People sometimes need to be reminded that the modern feminist movement began in the late 1960s, arising from the New Left at a time when bizarre radical ideas were common among young anti-war activists. Weird sexual practices were widely promoted. Leaders of the Weather Underground adopted the slogan “Smash Monogamy” to describe their bisexual orgies and communal living arrangements.

The radical milieu included terrorist bombings, armed violence and assassination plots. And, as I’ve mentioned before, a lot of people were doing a lot of drugs at the time. So I was reading Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-75 by Alice Echols and on page 221, she quotes Marilyn Webb’s description of the “very intense shared experience” of a two-week feminist retreat in 1970:

“What we actually did on the retreat was talk theory and practice, eat, clean, cook, take one group mescaline trip, which had the effect of welding us together in an intense and inexplicable closeness. Lesbianism was not on the agenda, although in retrospect it should have been obvious that homosexuality would be a future result for some of us.”

In a note on page 347, Echols names the attendees at this retreat, in addition to Webb, as Marlene Wickes, Coletta Reid, Susan Gregory, Susan Hathaway, Tasha Peterson, Betty Garman, Charlotte Bunch and Judy Spellman. Both Gregory and Hathaway had been lovers of “Chicago Seven” conspirator Rennie Davis. Peterson was the daughter of another “Chicago Seven” conspirator, anti-war activist Dave Dellinger. Charlotte Bunch subsequently divorced her husband and in 1971 founded The Furies, a lesbian collective that originally included Peterson, Hathaway and Reid, who had participated in the earlier retreat.

As their first action, The Furies decided to push the issue of lesbianism at a retreat which had been called to determine the future of the foundering D.C. women’s center. . . . [Furies member Helaine] Harris . . . characterizes the group’s style at the retreat as disruptive and dogmatic:

The Furies went as a lesbian-feminist front. Someone from the group attended each workshop and tried to steer the discussion onto lesbianism. Basically we were telling women that we really believed that they should leave their husbands and boyfriends and become lesbian-feminists. [We contended] that was the only choice that they really had.

Echols quotes Furies founder Bunch: “The entire retreat was us ranting and raving in every corner.” Keep in mind that these were not “fringe” people within the feminist movement. Bunch’s 1972 manifesto “Lesbians in Revolt” is included in the curricula of many university Women’s Studies programs, and I again refer readers to Professor Bunch’s official biography at Rutgers University:

Charlotte Bunch, Founding Director and Senior Scholar, at the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, Rutgers University, has been an activist, author and organizer in the women’s, civil, and human rights movements for four decades. A Board of Governor’s Distinguished Service Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies, Bunch was previously a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a founder of Washington D.C. Women’s Liberation and of Quest: A Feminist Quarterly. She is the author of numerous essays and has edited or co-edited nine anthologies including the Center’s reports on the UN Beijing Plus 5 Review and the World Conference Against Racism. Her books include two classics: Passionate Politics: Feminist Theory in Action and Demanding Accountability: The Global Campaign and Vienna Tribunal for Women’s Human Rights.

Bunch’s contributions to conceptualizing and organizing for women’s human rights have been recognized by many and include: her induction into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in October 1996; President Clinton’s selection of Bunch as a recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights in December 1999; her receipt of the “Women Who Make a Difference Award” from the National Council for Research on Women in 2000; and being honored as one of the “21 Leaders for the 21st Century” by Women’s Enews in 2002 and also received the “Board of Trustees Awards for Excellence in Research” in 2006 at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey . She has served on the boards of numerous organizations and is currently a member of the Advisory Committee for the Human Rights Watch Women’s Rights Division, and on the Boards of the Global Fund for Women and theInternational Council on Human Rights Policy. She has been a consultant to many United Nations bodies and recently served on the Advisory Committee for the Secretary General’s 2006 Report to the General Assembly on Violence against Women.

For some reason, this official biography neglects to mention the part about Professor Bunch tripping on mescaline and trying to convert the entire feminist movement to lesbianism.

Feminism began with radical weirdos — kooks and Communists and drug-addled lesbians — and the insanity of the movement today is a hereditary trait, a legacy of lunacy bequeathed by feminism’s foremothers.

Meanwhile, in Iowa, Democrat state Rep.Liz Bennett invited a pagan Wicca priestess, Deborah Maynard, to give the opening prayer at the state legislature. Have you been paying attention?















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