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Susan Brownmiller
Susan Brownmiller (born Susan Warhaftig; February 15, 1935 – May 24, 2025) was 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 the 100 most important books of the 20th century.
Susan Brownmiller was born in Brooklyn, New York City, on February 15, 1935, to Mae and Samuel Warhaftig, a lower-middle-class Jewish couple. She was raised in Brooklyn and was the only child of her parents. Her father emigrated from a Polish shtetl 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. She later took the pen name Brownmiller, legally changing her name in 1961.
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 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."
She had "a stormy adolescence", 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.
Brownmiller was a worker in progressive Democrat Mark Lane's successful 1960 campaign for the New York Assembly and his unsuccessful 1962 congressional campaign. They began a relationship which lasted for three years. Brownmiller would later say of Lane after his passing in 2016 that "Mark was a crucial person in my life for a few years. This was before feminism. My ambition was to latch myself to Mark’s career and be the Evita of Gracie Mansion".
Brownmiller also participated in civil rights activism, joining CORE and SNCC during the sit-in movement in 1964. Brownmiller volunteered for Freedom Summer in 1964, wherein she worked on voter registration in Meridian, Mississippi. According to her own account:
She first became involved in the Women's Liberation Movement in New York City in 1968, by participating in a consciousness-raising group in the newly formed New York Radical Women organization, where she stated: "I've had three illegal abortions."
Brownmiller went on to coordinate a sit-in against Ladies' Home Journal in March 1970. As the informal leader of the West Village-1 brigade within the New York Radical Feminists (formed in late 1969), by February 1970 she began to mount a challenge to Shulamith Firestone's leadership, which eventually split the organisation and prompted Firestone's departure in late May/early June 1970.
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Susan Brownmiller
Susan Brownmiller (born Susan Warhaftig; February 15, 1935 – May 24, 2025) was 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 the 100 most important books of the 20th century.
Susan Brownmiller was born in Brooklyn, New York City, on February 15, 1935, to Mae and Samuel Warhaftig, a lower-middle-class Jewish couple. She was raised in Brooklyn and was the only child of her parents. Her father emigrated from a Polish shtetl 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. She later took the pen name Brownmiller, legally changing her name in 1961.
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 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."
She had "a stormy adolescence", 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.
Brownmiller was a worker in progressive Democrat Mark Lane's successful 1960 campaign for the New York Assembly and his unsuccessful 1962 congressional campaign. They began a relationship which lasted for three years. Brownmiller would later say of Lane after his passing in 2016 that "Mark was a crucial person in my life for a few years. This was before feminism. My ambition was to latch myself to Mark’s career and be the Evita of Gracie Mansion".
Brownmiller also participated in civil rights activism, joining CORE and SNCC during the sit-in movement in 1964. Brownmiller volunteered for Freedom Summer in 1964, wherein she worked on voter registration in Meridian, Mississippi. According to her own account:
She first became involved in the Women's Liberation Movement in New York City in 1968, by participating in a consciousness-raising group in the newly formed New York Radical Women organization, where she stated: "I've had three illegal abortions."
Brownmiller went on to coordinate a sit-in against Ladies' Home Journal in March 1970. As the informal leader of the West Village-1 brigade within the New York Radical Feminists (formed in late 1969), by February 1970 she began to mount a challenge to Shulamith Firestone's leadership, which eventually split the organisation and prompted Firestone's departure in late May/early June 1970.