Robin Morgan, Jane Alpert, and Feminist Satire

Despite the pronounced increase in feminist attacks on male supremacy during the second wave of the 1960s and 1970s, comparatively little has been written on feminist satire from this time. The following article examines two important essays from this era and illustrates the ways in which they take shape within the long tradition of satiric writing while critiquing that tradition in feminist terms. More narrowly, the essay suggests that the tonal and argumentative differences between the two texts can be attributed in part to their respective relationships to shifts in feminist theory between 1970 and 1973. Analysis of the two works reveals the close connection that existed in the 1970s between the writing of feminist satire and the development of feminist attitudes toward radicalism, the left, and anger in politics generally.