Susan Brownmiller

{{Short description|American journalist, author, and feminist activist (1935–2025)}}

{{Infobox person

| image = Susan Warhaftig.jpg

| caption = Brownmiller (née Warhaftig) in 1952

| birth_name = Susan Warhaftig

| birth_place = New York City, U.S.

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1935|2|15}}

| death_date = {{death date and age|2025|5|24|1935|2|15}}

| death_place = New York City, U.S.

| occupation = {{hlist|Journalist|author|activist}}

| notable_works = Against Our Will (1975)

| education = Cornell University

}}

Susan Brownmiller (born Susan Warhaftig; February 15, 1935 – May 24, 2025) was an American journalist, author, and feminist activist, best known for her 1975 book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, which was selected by The New York Public Library as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century.

Early life and education

Susan Brownmiller was born in Brooklyn, New York, on May 24, 1935, to Mae and Samuel Warhaftig, a lower-middle-class Jewish couple. She was raised in Brooklyn and was the only child of her parents.{{Cite web|title=Susan Brownmiller|url=https://jwa.org/people/brownmiller-susan|access-date=2020-12-01|website=Jewish Women's Archive}} Her father emigrated from a Polish shtetl{{cite news |last1=Cooke |first1=Rachel |title=US feminist Susan Brownmiller on why her groundbreaking book on rape is still relevant |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/18/susan-brownmiller-against-our-will-interview-metoo |access-date=28 August 2022 |work=The Guardian |date=February 18, 2018}} and became a salesman in the Garment Center and later a vendor in Macy's department store, and her mother was a secretary in the Empire State Building.[http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch00352 Susan Brownmiller Papers], Harvard Library catalog listing (accessed June 3, 2010).Susan Brownmiller, [http://www.susanbrownmiller.com/susanbrownmiller/html/bio.html "An Informal Bio"], susanbrownmiller.com; accessed June 4, 2010. She later took the pen name Brownmiller, legally changing her name in 1961.

As a child Brownmiller was sent to the East Midwood Jewish Center for two afternoons a week to learn Hebrew and Jewish history. She would later comment, "It all got sort of mishmashed in my brain except for one thread: a helluva lot of people over the centuries seemed to want to harm Jewish people. ... I can argue that my chosen path – to fight against physical harm, specifically the terror of violence against women – had its origins in what I had learned in Hebrew School about the pogroms and The Holocaust."Susan Brownmiller, [http://jwa.org/feminism/?id=JWA008 statement] recorded by the Jewish Women's Archive, "Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution", jwa.org; accessed June 4, 2010.

She had "a stormy adolescence",Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will (1975). attending Cornell University for two years (1952 to 1954) on scholarships, but not graduating. She later studied acting in New York City. She appeared in two off-Broadway productions.Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs (2005), chapter 2.

Activism

Brownmiller also participated in civil rights activism, joining CORE and SNCC during the sit-in movement in 1964. Brownmiller volunteered for Freedom Summer in 1964, wherein she worked on voter registration in Meridian, Mississippi. According to her own account:

:Jan Goodman and I were in the second batch of volunteers for Mississippi Freedom Summer....When no one else at the Memphis orientation session volunteered for Meridian, Jan and I accepted the assignment. Between us, we had a good ten years of organizing experience, hers in Democratic primaries and presidential campaigns, mine in CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, and both of us together in voter registration drives in East Harlem. The night we arrived in Meridian, a field secretary called a meeting, asking to see the new volunteers. Proudly we raised our hands. 'Shit!' he exploded. 'I asked for volunteers and they sent me white women.'{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/brownmiller-time.html|title=In Our Time|website=www.nytimes.com|access-date=9 September 2017}}

She first became involved in the Women's Liberation Movement in New York City in 1968, by participating in a consciousness-raising group in the newly formed New York Radical Women organization, where she stated 'I've had three illegal abortions'.

