ABSTRACT
Writing on nineteenth-century “Feminist Responses to ‘Crimes Against Women,’” Elizabeth Pieck observed that “American feminists have long responded to ‘crimes against women’ by providing local support services for victims, lobbying for legislative reform, and exposing the social origins of women’s oppression”. The women’s movement’s anti violence campaigns have withstood the test of time in terms of social movement survival and, in the process, “broken silence on the darkest aspects of patriarchy”. Coinciding with the growth of statewide coalitions, in the late 1970s national level antiviolence against women organizations developed into one of three forms, depending upon the organization’s primary activity: coalitions, clearinghouses, and policy centers and caucuses. In the middle of the 1970s it became increasingly obvious that a new type of organization was needed to further the goals of the antiviolence against women movement: the coalition. In historical terms, the women’s movement is ahead of the gay and lesbian movement in the politics of hate.
