Ellen Jane Willis (December 14, 1941 – November 9, 2006) was an American left-wing political essayist, journalist, activist, feminist, and pop music critic. A 2014 collection of her essays, The Essential Ellen Willis, received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.

Early life and education

Willis was born in Manhattan to a Jewish family, and grew up in the boroughs of the Bronx and Queens in New York City. Her father was a police lieutenant in the New York City Police Department.

Writing and activism

Willis was known for her feminist politics. She was a member of New York Radical Women and subsequently co-founder in early 1969 with Shulamith Firestone of the radical feminist group Redstockings. She was one of the few women working in music criticism during its inaugural years when the field was predominantly male. Starting in 1979, Willis wrote a number of essays that were highly critical of anti-pornography feminism, criticizing it for what she saw as its sexual puritanism and moral authoritarianism, as well as its threat to free speech. These essays were among the earliest expressions of feminist opposition to the anti-pornography movement in what became known as the feminist sex wars. Her 1981 essay, Lust Horizons: Is the Women's Movement Pro-Sex? is the origin of the term, "pro-sex feminism".

She was a strong supporter of women's abortion rights, and in the mid-1970s was a founding member of the pro-choice street theater and protest group No More Nice Girls. A self-described anti-authoritarian democratic socialist, she was very critical of what she viewed as social conservatism and authoritarianism on both the political right and left. In cultural politics, she was equally opposed to the idea that cultural issues are politically unimportant, as well as to strong forms of identity politics and their manifestation as political correctness.

In several essays and interviews written since the September 11 attacks, she cautiously supported humanitarian intervention and, while opposed to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, she criticized certain aspects of the anti-war movement.

Willis wrote a number of essays on anti-Semitism, and was particularly critical of left anti-Semitism. Occasionally she wrote about Judaism itself, penning a particularly notable essay, for Rolling Stone, in 1977, about her brother's spiritual journey as a Baal Teshuva.

She saw political authoritarianism and sexual repression as closely linked, an idea first advanced by psychologist Wilhelm Reich; much of Willis' writing advances a Reichian or radical Freudian analysis of such phenomena. In 2006 she was working on a book on the importance of radical psychoanalytic thought for current social and political issues.

Personal life

Willis had met her second husband, sociology professor Stanley Aronowitz, in the late 1960s, and they entered a relationship some 10 years later. They shared domestic tasks equally. Willis died of lung cancer on November 9, 2006. At one point, she and Christgau were lovers.

Her papers were deposited in the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, in the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University in 2008.

In 2011, the first collection of Willis's music reviews and essays, Out of the Vinyl Deeps (University of Minnesota Press), was published. Willis "celebrated the seriousness of pleasure and relished the pleasure of thinking seriously," a review in The New York Times said.

On April 30, 2011, a conference at New York University, "Sex, Hope, & Rock 'n' Roll: The Writings of Ellen Willis", celebrated her anthology and pop music criticism.

The Essential Ellen Willis, edited by her daughter, won the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award in the Criticism category.

Willis is featured in the 2014 feminist history documentary She's Beautiful When She's Angry.

Bibliography

Books

  • Willis wrote the foreword.

Essays, reporting and other contributions

  • "Ellen Willis's Reply", 1968.
  • "Women and the Myth of Consumerism", Ramparts, 1969.
  • "Radical Feminism and Feminist Radicalism", Social Text, Spring-Summer 1984.
  • "Hell No, I Won't Go: End the War on Drugs", Village Voice, September 19, 1989.
  • "Vote for Ralph Nader!", Salon, November 6, 2000.
  • "The Realities of War" (A response to Elaine Scarry's "Citizenship in Emergency"), Boston Review, October/November 2002.
  • "The Pernicious Concept of 'Balance'", The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 9, 2005. Note: scroll down page.

References

  • Ellen Willis Tumblr Page - large collection of Willis's writings.
  • "Ellen Willis, 64, Journalist and Feminist, Dies" by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, November 10, 2006.
  • "My Ellen Willis" by Michael Bronski, The Boston Phoenix, November 30, 2006.
  • "Sex, Hope and Rock and Roll: A Conversation with Ellen Willis" by Chris O'Connell, Pop Matters, January 8, 2007.
  • Papers of Ellen Willis, 1941-2006. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

Reviews and critiques of Ellen Willis

  • by Marcy Sheiner, San Francisco Bay Guardian, March 29, 2000.
  • Bully in the Pulpit? (Discussion of Ellen Willis "Freedom From Religion"), The Nation, February 22, 2001.

Interviews

  • "Ellen Willis, Feminist and Writer", Fresh Air, November 10, 2006 (originally broadcast February 14, 1989). (page links to RealAudio audio file)
  • Interview with Ellen Willis and others on Implicating Empire by Doug Henwood, Left Business Observer (radio), March 27, 2003. (page links to MP3 audio)