The Redstocking Movement: Sex, Love, and Politics in 1968

by

Lynn Walter

August 15, 2004

            The 68ers, as a generation and as a class, were the beneficiaries of the twentieth century development of the welfare state. The post-war expansion of higher education in particular provided opportunities, locations, and dispositions for the formation of new social movements, most directly in the student uprising to democratize the university.  Significantly, women’s increased access to higher education also put them in a fortuitous location from which to imagine a new women’s movement.  Along with reforms in educational institutions, the "post-industrial" and “post-material” generation called upon the state, political parties, and the family to fulfill the modernist promises of democracy, welfare, and equality.

            Their confrontation with authority and the establishment shaped and was shaped by “post-structuralist” disputations opposing the dominant socio-political paradigms and theories, especially as represented by New Left challenges to Old Left Marxism. One common foundation of their diverse post-structural arguments was the importance of making theoretical space for alternative forms of agency, or collective action, in analyses of history and social change. The significance of agency to social movement activists’ conception of their own collective action as reforming, or even revolutionizing, society is apparent. Furthermore, the anti-hierarchical structure favored by most 68er organizations was meant to counteract the practical implications of the post-structuralist conception that all critical social categories are formed and maintained by power inequalities.  Women’s collective action against “gender” as a hierarchical distinction is a profound example of such thinking, and it led them to create a women’s movement with an egalitarian, or “flat”, structure.

THE REDSTOCKINGS MOVEMENT

            The definitive branch of the new women’s movement, the Redstockings, officially began in 1970 with a series of well-publicized actions by small groups of young women studying at higher educational institutions and quickly attracted many more young, middle-class women, the majority of whom lived in København.  In contrast to established equal rights groups, the Redstockings turned their anti-authoritarian challenge toward the very same young men who were their co-activists in the student revolt and the New Left as well as in the peace, anti-EU, and anti-nuclear movements.  They challenged male domination with a new political practice in the form of small, women-only, consciousness-raising “basisgruppe” that were loosely coordinated in umbrella organizations.  Encapsulated in the slogan "the personal is political", their thinking was that by coming together to critically examine their own lives as women, they would become conscious of the ways in which seemingly isolated, individual problematic experiences were collective, political ones.  Through this practice of “consciousness-raising,” they created the political subject of a collective struggle against what was theorized as patriarchy.

            Whether or not patriarchy actually existed as a system (as opposed to a gendered prejudice or an artifact of capitalism) was a major bone of theoretical contention between the Redstockings and the New Left.  When some socialists argued that patriarchy did not exist and that, therefore, there was no foundational logic to Redstocking feminism, the implication was that their political practice was not grounded in reality or, as Birkholm (1971) argued, that it was grounded in bourgeois reality and hence, reactionary.  The critique by some socialist feminists (see, e.g., Signe Arnfred & Hanne Møller 1974) that the Redstockings' practice was “anti-theory” was, at least in part, based upon this epistemological point.  Nevertheless, since most Redstockings considered themselves to be socialist as well as feminist, they participated in a dialogue with the New Left on this point, despite its sometimes basic challenge to Redstocking practice (Walter 1991).

            The theoretical and epistemological question of the material base of patriarchy and of feminist practice is addressed here in three concrete questions. Why did the new Danish women’s movement arise; and how did it develop over time?  What contributions, if any, did it make toward overcoming male domination? 

            The search for answers led in a direction that was not immediately apparent from the weight of the written discourse, which focused on the dialogue between socialism and feminism about theory and organizational structure.  Examining texts written in the first person and about personal experience revealed that the new women's movement was collective action against the oppressive, everyday ways of thinking and interacting that perpetuate middle class femininity and masculinity as male domination.  New forms of political practice developed by the Redstockings supported an uprising to oppose "the logic of love" through "the embodiment of ugliness".[1]

JUDGING BODIES

            Nine days after the first public action by a small group of Redstockings, a newspaper featured an interview with the head of an American modeling agency. She opined that:

De fleste at de piger, der beskæftiger sig med kvindesag er grimme. Man ser sjældent en smuk kvinde stå og demonstrere for ligeret. Kvindesagskvinderne skyder altid skylden på mændene. Det må være, fordi de enten er så grimme eller ucharmerende, at de ikke er i stand til at gore indtryk på nogen mand (Ekstra Bladet April 17, 1970).

Most of the girls who work on women's issues are ugly.  One seldom sees a beautiful woman demonstrating for equal rights.  These women always blame men.  It must be because they are either so ugly or so uncharming that they can't impress a man (Ekstra Bladet April 17, 1970).

Accompanying this article was a picture of a young woman protester with a caption, inviting viewers to judge for themselves, “Er der egentlig noget som helst grimt over en rødstrømpe?” “Is there really anything ugly about a Redstocking?” Seventeen years later came an answer in the headline in a different national newspaper:  “Rødstrømperne tabte fordi de var grimme.” “The Redstockings lost because they were ugly “(Politiken, January 18, 1987).       

            Before they became Redstockings, these same young women had internalized the cultural ways to use their own bodies to reproduce male domination in the form of a societal beauty contest among women.  The generative principle of the contest was that women used their bodies to compete for men’s attention. The judges were everyone in society, men and women, ugly and beautiful, but the judged were the bodies of women.

