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Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist
Brings together the writings and speeches of a radical feminist who, since 1962, has been eloquent on such issues as abortion, rape, pornography, religion, and motherhood
333 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
3 people are currently reading
328 people want to read
About the author
Robin Morgan
151 books109 followersAn award-winning poet, novelist, political theorist, feminist activist, journalist, editor, and best-selling author, Robin Morgan has published 20 books, including the now-classic anthologies
Sisterhood Is Powerful
(Random House, 1970) and
Sisterhood Is Global
(Doubleday, l984; updated edition, The Feminist Press, 1996); with the recent
Sisterhood Is Forever
(Washington Square Press, 2003). A leader in contemporary US feminism, she has also played an influential role internationally in the women’s movement for more than 25 years.
An invited speaker at every major university in North America, Morgan has traveled — as organizer, lecturer, journalist — across Europe, to Australia, Brazil, the Caribbean, Central America, China, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Nepal, New Zealand, Pacific Island nations, the Philippines, and South Africa; she has twice (1986 and 1989) spent months in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, West Bank, and Gaza, reporting on the conditions of women.
Her books include the novels Dry Your Smile (Doubleday, l987) and The Mer-Child A Legend for Children and Other Adults (Feminist Press, 1991); nonfiction Going Too Far (Random House, 1977), The Word of a Woman (Norton, 1992, 2nd ed. 1994), and The Anatomy of Freedom (Norton, 1994). Her work has been translated into 13 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Russian, and Sanskrit. Recent books include the poetry anthologies Upstairs in the Garden (1994) and A Hot January (both Norton), as well as the memoir Saturday's Child (Norton, 2000), and her best-selling nonfiction piece The Demon Lover - The Roots of Terrorism (Norton, 1989—2nd ed. with a new introduction and afterword (Washington Square Press, 2001). Her novel on the Inquisition — The Burning Time — was published in 2006 (Melville House), and Fighting Words A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Right in 2006 (Nation Books).
As founder and president of The Sisterhood Is Global Institute and co-founder and board member of The Women’s Media Center, she has co-founded and serves on the boards of many women’s organizations in the US and abroad. In 1990, as editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine, she relaunched the magazine as an international, award-winning, ad-free bimonthly, resigning in late 1993 to become consulting global editor. A recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Prize for poetry, and numerous other honors, she lives in New York City.
An invited speaker at every major university in North America, Morgan has traveled — as organizer, lecturer, journalist — across Europe, to Australia, Brazil, the Caribbean, Central America, China, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Nepal, New Zealand, Pacific Island nations, the Philippines, and South Africa; she has twice (1986 and 1989) spent months in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, West Bank, and Gaza, reporting on the conditions of women.
Her books include the novels Dry Your Smile (Doubleday, l987) and The Mer-Child A Legend for Children and Other Adults (Feminist Press, 1991); nonfiction Going Too Far (Random House, 1977), The Word of a Woman (Norton, 1992, 2nd ed. 1994), and The Anatomy of Freedom (Norton, 1994). Her work has been translated into 13 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Russian, and Sanskrit. Recent books include the poetry anthologies Upstairs in the Garden (1994) and A Hot January (both Norton), as well as the memoir Saturday's Child (Norton, 2000), and her best-selling nonfiction piece The Demon Lover - The Roots of Terrorism (Norton, 1989—2nd ed. with a new introduction and afterword (Washington Square Press, 2001). Her novel on the Inquisition — The Burning Time — was published in 2006 (Melville House), and Fighting Words A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Right in 2006 (Nation Books).
As founder and president of The Sisterhood Is Global Institute and co-founder and board member of The Women’s Media Center, she has co-founded and serves on the boards of many women’s organizations in the US and abroad. In 1990, as editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine, she relaunched the magazine as an international, award-winning, ad-free bimonthly, resigning in late 1993 to become consulting global editor. A recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Prize for poetry, and numerous other honors, she lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 20, 2013
Robin's clear and forceful exposition of the radical feminist take on our world was one of the first books I read on the subject not moreorless completely tied to the task of repudiating the critics (read and perceived) of women and feminism. I haven't seen my copy in decades - I think. But I will always know exactly where it is.
Not an easy read for us fellas, I'd think. But more than worthwhile for everyone.
Not an easy read for us fellas, I'd think. But more than worthwhile for everyone.
