The Redstockings Manifesto 1969
After reading “The Redstockings Manifesto” multiple times and compared it to the time line of women’s feminism waves and eras. They seem to have clawed and chiseled away at each new right they got for themselves. They have accomplished a lot. The NOW, National Organization for Women, did a lot to help the situation women are in. The main concern of mine is, still to this day looking around we misunderstand each other. There is still huge disconnect between people, especially the more different one is from another: (male vs female), (young vs old), (black vs white). The sad thing is that without a change in the core of people, chiseling and clawing away for more rights isn’t going to get you what you declared in the Redstockings Manifesto.
They call out “all men” in the Manifesto and that is a great start, because it’s not just one man, a group of men, it’s the way of thinking that men have, possibly just a human characteristic. They proclaim to help all woman against any type of oppression. The words written on that page are powerful, those words give us insight to how women felt during that time. To feel so strongly under -valued and -respected is not how we should be treating one another. We should not treat each other like this. We should have evolved to a different type of thinking. One based on respect for the team, the world we are A PART of, and a really small one at that; individually I mean. The women of today are still fighting to be respected as equals. If everything was okay, in 2004 women wouldn’t have had the biggest civil rights march in US history of 1.5 million people in Washington, DC. (NOS) There seem to be some major improvements since 1960, but the problems are just less apparent now. It looks like the next hurdle will be the hardest, to change the mindset of those around them.
One thing I didn’t like was the statement at the end of the “The Restocking Manifesto” which stated: “We call on all men to give up their male privileges and support women’s liberation in the interest of our humanity and their own.” I understand the need to get men on your side in order to help support the changes you desire. After reading that powerful manifesto and then seeing that they call for men to support them, it just seems like they already lost the battle. They shouldn’t seek out the approval of men. They deserve to have it and they should have acted accordingly. The passion in the words of the manifesto to be treated like equals to then show weakness but looking for the men’s help. It did help that they said “We call on all men” but then they said “to give up”. They are asking them to surrender something instead of showing them why its wrong to think the way think. I believe there is still plenty of work to be done between the relationships between each other, but a great start would be to understand the differences of a man and a woman to realize that’s what makes us special, diversity. We are a team of all functionally needed parts.