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Central to the youth movement of the 1960s were rock music, experimentation with drugs and sex, and the sense of community and oneness of Eastern mysticism. The accoutrements of the “hippie” flower children were tags for members of the counterculture, as much as a suburban home, TV, and two cars were tags for “straight” American culture.
In 1970 women staffers of the New York underground newspaper, Rat, incensed by the publication’s reliance on sexist and prurient advertisements for financial stability, ejected the male editors and created their own publication, Women’s LibeRATion. In their first issue, Robin Morgan proclaimed women’s rage at the sexist attitudes prevalent in the New Left, warning, “We are the women that men have warned us about.” As with earlier feminist activity rising out of women’s involvement in the abolitionist movement of the 19th century, the current activism arose from women working in social and political movements of the 1960s. These women quickly perceived that their efforts in other groups’ causes did little to emancipate themselves in a patriarchal society. They soon split off from other groups to form their own agenda and create their own feminist press.
Like feminism, other issues first explored by the underground media coalesced into full-fledged movements with media of their own.
Undercurrent. Vol.4, no.1, 1971 (Buffalo, NY: Sub-Board I, Inc., SUNY Buffalo)
"Brave new world or bust"Journals were founded exclusively to cover such movements as gay liberation, environmentalism, Third World and native people’s movements, “New Age” mysticism, and back-to-the-land communalism, among others. Providing an “alternative” to the commercial presses, these publications rejected the term “underground” (something of a misnomer anyway in a democratic society), and activism “against” the system. Instead the new movements and their publications advocated community involvement on a local level and changes in personal lifestyles and values as the chief vehicles for achieving long term social and political change.
