Episode 17: Susan Brownmiller: Sisterhood is Powerful

Last month, May 2025, the feminist movement lost a titan. We said goodbye to a 'second wave' pioneer whose relentless writing, fearless protesting, and groundbreaking national conversations fundamentally reshaped our understanding of sex, marital reproductive rights, workplace harassment, and domestic violence. These are sensitive topics, and we urge you to listen with care.

Today on HerStance, we honor the radical and impactful life of Susan Brownmiller, a prominent feminist and author of the 1960s and 1970s. We'll delve into her influential books, including her landmark bestseller "Against Our Will," and explore how her powerful legacy continues to resonate with us, the 'third wave,' as we carry the torch forward.

Books by Susan Brownmiller:  

*Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape; *Femininity; *In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution; *Waverly Place; *Seeing Vietnam: Encounters of the Road and Heart; *My City Highrise Garden; *Shirley Chisholm: A Biography

https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/35623.Susan_Brownmiller

#SusanBrownmiller, #RadicalFeminism, #SecondWaveFeminism, #RadicalNewYorkWomen, #NationalOrganizationforWomen, #SisterhoodIsPowerful, #InOurTime, #HerStancePodcast, #ReproductiveRights,  #AgainstOurWill, #WAP, #WomansRights, #HerstanceWithSandra

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/brownmiller-time.html

https://thenewhistoria.org/editorial/susan-brownmiller-s-radical-life/

https://msmagazine.com/2024/03/01/we-have-had-abortions-petition-spring-1972/

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/15/archives/sisterhood-is-powerful-a-member-of-the-womens-liberation-movement.html

Music Clip: Something Greater  by All Good Folks

https://www.facebook.com/sandra.koelle/

www.linkedin.com/in/positivitymindsetgrowth

https://theleap.co/creator/herstance/

Transcript

Last month, May 2025, the feminist movement lost a titan. We said goodbye to a 'second wave' pioneer whose relentless writing, fearless protesting, and groundbreaking national conversations fundamentally reshaped our understanding of sex, marital reproductive rights, workplace harassment, and domestic violence. These are sensitive topics, and we urge you to listen with care.

Today on HerStance, we honor the radical and impactful life of Susan Brownmiller, a prominent feminist and author of the 1960s and 1970s. We'll delve into her influential books, including her landmark bestseller "Against Our Will," and explore how her powerful legacy continues to resonate with us, the 'third wave,' as we carry the torch forward.

Welcome back to HerStance, where we empower women and allies by amplifying the stories of historical female trailblazers, inspiring action and collaboration for a more equitable future.

Before we dig into our story today, I want to invite you to become a subscriber of the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and Castbox, or at my website herstancepodcast.buzzsprout.com.  Downloads, shares and 5 starts are so helpful. I am always looking for your reviews and feedback by email at contact@elevateherexistence.com.  The podcast remains free, and I’m happy to offer this content and the companion worksheets on my digital product store for a few weeks free as well. Those are at https://theleap.co/creator/herstance/ 

Well, let’s get back to the program.

The second wave of feminism, spanning the 1960s and 70s, redefined women's liberation. For years, as I delved into women's rights, history, and experience throughout the 80s and 90s, I never quite saw myself as part of a "third wave." Yet, history now categorizes it as such.

Unlike the first wave's singular focus on suffrage, the second wave launched a broad assault on inequality, demanding parity in employment, politics, marriage, family, education, and sexuality.

It was in this fertile ground that Susan Brownmiller, a 'radical' by any measure, shattered the silence surrounding rape. Her groundbreaking 1975 book, "Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape," became an instant classic, taught and read for decades. Brownmiller meticulously documented the roots, prevalence, and politics of rape—from battlefields to prisons, against children and spouses. Crucially, she was the first to expose its glorification in pop culture, unequivocally labeling it an act of violence, not lust, tracing its origins to the very foundations of human history.

The book's impact was undeniable. It was a Book-of-the-Month Club main selection, earning Brownmiller an interview with Barbara Walters on the "Today" show. In 1976, Time magazine honored her as one of their "Women of the Year," alongside Billie Jean King and Betty Ford.

