NY Times, August 9, 2020
Diana Russell, Who Studied Violence Against Women, Dies at 81
She popularized the term “femicide,” to highlight the killing of women
“because they are women” and to distinguish these killings from other
homicides.
Diana E. H. Russell in 2009.
Diana E. H. Russell in 2009.Credit...Susan Kennedy
Katharine Q. Seelye <https://www.nytimes.com/by/katharine-q-seelye>
ByKatharine Q. Seelye <https://www.nytimes.com/by/katharine-q-seelye>
*
Aug. 6, 2020
*
o
<https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?app_id=9869919170&link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2020%2F08%2F06%2Fobituaries%2Fdiana-russell-dead.html%3Fsmid%3Dfb-share&name=Diana%20Russell%2C%20Who%20Studied%20Violence%20Against%20Women%2C%20Dies%20at%2081&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2F>
o
<https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2020%2F08%2F06%2Fobituaries%2Fdiana-russell-dead.html%3Fsmid%3Dtw-share&text=Diana%20Russell%2C%20Who%20Studied%20Violence%20Against%20Women%2C%20Dies%20at%2081>
o
<mailto:?subject=NYTimes.com%3A%20Diana%20Russell%2C%20Who%20Studied%20Violence%20Against%20Women%2C%20Dies%20at%2081&body=From%20The%20New%20York%20Times%3A%0A%0ADiana%20Russell%2C%20Who%20Studied%20Violence%20Against%20Women%2C%20Dies%20at%2081%0A%0AShe%20popularized%20the%20term%20%E2%80%9Cfemicide%2C%E2%80%9D%20to%20highlight%20the%20killing%20of%20women%20%E2%80%9Cbecause%20they%20are%20women%E2%80%9D%20and%20to%20distinguish%20these%20killings%20from%20other%20homicides.%0A%0Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2020%2F08%2F06%2Fobituaries%2Fdiana-russell-dead.html%3Fsmid%3Dem-share>
o
o
Diana E.H. Russell, a leading feminist activist and scholar who
popularized the term “femicide” to refer to the misogynist killing of
women, and to distinguish these killings from other forms of homicide,
died on July 28 at a medical facility in Oakland, Calif. She was 81.
The cause was respiratory failure, said Esther D. Rothblum, a feminist
scholar and friend.
Dr. Russell studied and explored all manner of violence against women,
including rape, incest, child abuse, battering, pornography and sexual
harassment, and she was among the first to illuminate the connections
between and among these acts.
As a daughter of white privilege growing up in South Africa, her
rebellious instincts found an outlet in the anti-apartheid movement.
Later, as a graduate student in the United States in the 1960s, she
gravitated to the feminist movement, becoming one of the earliest
researchers to focus on sexual violence against women.
ImageDr. Russell in an undated photo. She once wrote that she became a
feminist scholar in part because of “my own experiences of sexual abuse
as a child and an adolescent.”
Dr. Russell in an undated photo. She once wrote that she became a
feminist scholar in part because of “my own experiences of sexual abuse
as a child and an adolescent.”
Gloria Steinem said in an email that Dr. Russell had “a giant influence”
on the women’s movement worldwide, and that her writings had particular
resonance now, “when we see the intertwining of racism and sexism that
she wrote about so well and organized against.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/obituaries/diana-russell-dead.html#after-story-ad-1>
In a 1995 essay,“Politicizing Sexual Violence: A Voice in the
Wilderness,”
<https://www.dianarussell.com/politicizing_sexual_violence.html>Dr.
Russell described the seeds of her work.
* Give the gift they'll open every day.
Subscriptions to The Times. Starting at $25.
<https://www.nytimes.com/subscription/gift?campaignId=9JW8F>
“My own experiences of sexual abuse as a child and an adolescent have
undoubtedly been vital motivators for my enduring commitment to the
study of sexual violence against women,” she wrote.
“My research and activism,” she added, “exemplify how personal trauma
can inform and inspire creative work.”