Brownmiller went on to coordinate a sit-in against Ladies' Home Journal in 1970.{{cite book |last1=Dow |first1=Bonnie J. |title=Watching Women's Liberation, 1970: Feminism's Pivotal Year on the Network News |date=October 2014 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=9780252096488 |pages=95–119 |url=https://academic.oup.com/illinois-scholarship-online/book/18305/chapter-abstract/176328825?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false |access-date=28 August 2022 |chapter=Magazines and the Marketing of the Movement: The March 1970 Ladies’ Home Journal Protest}} She began work on her book Against Our Will after a New York Radical Feminists speak-out on rape in 1971, and then spent four years researching and writing in the New York Public Library.{{cite news |last1=Gordon |first1=Claire |title=When America started caring about rape |url=http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/articles/2015/3/20/susan-brownmiller-rape.html |access-date=28 August 2022 |work=Al-Jazeera |date=March 20, 2015}}

In 1972, Brownmiller signed her name to the Ms. campaign “We Have Had Abortions” which called for an end to "archaic laws" limiting reproductive freedom; they encouraged women to share their stories and take action.{{Cite web|url=http://images.nymag.com/images/2/promotional/11/11/week1/mrs-abortionsb.pdf|title=We Have Had Abortions}}

In 1977, Brownmiller became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP).{{Cite web|url=http://www.wifp.org/who-we-are/associates/|title=Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press|website=www.wifp.org|access-date=2017-06-21}} WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization. The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media. She attended a feminist anti-pornography conference in 1978. She co-founded Women Against Pornography in 1979.{{cite web |title=Records of Women Against Pornography, 1979-1989 |url=https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/8/resources/7060 |website=hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu |publisher=Women Against Pornography |access-date=27 August 2021}}

Career

File:Susan Brownmiller.webp

Brownmiller's path into journalism began with an editorial position at a "confession magazine". She went on to work as an assistant to the managing editor at Coronet (1959–60), as an editor of the Albany Report, a weekly review of the New York State legislature (1961–1962), and as a national affairs researcher at Newsweek (1963–1964). In the mid-1960s, Brownmiller continued her career in journalism with positions as a reporter for NBC-TV in Philadelphia (1965), staff writer for The Village Voice (1965), and as a network news writer for ABC-TV in New York City (1966–68).

Beginning in 1968, she worked as a freelance writer; her book reviews, essays, and articles appeared regularly in publications including The New York Times, Newsday, The New York Daily News, Vogue, and The Nation. In 1968, she signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War."Writers and Editors War Tax Protest", New York Post, January 30, 1968.

In New York, she began writing for The Village Voice and became a network TV newswriter at the American Broadcasting Company, a job she held until 1968. In her later years, she continued to write and speak on feminist issues, including a memoir and history of Second Wave radical feminism titled In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (1999).

''Against Our Will''

Against Our Will (1975){{cite web|url=http://www.susanbrownmiller.com/susanbrownmiller/html/against_our_will.html|title=Against Our Will|first=Monica Ann|last=Pedone|website=www.susanbrownmiller.com|access-date=9 September 2017}} is a feminist book in which Brownmiller argues that rape "is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear." In order to write the book, after having helped to organize the New York Radical Feminists Speak-Out on Rape on January 24, 1971, and the New York Radical Feminists Conference on Rape on April 17, 1971, she spent four years researching rape. She studied rape throughout history, from the earliest codes of human law up into modern times. She collected clippings to find patterns in the way in which rape is reported in various types of newspapers, analyzed portrayals of rape in literature, films, and popular music, and evaluated crime statistics.{{cite web|url=http://www.enotes.com/against-our-will-salem/against-our-will|title=Against Our Will Summary - eNotes.com|website=eNotes|access-date=9 September 2017}}{{better source needed|date=August 2022}}

Brownmiller's book received criticism from feminists, including bell hooks and Angela Davis, who wrote that Brownmiller's discussion of rape and race became an "unthinking partisanship which borders on racism".{{cite book|author=Davis, Angela Y.|title=Women, Race & Class|year=1981|publisher=Random House, Vintage Books|pages=195, 198|isbn=0-394-71351-6}}

After the book was published, Brownmiller was named as one of the Time magazine people of the year. In 1995, the New York Public Library selected Against Our Will as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century.{{cite web|url=http://www.nypl.org/voices/print-publications/books-of-the-century|title=The New York Public Library's Books of the Century|website=The New York Public Library|access-date=9 September 2017}}