"Against Our Will" empowered countless survivors to speak out, spurred the organization of rape crisis centers, and led to the passage of marital rape laws. Yet, her challenge to the status quo wasn't universally welcomed. One reporter famously shouted at her, "You have no right to disturb my mind like this!"

I'll soon delve deeper into Brownmiller's feminist journalism—a force that powerfully shaped the movement, often from the shadows of more widely recognized figures like Gloria Steinem, Audre Lorde, and Betty Friedan.

But first, let's explore Susan Brownmiller's background, which provides essential context for her groundbreaking views.

Susan Brownmiller, born in Brooklyn in 1935, was an only child to Mae and Samuel Warhaftig, a lower-middle-class Jewish couple. Her father, an immigrant from a Polish shtetl—a Yiddish term for the predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish towns that existed in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust—became a salesman in New York's Garment Center and later a vendor at Macy's. Her mother worked as a secretary in the Empire State Building. Susan legally changed her name to Brownmiller in 1961.

She spent two afternoons a week at a Jewish center, learning Hebrew and Jewish history. Later in life, she reflected, "It all got sort of mishmashed in my brain except for one thread: a helluva lot of people over the centuries seemed to want to harm Jewish people. ... I can argue that my chosen path—to fight against physical harm, specifically the terror of violence against women—had its origins in what I had learned in Hebrew School about the pogroms and The Holocaust." This early understanding of systemic violence clearly shaped her future work.

Brownmiller attended Cornell University for two years but didn't graduate, her aspirations for an acting career never materializing. Instead, she dove headfirst into left-wing politics. She became deeply involved in civil rights activism, joining the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1964, while working a research job for Newsweek, she took a leave to actively participate in voter registration efforts in Meridian, Mississippi. It was there, working with a television news crew in Jackson, that she wrote and published her first piece of investigative journalism for The Village Voice.

By 1969, her writing and activism merged when she joined New York Radical Women, one of the city's pioneering radical feminist consciousness-raising groups. The following year, her landmark feature in The New York Times introduced a broader audience to what was now being called "women's liberation." An excerpt from that article is included in her memoir, In Our Time, Memoir of a Revolution, and you'll find a link to it in the show notes.

Now, I have to tell you, this part of Brownmiller's story truly excites me because what she was writing about—what these radical feminist consciousness-raising groups were discussing—was bubbling up in my own world as a young woman in high school. I was bumping up against expectations for my future, like "be a secretary, get married, have a family," that simply didn't align with my own dreams of a military career and traveling the world. I just couldn't quite find the language to express that disconnect.

In March 1970, Brownmiller's New York Times article, "Sisterhood is Powerful," vividly described these groups. She explained how about 15 women—married, single, working or not—met weekly at her home, exploring the fundamental oppression they perceived in a male-controlled society. These conversations were always animated, often emotional, rarely adjourning before midnight.

They deliberately avoided public scrutiny, understanding it wasn't safe. Brownmiller wrote that "the movement" was ironically reinforcing their deepest insecurities as women, feelings that perhaps had driven them to radical politics in the first place. For the first time ever, women were openly discussing being whistled at or cat-called on the street, being treated like objects. They explored how home dynamics shifted when wives earned more than their husbands, or how male partners mistakenly believed they were frigid for not having a vaginal orgasm—a complete myth.

I vividly remember when I declared my major in Women’s Studies in the 80s at university. I felt so at home, empowered, and awake. But I also remember the disdain in a family friend's voice at a gathering when they asked about it and stated, "What are you going to do with that?"

This conversation often carries the undercurrent that all feminists are "man-haters." Brownmiller addressed this directly in her article: "Man‐hating has been the cause of a deep rift within Women's Liberation. It is a vital issue because it involves ultimately the way we feel about ourselves, and how far we are willing to go on our own behalf." She noted that fear often suppressed the recognition of man-hating within the movement, as men, who control the definition, had made it a "disgusting perversion." She then drew a powerful parallel: "Many men engage in sexual intercourse, often extensively, even marry, while hating women. These men are called misogynists. Now, there is no shame in being a misogynist. It is a perfectly respectable attitude. Our whole society (including too many of the women in it) hates women. Perhaps we need a Latin or Greek derivative in place of ‘man‐hating’ to make the perfect symmetry of the two attitudes more obvious.”

And that, as a reminder, is precisely why I started HerStance in the first place!

If you're curious about the evolution of early feminist organizing, from Betty Friedan's National Organization for Women (NOW) to the dynamic shifts within New York Radical Women – and want to decide for yourself what truly constitutes "radicalism" – I highly recommend checking out that New York Times "Sisterhood is Powerful" article. The link, of course, will be in the show notes.

Brownmiller continued to make history, bravely bringing once-taboo subjects into the light. In 1972, she was one of 53 American women to sign Ms. Magazine's "We have had abortions" campaign, publicly sharing her own story. These efforts profoundly shifted the landscape of reproductive rights in this country, culminating in Roe v. Wade the following year. Then, in 1978, she channeled the significant royalties from Against Our Will into establishing Women Against Pornography (WAP), a powerful grassroots antipornography movement headquartered right in New York City's Times Square.

For decades, Brownmiller continued to illuminate the often-deadly ramifications of sexism through her essays, books, and public appearances. Even as feminism's momentum shifted to a new generation in the 1990s, she tirelessly worked to ensure its original, radical ideas remained front and center, through her memoir and participation in documentaries and interviews that archived the movement's vital achievements.

Susan Brownmiller was a transformational force in American journalism and feminist politics. She gave voice to what so many desperately wanted to say, and in doing so, shaped a movement.

Now, as we navigate the third wave of feminism—a movement striving for true inclusiveness, fighting for LGBTQ+ rights and equality for people of color—we recognize we've lost significant ground in recent months. It seems we need to tap into some of that radical spirit Susan Brownmiller so fearlessly embodied.

I'll leave you with a few powerful words from her:

"There is a women's rights button that I sometimes wear and the slogan on it reads, 'Sisterhood is Powerful.' If sisterhood were powerful, what a different world it would be. Women as a class have never subjugated another group; we have never marched off to wars of conquest in the name of the fatherland. We have never been involved in a decision to annex the territory of a neighboring country, or to fight for foreign markets on distant shores. Those are the games men play, not us. We see it differently. We want to be neither oppressor nor oppressed. The women's revolution is the final revolution of them all."

Here’s your Herstance challenge

The National Organization for Women, established in 1966, still exists! With over 50 United States chapters they are championing the equal rights amendment to the constitution (which still isn’t ratified) and championing abortion rights, reproductive freedom and other women’s health issues; opposing racism; fighting bigotry against the LGBTQIA community; and ending violence against women.

Your challenge this episode is to visit their website, get informed and get engaged. https://now.org/issues/

Interested in other organizations that champion women’s issues and civil rights?

I’ll put a directory on my product site for you to download free.  Here are a few organizations that you should check out.  Your voice and support are needed!

Center for Reproductive Rights - Reproductive rights are human rights!

Be Bold Girls - Emboldening and equipping girls to be changemakers

And 

The Human Rights Campaign - with a goal to ensure that all LGBTQ+ people are treated as full and equal citizens across the US and around the world.

And if you are interested in International Women’s Rights —

Amnesty International - Human Rights work across the world

And the 

Global Fund for Women - Fueling Gender Justice Movements

Susan Brownmiller once said:

Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge. Some of us have ventured out nevertheless, and so far we have not fallen off. It is my faith, my feminist faith, that we will not.

So , venture out!

HerStance was written, hosted, and produced by me, Sandra Koelle.

References and music credits are provided in the show notes.

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Episodes are produced twice a month to share Women’s historical contributions and their impacts connected to today’s critical issues.

Connect with me any time by sending an email to contact@elevateherexistence.com.

Until next time!