            The Redstockings were judged "ugly" because they confronted the embodiment of male domination with a conscious, deliberate, and discursive break with the past unconscious practice. For example, the very first public action by a group of Redstockings was to walk down the avenue sporting exaggerated sexy apparel (the things they used to make themselves more beautiful---wigs, balloons in their bras, false eyelashes) and on reaching Rådhuspladsen to take these off and throw them in the trash.  In 1972, five Redstockings published a study of the women's magazine eva, which made explicit some of the criteria for judging ideal middle class young woman’s beauty (Møller 1972). She should be smiling, flirtatious, playful, original, soft, clean, and nonserious, as well as wearing smart clothes and eye makeup and loved by a man.  And the Redstockings?  Ninon Schloss said in her critical obituary of the movement...

Og da we smed kvindetøjet, smed vi jo også kvinderollen. Vi smilede aldrig, vi var ikke venlige og opmærksomme. Vi var håndfaste, aggressive, og skabte dårlig stemning (Politiken, Jan 18, 1987).

And when we shed feminine clothes, we also shed women's roles.  We never smiled, we were not friendly or considerate.  We were heavyhanded, aggressive, and created a bad atmosphere (Politiken Jan 18, 1987).

In other words, they were "ugly" in confrontation with the "beauty" as commercialized, objectified, pacified, "pænt pige" (“good girl”) and the innumerable, day-to-day practices of female subordination.  When she became a Redstocking, the beauty became the beast and even celebrated her liberation by dancing naked at the women's summer camps.

WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

            In 1970 the first Redstockings' manifesto was published.  Written collectively by four Redstockings--Lisbeth Dehn Holgersen, Åse Lading, Ninon Schloss and Marie-Louise Svane--and published as a newspaper editorial in the independent, left newspaper Information, it spoke of the "ventetid”, the time before the prince comes,

Derfor tilbringer vi ventetiden med at hækle smarte trøjer og sjaler, some vi ser labre ud i. Nød lærer nøgen kvinde. Derfor snakker vi med højskoleveninderne om, hvordan vi skal få det (os) til at lykkes, hvilken make-up, hvilken frisure, hvilken attrap. Vi stiver hinanden af med gossip om alle vores erfaringer med mænd, vi skidder og prøver sammen at beregne situationen og lægge strategien. Vi udvikler en umådelig psykologisk sans i kærlighedsanliggender-—kvinder har nu mere forstand på følelser—-vi spinder et psykologisk net, some vi snedigt forsøger at sænke ned over vores stakkels omkringfarende or rænkeløse helt, hovedperson og bedre halvdel. Det plejer over in købet at lykkes. (Holgersen, et.al. 1970)

We pass the waiting time crocheting smart clothes and shawls, which we look luscious in.  "Need teaches naked women...(to spin)."  Therefore, we talk with girlfriends about how we are going to get it all to end happily.  We talk about which makeup, which hairstyle, which snare.  We reinforce each other with gossip about all of our experiences with men, we sit and try to figure it all out and develop a strategy...we spin a psychological web and cunningly try to lower it over our poor, guileless, wandering hero, main character, and better half.  It usually does work, at that (Holgersen, et.al. 1970).

Like many young women her age, a twenty-year-old hippie, interviewed for Tine Schmedes and Suzanne Giese’s book Hun, thought "getting a man" was the key to happiness:

Der findes ikke noget skønnere på jord end at være kvinde og ha’ en dejlig mand, som ka’ li én og som behandler én som “kvinde” (Schmedes & Giese 1970: 127).

I think the women's revolt is completely ridiculous...There isn't anything more beautiful on this earth than to be a woman and have a wonderful man, who likes you and who treats you like a woman (Schmedes & Guiese 1970: 127).

Asked what it meant to be treated like a woman, she replied:

Jeg elsker at være den svage, den der ska passes på—og jeg elsker at få at vide, at jeg ser dejlig ud og at han elsekr mig. Jeg ka godt li at lave mad til min fyr og pusle om ham, for det er min måde at vise ham at jeg elsker ham (Ibid.: 127).

I love to be the weak one, the one who is taken care of...I love to know that I look beautiful and that he loves me.  I like to cook for him and to do for him, because it's my way of showing him that I love him (Ibid.: 127)

And, prompted by a leading question,:

Og I øvrigt tror jeg ikke at kvinder kompenserer for noget ved at gøre sig smukke. For fanden, de vil jo bare ha fat I mændene, der ka da ikke være nogen bedre grund til det. Og det er jo osse det vigtigste af alt: kærligheden. Der er ingen af os der ka leve uden kærlighed og selvfølgelig bruger man alle midler til at opnå den. Hvis jeg er grim og kedelig at se på, så er der da ingen mænd der får øje på mig, så jeg vil meget hellere være smuk så de kommer løbende alle sammen.  For det synes jeg nemlig er det eneste, der virkelig er værd at arbejde på: at elske hinanden. Jeg vil godt bruge hvert sekund af mit liv på at elske dejlige mænd, for jeg synes at man kun føler man lever, når man er forelsket. Vil du ikke gi mig ret I det (Ibid.: 130)?

And besides I don't think women are compensating for anything (prompted by the interviewer's leading question) by making themselves pretty.  Hell, they just want to get men.  There can't be any better reason than that.  And it is certainly also the most important thing of all:  love.  There isn't anyone who can live without love and, of course, one uses every means to get it.  If I were ugly and boring, then no man would look at me; I would rather be pretty, so they all come running.  I think the only really worthwhile thing to work on is to love one another.  I want to use every second of my life to love a wonderful man, because you feel alive when you are loved.  Don't you agree? (Ibid.: 130)

Her main goal in life was to be loved by men; her strategy was directed at getting and keeping love, in the form of an objectified man.  However, she was critical of men as a category.

Vel er det et mandsamfund vi lever i, det er jo derfor det er sådan et lortesamfund, fordi mange mænd er så vanvittig egoistiske (Ibid.: 128).