July 28, 2025
A SERIES OF ESSAYS FROM THE ‘60s AND ‘70s FROM A PROMINENT ACTIVIST
Robin Morgan is an activist, poet, and author, who was editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine from 1989-1994, and a co-founder of The Women’s Media Center.
She wrote in the Preface to this 1977 book, “The contents of this book tell a story which covers the last decade and a half. In selecting the pieces assembled here I have chosen those which seemed best to represent my own evolving political/personal thought of a given period… via the intertwined roads of daughterhood, artistry, marriage, motherhood, radicalism. The interior terrain was one of ambivalent love, of dreams and fantasies, an exploration of ‘madness,’ and an affirmation of the artistic process. The exterior reality was of the 1960s: reform, and then revolutionary politics, militant tactics (and rhetoric), and the emergence of feminist consciousness.” (Pg. xi)
She continues, “I myself… in my twenties, careened between my own fierce and often melodramatic individuality and a surrender to the intense pressure we radicals mutually asserted upon one another---all of us eagerly conforming to the dogma of nonconformity. I remember more than one demonstration of revolutionary sisters and brothers standardized in the regalia of psychedelic splendor and chanting in unison some slogan that conveyed our rejection of a society which processed people into identical roots… As feminist consciousness trickled into my life, however, another shift in my attitude toward language came about… Synchronistically, an awkward but intrepid feminist culture was born… Meanwhile, I was finding my own way… back to that original concern for language, but a concern informed and transformed by the political consciousness gained in the interim. No revolution has yet dared to understand its artists.”
She explains in the Introduction, “I’ve thought a lot recently, while assembling the essays in this book, about that intervening decade and the startling changes it brought about. [This book] is more than a collection of my prose writings on feminism dating back to the early 1960s; it is also a graph of slow growth, defensiveness, struggle, painful new consciousness, and gradual affirmation. My decision to leave each piece in the book unretouched---warts and all---had necessitated an editorial discipline…” (Pg. 4)
She continues, “They said we were ‘going too far.’ Perhaps this has been the most frequent and basic accusation… Never mind that we were forced to act, or react, by the pain of our status itself… The vote? ‘This time the ladies are going too far.’ An end to foot-binding? ‘That goes too far.’ … More recently, perhaps: ‘Well, equal pay for equal work, yes, but a woman learning karate, a woman raising a child with her lesbian lover, a woman brain surgeon or priest or astronaut or architect or President---now THAT’S going too far.’ … At last we seem to be understanding that there IS no ‘too far,’ that AS we grow and change and expand the categories themselves, that we create new space… and there is never any turning back.” (Pg. 8-9)
She observes, “I’ve watched the bloody internecine warfare between groups, between individuals. All that fantastic energy going to fight each other instead of our opposition! (It is, after all, safer to attack ‘just women.’) So much false excitement, self-righteousness, and judgmental posturing! Gossip, accusations, counter-accusations, smears---all leapt to, spread, and sometimes believed without the impediment of facts. I’ve come to think that we need a feminist code of ethics, that we need to create a new WOMEN’S morality, an antidote of honor against this contagion by male supremacist ethics.” (Pg. 13)
She wrote a letter to her soon-to-be-newborn son, Blake: “Of course I already envy you… You are born into the age of worldwide revolution… If you are a woman, you will grow up in an atmosphere… for women’s liberation, so that your life will be less reflective of sexual oppression than mine, more human. If you a man, you will be freer; you will not need to live a form of stereotyped masculinity which is based on the oppression of the other sex. If you are a woman, you will be free to think---unlike so many women today. If you are a man, you will be free to feel---unlike so many men today.” (Pg. 53) [Blake grew up to be a musician, producer, and record label owner.]
