Cell 16

{{Infobox organization

| name = Cell 16

| image = NMFGIssue2.jpg

| caption = Cover of Cell 16's journal No More Fun and Games, issue 2

| formation = 1968

| founder = Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

| founding_location = Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.

| dissolved = {{End date and age|1973}}

}}

Cell 16 is a progressive, radical feminist organization active in the United States known for its program of self-defense training (specifically karate), opposition to violence against women, and its analyses of relations between men and women in dating culture, politics and the economics of unpaid labor in the home. Co-founded by Roxanne Dunbar and Dana Densmore in 1968, Cell 16 included early members Betsy Warrior, Abby Rockefeller and Jayne West.{{cite book |last1=Collier & Horowitz |first1=Peter & David |title=The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty |date=January 1, 1976 |publisher=Holt, Rindhart and Winston |isbn=0030083710 |pages=600}} Cell 16 was sometimes mischaracterized as promoting celibacy or separatism for its suggestion that women remain autonomous from men's groups and avoid romantic entanglements with either men or women, which would take away time and energy better spent on women's rights.https://hopesdoorny.org/betsy-warrior/FeministEconomics The organization had a journal titled No More Fun and Games, which exerted a strong influence over the development of the second wave of feminism.https://www.cambridgema.gov/cwhp/bios_w.html

History

In the summer of 1968, Roxanne Dunbar placed an advertisement in a Boston, Massachusetts, underground newspaper calling for a "Female Liberation Front". The original membership also included Hillary Langhorst, Sandy Bernard, Dana Densmore (the daughter of Donna Allen),{{cite web |title=Donna Allen, 78, a Feminist and an Organizer |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/26/us/donna-allen-78-a-feminist-and-an-organizer.html |website=The New York Times |publisher=The New York Times |access-date=9 August 2024}} Betsy Warrior, Ellen O'Donnell, Jayne West, Mary Ann Weathers, Maureen Maynes, Gail Murray, and Abby Rockefeller.Endres and Lueck. Women's Periodicals in the United States: Social and Political Issues (1996) {{ISBN|0-313-28632-9}}Echols, Alice. Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-75, University of Minnesota Press, 1990, {{ISBN|0-8166-1787-2}} The group's name was meant "to emphasize that they were only one cell of an organic movement" and referenced the address of their meetings – 16 Lexington Avenue.{{Cite web |url=http://www.cambridgema.gov/cwhp/bios_c.html |title=Cambridge Women's Heritage Project |access-date=2007-11-30 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100128225509/http://www.cambridgema.gov/cwhp/bios_c.html#Cell16 |archive-date=2010-01-28 |url-status=dead }}

No More Fun and Games ceased publication in 1973.[http://www.greenlion.com/NMFG/nmfg.html No More Fun and Games, A Journal of Female Liberation] Cell 16 disbanded in 1973 as well.

Ideology

Founded in 1968 by Roxanne Dunbar, Cell 16 has been cited as the first organization to advance the concept of separatist feminism.Echols, Alice. Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-75, University of Minnesota Press, 1990, {{ISBN|0-8166-1787-2}}, p. 164.Saulnier, Christine F. Feminist Theories and Social Work: Approaches and Applications, 1996, {{ISBN|1-56024-945-5}}. Cultural historian Alice Echols cites Cell 16 as an example of feminist heterosexual separatism, as the group never advocated lesbianism as a political strategy. Echols credits Cell 16's work for "helping establishing the theoretical foundation for lesbian separatism." In No More Fun and Games, the organization's journal, Roxanne Dunbar and Lisa Leghorn advised women to "separate from men who are not consciously working for female liberation", and advised periods of celibacy, rather than lesbian relationships, which some lesbian groups labeled as "nothing more than a personal solution".Dunbar, Leghorn. The Man's Problem, from No More Fun and Games, November 1969, quoted in Echols, p. 165.

In Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's book, Outlaw Woman, in referring to an article by member Dana Densmore titled "On Celibacy" that was published in the first issue of No More Fun and Games (1970), Dunbar-Ortiz explains, "That essay mythologized our group as having taken "vows of celibacy."{{Cite book |last=Dunbar-Ortiz |first=Roxanne |title=Outlaw Woman |publisher=University of Oklahoma |year=2014 |isbn=978-0-8061-4479-5 |page='p. 128' |pages=}}

References

External links

Pearson, Kyra, Mapping rhetorical interventions in "national" feminist histories: Second wave feminism and Ain't I a Woman (1999) ([https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10510979909388482 abstract])
Duke University has digitized [http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/wlmpc_wlmms01029/ vol. 1, no. 2], of the journal "No More Fun and Games"

Cell 16

History

Ideology

References

External links

Further reading