By Lynne Harne. This article is adapted from Lynne’s talk at the Not Dead Yet: Feminism, Passion and Women’s Liberation session at #FiLiA2021.

I became aware of Women’s Liberation in 1971 when I was pregnant with my daughter and saw the first UK national march on television. At this time, women were usually seen only as ornamental sex objects whose main role was to sexually service men. Some women on the march were in a group parodying the song ‘Stay Young and Beautiful if you want to be Loved.’ This ideology about beauty immediately hit home, and I decided to join. Later, I met up with women involved in taking direct action at the Miss World protest in l970 and I was very inspired by how powerful women could be in challenging male supremacy when taking such actions together.

What was valuable about Women’s Liberation – grassroots organising and activism

Women’s Liberation was a grassroots collective movement where women got together locally in women-only groups. These small groups enabled many women to participate and gain confidence to speak out as well as to organise together.  By the third women’s liberation conference, the movement had become women only as in the previous conference, men had taken over and were mansplaining about what women should do. So, Women’s Liberation became an autonomous movement with no men allowed.

There was a lot of angry activism against all the blatant misogyny that women faced. For example, women without men were barred from Wimpey bars after 10 pm at night. So, groups of women got together to occupy these bars and soon Wimpey was forced to change this rule.  Later women began to take action against male sexual violence with the formation of Reclaim the Night marches. By the beginning of the 1980s, I became part of an anonymous group called Angry Women.  We were taking action against the increasing liberalisation of violent male pornography, and targeted sex shops, cinemas showing sexually violent murders of women and sexualised advertising.   

There are signs once again that women are campaigning in local groups against male sexual violence often from transgender activists. Some groups have picketed ‘Drag Queen Story Time’ Events; taking place in local libraries and aimed at very young children. The national grassroots organisation Safe Schools Alliance has had some success in challenging what is going on in schools to safeguard girls and the use of pornography as a sex education tool. But none of this is enough. Women and girls should not have to share mixed-sex facilities with sexually predatory men calling themselves women. We need to reach out far more to local women to talk about how harmful the fiction of transgender ideology is as without a mass movement of resistance, very little will change.

Valuing lesbian feminism

Another key aspect of the movement was the development of lesbian feminism. From early on women like myself chose to leave male partners to become lesbians. This was not only about dissatisfaction with heterosexuality. It was about putting women at the centre of our politics..But, since many of us were mothers, we got into a war with the patriarchal state over retaining custody of our children as we were all seen as ‘unfit’ mothers. It took a long campaign to get the family courts to change this policy. Today, it is even harder to be lesbian. On the one hand, young lesbians are told they must define as queer and be forced to have sex with those men who claim to be women. An even younger cohort is told that if they do not conform to feminine stereotypes, they are really men and are pressurised to harm their female bodies through medication and surgery. However,  a large number of lesbian detransitioners are now speaking out and young lesbian feminists are working closely with our organisation, the Lesbian Rights Alliance to recreate the positive aspects of being lesbian initially through the website positivelylesbian.org. This site has gained international acclaim from gender-critical groups.

The value of women-only culture

I finally want to say something briefly about the creation of a women-only culture which has sustained the women’s liberation movement, as this is essential to any new movement for women’s rights. In the 1970s women had to create their own discos, bands, music, and record labels, as well as women’s theatre, lesbian pantomimes and even publishing houses and presses as all these cultural institutions were totally male orientated and were threatened by the rise of radical feminism. Malestream publishing houses refused to publish radical feminist books which critiqued the patriarchy.  This is happening again today, particularly when women criticise patriarchy’s latest manifestation - the transgender movement,  a movement that has captured all the institutions of power and even wants to erase the language of the female sex. Once again we women have to do it for ourselves.