{"id":230771,"date":"2025-07-02T01:38:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T01:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/230771\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T01:38:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T01:38:10","slug":"completely-radical-how-ms-magazine-changed-the-game-for-women-documentary-films","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/230771\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Completely radical\u2019: how Ms magazine changed the game for women | Documentary films"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first of July marks the anniversary of Ms magazine\u2019s official inaugural issue, which hit newsstands in 1972 and featured Wonder Woman on its cover, towering high above a city. Truthfully, Ms debuted months earlier, on 20 December 1971, as a 40-page insert in New York magazine, where founding editor Gloria Steinem<\/a> was a staff writer. Suspecting this might be their only shot, its founders packed the issue with stories like The Black Family and Feminism, De-Sexing the English Language, and We Have Had Abortions, a list of 53 well-known American women\u2019s signatures, including Ana\u00efs Nin, Susan Sontag and Steinem herself. The 300,000 available copies sold out in eight days. The first US magazine founded and operated entirely by women was, naysayers be damned, a success.<\/p>\n

The groundbreaking magazine\u2019s history, and its impact on the discourse around second-wave feminism and women\u2019s liberation, is detailed in the HBO<\/a> documentary Dear Ms: A Revolution in Print, which premiered at this year\u2019s Tribeca film festival. Packed with archival footage and interviews with original staff, contributors and other cultural icons, Dear Ms unfolds across three episodes, each directed by a different film-maker. Salima Koroma, Alice Gu and Cecilia Aldarondo deftly approach key topics explored by the magazine \u2013 domestic violence, workplace harassment, race, sexuality \u2013 with care, highlighting the challenges and criticisms that made Ms a polarizing but galvanizing voice of the women\u2019s movement.<\/p>\n

Before Ms launched, the terms \u201cdomestic violence\u201d and \u201csexual harassment\u201d hadn\u2019t entered the lexicon. Women\u2019s legal rights were few, and female journalists were often limited to covering fashion and domesticity. But feminist organizations like Redstockings, the National Organization for Women<\/a> and New York Radical Women were forming; Steinem, by then an established writer, was reporting on the women\u2019s liberation movement, of which she was a fundamental part. In part one of the documentary, Koroma\u2019s A Magazine for All Women, Steinem recalls attending a women\u2019s liberation meeting for New York magazine. Archival footage discloses what was shared there, and other meetings like it: \u201cI had to be subservient to some men,\u201d says one woman, \u201c \u2026 and I had to forget, very much, what I might have wanted to be if I had any other choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

The response to Ms was unsurprising, its perspective so collectively needed. \u201cA lot of these articles could still be relevant,\u201d Steinem muses in part one. But, says the publication\u2019s first editor, Suzanne Braun Levine, \u201cI don\u2019t think we all were prepared for the response. Letters, letters, letters \u2013 floods of letters.\u201d Koroma unveils excerpts of those first letters to the editor, vulnerable and intimate: \u201cHow bolstering to find that I am not alone with my dissatisfaction that society had dictated roles for me to graduate from and into.\u201d By the time Ms was in operation, the staff was publishing cover stories on Shirley Chisholm, unpaid domestic labor and workplace sexual harassment. \u201cWho is it you\u2019re trying to reach?\u201d a journalist asks Steinem in an interview back then. She replies: \u201cEverybody.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThey tried to be a magazine for all women,\u201d explains Koroma in a recent interview, \u201cand what happens then? You make mistakes, because of the importance of intersectionality.\u201d In an archival audio clip, the writer and activist (and close friend of Steinem\u2019s) Dorothy Pitman Hughes says: \u201cWhite women have to understand \u2026 that sisterhood is almost impossible between us until you\u2019ve understood how you also contribute to my oppression as a Black woman.\u201d Marcia Ann Gillespie, the former editor in chief of Essence and later Ms\u2019s editor in chief, confides to Koroma: \u201cSome of the white women had a one-size-fits-all understanding of what feminism is, that our experiences are all the same. Well, no, they\u2019re not.\u201d Alice Walker, who became an associate editor, shared her own writing and championed others\u2019, like Michele Wallace\u2019s, in the publication\u2019s pages before quitting in 1986, writing about the \u201cswift alienation\u201d she felt due to a lack of diversity.<\/p>\n

Wallace recounts her experience as a Ms cover girl, her braids removed, her face caked in make-up. She adds: \u201cI want to critique [Ms], but they were very supportive of me. I don\u2019t know what would\u2019ve become of me if there hadn\u2019t been a Ms magazine.\u201d She left, too: \u201cI was not comfortable with white women speaking for me.\u201d Levine admits: \u201cWe made a mistake,\u201d referring to featuring Black writers but having few Black cover stars and no Black founding staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe work still needs to be done. We\u2019re always going to have to rethink things,\u201d Koroma says. It\u2019s a running thread in Dear Ms, one that creates a rich and ultimately loving picture of the magazine. \u201cMs is a complex and rich protagonist,\u201d Aldarondo reflects. \u201cIf you only talk about the good things and not the shadow, that\u2019s a very one-dimensional portrait. One of the things that makes Ms so interesting and admirable is that they wrestled with things in the pages of the magazine.\u201d In part three, No Comment (named for Ms\u2019s column that called out misogynistic advertising), Aldarondo chronicles its contentious coverage of pornography, which the staff primarily differentiated from erotica as inherently misogynistic, many of them aligning with the Women Against Pornography movement.<\/p>\n