She recounts, “the Women’s Liberation Movement surfaced with its first major militant demonstration on September 7, 1968… at the Miss American pageant… The pageant was chosen as a target for a number of reasons: it is, of course, patently degrading to women… it has always been a lily-white, racist contest (there has never been a black finalist); the winner tours Vietnam, entertaining the troops as a Murder Mascot… Where else could one find such a perfect combination of American values---racism, militarism, capitalism---all packaged in one ‘ideal’ symbol, a woman…. The contestants epitomize the role all women are forced to play in this society… apolitical, unoffending, passive, delicate… THINGS.” (Pg. 64)
She wrote a letter to men in general: “Sure, the system oppresses men as well as women, which is why all of us must work to destroy the system together. But there’s a sub-oppression, a ‘pecking order’ that permits oppressed white people to take their rage and misery out on blacks, oppressed men to do the same to same to women, etc. A concrete example… how many ‘Movement couples’ stagger home from a demonstration… so that he, exhausted, can collapse, while she, exhausted, fixes something to eat for them, OR cleans up the pad, OR picks up the kids… Sure, pity the poor oppressor ‘man-in-kind.’ Well, we want to free men from that role, too---and by any means necessary, no matter what we are called.” (Pg. 83)
She argues, “The hell with the simplistic notion that automatic freedom for women---or nonwhite peoples---will come about ZAP! with the advent of a socialist revolution. Bull____. Two evils predate capitalism and have clearly been able to survive and post-date socialism: sexism and racism… How much further we will have to go to create those profound changes that would give birth to a genderless society.” (Pg. 127)
She asserts, “Women are a colonized people. Our history, values, and cross-cultural culture have been taken from us---a gynocidal attempt manifest most arrestingly in the patriarchy’s seizure of our basic and precious ‘land’: our own bodies.” (Pg. 161)
She contends, “The war outside, between women and male power, is getting murderous; they are trying to kill us, literally, spiritually, infiltratively. It is … past time we drew new lines and knew which women were serious, which women were really committed to loving women (whether that included sexual credentials or not), and, on the other side, which women thought feminism [just] meant pure fun…” (Pg. 185)
She asks, “who DETERMINES whether something is academic or political?... The point is that there is no approach which is NOT political. The so-called objective, apolitical, or nonpartisan stand is itself a political stand. There are no bystanders any longer.” (Pg. 193)
She admits, “I confess to a particular antipathy for the Catholic Church… I don’t mean to let the rest of Christianity … off the hook easily. But it is hard to overlook or forget nine million women burned as witches over a period of 300 years… largely by the Catholic Church.” (Pg. 303) Later, she adds, “I am an atheist who prays most commonly and devotedly through art. I am an initiated Wiccan priestess… but what that means to me and what it means to you… may indeed be astral planes apart.” (Pg. 305)
Much of this book may make those of us who lived through the 70s think, ‘Oh, that’s SO ‘Seventies!’ But there is still much of this book that will greatly interest those studying the development of the modern feminist movement.
Robin Morgan is an activist, poet, and author, who was editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine from 1989-1994, and a co-founder of The Women’s Media Center.
She wrote in the Preface to this 1977 book, “The contents of this book tell a story which covers the last decade and a half. In selecting the pieces assembled here I have chosen those which seemed best to represent my own evolving political/personal thought of a given period… via the intertwined roads of daughterhood, artistry, marriage, motherhood, radicalism. The interior terrain was one of ambivalent love, of dreams and fantasies, an exploration of ‘madness,’ and an affirmation of the artistic process. The exterior reality was of the 1960s: reform, and then revolutionary politics, militant tactics (and rhetoric), and the emergence of feminist consciousness.” (Pg. xi)
She continues, “I myself… in my twenties, careened between my own fierce and often melodramatic individuality and a surrender to the intense pressure we radicals mutually asserted upon one another---all of us eagerly conforming to the dogma of nonconformity. I remember more than one demonstration of revolutionary sisters and brothers standardized in the regalia of psychedelic splendor and chanting in unison some slogan that conveyed our rejection of a society which processed people into identical roots… As feminist consciousness trickled into my life, however, another shift in my attitude toward language came about… Synchronistically, an awkward but intrepid feminist culture was born… Meanwhile, I was finding my own way… back to that original concern for language, but a concern informed and transformed by the political consciousness gained in the interim. No revolution has yet dared to understand its artists.”