Books

Shirley Chisholm: A Biography (Doubleday, 1970)
Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (Simon and Schuster, 1975/Fawcett Columbine 1993)
Femininity (Linden Press/Simon & Schuster, 1984){{cite news |last1=Petersen |first1=Clarence |title=Femininity, by Susan Brownmiller |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1985-03-03-8501120527-story.html |access-date=28 August 2022 |work=Chicago Tribune |date=March 2, 1985}}{{cite news |last1=Roberts |first1=Yvonne |title=Fab abs, Nicole Kidman. But this frantic effort to look half your age is frankly demeaning |url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/28/fab-abs-nicole-kidman-frantic-effort-to-look-half-your-age-demeaning |access-date=28 August 2022 |work=The Guardian |date=28 August 2022 |quote=Brownmiller described attempting to acquire femininity as “bafflingly inconsistent at the same time [as]… minutely demanding… Femininity always demands more”. And she warned that “an unending absorption in the drive for a perfect appearance… is the ultimate restriction on freedom of mind”.}}
Waverly Place (Grove Press, 1989)
Seeing Vietnam: Encounters of the Road and Heart (HarperCollins, 1994)
In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (Dial Press, 1999){{cite news |title=In Our Time - Excerpt |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/brownmiller-time.html |access-date=28 August 2022 |work=The New York Times |date=1999}}{{cite news |last1=Miller |first1=Laura |title=It Never Did Run Smooth |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/12/19/reviews/991219.19millert.html |access-date=28 August 2022 |work=The New York Times |date=December 19, 1999}}
My City High Rise Garden (Rutgers University Press, 2017){{cite web|url=https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/my-city-highrise-garden/9780813588896|title=My City Highrise Garden|website=rutgersuniversitypress.org|access-date=9 September 2017}}

Honors

Brownmiller won an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship{{cite web|url=http://www.aliciapatterson.org|title=Alicia Patterson Foundation|website=www.aliciapatterson.org|access-date=9 September 2017}} in 1973 to research and write about the crime of rape. She was named as one of 12 Women of the Year by Time magazine in 1975.{{cite magazine |last1=Cohen |first1=Sascha |title=How a Book Changed the Way We Talk About Rape |url=https://time.com/4062637/against-our-will-40/ |access-date=28 August 2022 |magazine=Time |date=October 7, 2015}}

She is featured in the feminist history film She's Beautiful When She's Angry (2014).{{cite web|url=http://www.shesbeautifulwhenshesangry.com/women/|title=The Women}}{{cite web|url=http://www.shesbeautifulwhenshesangry.com/the-film/|title=The Film – She's Beautiful When She's Angry|publisher=Shesbeautifulwhenshesangry.com|access-date=2017-04-28}}

Personal life

She described herself as "a single woman", even though "I was always a great believer in romance and partnership."Author bio, bookreporter.com (accessed June 3, 2010). "I would like to be in close association with a man whose work I respect," she told an interviewer in 1976, attributing her unmarried status to the fact that she was "not willing to compromise."Mary Cantwell, "The American Woman", Mademoiselle, June 1976. She never married.

Brownmiller died on May 24, 2025, at a hospital in New York City from a long illness at the age of 90.{{cite news |newspaper=The New York Times |title=Susan Brownmiller, Who Reshaped Views About Rape, Dies at 90 |first=Katharine Q. |last=Seelye |date=May 24, 2025 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/24/books/susan-brownmiller-dead.html |access-date=May 25, 2025}}{{cite news |newspaper=The Canberra Times |title=Brownmiller, author of the landmark rape book dies |date=May 25, 2025 |agency=Australian Associated Press |url=https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8975443/brownmiller-author-of-the-landmark-rape-book-dies/ |access-date=May 25, 2025}} Her papers have been archived at Harvard, in the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.

Notes

References

[http://www.susanbrownmiller.com/susanbrownmiller/html/bio.html Susan Brownmiller.com: An Informal Bio]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20070719200440/http://www.susanbrownmiller.com/html/in_our_time.html In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution], {{ISBN|0-449-90820-8}}

External links

{{IMDb name| 0115249}}
[https://jwa.org/people/brownmiller-susan Susan Brownmiller] at the Jewish Women's Archive
[http://www.sojournertruth.net/rrwwm.html A critique of Against Our Will by a black feminist] (1976)

Category:1935 births

Category:2025 deaths

Category:21st-century American Jews

Category:21st-century American journalists

category:21st-century American non-fiction writers

Category:21st-century American women writers

Category:Activists from New York (state)

Category:American feminist writers

Category:American tax resisters

Category:American women journalists

Category:American women non-fiction writers

Category:Anti-pornography feminists