Dedicated to the Press: They are More Interested in Fame Than Revolution!
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The third and finale part of this column will illustrate how feminists Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinem were able to control the way mainstream media publications represented them and retained their intellectualism, because their feminist politics was seen as harmless. Revolutionary Assata Shakur, (a leading figure in the 1970s Black Liberation Army) like Kate Millett and Angela Davis, was treated with little respect by mainstream media publications because they fought for the abolition of the patriarchy, capitalism and other forms of oppression. Mainstream media publications worked to delegitimise Shakur, Millett and Davis because their politics threatened commercial media.
Millett and Davis possessed no control over how mainstream media publications in the 1970s portrayed them. Steinem did not share this experience when she became associated with the WLM. After a prolific freelance writing career that cultivated her celebrity in the 60s, Steinem's political interests and writing led her into women’s politics in the 70s. Steinem often recounts that her feminist awakening occurred when she attended an abortion hearing in 1969 for New York magazine. As someone who had an illegal abortion, Steinem realised that she shared the same secret as other women.
After her New York column on abortion, she was invited to speak to the Washington’s Women’s National Democratic Club; additionally, she was asked to write about feminism for various magazines such as Time in 1970 and Look Magazine in 1976. Steinem was being positioned as the spokesperson for this ‘new wave’ of feminism.
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As Steinem emerged into the political spotlight, it was clear that she ran the risk of being destroyed by the media, just like Millett. Celebrity involvement in liberal politics was under particular scrutiny by mainstream media publications. On January 14th 1970, composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia hosted a fundraiser on the Upper East Side in New York to raise money for the Black Panther Party. Ninety celebrities and socialites were in attendance, and the next day style reporter Charlotte Curtis who attended the event, wrote about it for the NYT.
Curtis’s article was not critical of the event, but its release led to worldwide criticism of celebrities and performative activism. In June 1970, twenty weeks after the fundraiser, Tom Wolfe’s influential essay ‘Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s’ was published in New York magazine. In the essay, Wolfe, who also attended the fundraiser, criticised celebrities who endorsed leftist radicalism merely to lessen their White guilt and advance their social standing.
“Greer and Steinem were able to have a relatively positive celebrity experiences because of their inoffensive feminist politics.”
The original article included Steinem's name, as she had organised a similar fundraising party for the United Farm Workers at a sophisticated Southampton estate. However, after a conversation with Wolfe, Steinem persuaded him to remove her from the published article - still Wolfe still referred to the United Farm Workers fundraiser.
It is unclear how Steinem persuaded Wolfe to remove her from his article as the pair were not friends. They were merely acquaintances, both mentored by Clay Felker, the co-founder of New York magazine, but this demonstrates the power Steinem held - not only over her image but over influential writers in New York. This is significant as New York media drove so much of the national media agenda.
It should be noted that in 1971, Esquire ran a piece by Leonard Levitt about Steinem titled ‘She: The Awesome Power of Gloria Steinem.’ In the article, Wolfe was asked to evaluate Steinem’s rise as a leader of the WLM, and he wrote ‘at certain times the press is really looking for people to embody a trend the way fashion magazines look for women who actually wear the clothes they put out. The press would rather have Gloria be Women’s Liberation than others.’ In this statement, Wolfe’s motive for not including Steinem in his 1970 piece becomes apparent. Steinem became the embodiment of what was known as the ‘liberal takeover’, as she worked closely with NOW, the liberal branch of the WLM. Steinem’s feminism was not considered dangerous.
Steinem’s non-threatening feminist ideology can be seen in her writing about women. In her 1970 article for Time titled ‘What It Would Be Like If Women Win’, Steinem ended the article by stating ‘the most radical goal of the movement is egalitarianism.’ Steinem's feminism did not advocate for the abolition of oppressive institutions, her feminism advocated for equality under capitalism.
This is why Patricia Bradley writer of Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 1963-1975 has argued that ‘Steinem came to represent the only ground on which Americans were ready to consider feminism.’ This is why Steinem was able to control her image, and Millett and Davis were not.
Furthermore, Davis and Millett had their intellectualism stripped from them or accredited to men by mainstream media publications. Not only did mainstream media publications stop referring to Davis as a professor after the Marin County Civic Center attacks, Life magazine labeled Davis the ‘dum-dum of the decade’ for blindly following the teachings of ‘Frankenstein’ Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse, who wrote Marxist scholarship, was Davis’s teacher at Brandeis University. Life was sexistly suggesting that Davis could not have possibly developed radical opinions on class, race and gender on her own accord.
Similarly, Millett’s intellectual ability was questioned when Time outed her as bisexual in December of 1970. Meanwhile Greer's intellectualism was not stripped from her or questioned when she became newsworthy after writing the feminist blockbuster, The Female Eunuch in 1970. Bradley has argued that Greer’s intellectuality was more appealing to mainstream US media publications because of her ‘overt heterosexuality.’144 Though The Female Eunuch criticised the nuclear family as being oppressive to women, Greer continued to publically affirm that feminism was not the end of sex between men and women.
In 1971, Greer was put on the cover of Life, with the headline ‘Saucy Feminist That Even Men Like’ Unlike Millett, Greer willingly participated in the Life article.The four-page spread, dedicated to Greer, began with a quote by her: ‘I don’t go for the whole pants and battledress routine. It just puts men off.’ The magazine spread ended with a full-page picture of Greer and her boyfriend, snuggling and smiling. This issue of Life confirmed that Greer’s radicalism - her rejection of marriage - was non-threatening. Greer’s quote suggests that she still aims to present herself in an aesthetically appealing way to men. This is a surprising statement from someone who has written in-depth about the enslavement and lack of freedom women face within marriage. Greer did not entirely put her radicalism into practice.