It is a man's world we live in, and it is therefore that it is such a shitty place, because men are so insanely egotistical (Ibid.: 128).

Nevertheless,

Jeg er fuldstændig frit stillet mht alt havd jeg laver, og jeg har da valgt at leve på den her made af egen fri vilje, og  jeg synes om det…Jeg tar det bare roligt og kræver ikke andet end at ha det så skønt som muligt hvert sekund (Ibid.: 131).

I am completely free to do what I want...I just take things calmly and ask nothing more than to have it as beautiful as possible every second (Ibid.: 131).

            From her perspective and that of the women's magazine eva, beauty and ugliness are voluntary choices; and while there is an "objective" standard of beauty and ugly, most women could be passably pretty, if they chose to act in ways that are beauty-making.  But who, if beauty were hers to choose, would choose ugliness? The radical nature of the Redstockings practice was that they chose to be "ugly", that is, to oppose the societal beauty contest by acting "ugly".

            This practical side of beauty contest with love as the imagined prize was instilled from earliest socialization.  It was objectified in structures of political economy, including the family; and it constituted aspects of middle class feminine and masculine dispositions in structures and institutions that support male domination.  French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1977) conceptualized as “habitus” the ways people unconsciously conform their everyday behavior and motives to the intersecting hierarchical structures that constitute their position in the world.  It is meaningful from Bourdieu’s analytical perspective that it was not most men’s habitus to behave as beauty contestants.  A man who spent much time beautifying himself would have been labeled “unmanly”.  Men, as objectified, embodied, heterosexual love, were the prizes not the contestants.  And, if a woman had the prize, then she must have been a winner; if not, then she was a loser, no matter how "objectively" beautiful she was. 

     To experience the sanctions that enforced the traditional logic of heterosexual love could be painful, as the following stories from one of the first Redstocking books attested. For example, Helle spoke of the shame and sadness she felt during her teenage years because she had no breasts. She recounted an incident at a party, when one of the boys got out the ironing board, pinned two pins on it, danced with it, and said he was dancing with Helle.  All the boys and girls laughed, and she did too. “Jeg blev nødt til at le med, for at ikke skulle mærke min skam.” “I had to laugh to cover up my shame (Bisgaard, et.al. 1971: 33).” In another account, a man commented on women’s liberation to a woman with whom he had just had sex:

Jeg kender godt alle jeres ideer, og det er altsammen meget smukt, men det er nu naturligt, at det er bedre at gå i seng med en helt ung pige end med en ældre (Ibid.: 45).

I understand well all your ideas (about women's liberation), and they are all very fine, but it is naturally better to sleep with a really young girl than with an older one (Ibid.: 45).

Another woman related her father’s lectures on the aesthetics of the human body:

Mennesket skal passe på sin krop, sagde han. En grim krop er uæstetisk….Menneskets krop er for en gangs skyld kvindens. Hans egen krop var stærkt i forfald. Hans ben var fulde af årebetændelse og –knuder. Han var med undtagelse af sin ølmave ret slank…Hans tænder var i mange år helt sorte. Han var tit syg p.gr.. sit store spiritus- og cigaretforbrug. Han blev fysisk syg, når han var sammen med kvinder, der var for fede….Han havde aldrig kunnet gennemføre et samleje med en kvinde over 30 år -  og han havde aldrig forelsket i en kvinde over 25 år….Jeg modsagde ham aldrig, fordi jeg selv var kvinde og bange for at blive over 30 år og ubegæret (Ibid.: 47ff.).

My father often gives a lecture on the human body.  One should take care of one's body, he says.  An ugly body is unaesthetic.  His legs are covered with varicose veins, he has a beer belly, his teeth are black, he's often sick from cigarettes and alcohol.  He says he gets physically sick when he's with a fat woman.  He could never sleep with a woman over 30 and has never loved a woman over 25.  I never say anything when he says this, because I'm a woman and afraid of becoming over 30 and undesirable (Ibid.: 47ff.)

To confront such powerful sanctions demanded a political practice that challenged the "naturalness" of beauty, sexuality, and love and that constructed alternative forms, attractive and powerful enough to counter the positive reinforcements of this logic.  It would require the deconstruction of the dichotomy masculinity-femininity along with the deconstruction of the dichotomy heterosexuality-homosexuality (Lützin 1990) and the construction of new collective identities and subjects.[2]  Among these new identities were the Redstockings, the Lesbian Movement, and several socialist-feminist groups, such as Socialistisk Kvindegruppe, Alexandragruppe, and Gruppe 27.[3] 

            The establishment of the Lesbian Movement separate from the Redstockings was based upon the recognition that oppression on the basis of sexuality and gender required a separate lesbian feminist political practice.  This was so for several reasons, but among these were that while becoming a lesbian feminist might be a way out of "the logic of love" for some women, it was not the way most Redstockings at that time chose to follow.

            However, Redstocking practice did lead to deeper understanding of the psychology that reproduced heterosexual, feminine habitus.  It was that in seeking men's love, you also seek your own domination; and, in the end, you seem to want to be dominated and cannot love him if he is not the dominant partner.  This was Maria Marcus' “frygtelige sandhed” “frightful truth” (1974); Signe Arnfred, Susi Frastein and Suzanne Giese's “indre fjender” “inner enemy” (1979/80) and the basis of Suzanne Brøgger's call to “fri os fra kærlighed” “free us from love” (1974).  Who would want to be "free" from love? -Only "frustrated man-haters" or cold and bitter souls too "ugly" to be loved by a man (Clod 1976: 114).  As the boyfriend of one of the Redstockings put it:

(Rødstrømperne) kunne sagtens spille op, være kry og provokerende og ovenpå, sålænge de var unge, og mænd stadig var interesserede i dem, seksuelt, men de skulle nok vågne op om nogle år, når de sad som sammenbidte gammeljomfruer og skrev bitre artikler, som ingen gad læse, og når ingen mænd gad have noget at gøre med dem (Bisgaard, et.al. 1971: 44).

