Editors' note: Naomi Weisstein passed a way in March. She was a pioneering voice for feminism in psychology and was a formidable socialist-feminist activist in the 1960's and 70's. 

She was also a founding member of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union and of its musical group: the Chicago Women's Liberation Union Rock Band. The band was formed as an effort to push back against the chauvinism prevalent in popular music at the time and as a way to provide space for feminist art and culture to thrive. We publish this essay, which also appears at the CWLU Herstory Project, in her memory.

* * *

In Chicago, one cold and sunny day in March of 1970, I decided to organize a feminist rock band. I was lying on the sofa listening to the radio -- a rare bit of free time in those early days of the women's movement. Perhaps a meeting had been canceled. The trendy station that had just switched to all-rock was playing a medley of hits. First, Mick Jagger crowed that his once feisty girlfriend was now "under his thumb." Then Janis Joplin moaned with thrilled resignation that love was like "a ball and chain." Then The Band, a self-consciously left-wing group, sang: