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Amazon odyssey: [collection of writings]
Ti-Grace Atkinson was a leading radical feminist, a founding member of the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women, and, in 1968, a founder of the cadre-oriented group The Feminists.
This collection of Atkinson's writings is comprised mostly of adapted versions of lectures delivered around the country between 1968 and 1972. In these incendiary lectures Atkinson argues for radical feminist positions on a wide range of issues, including marriage, love, abortion, lesbianism, and the role of older women in the movement. Also included are dramatic photographs, a series of tactical "strategy charts" for the revolution, and Atkinson's letter of resignation from NOW.
This collection of Atkinson's writings is comprised mostly of adapted versions of lectures delivered around the country between 1968 and 1972. In these incendiary lectures Atkinson argues for radical feminist positions on a wide range of issues, including marriage, love, abortion, lesbianism, and the role of older women in the movement. Also included are dramatic photographs, a series of tactical "strategy charts" for the revolution, and Atkinson's letter of resignation from NOW.
259 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1974
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Ti-Grace Atkinson
6 books7 followersTi-Grace Atkinson is a feminist author and philosopher.
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February 18, 2018
This collection of essays and speeches helped form my early ideas about radical feminism, the state of the world in wartime America, and the impact of poverty on women and children. Atkinson addresses issues from sex to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and she does it with a trained eye informed by her personal experiences and an amazing sensitivity to the world around her. She embodies the most visceral dynamics of feminism.
I believe there were two schools of feminism in the 1960s:
1. "Women can change the world" (embodied by Atkinson and the other radical members of NOW-NY); and
2. "Women can act just like men" (embodied by the likes of Gloria Stienam and resulting in products like "Ms." magazine, but offering no significant change.
Sadly, the latter was the most successful because capitalism abhors a vacuum and the only mark of success for a political movement is it being turned into a market for consumerism, not a collective for change.
I believe there were two schools of feminism in the 1960s:
1. "Women can change the world" (embodied by Atkinson and the other radical members of NOW-NY); and
2. "Women can act just like men" (embodied by the likes of Gloria Stienam and resulting in products like "Ms." magazine, but offering no significant change.
Sadly, the latter was the most successful because capitalism abhors a vacuum and the only mark of success for a political movement is it being turned into a market for consumerism, not a collective for change.
August 3, 2025
A COLLECTION OF WRITINGS AND SPEECHES BY AN INFAMOUS ‘RADICAL FEMINIST’
Ti-Grace Atkinson (b. 1938) is a radical feminist activist, who was a founding member of the New York chapter of NOW, the founder of The Feminists (1968-1973) in New York, and a member of the Daughters of Bilitis.
She wrote in the Foreword to this 1974 book, “The essays and speeches included in this volume are only a small fraction of my writings abstracted from the years 1967 through 1972. Nonetheless I believe this collection represents my work of those years fairly…
“I originally thought of this volume as a sort of compromise. I have been working on my ‘serious’ book, ‘Women and Oppression,’ since the spring of 1968. I have yet to find a publisher for it. Recently, however, it was suggested that the comparatively easy pieces in this volume might open the way to the publication of what I view as my major work (and what I’ve come to label, my ‘dream’ book). But as I’ve edited these pieces, and now see them together for the first time, I find that I must reassess what has transpired over the last six years. And I have been forced to reassess the significance of this collection as well. I no longer see it as a ‘compromise,’ but as a work in its own right---with its own special value.
“I have always been aware that I had two distinct, yet, in some ways, interlocking concerns. The ‘ideological’---of, ‘WHAT is the problem?’---and the ‘tactical’---or, ‘HOW can this problem be solved?’ Exactly how the ‘ideological’ and ‘tactical’ interact and relate is an enormously important and intricate philosophical problem…. In the essays and speeches which follow, sometimes the ‘problem’ is barely suggested. Sometimes only the appropriate QUESTIONS concerning the definition of the relevant problem are raised…” (Pg. xxi)
“At least two things are clear from these pieces. First, I perceived and stated, very early, that female oppression was essentially a class confrontation. (I should add here that I always understood that it was male BEHAVIOR that was the enemy and that it was crucial to identify and analyze this behavior as an aspect of the phenomenon of oppression…) Second, I saw from the first the feminism raised fundamental philosophical issues, such as the distinction between ‘function’ and ‘capacity.’ (Pg. xxii)
“I call this collection ‘Amazon Odyssey.’ … at least some fundamental, solid, and reasoned direction should be in hand. And some methodology for reaching the charted dimension should be consciously in process. These two minimal---and somewhat modest---basics are what I consider, at present, the end of my Odyssey. I know the current feminist analysis is badly flawed. Even the radical feminist analysis fails in its lack of refinement and lack of strategy. BOTH analyses fail to probe the FOUNDATIONS of the sex institutions… We are all still imprisoned by Marx. Perhaps the very notion of ‘class’ is irrelevant to revolutionary political theory. (But if ‘class’ is irrelevant, how could we still even REFER to the oppression of ‘women’?)” (Pg. xxiii)
“Now that I see this collection together… I see what a long way and how many shores I have touched since that first drawing up of lines. For the Movement as a whole, that Battle is much more recent and the lines are still fresh. I hope I have learned sufficiently the price of self deception. It is the ultimate collaboration… I am still an Amazon, although much battered. Science has done very little for ideological transport over the centuries.” (Pg. xxiv)
She states in an essay, “The oppression of women by men is the source of ALL the corrupt values throughout the world. Between men and women we brag about domination, surrender, inequality, conquest, trickery, exploitation. Men have ROBBED women of their lives… It is the FUNCTION of men to oppress. It is the function of men to exploit. It is the function of men to lie, to betray, and to humiliate, to crush, to ignore, and the final insult: it is the function of men to tell women that man’s iniquities are women’s function!” (Pg. 5)
In a speech, she clarifies, “I am addressing this speech primarily to the women in the audience. It’s the only way I could possibly be effective. I am a woman. I am a feminist. I see the problem of women from the women’s point of view. Women who empathize with the male role, that is, women who grasp the male point of view more than momentarily, are not feminists.” (Pg. 25)
She recounts, “I don’t think I could have made the discoveries I am about to present to you if I had not spent the last three years in the Women’s Movement. When I was president of New York N.O.W., I noticed, first, how inefficient the organization was. N.O.W. … operates according to ‘Robert’s Rules of Order’… This standard hierarchical [order] entailed that the decisions, thus the views of a few, determined the labors of the majority… [This] caused the organization … to drag to a near standstill. My primary goal at the time was to foment a Revolution… I attempted in 1968 to abolish the representational hierarchical system… by introducing the ‘lot’ system [where representatives are chosen by random lot]… The rest of the officers in N.O.W. banded together to defeat the lot system by packing the meeting and buying up votes in the worst American tradition… those of us who were most convinced of the centrality of the equality issue left N.O.W. and formed the radical feminist wing of the movement…” (Pg. 68-69)
In her essay, ‘Lesbianism and Feminism,’ she asserts, “It has seemed clear to me… that there is some important connection between lesbianism and feminism… I think that lesbianism, to men, is the ultimate political position for women… Most lesbians deny that lesbianism has anything to do with rejecting men… On the fact of this, one might claim that lesbians are simply lying when they say that they don’t hate men. After all, in a society which is militantly heterosexual, homosexuality must be, at some point, a conscious choice…” (Pg. 83-84)
In her essay, ‘The Political Woman,’ she states, “The most anti-male feminists, who hold---not just, as I do, that male BEHAVIOR or role is unacceptable---that ALL men are the enemy, can, still, be seen walking down the street hand in hand with this very enemy! I, personally, have taken the position that I will not appear with any man publicly, where it could possibly be interpreted that we were friends.” (Pg. 91)
She says of ‘The Feminists’ organization, “sine The Feminists is against marriage, we instituted a quota that no more than one third of our membership would be married. The consistency issue is at the heart of the failures of the last and of the current women’s movement.” (Pg. 99)
She notes, “One of the famous ‘achievements’ of the last feminist movement was the ‘Married Woman’s Property Act.’ How about a Slave’s Property Act? How much sense would that make? Would you want to claim this as a qualitative change in the institution of marriage? On what possible basis could the institution of marriage be saved?” (Pg. 104)
In a 1971 speech at Catholic University, she read a proclamation which stated (in part):”I, Ti-Grace Atkinson, in the name of all women… charge the Catholic Church, its government, and al its subsidiaries and members such as Catholic University with murder in the first degree, premeditated and willful… I charge the Catholic Church with conspiracy to imprison and enslave the women of the world through coercion into such institutions as marriage and the family… with forcing many of our class into prostitution, through the financial greed of the Catholic Church… with inciting rape against women, by its degrading and sadistic propaganda against women...” (Pg. 196) [This speech, incidentally, was the one in which Catholic laywoman Patricia Buckley Bozell rushed to the podium and attempted---unsuccessfully-----to slap Atkinson.]
Atkinson largely dropped out of the feminist movement in the mid-70s; but while she was active, she was a prominent radical lesbian feminist in the movement.
Ti-Grace Atkinson (b. 1938) is a radical feminist activist, who was a founding member of the New York chapter of NOW, the founder of The Feminists (1968-1973) in New York, and a member of the Daughters of Bilitis.
She wrote in the Foreword to this 1974 book, “The essays and speeches included in this volume are only a small fraction of my writings abstracted from the years 1967 through 1972. Nonetheless I believe this collection represents my work of those years fairly…
“I originally thought of this volume as a sort of compromise. I have been working on my ‘serious’ book, ‘Women and Oppression,’ since the spring of 1968. I have yet to find a publisher for it. Recently, however, it was suggested that the comparatively easy pieces in this volume might open the way to the publication of what I view as my major work (and what I’ve come to label, my ‘dream’ book). But as I’ve edited these pieces, and now see them together for the first time, I find that I must reassess what has transpired over the last six years. And I have been forced to reassess the significance of this collection as well. I no longer see it as a ‘compromise,’ but as a work in its own right---with its own special value.
“I have always been aware that I had two distinct, yet, in some ways, interlocking concerns. The ‘ideological’---of, ‘WHAT is the problem?’---and the ‘tactical’---or, ‘HOW can this problem be solved?’ Exactly how the ‘ideological’ and ‘tactical’ interact and relate is an enormously important and intricate philosophical problem…. In the essays and speeches which follow, sometimes the ‘problem’ is barely suggested. Sometimes only the appropriate QUESTIONS concerning the definition of the relevant problem are raised…” (Pg. xxi)
“At least two things are clear from these pieces. First, I perceived and stated, very early, that female oppression was essentially a class confrontation. (I should add here that I always understood that it was male BEHAVIOR that was the enemy and that it was crucial to identify and analyze this behavior as an aspect of the phenomenon of oppression…) Second, I saw from the first the feminism raised fundamental philosophical issues, such as the distinction between ‘function’ and ‘capacity.’ (Pg. xxii)
“I call this collection ‘Amazon Odyssey.’ … at least some fundamental, solid, and reasoned direction should be in hand. And some methodology for reaching the charted dimension should be consciously in process. These two minimal---and somewhat modest---basics are what I consider, at present, the end of my Odyssey. I know the current feminist analysis is badly flawed. Even the radical feminist analysis fails in its lack of refinement and lack of strategy. BOTH analyses fail to probe the FOUNDATIONS of the sex institutions… We are all still imprisoned by Marx. Perhaps the very notion of ‘class’ is irrelevant to revolutionary political theory. (But if ‘class’ is irrelevant, how could we still even REFER to the oppression of ‘women’?)” (Pg. xxiii)
“Now that I see this collection together… I see what a long way and how many shores I have touched since that first drawing up of lines. For the Movement as a whole, that Battle is much more recent and the lines are still fresh. I hope I have learned sufficiently the price of self deception. It is the ultimate collaboration… I am still an Amazon, although much battered. Science has done very little for ideological transport over the centuries.” (Pg. xxiv)
She states in an essay, “The oppression of women by men is the source of ALL the corrupt values throughout the world. Between men and women we brag about domination, surrender, inequality, conquest, trickery, exploitation. Men have ROBBED women of their lives… It is the FUNCTION of men to oppress. It is the function of men to exploit. It is the function of men to lie, to betray, and to humiliate, to crush, to ignore, and the final insult: it is the function of men to tell women that man’s iniquities are women’s function!” (Pg. 5)