(the Redstockings) are OK for now, but just wait until they get older and unattractive and sit as old, hard-bitten virgins, writing bitter articles that no one wants to read and when no man will want to have anything to do with them (Bisgaard, et.al. 1971: 44).

For many women heterosexual love was the cultural basis for marriage and the establishment of a nuclear family.  There would have to be practical options for women to support themselves and their children before they could confront the contradiction of the logic of love. 

OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURES

            Fortunately, in 1968, young middle-class women in Denmark did have opportunities that women in other parts of the world might well have envied. Those most frequently cited were expanded higher educational opportunities for both women and men; an economic boom, which increased the number of jobs for educated women, especially in the public and circulation sectors; the growth of social services, particularly childcare and care for the sick and elderly; and the introduction of birth control pills (Foged 1975, Richard 1978, Flensted-Jensen, et.al. 1977).  All of these changes enhanced women’s opportunities for economic independence from their individual male partners.

             In addition to supporting social welfare services, the state played an ideological role in promoting sexual equality in the “sex-role debate” (Möberg 1962).  Questions like equal pay, marital tax reform, the amelioration of women's double burden in the labor force and at home, and the expansion of care services were all being addressed before the new women's movement arose (Markussen 1980).  Furthermore, Denmark had a national women's organization, The Danish Women's Society, which was active throughout the 1960s and continuing as a women's voice for sexual equality and equal rights.  Thus, by 1970, when the Redstockings movement arose, there was little need for them to debate equal rights for women as a principle. 

            The Redstockings’ class position, generation, and sexuality also contributed to opportunities for collective action. They were relatively privileged in having or studying for careers that would be fulfilling and well-paying enough to support themselves and their children without a man.  They were young enough to be attractive to "their" men no matter how "ugly" they might act.  And, they were in that chapter of their lives where being rescued by the prince was still possible, but they had not settled down in the castle. Moreover, lesbian members were not as tightly bound to the traditional logic and could more easily see through the “enchantment”.

            Of those changes in practice that preceded and supported the Redstockings' political practice, the most relevant ones are the anti-authoritarian student movement, of which many of the first Redstockings were members and the sexual liberation that this same group of young people experienced in the late 1960s. The university and college students in Denmark were part of a general Western phenomenon of anti-authoritarian youth rebellion of the late 1960s, a rebellion that democratized the educational power structure and in Denmark led to the creation of a new political party---The Left Socialist Party.  The turn of the students to the left in a critique of capitalism and the establishment included many conscious challenges to traditional lifestyles---for example, in consumption patterns, in appearance, in living arrangements, and in sexual and marriage patterns.  Sexual liberation was a critique of monogamy and marriage along with a celebration of sex as a natural appetite and delight, which they thought should not be suppressed or controlled by "petit-bourgeois morality" and concepts of ownership and jealous in relationships.

THE DISENCHANTMENT OF THE PRINCE

            A result of the new sexual practice was the uncoupling of sex and love, since you did not have to love each other to enjoy sex together.  However, when sex and love were uncoupled, so, too, were couples uncoupled.  If the young woman was not in love with her sexual partner, a key link chaining romantic love to marriage was broken.  "Love" became even more abstract as a basis for marriage, if it did not mean sexual monogamy, at least as an ideal.  Of course, love never really had meant strict sexual monogamy as a practice, as the young people pointed out in their criticism of the "hypocrisy" of their elders.

            In his analysis of the impact of capitalism on Algerian peasant culture, Bourdieu examined the "disenchantment" of nature (1979) and, elsewhere, he considered the disenchantment of honor (1977).  By analogy, one could say that sex was disenchanted by sexual liberation and that:

henceforward reduced to its economic dimension only...the most sacred activities find themselves constituted negatively, as symbols, i.e., in a sense the word sometimes receives, as lacking concrete or material effect, in short, gratuitous, i.e. disinterested but also useless (Bourdieu 1977: 176ff.).

            The effects of the disenchantment of sex were different for young men than for young women.  Young men were free to see women as sex objects.  By extension, women were free to see men as sex objects (Marcus 1970) but not to imagine them as romantic love objects.  A young housewife described the problems this premise created in her marriage when they both agreed that it was simply impossible not to have sex with others outside the marriage.  He was good about not falling in love with the other sexual partners, but she was not so good at that (Schmedes & Giese 1970).  The first Redstocking manifesto discussed the problem in terms of the increased pressures they felt to be sexually available:

Vi er frigjorte. Endelig er vi blevet fri for at simulere ksyske og kostbare, endelig tør vi tilstå, at vi har lyst til sex. Vi tør faktisk ikke mere tilstå, at vi ind imellem rent undtagelsesvis måske ikke lige har lyst til sex. Hvis vi  f.eks. har mere lyst til at snakke med ham end absolut ha noget med hans pik at gøre.  Men vi hellere alt andet end misforstås og opfattes som bornerte, ufrie og (venstrefrontenens væmmeligste smædeord) frustrerede. Vi sætter alt ind på at holde positionen som venstrefrontens frigjorte damer, og paneldrengene elsker os, fordi vi vil, når de kan (Holgersen, et.al. 1970).

