In the years before her political activism, she earned a BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, helped found the Institute of Contemporary Art, and worked as an art critic. She then moved to New York City where she earned a Ph.D. at Columbia.
As a member and president of NOW-NY, her radicalism was met with skepticism when she defended the theories presented in the "SCUM Manifesto," whose author, Valerie Solanas, shot New York artist Andy Warhol. In 1968, Atkinson left NOW because it would not confront issues like abortion and marriage inequality. That same year she founded The Feminists, an active radical feminist group.
She wrote several pamphlets on feminism, and advocated lesbianism as a political action. Many of her pamphlets and speeches are collected in the book "Amazon Odyssey." The book can be difficult to find, but it is an amazing look into the nascent stages of radical feminism, and I highly recommend it.
One of her speeches, delivered at Catholic University, is infamous because Atkinson discussed the Catholic Church of profiteering off the Virgin Mary. Her talk so disturbed Patricia Buckley Bozell, the sister of William F. Buckley, that Bozell leapt to the stage and slapped Atkinson across the face during the speech (further proof that conservatives are the most dangerous people in the world). Bozell posited, in that insane way that radical Christian conservatives always do, that Atkinson's clear and concise presentation was "an illiterate harangue against the mystical body of Christ."
Atkinson has continued her activism as a private citizen and a lecturer at schools as diverse as Pratt Institute, Case Western University, and Tufts University.
Learn about Atkinson, she is one of the people helped shape the progressive and meaningful America that conservatives are destroying.
See Atkinson greeted by Judy Chicago and a cheerleading squad at Cal State Fresno, in 1971: https://youtu.be/4cKCYvWz77A
Photo Credit: Janna Giacoppo
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