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Rita Mae Brown Research Paper

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Rita Mae Brown is an influential activist and author. She was born in 1944 on a farm in Hanover, Pennsylvania. She cites her mother’s political activism (marching for women’s right to vote) as a motivating factor in her life. After graduating high school, Brown attended the University of Florida, but was expelled. The school cited her participation in the civil rights movement, but many believe that the actual reason was her sexuality. After she was expelled, she hitchhiked to New York City, where she spent time living out of her car before finally earning a scholarship New York University, where she co-founded the Student Homophile League and joined the National Organization for Women (NOW). She was eventually forced to leave NOW by founder …show more content…

This sentiment rings true throughout the life lived by Rita Mae Brown. As a child, she witnessed first-hand that inequality was inherent in society, though this understanding was tempered by the efforts of her role models to fight against that inequality. During her college experience, Brown found herself rebelling against the dominant ideologies of both the role of women within society and the acceptability of her sexuality as a lesbian; perhaps this rebellion was fueled by the climate of the civil rights movement, but the end result was that—rather than serving to silence her—the oppressive nature and punishment meted out by those in power worked to reinforce the lesson taught by her family, spurring her toward greater activism. Surprisingly, Brown did not encounter like minds when joining up with the powerful women’s movement, but again found herself subjected to judgements and fear based on her sexuality. Once again unwilling to accept this as the status quo, Brown fought for the rights of lesbians to be included in the feminist movement. It’s quite interesting to hear Brown, in her own words, describe her lifelong activism as having roots in those early days of women’s suffrage, and to see that, despite being disadvantaged by both her sexuality and her gender, she was still able to fight not only for her own rights to exist under the Constitution, but for those

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