We are liberated.  We are finally free from feigning chastity and preciousness; finally we dare to confess that we want sex.  Indeed, we dare not confess that, on some rare occasions, we don't want sex.  Say, for example, we would rather talk with him than have anything to do with his prick.  However, we would rather do anything than be misunderstood and thought of as straitlaced, unfree, and (the left's most contemptful label) "frustrated".  We stake everything on being the left's wonderful, liberated ladies, and the boys on the panel love us, because we will when they can (Holgersen, et.al. 1970)

Sex without love, and sometimes even without desire, led to disenchantment with the prince. He, like the emperor, was exposed and diminished.

            Together, the challenges to the logic of love that originated in sexual liberation, the students’ push to democratized authority, and the rise of a general critique of materialist values and capitalism loosened the grip of gender, sexuality, and class habitus (Dahlerup 1998:159).  In so doing they paved the way for a radical new form of feminist practice.

THE REDSTOCKINGS' PRACTICE

            The first moments of this new practice were instances of recognition in the form of speaking and writing, listening and reading, but not yet a well-developed discourse.  Describing the beginnings of becoming a feminist, Lisbeth Dehn Hogersen wrote that in 1969 she attended a speech about minorities in America.

Jeg var mægtig opflammet af den tale og lavede lynhurtigt analogier mellem kvindens og negerens situation: de var begge to undertrykt på grund af nogle fysiske ting, hudfarve og kusse, som der jo simpelthen ikke var noget at gøre noget ved….Det stod helt klart for mig, at da jeg ikke syntes, at samfundets opfattelse af mig passede mig, så matte jeg ændre samfundet, således at det kunne acceptere sådan nogle individer som mig, og det kunne jeg kun gøre i fællesskab med andre kvinder, der tænkte ligesom jeg gjorde, og som følte sig ligeså frustrerede some jeg ved tanken om at skulle leve et liv som vore mødres generation af kvinder havde levet. Jeg gik i flere måneder or lurede med den tanke, men jeg vidste ikke rigtig, hvordan jeg skulle gribe det an (Arnfred, et.al. 1974: 13).

I was inflamed by that speech and made immediate analogies between women's and black's situations.  They both were oppressed on the basis of some physical biological traits---skin color, genitals---that you could not change...It was clear to me that since society's perception of me didn't suit me, I would have to change society...and I could only do that in solidarity with other women who thought like me and who felt just as frustrated as I did thinking that we were supposed to live the lives our mothers lived.  I went around thinking that for several months, not really knowing what to do about it (Arnfred, et.al. 1974: 13).    

Holgersen’s recognition occurred before the Redstockings existed and thus, demanded creative action.  This came, prophetically, when she decided to attend a lecture by R.D. Laing, whose book, The Politics of Experience, had just been translated into Danish that year.  She could not get into the lecture hall because it was filled; so she and a casual acquaintance that she met there went to have a beer.  As they talked they recognized that they had common problems and decided to get together a group of women who could "langsomt og sejgt ændre samfundets holdning til kvinder gennem kvinders ændrede holdning til sig selv.” “slowly and steadily change society’s attitudes toward women by women changing themselves (Lisbeth in Arnfred, et.al. 1974: 14).” Within a month there were twelve women in their group, and they were the ones who made the first public action on the avenue in April of 1970.

            Others of the first Redstockings came from such small groups or from already existing women's or left student organizations.  Once they started with a series of public actions, they drew media attention and had the chance to publicize their existence.  Within a week after the first public open meeting was called, there were thirteen small groups of women who decided to call themselves after the first group, whose name came from the New York Redstockings.  The media attention had contradictory effects.  They became known, but through the media's lens of "good stuff", rather than through their own discourse.

            To construct a discourse which could confront the disposition of lover-mother embodied in women, they would not only have to challenge unspoken, unconscious, forms of gendered domination, but also the orthodox position and the organizations which promoted it.[4]  The orthodox position was that men and women are entitled to equal rights and that the institutions of the state and capitalism should support appropriate measures to insure equality.  This was also the position of the Danish Women's Society, the most important longstanding feminist organization.  However, as early as 1963, younger members of the Danish Women's Society raised questions about the political practice of their organization and its parliamentary path (Bryld 1963, Groes 1964).  The fact that the orthodox societal position supported equality of the sexes but not women’s liberation, meant that the Redstockings had to confront existing feminist discourse and practice as well as the unconscious forms.  One the other hand, it meant that their more radical discourse had cultivated soil in which to grow.

            To go up against the lover-mother disposition required that they not only recognize and say that the prince had no clothes, but also, and more importantly, that the princess was naked too.  This project would require a collective remaking of the engendered self.

            The primary means came to be formulated as small, women-only groups with six to eight members who would meet regularly to talk to each other about their lives as women.  This talk was not to be understood as therapy, even though some critics "accused" it of being so.  It was to be understood as political practice with which the group’s members created themselves as political agents and constructed women as historical subjects.  In a non-hierarchal, supportive setting, one could come to see that one's "personal" problems had political causes, that they were common to many women in society.  Over the period from 1970 to 1975, this small group form---the “basisgruppe”, increasingly defined Redstockings practice.  The talk within the basisgruppe was increasingly structured, at least in theory, as the principles and procedures of basisgruppe practice became the subject of discourse by the movement as an organization (See Rødstrømpebevægelsens publications En basisgruppe 1975, En dag med 120 kvinder 1976a, and Jordmorpjecen 1976b).  The procedures were to work against dominance by individual members, against the passivity of others, for security and support for personal challenges, against straying from the topic and slipping into familiar, “girlfriend talk” (i.e., pre-Redstocking talk).  For example, the meetings were to be conducted in rounds with each person having a turn, and they were to start with a round called "siden sidst" in which the talk was about what significant conflicts or problems members experienced since the last group meeting (Agger 1977, Rødstrømpebevægelsen 1975).  In its own internal practice, the group was to build each other's self-confidence, to learn to trust one another, and to develop a sense of appreciation for one's self as a woman by appreciating other women and, as a whole, to develop "sister solidarity".  Thus, the group, besides being personally supportive, would also support change in practice and eventually would serve as a link in a unified feminist practice as a mass movement.