In an episode that opens with unfurling flowers and the words of the delightful porn star, educator and artist Annie Sprinkle, Aldarondo depicts the violence of the era\u2019s advertising and pornography, and the women who were making \u2013 or enjoying \u2013 pornography and sex work, proudly and on their own terms. In a response to the 1978 cover story Erotica and Pornography: Do You Know the Difference?, Sprinkle and her colleagues, the writers and adult film actors Veronica Vera and Gloria Leonard, led a protest outside the Ms office. The staff hadn\u2019t \u201cinvited anyone from our community to come to the table\u201d, says Sprinkle, despite adult film stars\u2019 expertise about an exploitative industry they were choosing to reclaim. \u201cTo see these women as fallen women,\u201d says Aldarondo, \u201ccompletely misses the mark.\u201d<\/p>\n

From left, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Gloria Steinem and Suzanne Braun Levine. Photograph: HBO<\/p>\n

Behind the scenes, the staff themselves were at odds. Former staff writer Lindsy Van Gelder states: \u201cI knew perfectly good feminists who liked porn. Deal with it.\u201d Contending with the marginalization faced by sex workers, Ms ran Mary Kay Blakely\u2019s cover story, Is One Woman\u2019s Sexuality Another Woman\u2019s Pornography? in 1985. The entire issue was a response to activists Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon\u2019s Model Antipornography Law, which framed pornography as a civil rights violation and which Carole S Vance, the co-founder of the Feminist Anti-Censorship Task Force, describes in Dear Ms as \u201ca toolkit for the right wing\u201d that ultimately endangers sex workers. Dworkin, says Vance, refused a dialogue; instead, the magazine printed numerous materials, the words of opposing voices and the law itself to \u201creflect, not shape\u201d readers\u2019 views, says founding editor Letty Cottin Pogrebin. The hate mail was swift \u2013 including Dworkin\u2019s, once a staff colleague: \u201cI don\u2019t want anything more to do with Ms \u2013 ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gu reveals something far more frightening than hate mail, a horror that didn\u2019t make its way into the film: death threats and bomb threats, which the staff received in response to their most controversial stories. \u201cThere was actionable change that happened because of what these women did,\u201d says Gu. \u201cThe danger they put themselves in is not to be discounted. I get emotional every time I talk about it … I have benefited largely from the work of these women, and I\u2019m very grateful.\u201d<\/p>\n

That actionable change refers to the legislative reforms prompted by Ms\u2019s coverage of domestic violence and workplace harassment. In A Portable Friend, Gu examines the 1975 Men\u2019s Issue, the 1976 Battered Wives Issue and the 1977 issue on workplace sexual assault. \u201cBack then, there was no terminology if a woman was being hit by her partner,\u201d says Gu. She spotlights heartbreaking archival footage of women sharing their experiences with abuse: \u201cIf it\u2019d been a stranger, I would have run away.\u201d Staff writer Van Gelder reflects on a former partner who hit her. \u201cDid you tell anyone?\u201d Gu asks.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot really,\u201d Van Gelder says.<\/p>\n

In an archival clip, Barbara Mikulski, former Maryland senator and representative, says: \u201cThe first legislation I introduced as a congresswoman was to help battered women. I got that idea listening to the problems of battered women and reading about it in Ms.\u201d Adds Levine: \u201cWe brought it into the daylight. Then there was the opening for battered women\u2019s shelters, for legislation, for a community that reassured and supported women.\u201d The same idea applied to workplace sexual harassment: \u201cIf something doesn\u2019t have a name, you can\u2019t build a response,\u201d Levine exclaims. \u201cThe minute it had a name, things took off and changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gloria Steinem (second from right) and staff. Photograph: Jill Freedman\/HBO<\/p>\n

Gu shared that while \u201cthere\u2019s a little bit of questioning as to whether it was Ms who coined the term [domestic violence], they were certainly the first to bring the term into the public sphere and allow for a discussion\u201d. The Working Women United Institute eventually collaborated with Ms on a speak-out on sexual harassment.<\/p>\n

Despite obstacles, the scholar Dr Lisa Coleman, featured in part one, describes the publication as one \u201cthat was learning\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s easy to be critical at first,\u201d says Koroma, \u201cbut after talking to the founders, you realize that these women come from a time when you couldn\u2019t have a bank account. It\u2019s so humbling to talk to the women who were there and who are a large part of the reason why I have what I have now.\u201d Gu noted that the lens of the present day can be a foggy one through which to understand Ms \u2013 which, in truth, was \u201ccompletely radical\u201d, she says. \u201cYou weren\u2019t going to read about abortion in Good Housekeeping. You have to plant yourself in the shoes of these women at that time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our elders endured different but no less tumultuous battles than the ones we face now, many of which feel like accelerated, intensified iterations of earlier struggles. \u201cTalk to your moms, to your aunts and grandmas,\u201d Koroma adds. Aldarondo agrees: \u201cOne of the great pleasures of this project, for all of us, was this intergenerational encounter and getting to hear from our elders. It\u2019s very easy for younger people to simply dismiss what elders are saying. That\u2019s a mistake. I felt like I already understood the issues, and then I learned so much from these women.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first of July marks the anniversary of Ms magazine\u2019s official inaugural issue, which hit newsstands in 1972…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-230771","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}