She explored these topics in more than a dozen books over four decades.
If there was a through-line in them, it was her rejection of the common
practice of victim blaming.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/obituaries/diana-russell-dead.html#after-story-ad-2>
In “The Politics of Rape” (1975), she argued that rape is an act of
conformity to ideals of masculinity. Rolling Stone magazine called the
book “probably the best introduction to rape now in print.”
In 1977, Dr. Russell surveyed 930 women in depth in San Francisco and
found that more than 40 percent had been the victims of rape or incest —
a much higher rate than other studies suggested. Those interviews led to
a series of books: “Rape in Marriage” (1982); “Sexual Exploitation:
Rape, Child Sexual Abuse and Workplace Harassment” (1984); and “The
Secret Trauma: Incest in the Lives of Girls and Women” (1986).
Image
T-shirts that Dr. Russell made for protests in South Africa, where she
joined an underground revolutionary organization called the African
Resistance Movement.
T-shirts that Dr. Russell made for protests in South Africa, where she
joined an underground revolutionary organization called the African
Resistance Movement.
Dr. Russell first heard the word “femicide” in 1974, when a friend told
her that someone was writing a book with that title.
“I immediately became very excited by this new word, seeing it as a
substitute for the gender-neutral word ‘homicide,’”she said in a 2011
speech <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk9VNHYMOrE&feature=emb_title>.
She later found out that Carol Orlock was the author who had intended to
write the “Femicide” book but had not done so. Dr. Russell said that Ms.
Orlock was later delighted to hear that Dr. Russell was popularizing the
term.
Dr. Russell changed her definition of “femicide” over the years, but in
the end she described it as “the killing of females by
males/because/they are female.” This covered a range of acts, including
killing a wife or girlfriend for having an affair or being rebellious,
setting a wife on fire for having too small a dowry, death as a result
of genital mutilation, and the murder of sex slaves and prostitutes.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/obituaries/diana-russell-dead.html#after-story-ad-3>
Her definition also covered indirect forms of killing, such as when
women are barred from using contraception or obtaining an abortion,
often leading them to seek unsafe abortions that can be botched and
result in death. Similarly, “femicide” covered women who died of AIDS
after infected men had unprotected sex with them.
Dr. Russell first used the term publicly when addressingthe
International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women
<https://www.nswp.org/timeline/event/brussels-international-tribunal-crimes-against-women#:~:text=The%20International%20Tribunal%20on%20Crimes,against%20women%20in%20all%20cultures.>,
a global event held in Brussels in 1976 and attended by 2,000 women from
40 countries.
Dr. Russell had conceived of the tribunal and helped organize it. Among
the speakers wasSimone de Beauvoir,
<https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/15/obituaries/simone-de-beauvoir-author-and-intellectual-dies-in-paris-at-78.html>who
hailed the gathering as “the beginning of the radical decolonization of
women.”
Diana Elizabeth Hamilton Russell was born on Nov. 6, 1938, in Cape Town.
Her father, James Hamilton Russell, was a member of the South African
Parliament. He bought the South African branch of the advertising agency
J. Walter Thompson, and was its managing director before and during his
political career.
Dr. Russell’s mother, Kathleen Mary (Gibson) Russell, who was British,
had traveled to South Africa to teach education and drama; when she
married Mr. Russell, she became a homemaker and had six children but
still found time to join the anti-apartheidBlack Sash
<https://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/27/world/a-white-women-s-group-counters-apartheid.html>movement.
(She was a niece ofViolet Gibson,
<https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/irish-woman-shot-mussolini>who
had attempted to assassinate Mussolini in 1926.)
Diana was the fourth child, born a half-hour before her twin brother,
David. She attended an elite Anglican boarding school for girls, where
the motto was “Manners maketh man.”
“I was raised to be a useless appendage to some rich white man and to
carry on the exploitive tradition of my family,” Dr. Russell wrote in
the 1995 essay.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/obituaries/diana-russell-dead.html#after-story-ad-4>
Her mother wanted her to take classes in cooking and sewing, but Diana
signed up instead for academic classes at the University of Cape Town.