She explains in the Introduction, “I’ve thought a lot recently, while assembling the essays in this book, about that intervening decade and the startling changes it brought about. [This book] is more than a collection of my prose writings on feminism dating back to the early 1960s; it is also a graph of slow growth, defensiveness, struggle, painful new consciousness, and gradual affirmation. My decision to leave each piece in the book unretouched---warts and all---had necessitated an editorial discipline…” (Pg. 4)
She continues, “They said we were ‘going too far.’ Perhaps this has been the most frequent and basic accusation… Never mind that we were forced to act, or react, by the pain of our status itself… The vote? ‘This time the ladies are going too far.’ An end to foot-binding? ‘That goes too far.’ … More recently, perhaps: ‘Well, equal pay for equal work, yes, but a woman learning karate, a woman raising a child with her lesbian lover, a woman brain surgeon or priest or astronaut or architect or President---now THAT’S going too far.’ … At last we seem to be understanding that there IS no ‘too far,’ that AS we grow and change and expand the categories themselves, that we create new space… and there is never any turning back.” (Pg. 8-9)
She observes, “I’ve watched the bloody internecine warfare between groups, between individuals. All that fantastic energy going to fight each other instead of our opposition! (It is, after all, safer to attack ‘just women.’) So much false excitement, self-righteousness, and judgmental posturing! Gossip, accusations, counter-accusations, smears---all leapt to, spread, and sometimes believed without the impediment of facts. I’ve come to think that we need a feminist code of ethics, that we need to create a new WOMEN’S morality, an antidote of honor against this contagion by male supremacist ethics.” (Pg. 13)
She wrote a letter to her soon-to-be-newborn son, Blake: “Of course I already envy you… You are born into the age of worldwide revolution… If you are a woman, you will grow up in an atmosphere… for women’s liberation, so that your life will be less reflective of sexual oppression than mine, more human. If you a man, you will be freer; you will not need to live a form of stereotyped masculinity which is based on the oppression of the other sex. If you are a woman, you will be free to think---unlike so many women today. If you are a man, you will be free to feel---unlike so many men today.” (Pg. 53) [Blake grew up to be a musician, producer, and record label owner.]
She recounts, “the Women’s Liberation Movement surfaced with its first major militant demonstration on September 7, 1968… at the Miss American pageant… The pageant was chosen as a target for a number of reasons: it is, of course, patently degrading to women… it has always been a lily-white, racist contest (there has never been a black finalist); the winner tours Vietnam, entertaining the troops as a Murder Mascot… Where else could one find such a perfect combination of American values---racism, militarism, capitalism---all packaged in one ‘ideal’ symbol, a woman…. The contestants epitomize the role all women are forced to play in this society… apolitical, unoffending, passive, delicate… THINGS.” (Pg. 64)
She wrote a letter to men in general: “Sure, the system oppresses men as well as women, which is why all of us must work to destroy the system together. But there’s a sub-oppression, a ‘pecking order’ that permits oppressed white people to take their rage and misery out on blacks, oppressed men to do the same to same to women, etc. A concrete example… how many ‘Movement couples’ stagger home from a demonstration… so that he, exhausted, can collapse, while she, exhausted, fixes something to eat for them, OR cleans up the pad, OR picks up the kids… Sure, pity the poor oppressor ‘man-in-kind.’ Well, we want to free men from that role, too---and by any means necessary, no matter what we are called.” (Pg. 83)
She argues, “The hell with the simplistic notion that automatic freedom for women---or nonwhite peoples---will come about ZAP! with the advent of a socialist revolution. Bull____. Two evils predate capitalism and have clearly been able to survive and post-date socialism: sexism and racism… How much further we will have to go to create those profound changes that would give birth to a genderless society.” (Pg. 127)
She asserts, “Women are a colonized people. Our history, values, and cross-cultural culture have been taken from us---a gynocidal attempt manifest most arrestingly in the patriarchy’s seizure of our basic and precious ‘land’: our own bodies.” (Pg. 161)
She contends, “The war outside, between women and male power, is getting murderous; they are trying to kill us, literally, spiritually, infiltratively. It is … past time we drew new lines and knew which women were serious, which women were really committed to loving women (whether that included sexual credentials or not), and, on the other side, which women thought feminism [just] meant pure fun…” (Pg. 185)
She asks, “who DETERMINES whether something is academic or political?... The point is that there is no approach which is NOT political. The so-called objective, apolitical, or nonpartisan stand is itself a political stand. There are no bystanders any longer.” (Pg. 193)
She admits, “I confess to a particular antipathy for the Catholic Church… I don’t mean to let the rest of Christianity … off the hook easily. But it is hard to overlook or forget nine million women burned as witches over a period of 300 years… largely by the Catholic Church.” (Pg. 303) Later, she adds, “I am an atheist who prays most commonly and devotedly through art. I am an initiated Wiccan priestess… but what that means to me and what it means to you… may indeed be astral planes apart.” (Pg. 305)
Much of this book may make those of us who lived through the 70s think, ‘Oh, that’s SO ‘Seventies!’ But there is still much of this book that will greatly interest those studying the development of the modern feminist movement.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews