THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Ellen Willis
December 14, 1941 – November 9, 2006
““Music that boldly and aggressively laid out what the singer wanted, loved, hated — as good rock ‘n’ roll did — challenged me to do the same, and so, even when the content was anti woman, antisexual, in a sense anti human, the form encouraged my struggle for liberation.”
– Ellen Willis, 1981
Journalist, Author, Professor, Cultural Critic. Self-described anti-authoritarian democratic socialist, a “left-libertarian.” First pop-music critic, The New Yorker, 1968. Wrote for Rolling Stone, The Village Voice and other publications. Editor, Ms. Magazine. Founder, Redstockings, feminist women’s liberation group that pioneered consciousness raising (CR) and organized the first public speak-outs on abortion, 1969. Co-founder, No More Nice Girls, a street theater and protest group that focused on abortion rights, 1980s. Helped plan conference on Politics of Sexuality, Barnard College, 1982. Professor of journalism, New York University (NYU), 1990. Founded Cultural Reporting and Criticism program, New York University’s Journalism School, 1995. Organized veteran radical feminists, online discussion group, History in Action, 2000. Published books including, Beginning to See the Light (1981), No More Nice Girls (1992) and Don’t Think, Smile! Notes on a Decade of Denial (1999). B.A., Barnard College, 1962.
Photo. Ellen Willis, circa 1982 (Image Courtesy of University of Minnesota Press)
More About Ellen:
- Obituary, New York Times
- Sheila Tobias introduces Roberta Salper at the Veteran Feminists of America event celebrating Barbara Love’s book, Feminists Who Changed America, 1963 – 1975, 2006 to read the eulogy written by Rosalyn Baxandall for Ellen Willis’s funeral
- Ellen Willis: The First New Yorker Column, by Don Armstrong, July 2020
- Ellen Willis, 1941 – 2006, Jewish Women’s Archive
- The Essential Ellen Willis edited by Nona Willis Aronowitz, University of Minnesota Press, 2014, 536 pp.
- Ellen Willis, the Gate Opener: Beginning to See the Light and No More Nice Girls, PopMatters
- She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, 2014 American documentary film about some of the women involved in the second wave feminism movement, directed by Mary Dore and co-produced by Nancy Kennedy
- Feminism, Moralism and Pornography (nyls.edu), by Ellen Willis, 1993
- C-SPAN
- Redstockings website
- Redstockings of the Women’s Liberation Movement facebook page
- Archives
- Ellen Willis – Wikipedia
- Cited in Barbara Love’s book, Feminists Who Changed America, 1963 – 1975, page 495