Putting Feminism Back on Its Feet

Almost fourteen years have passed since I became involved with the women's movement. At first it was with a certain distance. I would go to some meetings but with reservations, since to a politico like I was it seemed difficult to reconcile feminism with a class perspective. Or this at least was the rationale. More likely I was unwilling to accept my identity as a woman after having for years pinned all my hopes on my ability to pass for a man. Two experiences were crucial in my becoming a committed feminist. First my living with Ruth Geller, who has since become a writer and recorded in her Seed of a Woman the beginning of the movement, and who in the typical feminist fashion of the time would continually scorn my enslavement to men. And then my reading Mariarosa Dalla Costa's The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community (1970), a pamphlet that was to become one of the most controversial feminist documents. At the