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Analog Revolution: Feminism and Media in Pre-Internet Activism
- Sutithi
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Feminism existed well before viral campaigns and hashtag movements, in pamphlets, marches and manifestos, petitions and writings, giving voice to the fearless. Yes, they thrived without the all-encompassing presence of the World Wide Web. The conversation and campaigns for women’s suffrage, or women’s voting rights, started making waves long before Twitter or Facebook entered our social consciousness.
If we need to understand feminism and media before the digital boom, we must trace back to the latter half of the twentieth century, to follow the analog revolution, when silence meant more than words.
Feminism and Media: Word of Mouth and the Power of Print
Second wave feminism started with Women’s Rights Movements in the last few decades of the 20th century. Before they were accustomed to tweets and posts, the feminist ideals were spread far and fast by print and word of mouth. Journals, newspaper columns, pamphlets became the significant sources of propagating radical thoughts. Often, they distributed pamphlets physically on the city streets.
“Gender is an absolute rather than a relative category,” some radical feminists would say!
In the United States of America, the suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt led campaigns for voting rights in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Radical suffragists and women’s rights activists like Alice Paul founded the National Women’s Party in 1916.
After the 1950s, feminist presses became much more popular, publishing stories, chronicles, manifestos, and more, such as Ms. Magazine (USA) or Spare Rib (UK). Indeed, they were more than just publications; they were shared conversations between female readers eager to be represented alongside their male counterparts.
Books also played a pivotal role, just like The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir or The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, which triggered some uneasy conversations in kitchens, dorms, union halls, and gatherings.
There was no fast-paced response strategy to handle those debates back then, so women used to gather in community chambers, living rooms, as part of raising consciousness, discussing how the personal becomes political.
How the Streets Became a Platform for Protest and Kinship
Streets were one of the significant arenas for discussions, forums, and meetings to strategize agendas, as there was no online activism back in the 1960s or 70s.
The streets witnessed marches, rallies, sit-ins, and demonstrations, including the parades by suffragists. The second wave feminism was vocal on beauty pageants, and the modern-day role of women, crying out justice for the rape victims —sharing messages unlike those quickly scrolled past or deleted on social media reels. Hashtags were replaced by handmade placards, as power-packed chants echoed long after the marches were abandoned.
All that mattered was the active physical space and their presence — making the claims visible, rubbing shoulders, and crying out slogans as they were not to be ignored or scrolled past. They created a kind of solidarity and a visible kinship that can hardly be replicated in the age of social media threads.
Letters, Telephones, and Networks of Care
How did those radical women communicate in times of emergency or celebration? They were not WhatsApp- or Snapchat-savvy, rather relied on letters and phone calls, voicing their sincere emotions and desire to connect for a cause.
Women often formed international alliances through letter writing, raising global awareness across borders and countries. There were pen pal requests, chains of letters, and meaningful exchanges that carried excitement and encouragement for getting organized in a male-dominated, and restricted environment.
Just like letters, they relied on the lifeline of telephones for communication. Rapid-action phone services were established along with rape-victim hotlines and domestic violence shelters run by volunteers. It was like setting an alarm — if the phone rang at the odd hours of the night, it often meant a woman in distress or desperately needing help. The feminists were more than agile to respond swiftly when the need arose. These networks also functioned as chains of survival and care, beyond political agendas.
Art, Music, and Innovative Public Performances
Even if there was no infotainment or a flurry of videos and memes, feminism at that time shaped its narrative through creative feminist literature and art activism. There were protest songs, painting murals and creating zines or booklets using scissors and glue. They staged open-air theatres, almost like interactive platforms of today, and aesthetic performances that mocked male chauvinism. Handmade pamphlets, posters, or choruses were created without any help of the templates, digital modifications, or fine edits, yet the performances used to fill the air with enthusiasm, showing resistance and alliance, loaded with meaning.
Feminist perspectives started getting the spotlight attention through immersive installations and meaningful creations. More and more female artists came up with innovative projects like ‘Womanhouse.’ Womanhouse, the collaborative project by artists Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, was a fascinating installation that turned a Hollywood mansion into a typical domestic scene. These radical creators paved the way for contemporary feminist art and artists, making their presence felt in a patriarchal art scene.
Television and Gender Roles
It was during the 1960s and 1970s that television began to portray women as a new face of defiance and rebellion. The book by Susan J. Douglas Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media has a reference to this gradual transformation of women in media within the context of American pop culture. The sexual and political energy of The Second Sex was no longer a taboo topic associated with female roles. In popular television series of that time, some famous names popped up, such as Samantha Stephens in Bewitched, Morticia Addams in The Addams Family, and others.
The Second Wave Feminists: Why They Matter Today
Things were different in the pre-internet era. The messages moved slowly at a snail’s pace, but penetrated deeper than one could imagine. From claiming women’s suffrage or voting rights to addressing cultural biases, gender protocols, workplace inequalities, lack of political representation, to issues like diverse identities, racism and sexism, the communications were vocal about the multi-wave feminist movement.
They used traditional modes like newspapers, books, conventions, and parades to spread their words and unite all those struggling voices. No wonder women faced challenges in disseminating ideas and had to compromise on reach and inclusivity compared to the digital reach of today, but they could still make their stories on art and politics resonate.
Physical activism often included challenges like violence erupting on streets, public ridicule, or arrest by authorities. Yet these could hardly stifle or mar their spirits — they even made them stronger and more resilient.
The role of feminism and media of the last century was far-reaching, paving the way for future generations to command dignity and equal respect. It hardly mattered if they were aided by search engines or not; their messages or quests travelled across borders and generations, with nothing but guts and grit.
We must salute this analog revolution, which upheld feminist expression and dialogue through daring speeches, marches, correspondence, songs, Television shows and performances.
The age of the internet has undoubtedly highlighted the feminist ideologies and issues, making them viral. They were cradled long before Wi-Fi and scrolls existed — led by some fearless personas through leaflets, zines, printed manifestos, and gatherings, one voice at a time.