The Third World Woman in the Feminist Movement Against Sexual Violence

• In Event: “Dreams of a Common Language”: Revisiting “Third Worldism” as a Language of Solidarity

Abstract

In August 1980, the Black feminist leadership of the Washington, D.C. Rape Crisis Center convened the First National Conference on Third World Women and Violence. More than a hundred Black, Latina, Asian American, and indigenous anti-rape activists descended upon the nation’s capital for the first-of-its-kind meeting. Their objective was twofold: to forge connections between non-white women operating within the predominantly white feminist movement against sexual violence and develop a course for the movement that would center the needs of non-white victims. Within the decade, the term “Third World woman” would be replaced within the anti-rape movement by “woman of color.” But the interventions made within the movement on behalf of the “Third World woman” would not expire with the change of terminology. This paper will excavate the use of “Third World woman” as an organizational category within the feminist anti-rape movement during the 1970s and early 1980s. By examining formation of the Third World Women’s Caucus of Philadelphia Women Organized Against Rape (WOAR), the iterations of “Third World women” in movement publications like the Feminist Alliance Against Rape Newsletter/ Aegis, off our backs, and Plexus, and advent of the First National Conference on Third World Women and Violence, this paper will trace the infusion of anticolonial, anti-racist, and anticapitalist analysis into the feminist movement against sexual violence. This analysis allowed Black anti-rape organizers to name the inseparability of state and interpersonal violence and the promise of anticapitalist revolution to secure women’s safety, presaging the emergence of groups like INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence in the new millennium.

Author

• Caitlin R Wiesner, Mercy University