            As previously mentioned, the first groups of Redstockings conducted a series of public actions as part of their political practice. These included a bus sit-in demanding that women ride of 80% fare, since their wages were 80% of men's wages, a take-over of the podium during a televised speech by a man to the Social Democratic Party on equality in the 1970s, a sit-in at the offices of the women's magazine eva, street theater about Third World women to oppose the World Bank Congress, demonstrations for abortion on demand, against the Common Market, for equal pay, etc. (Rødstrømpebevægelsen n.d.a: 4-12).  They also wrote and published books and newspaper articles to reach a larger public.  They wanted to "do something" political, in the sense of making a public political "statement", and they hoped that other basisgrupper would do likewise.  That is, they hoped the basisgrupper would also conduct political actions directed outside the group itself and outside of the members' social networks. 

            The question of whether the movement should be more "outward" directed came to be understood as a problem with the political practice of the movement by many of its members---that is, they thought it needed to have a more centralized structures with which to make decisions on behalf of the movement as a whole.  This issue first became a significant part of the Redstockings' discourse at the Tåstrup seminar in January of 1972 (Rødstrømpebevægelsen 1972) at which 200 Redstockings met to discuss the future of the movement.  It ended with the Socialistisk Kvindegruppe splitting from the Redstockings, because most of the Redstockings wanted to maintain the small group, loosely-coordinated mass movement with a political practice directed at changing everyday life and consciousness, while those who formed the Socialistisk Kvindegruppe  wanted a more coordinated, more outward-directed, more "theoretical", and more "socialist" organization.[5] Similar debates at the Helsingør Seminars in 1974 and 1976 resulted in the split-off of Alexandragruppe and Gruppe 27, respectively, on relatively similar grounds (Alexandragruppe 1977, Gruppe 27 1977).  Since most Redstockings considered themselves to be "socialist" of one sort or another, this debate should be understood as one over practical priorities rather than a strictly socialist versus feminist one.  Also, in 1974, the Lesbian Movement split from the Redstockings (Rødstrømpebevægelsen n.d.b).  While this split can primarily be understood as one which reflects societal oppression on the basis of sexuality as well as gender, there was a tendency for the lesbian side of the Redstockings-Lesbian debate to parallel some of the same arguments as the Socialist-Redstocking debate with the "sides" lining up Socialist Feminist-Redstockings-Lesbian Feminist from those favoring the most centralized organization to loosest structure.

            Within the Redstockings, these two debates resulted in a somewhat more centralized and formalized movement organization, but the critical significance of the basisgruppe to the definition of Redstockings' political practice was maintained.  The specific outcomes were the introduction of a monthly coordination meeting to which each small group was to send a representative, an internal newsletter, an external magazine, and the refinement of procedures and principles of basisgruppe practice.[6]   Thus, the Redstockings became a coordinated mass movement by 1974 (Rødstrømpebevægelsen 1976b).

            The idea of a coordinated movement of small basisgrupper to work on individual practice collectively and collective practice individually was a new construction.  The major purposes of the coordinated movement were to plan events and actions that would promote the formation of new basisgrupper, develop the image of the strength of the movement, and represent the movement to other political groups and to the society as a whole.  As the discourse about basisgruppe practice developed, the number of groups increases.  By 1976, there were approximately 110 basisgrupper in the København Redstockings (Rygård 1976b: 21) and at least that many more around the country.  Also, there were groups similar to basisgrupper, but which were not officially tied to the Redstockings movement, and there were basisgrupper in the Lesbian movement.

            The Redstockings never had an official analysis of the basis of women's oppression beyond the minimum foundation that:

1.  Women were oppressed and exploited as women.  Male domination was systematic, and the systems included both capitalism and what came to be called "patriarchy".

2.  They adopted the slogan "No Women's Struggle without Class Struggle, No Class Struggle without Women's Struggle".

3.  Their organizational form was non-hierarchal and based on basisgrupper.

4.  The personal is political.

Despite the fact, or perhaps because of the fact, that the Redstockings had no official platform beyond this minimum, they did develop a very extensive and intensive discourse around these minimal themes, a discourse that was historically and politically new.

            Bourdieu states that heretical discourses (such as the Redstockings') “derive their power from the capacity to objectify unformulated experiences, to make them public (1977: 170).”

And that:

‘Private’ experiences undergo nothing less than a change of state when they recognize themselves in the public objectivity of an already constituted discourse (Ibid.)

And, quoting Sartre:

Words wreck havoc when they find a name for what had up to then been lived namelessly (Ibid.).

Discourse is in dialectical relation to the group which constructs it and which it constructs.  Based on this conception, one could say that the Redstockings' discourse and practice constructed "women" as historical subjects of a struggle against patriarchy or male domination, that it constructed sex-for-itself.  The Redstockings' practice was based upon speaking the experience of oppression and on supporting individual and collective efforts at confronting, confounding, and eventually, overcoming it.  This practice was founded upon  the epistemological assumption of "sex-in-itself" as an historical category.

