Susan Brownmiller
Susan Brownmiller (born Susan Warhaftig; February 15, 1935)[1] is an American journalist, author and feminist activist best known for her 1975 book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, which was selected by The New York Public Library as one of 100 most important books of the 20th century.
Susan Brownmiller
Early life and education[edit]
Brownmiller was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Mae and Samuel Warhaftig, a lower-middle-class Jewish couple. She was raised in Brooklyn and was the only child of her parents.[2] Her father emigrated from a Polish shtetl[2] and became a salesman in the Garment Center and later a vendor in Macy's department store, and her mother was a secretary in the Empire State Building.[3][4] She later took the pen name Brownmiller, legally changing her name in 1961.[3][4]
As a child Brownmiller was sent to the East Midwood Jewish Center for two afternoons a week to learn Hebrew and Jewish history. She would later comment, "It all got sort of mishmashed in my brain except for one thread: a helluva lot of people over the centuries seemed to want to harm the Jewish people. ... I can argue that my chosen path – to fight against physical harm, specifically the terror of violence against women – had its origins in what I had learned in Hebrew School about the pogroms and The Holocaust."[5]
She had "a stormy adolescence",[6] attending Cornell University for two years (1952 to 1954) on scholarships, but not graduating. She later studied acting in New York City. She appeared in two off-Broadway productions.[7]
Career[edit]
Brownmiller's path into journalism began with an editorial position at a "confession magazine". She went on to work as an assistant to the managing editor at Coronet (1959–60), as an editor of the Albany Report, a weekly review of the New York State legislature (1961–1962), and as a national affairs researcher at Newsweek (1963–1964). In the mid-1960s, Brownmiller continued her career in journalism with positions as a reporter for NBC-TV in Philadelphia (1965), staff writer for The Village Voice (1965), and as a network news writer for ABC-TV in New York City (1966–68).
Beginning in 1968, she worked as a freelance writer; her book reviews, essays, and articles appeared regularly in publications including The New York Times, Newsday, The New York Daily News, Vogue, and The Nation.[3] In 1968, she signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.[14]
In New York, she began writing for The Village Voice and became a network TV newswriter at the American Broadcasting Company, a job she held until 1968. She continues to write and speak on feminist issues, including a memoir and history of Second Wave radical feminism titled In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (1999). Her papers have been archived at Harvard, in the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.[3]
Honors[edit]
Brownmiller won an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship[25] in 1973 to research and write about the crime of rape. She was named as one of 12 Women of the Year by Time magazine in 1975.[17]
She is featured in the feminist history film She's Beautiful When She's Angry (2014).[26][27]
Personal life[edit]
She has described herself as "a single woman", even though "I was always a great believer in romance and partnership."[28] "I would like to be in close association with a man whose work I respect," she told an interviewer in 1976, attributing her unmarried status to the fact that she was "not willing to compromise."[29] As of 2018, she has not married.[2]