforceability, and the cultural context in which all of this is taking place

Kavita Krishnan, prominent Indian feminist activist, on the Udwin’s white savior problem: http://www.dailyo.in/politics/kavita-krishnan-nirbhaya-december-16-indias-daughter-leslee-udwin-mukesh-singh-bbc/story/1/2347.html

Nilanjana S Roy, Indian journalist and writer, on the glaring absence of protestors’ and activists’ voices in the film: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/03/indian-women-delhi-rape-film-rapist-indias-daughter

Lesbian Avengers Eat Fire, Too

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Running Time: 55 min

Lesbian Avengers Eat Fire, Too (2013), Dir. Su Friedrich and Janet Baus

Lesbian Avengers
(lesbianavengers.com)

Lesbian Avengers Eat Fire, Too documents the 1992-1993 activities of a New York chapter of the lesbian direct action group the Lesbian Avengers. The film gives a sense of the flamboyant and unapologetic yet varied direct action tactics the group used, from eating fire at protests, to leaving stink bombs outside the office of a lawyer for a homophobic school superintendent and covering his office with “Homophobia Stinks” stickers, to protesting inside the office of SELF Magazine after the magazine planned a conference in Colorado, a state that had recently passed an anti-gay and -lesbian amendment. We see extended footage of the protest in favor of the multicultural Rainbow Curriculum; an anti-violence march and vigil in Greenwich Village following the murder of two gay people in Oregon at a time when Oregon had an anti-lesbian and -gay measure on the ballot; and of the Valentine’s Day installation of a statue of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein’s lover, next to the statue of Stein.

Formally, the documentary cuts back and forth between interviews with members of the organization, extensive footage of direct actions, and often hilarious clips of passers-by responding to the question, “Who do you think the Lesbian Avengers are?” The candid, conversational interviews, filmed during Avengers meetings, and the glee and raw power of the extensive protest footage combine to relay a sense of the explosive political energy of these lesbian activists, fed up with invisibility in women’s and gay movements and respectability politics among their fellow lesbians in this historical moment. Absent from the film is any overview of the group’s structure or sense of how the group was situated with respect to other queer activist groups. The film, directed by two Avengers, treats each action as a victory, and functions as a call to action, ending with the Avengers’ hotline number. The content of the interviews shown, which feature racially diverse lesbians, suggest that the group took an intersectional approach to; as one woman says, “Anything can be a lesbian issue.” However, critiques of the group by lesbians of color are given no screen time in this documentary.

Suggested Uses:

Because the documentary focuses exclusively on the Avengers, with little attention to coexisting groups of the era like OutRage! and ACT-UP, and because it presents no criticism of the Avengers, it is of limited use in conveying historical information. It would be more useful in conveying the mood of the group and in presenting a compelling case for the Avengers’ brand of activism. While it is necessarily one-sided, it could be an entry point into the women’s and gay movements in a high school history class, or in a college class focused on lesbian activism, if shown in concert with readings or films that offered other perspectives on the activism of the time. Or, watch it just for fun!

Bibliographic Item:

the march, off our backs: The radical feminist periodical off our backs documented the Avengers’ activities, including the inaugural Dyke March in Washington, DC.

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry

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Running Time: 92 min

broadsheet.com.au

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry (2014), Dir. Mary Dore

Synopsis: Dore’s film covers a huge range of issues in the rise of the women’s movement, mostly between 1966 (beginning a few years back with the 1963 publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminist Mystique) and 1971. The documentary covers a range of issues the women’s liberation movement focused on, from abortion to birth control to equal pay to employment opportunities to self-defense and rape, and locates the beginning of the movement in the political energy of the Civil Rights, antiwar, and Black Power movements of the 1960s. The film also emphasizes the huge number of everyday, ordinary women who worked together to begin the movement, underscoring the role of consciousness-raising groups and collective organization rather than focusing on just a few women.

Formally, the film cuts often between interviews — always brief, interesting and relevant — and footage of past protests, speeches, and events, usually featuring the women interviewed. This effort to weave together interviews and past footage makes the film much more engaging than lengthy interviews or tape might be. SBWSA‘s interviews also lend a pleasing affective texture to the film, emphasizing the sense of women involved in the movement that it was long overdue as well as the catharsis and necessary support of consciousness-raising groups and a new (for white women, at least) understanding of the personal as political.

The film touches briefly on certain schisms within the women’s movement and towards the end focuses on the rollback of certain feminist gains such as abortion rights, but overall emphasizes the movement’s unity and triumphs — at the cost, perhaps, of truly delving into the painful and bitter exclusion of and alienation felt by Black women, for instance, from the feminist movement (the issue of lesbianism is given more time, but the Combahee River Collective’s statement and movement, though it emerges a few years past the film’s purview, would be an invaluable addition to the film — along with a few more minutes’ analysis of lesbian separatism, rather than what the documentary does, which is conclude that lesbianism was added and treated as important almost immediately by feminism after the Lavender Menace raised the issue). An unfortunate perpetuation of the universalism of the term “women” pervades the documentary, which, with a few notable exceptions in Fran Beal and Linda Burnham, focuses its interviews mostly on white women (a striking contrast with the footage and images from the past, which clearly show many Black women and other women of color involved in the organizing and activism taking place). The film could have made interesting connections between the ways in which certain spaces within the women’s movement would not permit the entrance of male infant children and modern day trans exclusion, or touched upon any number of issues which are brought up in the film but remain salient for the women’s movement (antifeminism from women, rape culture, etc.) but instead strikes a joyful and positive tone throughout. This is certainly in service of a noble goal of emphasizing the power of collective organizing, but misses the force which acknowledging difference and difficulty can generate.

Suggested uses: There is nothing new here — in fact, there is a lot missing — for those who have taken even an introductory Gender & Sexuality Studies class or studied the rise of feminism. Its most appropriate use might therefore be in high-school US history or possibly health classrooms, or as an engaging way in which to begin to study feminism’s development, though obviously much more research should still be done.

Bibliographic items: “The Woman-Identified Woman.” Written by the group of lesbian radical feminists calling themselves the Lavender Menace and responding to the exclusion of lesbians and lesbian issues from the feminist movement. The manifesto was passed out as part of a demonstration at the Second Congress to Unite Women in New York City in 1970 (which did not feature any openly lesbian women). Often cited as a major moment and text in second-wave feminism, perhaps the foundational document for lesbian feminism. The next year, delegates at the 1971 National Organization of Women’s national conference declared lesbian rights a key concern for feminism.

The Combahee River Collective Statement and the anthology Words of Fire, ed. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, both of which provide more nuanced looks than the documentary at Black women’s role in women’s liberation.

The Kickstarter campaign for the film contains interesting information about the filmmaking process and creators’ purposes.