In a speech, she clarifies, “I am addressing this speech primarily to the women in the audience. It’s the only way I could possibly be effective. I am a woman. I am a feminist. I see the problem of women from the women’s point of view. Women who empathize with the male role, that is, women who grasp the male point of view more than momentarily, are not feminists.” (Pg. 25)
She recounts, “I don’t think I could have made the discoveries I am about to present to you if I had not spent the last three years in the Women’s Movement. When I was president of New York N.O.W., I noticed, first, how inefficient the organization was. N.O.W. … operates according to ‘Robert’s Rules of Order’… This standard hierarchical [order] entailed that the decisions, thus the views of a few, determined the labors of the majority… [This] caused the organization … to drag to a near standstill. My primary goal at the time was to foment a Revolution… I attempted in 1968 to abolish the representational hierarchical system… by introducing the ‘lot’ system [where representatives are chosen by random lot]… The rest of the officers in N.O.W. banded together to defeat the lot system by packing the meeting and buying up votes in the worst American tradition… those of us who were most convinced of the centrality of the equality issue left N.O.W. and formed the radical feminist wing of the movement…” (Pg. 68-69)
In her essay, ‘Lesbianism and Feminism,’ she asserts, “It has seemed clear to me… that there is some important connection between lesbianism and feminism… I think that lesbianism, to men, is the ultimate political position for women… Most lesbians deny that lesbianism has anything to do with rejecting men… On the fact of this, one might claim that lesbians are simply lying when they say that they don’t hate men. After all, in a society which is militantly heterosexual, homosexuality must be, at some point, a conscious choice…” (Pg. 83-84)
In her essay, ‘The Political Woman,’ she states, “The most anti-male feminists, who hold---not just, as I do, that male BEHAVIOR or role is unacceptable---that ALL men are the enemy, can, still, be seen walking down the street hand in hand with this very enemy! I, personally, have taken the position that I will not appear with any man publicly, where it could possibly be interpreted that we were friends.” (Pg. 91)
She says of ‘The Feminists’ organization, “sine The Feminists is against marriage, we instituted a quota that no more than one third of our membership would be married. The consistency issue is at the heart of the failures of the last and of the current women’s movement.” (Pg. 99)
She notes, “One of the famous ‘achievements’ of the last feminist movement was the ‘Married Woman’s Property Act.’ How about a Slave’s Property Act? How much sense would that make? Would you want to claim this as a qualitative change in the institution of marriage? On what possible basis could the institution of marriage be saved?” (Pg. 104)
In a 1971 speech at Catholic University, she read a proclamation which stated (in part):”I, Ti-Grace Atkinson, in the name of all women… charge the Catholic Church, its government, and al its subsidiaries and members such as Catholic University with murder in the first degree, premeditated and willful… I charge the Catholic Church with conspiracy to imprison and enslave the women of the world through coercion into such institutions as marriage and the family… with forcing many of our class into prostitution, through the financial greed of the Catholic Church… with inciting rape against women, by its degrading and sadistic propaganda against women...” (Pg. 196) [This speech, incidentally, was the one in which Catholic laywoman Patricia Buckley Bozell rushed to the podium and attempted---unsuccessfully-----to slap Atkinson.]
Atkinson largely dropped out of the feminist movement in the mid-70s; but while she was active, she was a prominent radical lesbian feminist in the movement.
