In 1981, long before the phrase “mansplaining” made it into the popular lexicon, Ms. published “The Politics of Talking,” by Barbara Ehrenreich, who wrote about the “conversational mismatch” between men and women. “Men can and will talk,” she wrote, “if they can set the terms.”
In October 1985, Marie Shear wrote about “The Great Pronoun Debate.”
And then there are the pieces that provide an infuriating trip down memory lane.
“Welfare is a Women’s Issue,” a 1972 piece by Johnnie Tillmon, began, “Welfare is like a super-sexist marriage. You trade in a man for the man. … He tells you what to buy, what not to buy, where to buy it, and how much things cost. If things — rent, for instance — really cost more than he says they do, it’s just too bad. He’s always right.”
In June 1975, Angela Davis wrote about an incarcerated Black woman, Joan Little, who killed a white prison guard in North Carolina with the ice pick he brought into her cell. She acted in self-defense, she said, after he raped her. He was found shoeless and pantless in her cell, with semen on his thigh. Little, who was charged with first-degree murder, became the subject of a national outcry against sexual violence and was acquitted that August.
In September 1976, Lindsy Van Gelder wrote about a lesbian mother, Mary Jo Risher, who lost her court fight to keep custody of her son. Even though she was a good mother, and the boy’s father had been in legal scrapes and once broke Risher’s nose during an argument, the jury foreman said, “I felt the heterosexual family would be better for this child.”