In Life, when the focus was not on Greer’s relationships or opinions on men, there was a strong emphasis on Greer as an academic. The article started with a detailed description of Greer teaching at the University of Warwick in England. Life also included a picture of Greer conducting a seminar and described her as ‘the most popular lecturer on the Warwick campus.’ There was no questioning of Greer’s academic ability in the article, nor was it attributed to any man. It should be acknowledged that while Greer was teaching at Warwick, she also wrote and modeled nude for Oz magazine. In 1969, Greer modeled on the cover of Oz with her breasts out, alongside Vivian Stanshall from The Bonzo Dog Band.
Psychological research from Ed Edmonds in 1986 and Delwin Cahoon in 1987 concluded that women are seen as less competent, capable and intelligent when dressed provocatively. However, Greer’s sexuality did not seem to impact the academic validity of her voice; Life even positioned Greer as the leading feminist intellectual in Britain. They wrote, ‘In the U.S. Kate Millett shares the platform with the Friedans, Firestones, Atkinsons, et al. In Britain, Germaine Greer has it all to herself.’ It can be seen that Greer was not stripped of her intellectuality by mainstream media publications because her radicalism was not dangerous and she still succumbed to the patriarchy.
When Shakur became newsworthy in the 1970s, she faced the same difficulties as Millett and Davis regarding her treatment by mainstream media publications. From 1973 to 1977, Shakur was supposedly involved in various incidents of assault, robbery and murder. Like Davis, Shakur was targeted by the FBI’s COINTELPRO because of her involvement with the BPP. In 2001, Paul Wolf and several academics presented a report titled ‘COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story’ to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights at the World Conference Against Racism. This report contained evidence suggesting that Shakur and other Black individuals associated with the BPP or the Black Liberation Army (BLA) were targeted by an investigation called ‘NEWKILL’.
‘NEWKILL’ tied BPP members to the shootings of police officers before any evidence was collected. COINTELPRO later named ‘NEWKILL’, ‘CHESROB’, an acronym named after Shakur. Though CHESROB was not limited to Shakur, it ‘attempted to connect Joanne Chesimard to virtually every bank robbery or violent crime involving a Black woman on the East Coast.’ In 1977, Shakur was convicted of the murder of State Trooper Werner Foerster, even though medical testimony showed that Shakur was shot with her hands up and thus, unable to fire a weapon.
Shakur wrote in her 1988 autobiography that in 1971 she changed her name to ‘Assata Shakur’ because ‘Joanne Chesimard’ was a ‘slave name.’ In changing her name, Shakur followed the tradition of Black radicals before her. Individuals like Kwame Ture and Malcolm X changed their names to release themselves from the ‘psychological bondage of bearing the identity of their family’s slave masters. Shedding the name was a step toward freedom.’ In the 70s, when mainstream media publications reported about Shakur, she was not referred to as ‘Assata Shakur’ but instead ‘Joanne Chesimard.’ This can be seen in a 1973 article from the NYT titled the ‘Joanne Chesimard Pleads Not Guilty in Holdup Here.’ Additionally, Time wrote that ‘Joanne Chesimard was’ the ‘alleged leader of the BLA’ in 1974. When Shakur was being referred to as ‘Assata Shakur’, there was usually an inclusion of both names. In 2013 the NYT stated that ‘Joanne D. Chesimard lives in Cuba as Assata Shakur.’ The wording of this sentence by the NYT is a reminder to the public that Shakur may go by ‘Assata Shakur’, but her ‘real’ name is ‘Joanne Chesimard.’
Mainstream media publications were forcing the name ‘Joanne Chesimard’ upon Shakur when she did not claim it. It is reminiscent of the re-naming of slaves from West and West Central Africa whom European colonists stole in the sixteenth century. Historian Sarah Abel explained that when slave owners forced slaves to answer to their imposed names, they were engaging in what Susan Benson called ‘a tyrannous act of interpellation.’ Slave owners would repeatedly call slaves by names they imposed upon them so slaves could ‘acknowledge their subjection and powerlessness.’ This commitment to calling Shakur ‘Joanne’ suggests that these publications saw no legitimacy in Shakur’s voice or her act of resistance against White supremacy.
This refusal to exclusively refer to Shakur as ‘Assata Shakur’ is similar to Time, refusing to listen to Millett when she stated that she did not want to be on the cover of their women’s liberation issue in 1970. It is also comparable to the press refusing to take Davis’s declarations of innocence and fears for her safety seriously while in prison. The pattern is clear. Mainstream media publications did not support activists who had radical political beliefs that threatened the patriarchy and the United States. The threat Millett, Davis and Shakur posed to capitalism, and the State would have negatively affected mainstream media publications because they were integrated into these oppressive systems.
In the end, certain types of high profile, politically active women could interact positively with mainstream media publications. Greer and Steinem were able to have a relatively positive celebrity experiences because of their inoffensive feminist politics. Shakur, Millett and Davis shared similar negative experiences with mainstream media publications because their radical politics aimed to destroy capitalism, which would, in turn, destroy mainstream and commercial media publications.
Words: Halima Jibril