OBJECTIVITY AND SUBJECTIVITY, THEORY AND PRACTICE

            What if "sex-in-itself" did not exist outside of the Redstockings' construction of it?  What if their construction was a mystifying one, which served the purposes of a small segment of the population for a short period of time, but which left most women and men more confused than enlightened?  What if it were a discourse constructed by a privileged segment of the middle class to promote their interests against the interests of the working class? These question, from the epistemological to the political, are ones that were part of dialogues the Redstockings had with left political parties and with socialist feminists, inside and outside of the movement.  That the Redstockings confronted such basic questions in dialogue with the left at the same time that their own internal practice confronted the embodied gendered dominating practices such as accusations that they are ugly, they are not real women, they are frustrated man-haters, and that challenged the logic of love, must, in a practical sense provide evidence to support their claims to represent objective structures.

            That is, the ability to collectively oppose in practice, powerful efforts to undermine or deconstruct the basis of one's understanding and practice, lends support to one's claim to confrontation with objective structures of exploitation.  Also, the strength of the reaction against practical change is itself a confirmation of conflicting or contradictory structures. 

            However, structure reproduced in practice and "practice" as acting in ways to survive and thrive under given life conditions together do not constitute a theory of knowledge nor a theory of practice.  Bourdieu places these conceptions in historical materialism as a theory of practice, but one could also tie them to theories of psychoanalysis or transformational grammar, for example.   Indeed, "the logic of love" is likely to be connected to psychoanalytical object relations as well as to material life conditions of domination.  The advantage of historical materialism as a model or theory of practice over other possible ones is that it is useful in explaining political practice and change.  As a theory of practice, historical materialism assumes that unconscious, embodied patterns of domination represent contradictions and conflicts of interest between social categories of persons and that practice represents shifting power alignments and interests between these.  Marx's critique of capitalism, as an example of historical materialism, recognizes that class conflict and interests under capitalism are objective material contradictions.  Redstockings' feminism recognizes that the gender conflict and interests under patriarchy are objective material contradictions.  However, both recognitions are only revealed in practice.

            One of the interesting aspects of the dialogue between the left and the Redstockings was the left critique of the Redstockings' political form---its decentralized, non-hierarchal, basisgruppe, mass movement form---as being “anti-theory”.  The problem was that not only did "theory" (e.g.,kapitallogik) not have a place for feminism, but further, it could not recognize Redstockings' practice as politics; rather, it was "navel-gazing" and "egoism", not real politics.

            However, all the proposed and actual alternatives to Redstockings' practice involved more centralized organization, more "outward-directed" actions and discourse, like support for striking women workers, and in-depth analyses of the problem, clarification of the theory, and schooling in analysis and theory.  Because of their emphasis on theory as opposed to Redstockings' practice, they failed to recognize that the attraction of the Redstockings movement was that it confronted embodied, unconscious, gendered habitus which daily, infinitely, and intimately reproduced male domination.  This failure to understand the Redstockings' practice as politics created a situation of theory versus practice.  Partly this situation was a result of the fact that Redstocking practice represented a thesis in itself and therefore, could not be advanced by a different thesis; that is, it could not be reduced to class conflict.  The result was a theory gap within the Redstockings' practice, which sometimes got filled with biological reductionism or religion.[7]  Redstockings' practice can be understood as an attempt to change gendered domination by changing selves collectively in a coordinated mass movement.  One understanding of a mass movement it that it is made up of changes in individual practice, sometimes, to the threshold point or critical mass where structure can no longer hold.  The difficulty we have in seeing an argument between spouses as politics is that, traditionally, we have drawn a distinction between the personal and the political, a distinction that made it difficult for the Redstockings to develop a theory of their practice. 

THE BREAKUP OF THE REDSTOCKINGS

            By the late 1970s the Redstockings Movement began to fragment, and by 1985 the Århus Redstockings had a farewell party and closed up shop.  The possible explanations run from they won to they lost (Information 1985, Clod 1985, Dam 1985).  There is no doubt that they succeeded in changing themselves and in making changes in society and culture.  The question is whether those were deep and wide enough to be sustainable without the deliberate, conscious, explicit, discursive, and coordinated challenge and reinforcement of the Redstockings as an organized movement.  I am not able to answer this question, except to say that the logic of Redstockings' practice has become so much a part of women's politics that the idea of getting together with the women one works with in the factory or office, in the labor union or political party, in the schools and universities, is now commonplace.  Critical aspects of the Redstockings' discourse, like patriarchy and "the personal is political" are also broadly disseminated.  When I presented an earlier version of this paper to the Aalborg University women's studies faculty, some members were convinced that "the embodiment of ugliness and the logic of love" no longer held sway; that in contemporary Denmark women can beautify themselves without being part of a societal beauty contest.  I hope they are correct in their assessment. The absence of a critical political practice does not necessarily mean that there is no longer any problem, and the presence of actual beauty contests must make one wonder.

            In either case, it is clear that the Redstockings did not achieve all that they had hoped for.  Therefore, a critical question is whether there was something about their practice and/or about the structural conditions their practice confronted that might account for the dissolution of the Redstockings movement as a movement organization. 

            The economic downturn, which started in the mid-1970s and culminated in the installation of a Conservative Party government in 1982; and the cutbacks in social services were threats to women's security.  Such circumstances would seem to work against bold challenges to patriarchy---no time for roses, when the bread is threatened.  According to Elisabeth Rygård, in her analysis from 1976:

Krisen og arbejdløsheden har den umiddelbare virkning, at vi blir bange. “Mister jeg nu mit job…Jeg må heller la’ vær at brokke mig” er sådan de fleste af os tænker (Rygård 1976a: 18-19).