October 7, 2016
This book is as much about the era of the 1960s and early 1970s as it is about radical feminist theory. I read it when it first came out in 1974 and then reread it nearly 40 years later. It's still powerful, but its main value today is as a document of the times in which left politics flourished. Atkinson had a steel trap mind and an ability to make her ideas clear and to the point. I also liked the unconventional artwork.
March 31, 2015
if yr deep into feminist theory and its history, you'd better read this book. TGA is our formidable fore-sister and she deserves a place in the cannon. also, all else aside, totally worth it for the gorgeous/coocoobananas charts/visual representations of resistance movements dreamed up by TGA and the illustrator, Barbara Nessim.
March 1, 2024
First feminist literature I read as it was never really taught in school, but she’s funny and it brought up some really interesting ideas that I would never have thought about without reading
August 30, 2011
Dies sind die einzigen Texte aus einer lesbischen Perspektive, die die alltäglichen Erfahrungen analysieren und daraus eine Theorie der Praxis der Befreiung aller Frauen formulieren, eine politische Theorie des Lesbianismus. Jetzt muss ich Straight Mind lesen, Witig bezieht sich auf Ti-Grace Atkinson.
Wie Adorno und Horkheimer zog sich unsere Große Kleine Grazie in die Aesthetik zurück. Mit Schiller und der aestethischen Erziehung kann sie jedoch nicht entweichen.
Catherine MacKinnon hat dann einfach den Arbeitsbegriff bei Marx durch die Institution des Geschlechtsverkehrs ersetzt, die Idee ist von Atkinson, die Umsetzung von MacKinnon. Der Arbeitsbegriff bei Marx ist essentiell. Ti Grace Atkinson bedarf keiner metaphysischen Annahmen, ihre Analysen beziehen sich auf die Erfahrung, nicht auf ein übergestülptes Konstrukt.
Diese Texte sind gefährlich, Unterdrückung und Herrschaft durch Freiheit zu ersetzen, mit einer fast protestantisch asketischen anmutenden Schärfe vertreten, war nirgends willkommen.
Kommentieren tun dies bisher nur Männer Hier geht es um Ökonomie, um Ausbeutung - da können Frauen nun keine Dienste leisten, nicht wahr?
If you like an English translation, I do tremendous faults in English, but I do it, if you want understand. There are too much commata, but I mark pauses with commata. That makes more sense than these strange rules. I will read this book till I die.
Wie Adorno und Horkheimer zog sich unsere Große Kleine Grazie in die Aesthetik zurück. Mit Schiller und der aestethischen Erziehung kann sie jedoch nicht entweichen.
Catherine MacKinnon hat dann einfach den Arbeitsbegriff bei Marx durch die Institution des Geschlechtsverkehrs ersetzt, die Idee ist von Atkinson, die Umsetzung von MacKinnon. Der Arbeitsbegriff bei Marx ist essentiell. Ti Grace Atkinson bedarf keiner metaphysischen Annahmen, ihre Analysen beziehen sich auf die Erfahrung, nicht auf ein übergestülptes Konstrukt.
Diese Texte sind gefährlich, Unterdrückung und Herrschaft durch Freiheit zu ersetzen, mit einer fast protestantisch asketischen anmutenden Schärfe vertreten, war nirgends willkommen.
Kommentieren tun dies bisher nur Männer Hier geht es um Ökonomie, um Ausbeutung - da können Frauen nun keine Dienste leisten, nicht wahr?
If you like an English translation, I do tremendous faults in English, but I do it, if you want understand. There are too much commata, but I mark pauses with commata. That makes more sense than these strange rules. I will read this book till I die.
November 28, 2023
An interesting document in terms of the feminist ‘68. this middle-class white woman loves to use the n-word and thinks that lesbianism is reactionary if they have sex while simultaneously advocating for a political (celibate) lesbianism.
i only read this because it gets cited frequently enough in monographs about the lesbian 70s
i only read this because it gets cited frequently enough in monographs about the lesbian 70s
Read
September 26, 2008oh dear god.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews