Carol Hanisch (born 1942) is a

radical feminist Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical re-ordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts, while recognizing that women's experiences are also affected by other ...

activist. She was an important member of New York Radical Women and

Redstockings Redstockings, also known as Redstockings of the Women's Liberation Movement, is a radical feminist nonprofit that was founded in January 1969 in New York City, whose goal is "To Defend and Advance the Women's Liberation Agenda". The group's name ...

. She is best known for popularizing the phrase "

the personal is political ''The personal is political'', also termed ''The private is political'', is a political argument used as a rallying slogan of student movement and second-wave feminism from the late 1960s. In the context of the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1 ...

" in a 1970 essay of the same name.https://webhome.cs.uvic.ca/~mserra/AttachedFiles/PersonalPolitical.pdf However, Hanisch does not take responsibility of the phrase, stating in her 2006 updated essay, with a new introduction, that did not name it that, or in fact use it in the essay at all. Instead she claims that the title was done by the editors of ''Notes from the Second Year: Women's Liberation'' (where it was published), Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt. She also conceived the 1968

Miss America protest The Miss America protest was a demonstration held at the Miss America 1969 contest on September 7, 1968, attended by about 200 feminists and civil rights advocates. The feminist protest was organized by New York Radical Women and included putting ...

and was one of the four women who hung a women's liberation banner over the balcony at the

Miss America Pageant Miss America is an annual competition that is open to women from the United States between the ages of 17 and 25. Originating in 1921 as a "bathing beauty revue", the contest is now judged on competitors' talent performances and interviews. As ...

, disrupting the proceedings.

Early life

Hanisch was born and raised on a small farm in rural Iowa, and worked as a wire services reporter in Des Moines before leaving to join the Delta Ministry in Mississippi in 1965, inspired by the

Freedom Summer Freedom Summer, also known as the Freedom Summer Project or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a volunteer campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi. ...

reports the year before. There, she met the co-founders of the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF),

Anne Braden Anne McCarty Braden (July 28, 1924 – March 6, 2006) was an American civil rights activist, journalist, and educator dedicated to the cause of racial equality. She and her husband bought a suburban house for an African American couple during Ji ...

and husband

Carl Braden Carl Braden (June 24, 1914 – February 18, 1975) was a trade unionist, journalist, and activist who was known for his work in the civil rights movement. Biography Braden was born in New Albany, Indiana, and died in Louisville, Kentucky. He wo ...

, who hired her to run the SCEF NY office.

Feminist activism and writing

By early 1968, Hanisch had secured the SCEF offices for the weekly meetings of the New York Radical Women, and it remained their base until the group dissolved in the early 1970s.Brownmiller, Susan (1999). ''In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution''. Dial Press, pp. 20–21, 23. In 1970 her most famous essay, 'the personal is political' was published in Notes from the Second Year: Women's Liberation. Hanisch states that the essay was named by the two editors Shulie Firestone and Anne Koedt. In the essay, the phrase is actually not used at all but it instead states: One of the first things we discover in these groups is that personal problems are political problems. There are no personal solutions at this time. There is only collective action for a collective solution. The essay was written in response to a series of 'therapy groups' that Hanisch would attend. Her main argument was that these groups should not be deemed as 'apolitical', but instead any situation where women talk about their life and their struggles under the patriarchy is an extremely political act. She co-founded and currently co-edits with Kathy Scarbrough ''Meeting Ground online'', the third version of "Meeting Ground." The statement of purpose from 1977 describes itself as providing "an ongoing place to hammer out ideas about theory, strategy and tactics for the women’s liberation movement and for the general radical movement of working men and women." In 1996, Hanisch delivered a speech at the 30th Anniversary Symposium on “China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” at the

New School for Social Research The New School for Social Research (NSSR) is a graduate-level educational institution that is one of the divisions of The New School in New York City, United States. The university was founded in 1919 as a home for progressive era thinkers. NSS ...

. The speech was titled "Impact of the Chinese Cultural Revolution on the Women's Liberation Movement." Hanisch credited

William H. Hinton William Howard Hinton (; February 2, 1919 – May 15, 2004) was an American Maoist intellectual, best known for his work on Communism in China. A Marxist, he is best known for his book '' Fanshen'', published in 1966, a "documentary of revo ...

's book ''

Fanshen ''Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village'' is a 1966 book by William H. Hinton that describes the land-reform campaign during the Chinese Civil War conducted from 1945 to 1948 by the Chinese Communist Party in "Long Bow Villag ...

'' as well as the works of

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also Romanization of Chinese, romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the List of national founde ...

for influencing the emerging women's liberation movement of the 1960s. She cites both Black Liberation and Maoist theory, and in particular Maoist notions of " speaking bitterness" and "

self-criticism Self-criticism involves how an individual evaluates oneself. Self-criticism in psychology is typically studied and discussed as a negative personality trait in which a person has a disrupted self-identity. The opposite of self-criticism would be ...

", for helping to develop the idea of

consciousness raising Consciousness raising (also called awareness raising) is a form of activism popularized by United States feminists in the late 1960s. It often takes the form of a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group on some cause or ...

groups within American radical feminism. In 2013 Hanisch, along with Scarbrough,

Ti-Grace Atkinson Grace Atkinson (born November 9, 1938), better known as Ti-Grace Atkinson, is an American radical feminist activist, writer and philosopher. Life and career Atkinson was born into a prominent Louisiana family. Named after her grandmother, Gra ...

and Kathie Sarachild initiated "Forbidden Discourse: The Silencing of Feminist Criticism of 'Gender'", which they described as an "open statement from 48 radical feminists from seven countries". In August 2014 Michelle Goldberg in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' described it as expressing their “alarm” at “threats and attacks, some of them physical, on individuals and organizations daring to challenge the currently fashionable concept of gender.”Goldberg, Michelle (August 4, 2014)
"What Is a Woman? The dispute between radical feminism and transgenderism"
''

''.

References

External links

"The Personal is Political
by Carol Hanisch, March 1969.
Writings by Carol Hanisch
(official web site) {{DEFAULTSORT:Hanisch, Carol 1942 births Activists for African-American civil rights American essayists American feminists American newspaper reporters and correspondents American Maoists American anti-racism activists Feminist studies scholars Living people New York Radical Women members Radical feminists Redstockings members Southern Conference Educational Fund Date of birth missing (living people)