Richard Meyer Gives Public Lecture

Richard Meyer

Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Lecture Hall, 7:30pm

"Back to the Effeminist Future"

American feminist art of the early 1970s is typically remembered for its focus on female experience and embodiment. A less familiar strand of feminist work from the same moment insisted on the right of women artists to express their desire for the male body—and for the penis in particular—in visual terms. This paper looks in detail at work of one such artist, Anita Steckel, and at the activist mission of the "Fight Censorship" group she founded in 1973. It also considers the "Effeminists," a radical group of gay men who disavowed all forms of male supremacy in the early 1970s. The effeminists called on gay men to help and support women (by, for example, providing free day-care) without entering into or otherwise intervening in the women's movement. Taken together, the Fight Censorship Group and the Effeminists constitute both a counter-narrative of early 1970s feminism and a set of possibilities for the feminist future.