Susan Brownmiller, legendary feminist author and pioneer leader of the second wave of the feminist movement, died Saturday May 24, 2025. Susan was best known as the author of the groundbreaking book, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, the book that put rape on the map as a feminist issue.
It was my honor to have her in my life for one brief but significant, for me, moment. Here’s what happened:
I Give in to Groupie Tendencies
I was sitting at my desk at the publishing house where I was working by day when the voice over the intercom announced that I had a call on line 3.
I was at the time at a low point in my life. The entire inventory of my Voices from the Underground had been stolen from the publisher’s warehouse. Voices is a collection of histories of Vietnam-era underground newspapers written by key people on each of the papers. I contributed the history of the Lansing-area underground press and edited the whole collection. This first edition had appeared in 1993 as 600+ pages of an 8 ½ x 11 two-column format, the equivalent, in standard 6 x 9 paperback format, of a 1,500-page book, or four separate books.
I picked up the phone and identified myself. The voice at the other end said, “Hi, Ken, this is Susan Brownmiller.”
With no time to restrict my groupie-est of tendencies, I blurted back, “Susan Brownmiller!” She didn’t seem phased. Maybe she was being polite.
She said she was in the process of writing her history of the feminist movement, In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution, and she needed a copy of Voices for her research. Her particular interest was two histories, of
- off our backs, the first nationally distributed feminist newspaper to emerge from the east coast, written in part by Marilyn Webb, the founder of the paper; and
- The Furies, published by the legendary radical lesbian group, The Furies, written by collective member Ginny Berson.
Unfortunately, my own supply was down to only a precious handful that I couldn’t spare, and I couldn’t reorder from the publisher, whose inventory had just been ripped off. Fortunately, Marilyn Webb had a copy to spare. Marilyn’s story is footnoted several times in Susan’s book.
Susan Comes Through
I never forgot that incident, so twenty years later, while working on the second edition, which Michigan State University Press published in the four volumes it should have been all along, I contacted Susan and asked her for a testimonial quote. Generously, she came through. Here’s what she wrote:
“What a boon to historians! Ken Wachsberger’s Voices from the Underground is crucial to an understanding of the literary and political history of the 1960s counterculture movement. This valuable resource must stay in print, if only for academics who wish to study the amazing phenomenon of the alternative newspapers, put together by amateurs, that sprang up across the country in those fervent years. Wachsberger’s material, largely in the form of ‘how we did it’ memoirs, is rich in personal histories and anecdotal details that are collected nowhere else.”
I Meet Susan
On my next trip to New York, I met Susan for the first time. I expected her to tell me how much she loved the book. I was prepared to feign modesty. Instead, she said, “You don’t have enough on the feminist press. You need to include It Aint Me Babe.”
I reminded her that I already had off our backs and The Furies, so the women’s voice was well represented.
But the feminist papers deserved more, she demanded. She insisted I contact Laura X, whose interview with a rape victim in Berkeley had inspired Susan to write Against Our Will.
It Aint Me Babe Joins Voices
Laura X is legendary in feminist lore as the premier archivist of the feminist movement. She embraced my invitation and pulled together other key figures from Berkeley’s It Aint Me Babe, the first nationally distributed feminist underground paper in the country, to tell their story. Other contributors included lead author and Babe founder Bonnie Eisenberg; Trina Robbins, pioneer feminist comix artist, who helped to break through the men-only barrier; feminist journalist Starr Goode, and Alta Gerrey, founder of the feminist Shameless Hussy Press.
The story of It Aint Me Babe appeared, for the first time ever, in volume 3 of the four-volume series. Susan wrote the foreword.
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The story of Voices from the Underground appears in Thumbs Up: Memoir of a Joyful Organizer, now available for preorder. Launch date: July 14, 2025.
