Women Strike for Peace

In her conclusion  of Women Strike for Peace, Amy Swerdlow summarizes five important points about the WSP movement. Firstly, she reiterates that the WSP movement was important for women's history, and should not be marginalized as a "lost history", and that it was important for the collective human history as well, due to WSP's "ability to break through the Cold War consensus that had silenced foreign policy dissent int he United States for over a decade" (Swerdlow 234), as well as the WSP's opposition of atomic testing and assertion that "there was no such thing as a safe dose of strontium 90 or iodine 131 at a time when the dangers of atomic radiation were hidden from the public" (Swerdlow 234).  Swerdlow further asserts that the WSP's use of the maternalist standpoint, rather than reinforcing female marginality through building on traditional female culture, actually allows the role of that traditional culture to become subversive against the archetypes that reinforce it.  She points out that it was precisely the tactful use of this subverted maternal rhetoric that allowed WSP to be so effective against the dominant warmongering narrative: "WSP's standpoint, its challenge to male militarism, was based on the conviction that the preservation of life on earth is of greater value to the human race than the promotion and defense of abstract and outmoded notions of national advantage....In stressing maternal outrage at the threat to the health and welfare of their children, the WSPers were not only expressing their own sense of male betrayal...they were also trying to speak to the American people in a language that they believed would be understood and accepted" (Swerdlow 235).

The second point that Swerdlow highlights in her conclusion is that there is a difference between feminist theory, and actually being on the ground crafting a movememt for change.  The feminist movement largely criticized WSP for not being radical enough, for not rejecting the "housewife" identity, and for daring to retain that identity while still claiming to be feminists.  Swerdlow and other WSPers rejected these criticisms with the proof that WSP did in fact make huge strides for the feminist movement not only in America but Internationally.  In chapter 9, Swerdlow proves that WSP and later WISP was able to build effective and productive ties with women in Great Brittan, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, Burma, Australia, Canada, and France, among other countries. In 1961, a WISP delegation successfully spoke in front of the UN, and in 1962 they held a peace strike in Washington DC that was directly acknowledged by President John Kennedy "I saw the ladies myself. I recognized why they were here. There were a great number of them, it was in the rain. I understand what they were attempting to say. Therefore I consider their message received" (Swerdlow 193).  This all proves to me that the WSP movement was successful in reclaiming a public space for women's vioces in the public sphere, even though these voices were still coming from inside the home. I feel like the opposing argument can be most eloquently illustrated by the song Gonna Be an Engineer*.  This song beautifully illustrates the prevailing attitude towards housewiffery as a place of inescapable second-class status.  While this was true for many women, the members of WSP denied this sentence of impotency and turned the housewife image into a base for their activism.  This is perhaps one of the more brilliant moves of culture jamming that I have seen thus far, and this would lead me to argue that the WSP movement was even more effective in liberating women's voices than the traditional feminist movements of the time. This correlates with the 5th point that Swerdlow made in her conclusion: that the WSP gave dignity to housewives.  The movement let housewives vocalize, on a national scale, that what they were doing was valuable work even though they weren't being paid for it.  In a way, it is the MOST valuable job: they, as women, had to "sacrifice their own personal interests and career goals in favor of raising the next generation" (Swerdlow 235).

Swerdlow's third and fourth points were that the WSP movement was influenced by radical feminism, and that they were a separatist organization.  Neither of these characteristics are something one would expect from a group of white, middle-class housewives.  Nevertheless, it is apparent in chapter 9 when the Clarke and Gordon visit Vietnam that this experience and the images and stories they (and others) brought back channeled the WSP movement towards more radical action than they had taken before. WSP became the "first American peace group to establish person-to-person relations with the Vietnamese" (Swerdlow 217).  When Ngo Ba Than, "lawyer and former non-Communist leader of the opposition forces in Saigon" and personal friend of promonent WSPers, was arrested, WSP protested through picketing in front of the South Vietnamese Embassy in New York.  Daring to picket, and for international affairs no less, was a new step towards militancy for the WSP.  While in Hannoi, Dagmer Wilson formed such a compassion for the Vietnamese that when she saw American bombers flying overhead, she stated at a public rally, "I wanted to take up a gun and shoot back. I never thought I'd want to do that in my life...All one's feelings of national unity go out the window....You have no idea who the enemy is - the enemy is war and violence" (Swerdlow 218).  Their experiences in Vietnam lead the WSPers to a new impassioned mindset that lead them to embrace radical feminist techniques.

In relation to the tone of the book as a whole, or the way in which it was written, I was personally not thrown off by the way Swerdlow dealt with the dichotomy of being both a participant and trying to write an accurate history of the movement.  While there were a few jarring moments in which she changed from first person thought to third person referencing in a matter of sentences, my initial displeasure with this occurrence was replaced by an appreciation for the likelihood that she may have been writing that on purpose.  The line of participant and historian is likely a hard one to walk, and Swerdlow acknowledged this in her introduction. Perhaps there  I believe there should be an appreciation in academia for books of this nature: after all, in studying history,is it not the firsthand accounts and primary sources that are most valuable? And what are these but memories?  Because peer-reviewed literature is based on these sources, it effectively boils down to the author deciding what voices to admit into the narrative.  Who better to decide this than someone who lived it?  Who better to create the cannon of academia, which is by its nature exclusive of voices it deems "unhelpful" or "unreliable", than someone who can best know the important voices through personal acquaintance?  If all histories were written by their participants, rather than those who were able to assert dominance in the end, our collective stories would all be told differently.

*I became acquainted with this song through participating in 2013: A Women's Suffrage Pageant, created by Kevin Van Develde and the Cast members, as his senior comprehensive project. Please come watch it on Friday, April 12th at 4pm in the Vukovitch court yard!