She graduated in 1958 at 19 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. She
then left for England and studied social science and administration at
the London School of Economics, where she was named the best student in
the class of 1961.
Back in South Africa, she joined the Liberal Party, which had been
founded byAlan Paton,
<https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/12/obituaries/alan-paton-author-and-apartheid-foe-dies-of-cancer-at-85.html>the
author of “Cry the Beloved Country” (1948).
Her arrest during a peaceful protest soon led to “the most momentous
decision I’d ever before made,” as she wrote on herwebsite
<https://www.dianarussell.com/bio.html>: She joined an underground
revolutionary organization called the African Resistance Movement, which
sabotaged government property as a form of protest. She said she had
concluded that “aboveground, nonviolent strategies would be futile
against the brutal, white Afrikaner police state.”
But before long she left for Harvard, where she earned a master’s degree
in 1967 and a doctorate in 1970, both in social psychology. She then
became a research associate at Princeton, where she wrote her
dissertation on revolutionary activity. She said that the “extreme
misogyny at Princeton started me on my feminist path.”
Image
Dr. Russell was a fierce opponent of pornography, arguing that it led to
“pro-rape attitudes and behavior.”
Dr. Russell was a fierce opponent of pornography, arguing that it led to
“pro-rape attitudes and behavior.”
Dr. Russell marriedPaul Ekman,
<https://www.paulekman.com/about/paul-ekman/>an American psychologist
known for his work on facial expressions, in 1968. He was teaching in
San Francisco, and she took a teaching position at Mills College, a
private women’s school in Oakland, to be near him. They divorced after
three years.
“Divorce heralded the beginning of my creative life as an active
feminist and researcher,” she wrote.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/obituaries/diana-russell-dead.html#after-story-ad-5>
Dr. Russell stayed at Mills for 22 years. As a professor of sociology,
she taught courses on women and sexism and helped develop a major in
women’s studies.
As she delved into violence against women, she became a fierce opponent
of pornography, a divisive issue among feminists in the 1980s. Some felt
it encouraged rape and abuse; other, “sex-positive” feminists saw it as
a free-speech issue and argued that pornography gave women sexual agency.
In her book “Against Pornography: The Evidence of Harm” (1994), Dr.
Russell argued that pornography led to “pro-rape attitudes and
behavior.” She became a founding member of Women Against Violence in
Pornography and Media.
She often took to the streets for her causes, staging sit-ins in
government offices, spray-painting feminist slogans on businesses she
considered misogynist and destroying magazines in porn shops. For a time
she was the only picketer outside a restaurant in Berkeley, Calif.,
owned by a man who trafficked in underage girls.
Dr. Russell lived in a collective in Berkeley with several other women
and a succession of rescue dogs. She is survived by her sister, Jill
Hall, and a brother, Robin Hamilton Russell. Her twin brother,David
<https://www.groundup.org.za/article/obituary-bishop-david-russell_2157/>,
who became an Anglican bishop and a champion of the poor in South
Africa, died in 2014.
Image
Dr. Russell with her dog Lovies. She spent some of her last years living
in a collective in Berkeley with several other women and a succession of
rescue dogs.
Dr. Russell with her dog Lovies. She spent some of her last years living
in a collective in Berkeley with several other women and a succession of
rescue dogs.Credit...Marny Hall
In her later writings, Dr. Russell said that her “radical feminism” had
cost her job offers, grants and fellowships. Still, she said, she did
not regret her failure to “serve the patriarchy” because her work had
helped many women lift the veil of secrecy surrounding traumatic
experiences.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.
View/Reply Online (#251): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/251
Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/76087472/21656
-=-=-
POSTING RULES & NOTES<br />#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a
message.<br />#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.<br
/>#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
-=-=-
Group Owner: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy
[[email protected]]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