The crisis and unemployment have the direct effect of making us afraid.  "Will I lose my job?...I had better stop complaining", that is how most of us think (Rygård 1976a: 18-19).

 

I det politiske arbejde skrues bissen på: nu er der ikke tid til tant og fjas—nu skal der arbejdes med de virkelige problemer—og det betyder altid: de økonomiske alene (Ibid. 18-19).

In political work a tough line is taken:  this is no time for all this foolishness---now is the time for work on real problems---and that always means economic problems (Ibid. 18-19).

 

At arbejde med kvindepolitiske spørgsmål, bliver i opgangstider anset for at underholdende emne, der har et skær at latterlighed over sig…..i krisetider kommer den lurende foragt og undertrykkende holdning til kvindepolitik rigtig frem: Det bliver betragtet som luksus at beskæftige sig med kvindepolitik—det er det rene navlegnaskeri—får vi at vide (Rygård 1976a: 18-19)!

In boom times the politics of the women's question is considered an entertaining subject...in crisis times the latent contempt of women's politics comes out:  It is considered a luxury to concern yourself with women's politics---especially your own experience---it is pure navel-gazing, we are given to understand (Rygård 1976a: 18-19)            !

 

Thus, one explanation for the fragmentation of the Redstockings as a coordinated movement is that patriarchy was strengthened by an economic recession.

            However, since agency is central to 68ers’ conception of the significance of their collective action, analyzing the reasons for the breakup of the Redstockings must go beyond structuralist answers.  Their practice must also be examined.  Even during the most active and expansive period in the Redstockings' history, most basisgrupper lasted no more than two years (Internt Bladet 1979).  There was always a tendency for "old" Redstockings to drop out of the coordinated movement, taking their newly acquired feminist consciousness and experience with them to be used elsewhere.  According to almost all former Redstockings, the experience they acquired as Redstockings was personally transformative, and they did not, could not, go back to their pre-Redstockings selves and to thinking and acting in their pre-Redstocking ways.  That is, they did not abandon feminist practice when they dropped out of the Redstockings.  They reached a point in their own lives (with time-consuming jobs and children) and in their own feminist development where the coordinated basisgruppe practice was not basic enough. 

            The Redstockings' practice was very time-consuming and required a great deal of personal commitment.  This is evidence of the appeal and of the objective basis of the movement, but it was also its weakness, since that personal appeal had to be continually created and reinforced for it to be worth one's time and energy.  The moment one "got out of it" what one personally could; it then demanded too much personal sacrifice to the general good to maintain such intense commitment.  This was especially so when other facets of one's life were becoming more and more demanding, as one was no longer a childless student but rather an employed mother with a double burden of work and family.

            Basisgrupper were founded on the basis of friendship, acquaintance, or by the organized movement on the basis of geography or interests.  In other words, the basis of the basisgrupper was its practice and the similarities in age and personal background and history of those attracted to the movement.  Unless one were lesbian and/or one's basisgruppe were also a close-knit circle of friends outside the context of group meetings and/or one lived with one's basisgruppe, the basis of the basisgruppe was feminist practice.  On the other hand, it is difficult to see on what basis other than friendship, basisgruppe practice might have been based on.  Groups formed at the work place would tend to focus on work place problems and to face the complications that intimate disclosures might bring to the work environment, especially the competitive work environment of professional careers. Thus, the center collapsed as experienced Redstockings left.  Their lives, changed by that experience and by life span developments, had too little use or place for the basisgruppe. Further, the split-off from the Redstockings of the Lesbian Movement took some very active members’ time and energy in the direction of lesbian feminist practice. 

            Finally, the Redstockings found no way to use their form of politics to pressure the state and other corporate institutions directly.  What demands should they make upon the state, the party, the union, the university, etc., when their practice was directed at unconscious embodied habitus?  Certainly they did make demands---like abortion on demand, domestic violence shelters, women's houses, equal pay, sex quotas on party lists, opposition to the Common Market, more and better childcare, improved parental leave policy, etc..  The point is that these types of demands were not based upon the Redstockings' practice but rather on more conventional forms of feminist politics like The Danish Women's Society and women's committees in political parties and unions, and in state institutions like the Equal Rights Commission.  The types of demands that were basic to Redstockings' practice would require changes in individual women's and men's behavior and thinking and a politics of small, coordinated group work, work that would provide an immediate personal satisfaction as well as form the basis of a mass movement. 

            What happened instead was that Redstockings and other feminists became active in other political organizations; among these are the Lesbian movement, The Danish Women's Society, The Left Socialist and Socialist People's Parties, Women's Studies, and the peace and ecology movements (see Christenson 1989, Clod 1985).

CONCLUSION

            By daring to be "ugly", the Redstockings challenged the embodied habitus of femininity at a historical moment when middle class young women and other 68ers were presented with new possibilities for collective action. They seized upon these opportunities, created a new political practice, and constructed a new feminist discourse identifying "women" as historical subjects of a struggle against patriarchy. As Bourdieu noted:

The boundary between what goes without saying and what cannot be said for lack of an available discourse represents the dividing-line between the most radical forms of misrecognition and the awakening of political consciousness (1977: 170).

Where is this boundary line?  How do you find it?  What happens when it is crossed?  These are questions that I have tried to address in this look at the Redstockings movement; but it will not be 68ers, like myself, who answer them. That will left to our granddaughters, and grandsons.

 

ENDNOTES