Then vs. Now: Debates around consciousness-raising and therapy in the feminist movement

Written by Melody House, MSc Applied Gender Studies

This is the second of two posts by Melody House. Click here for her earlier post on the historical resonances of contemporary feminist activism against sexual harassment.

 ‘The Personal is Political’. Popularised by Carol Hanisch’s 1969 essay of the same name, the slogan has almost become synonymous with the feminist movement in the late sixties and seventies (or the ‘Second Wave’). The phrase encapsulates the thinking behind one of the key political feminist activities of the Second Wave: consciousness-raising. Coming to know the term through the #MeToo moment on twitter, I had always associated consciousness-raising with a type of therapy. The language that surrounded #MeToo was full of ‘#triggerwarnings’, mental health awareness tweets, helplines, and debates on whether to call the women who came forward ‘victims’ or ‘survivors’. I didn’t (and don’t) see anything wrong with these debates. Consciousness-raising has a cathartic element to it. It felt good to release a pent-up ‘#MeToo!’ into the depths of cyber space and have it confirmed, over and over, by thousands more. So it came as a surprise when reading through the archives, that this therapeutic element of consciousness-raising was actually contested by the ‘Second Wavers’ who brought it to life.

Glasgow Women's Liberation Newsletter, May 1977: Glasgow Women's Library archives

As Hanisch explains in her new Introduction to The Personal Is Political, she came to write the essay as a response to a memo by Dottie Zellner, for the Southern Conference Educational Fund, which argued that consciousness-raising was therapeutic rather than political. Hanisch found the connotation ‘greatly offensive’, stating the label of therapy was an ‘obvious misnomer’. Although it would be seen as problematic by today’s standards, to Hanisch and other women in the liberation movement, therapy was for people who were sick - but sick meant there was something wrong with you. The problem is seen to belong to the individual. Therefore, the ‘cure’ would be for the individual to adjust to society, rather than the other way around. This wrongly put the onus on women, rather than men, and society. Furthermore, for Hanisch, consciousness-raising meetings were not about solving women’s personal problems, but rather about the political reasons for the problems.

Simple in theory - but consciousness-raising took time and work. As Hanisch explains, women would gather in groups, each bringing a question to pose to the others who would then answer the question from their own personal experience. They would take notes, and once it was over, begin to make connections between each others’ experiences. Yet it didn’t end there. As Hanisch explains, ‘It took us some ten months to get to the point where we could articulate these things and relate themto the lives of every woman’.

With this in mind, it is understandable that Hanisch (and other Second Wave feminists) are calling for the work part of consciousness-raising to be re-emphasised in the ‘Third Wave’.  With the immediacy of social media, there often isn’t a pause for thought and debate before making something public. This has had negative implications. If Alyssa Milano, the actress responsible for making #MeToo go viral, had spent months planning and thinking about her tweet, she would have realised that Tarana Burke had started Me Too years before. In that light, I agree that Third Wave consciousness-raising would benefit from adopting a more Second Wave style here. However, I am unsure if I would say the same about the ‘therapeutic’ debate, especially since Third Wavers weren’t the first feminists to suggest therapy be included in consciousness-raising. Writing in the 1980s, feminists Sheila Ernst and Lucy Goodison note the need for therapy in the feminist movement. Although they set up consciousness-raising and therapy as separate from each other, naming the latter ‘unconsciousness-raising’, they still note that the two should happen in conjunction.

‘Unconsciousness-Raising’ by Shelia Ernst and Lucy Goodison, Spare Rib, issue 113 (1981), pp.18-21: Glasgow Women's Library archives.

Although there a lot has changed between the Second and Third Waves, much has stayed the same. Women are still oppressed in similar ways by society and men, and there is as great a need for a feminist movement now as there was then. It is thus incredibly important to look back on the past to see where we can improve the present. I would argue the Third Wave approach to therapy is, in fact, more developed. However, there is a lot it could learn from the Second Wave’s style of consciousness-raising. Too many voices are silenced by the current online consciousness-raising. Only a privileged few get heard, and fewer are actually listened to. So far, the hashtag #MeToo was a good moment in history that shed some light on the continued oppression of women in society. It needs to start doing the work of the consciousness-raising movements of the ‘Second Wave’ to become a movement.

This is the last in our series of student blog posts from 2018-19 - read the first in the series here.