Brown was exiled from The Furies after a few months and the group dismantled in 1972, a year after its inception. They believed that being a lesbian was a political act, not just a personal one. The group purchased two houses, where they lived together and used consciousness raising techniques to talk about things like homophobia, feminism, and child rearing.
The women wanted to create a communal living situation for radical feminists. In the early 1970s, she became a founding member of The Furies Collective, a separatist lesbian feminist collective in Washington, DC that held that heterosexuality was the root of all oppression. While doing work for the American Civil Rights Movement, Brown was introduced to consciousness-raising groups, which she incorporated into the organizations she created and the ones she worked in. The group that wrote the manifesto then went on to become the "Radicalesbians". Brown and other lesbians from the Gay Liberation Front created The Woman-Identified Woman, which was distributed at the zap. Brown claimed that lesbian was "the one word that can cause the Executive Committee a collective heart attack." īrown played a leading role in the " Lavender Menace" zap of the Second Congress to Unite Women on May 1, 1970, which protested Friedan's remarks and the exclusion of lesbians from the women's movement. īrown took an administrative position with the fledgling National Organization for Women, but resigned in January 1970 over comments by Betty Friedan seen by some as anti-lesbian and by the NOW's attempts to distance itself from lesbian organizations. She then went on to join the Gay Liberation Front, where she suggested the formation of an all-lesbian group, since many of the women felt excluded from the feminist movement and the male-led gay liberation movement. She was involved in the Redstockings, but also left the group because of its lack of involvement in lesbian rights. She was involved with the Student Homophile League at Columbia University in 1967 but left it because the men in the league were not interested in women's rights. Later in the 1960s, she participated in the anti-war movement, the feminist movement and the Lesbian Liberation movement. In the spring of 1964, during her study at the University of Florida in Gainesville, she became active in the American Civil Rights Movement. Brown is featured in the feminist history film She's Beautiful When She's Angry. In 1982, Brown wrote a screenplay parodying the slasher genre titled Sleepless Nights retitled The Slumber Party Massacre, the producers decided to play it seriously, and it was given a limited release theatrically. She also contributed to Come Out!, the gay liberation newspaper in NYC, published by the Gay Liberation Front. īrown wrote for Rat, an alternative bi-weekly that eventually became New York City's first women's liberation newspaper. in literature from Union Institute & University in 1976 and holds a doctorate in political science from the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. In 1968, she received a certificate in cinematography from the New York School of Visual Arts. Early career īrown hitchhiked to New York City and lived there between 19, sometimes homeless, while attending New York University where she received a degree in Classics and English. She subsequently enrolled at Broward Community College with the hope of transferring eventually to a more tolerant four-year institution. In the spring of 1964, the administrators of the racially segregated university expelled her for participating in the civil rights movement. Starting in late 1962, Brown attended the University of Florida on a scholarship. Julia and Ralph Brown were active Republicans in their local party.
Her mother's cousin, Julia Brown, and her husband, Ralph, retrieved the newborn Brown from the orphanage, and raised her as their own in York, Pennsylvania, and later in Ft.
Brown's birth mother left her at an orphanage. Brown received the Pioneer Award for lifetime achievement at the Lambda Literary Awards in 2015.īrown was born in 1944 in Hanover, Pennsylvania to an unmarried teenage mother and her mother's married boyfriend. Brown was active in a number of civil rights campaigns and criticized the marginalization of lesbians within feminist groups. Rita Mae Brown (born November 28, 1944) is an American feminist writer, best known for her coming-of-age autobiographical novel, Rubyfruit Jungle. Union Institute and University ( MA, PhD)
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