Sue O’Sullivan and Miriam David on being part of the women’s liberation movement, in response to a long read by Susanna Rustin on the Sex Discrimination Act. Plus a letter from Paul F Faupel
We write as “members” of the women’s liberation movement (WLM) since the earliest days in London in the late 1960s, and we read Susanna Rustin’s long read with interest and appreciation (‘Pretty birds and silly moos’: the women behind the Sex Discrimination Act, 18 December). We were drawn to the liberation politics of the new WLM (no membership forms available or needed).
Rustin refers briefly to WLM statements and conference resolutions in a way that might lead younger people to imagine a more formal organising force than ever existed. The WLM was a movement, not an organisation or a party. The national women’s liberation conferences that happened in those years often functioned as national “consciousness-raising” exercises. The most important “votes” were often about adding demands to our growing list, sometimes after long and volatile debates and discussions of emerging issues.
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