Both "The Small Group Process" and "About My Consciousness Raising" discuss examples of women meeting in groups to discuss their lives. The group process seemed to be more of simply a place where women could discuss their lives and express their feelings openly without criticism or judgement. On the other hand consciousness raising was a place where women were able to understand and realize the problems that they faced as well as the problems that american women as whole were dealing with. The purpose of consciousness raising was to help women become aware and better understand the problems they were facing. Since the issues presented in the other movements were much more obvious the step of consciousness raising was not quite as necessary for them. While the student and civil rights movement may have devoted a small amount of time to raising awareness, it was not nearly as important for those movements as it was for the women's movement.

In the fight for equal rights, many women had to deal with the violence that some men brought about. Many men were not pleased with the rights that women were asking for and simply did not agree with what they were fighting. For this reason, many rapes and beatings occured, as well as emotional violence towards women. Men of this time were worried that their lives would change drastically, and they did. These types of violent acts were merely an attempt to scare the women away from the movement and to stop the fight for women's rights.

While pushing for change, women began to anger many people, mainly men. Men were threatened by the idea of women having more power than they were already given, which inturn could lead to role reversals, and that could not be tolerated in their eyes. Men became agressive and violent towards women and would even go as far as to threaten them with rape. This only re-enforced the cause for the women's movement and made women push harder for change. This movement had much in common with the civil rights movement, in that both were just fighting for a reasonable and just cause in a nonviolent way that was met with disgrace and violence.

Both "the Small Group Process" and "About My Consciousness Raising" are based on womens real expirences and lives. The women use their stories in both articles to form an understanding of the social problems that they were facing. The groups were formed to make apparent these problems for women so that they could help change them and know that they were equal to men. One thing I find different about the two articles is that in "Consciousness Raising" Susan explained how women could not be seperated from one another. She explained her expirence with therapy and how it put her above "most women." It only helped with her self issues not with the ones rooted in women inequality. She also said that "in order for us to form a powerful political movement it must be a movement which answers to the needs of all women," explaining how there were women of all different races and economic classes there. In "the Small Group" I did notice much talk about unity of women and the equality within them. I think "Consciousness Raising" can be related to the Civil Rights Movement for this very reason. The African Americans new they had to stick together and be one powerful group to be able to achieve their goals. People were also overlapped in both of these fights. African American women were fighting for their freedom from the government and from men.

"The Small Group Process" and "About my Concsciousness raising" overlap in a similar way of how the women shared their experiences. The two pieces both emphasize the need for a women to talk about her feelings and about her life to other women in the group. By doing this, women were able to understand and care for each other. And also, sharing their experiences was a way to find the solutions to their problems. The difference between the two groups is that the conciousness raising was active in encouraging women to participate but the small group process was helpful for women to openly express their feelings. Therefore, the small group process was a little more personal than the CR. Also, the CR and social movments such as the civil rights movement have something in common because the participants of the CR were also actively involved in the civil rights movment.

Both articles, "The Small Group Process" and "About my Consciousness Raising" talk about how women gathered together to share about their own personal experiences as an important part of the Woman's Movement. Barbara Susan talks about how these discussions were "forming political analysis on information we can trust is true" which was based on each woman sharing her own experience before any generalizations about the women's condition were made. The two articles are similar in that they both stress how significant these consciousness raising techniques were in helping women realize that they were living in a male supremacist society, their problems were not isolated, and a generalization or concept needed to be formed by "the people who make up that movement." However, the first article repeatedly mentions that the need for these groups was because women were used to sharing but had an "inability to think conceptually" while the second article focused on the need to realize that one was not alone, not because there was some inability to think independently.
Consciousness raising helped women define their personal situations in a societal or political environment, "what's personal is public." This is unique from the Civil Rights Movement and the Student Movement because the problems could be seen more apparently. In the Civil Rights movement, black citizens knew they weren't getting the same freedoms. For the student movement, they protested for Freedom of Speech which is inherently a political problem. For women, though, most did not realize their unhappiness with domestic life could be a social problem, and the source of their prosecution was from within their own homes, their own husbands.

As women pushed for liberation, stating they intended on "organizing [and] turn[ing] the men's world upside-down and running things as they should run,"they faced violence and intense threatening behavior in order to do so. Men claimed disturbing threats of rape, overtly expressed bad language, and graphic descriptions of violence.
The men, on the other side, felt that they were the ones being attacked and felt that they were seen as the "enemies." For reasons like this, they felt an duty to fight back and perhaps take advantage of a vulnerable situation.
Other movements have been very much similar to this situation, as one group feels inferior to other. When this occurs, both groups take action to stand ground and violence and negativity erupts.

Men felt threatened by the womens' suggestions of change and displayed verbal and physical signs of unrest. When the females would raise concerns about the sexual images of women in advertisements or the underrepresentation of women in the Supreme Court, men's "faces would get red, veins would stand out on their necks...muscles would tighten." Not only could their anger be seen, but they would begin to speak irrationally about being made the "enemy" and talk of castration and "killing all the men." The women's movement was about equality among both genders, not a decrease in men's rights. They were not out to rid the population of males, but to modify their all human behavior.
In other social movements, such as the struggle for civil rights and the student movement, activists were working for equality also. They were not out to be better than everyone else; they just wanted to be treated the same. African-Americans wanted the same rights as everyone else, and faced even more violent protests. It was somehow more acceptable to be physically violent towards blacks than it was towards women, even though the cause they were fighting for was basically the same. Women were subject to much psychological abuse, and still faced many of the same obstacles as the other social movements.

Women faced a lot of threats from everyone during the women's movement. These women werer threatened "in a very personal way with rape, mutilation, and lynching in a civil rights sit-it in the South." Men, including liberals and hippies would turn red when women would raise issues about women being depicted as sex symbols and how they wanted this to stop. I think that some of the reasons for this is that men have always had more power than women. They have always been seen and treated with some form of superiority over women. The fact that women (whom should have no say) are now demanding to be seen and treated as equal pissed men off. They did not want there to be a shift in power, and would therefore try to threaten these women into stopping the liberation movement. Though these might actions might not seem as severe as the Civil Rights Movement, some cases were pretty extreme.

The most obvious threat to women when they were pushing to change the way they were objectified is rape. It was mentioned in the article that men’s superior anatomy and strength left most women defenseless against them and men knew this too. Rape is not a crime about sex; it is a crime about power. When someone is raped, they have no control and it asserts the rapist’s power over them. Another factor that was brought in to the protests by the women is just the fear of being raped or someone being violent with them. Women in the movement were also labeled by the media and society, which caused alienation from their families and their non-feminist friends. Obviously there was also domestic violence between husbands who wanted their wives to submit to them and their wives wanted to have a say in what was going on in their own lives. The reason behind all the violence was that men were used to be completely unquestioned and in control, nobody else had a say. Now that women were asserting their decision making abilities, men felt threatened, so they chose to assert themselves any way that they knew how.
The violence in this movement can be compared to that of the Civil Rights movement for a couple of reasons. First of all, when African Americans started doing things on their own, it meant that the white people were losing control of their lives. When you lose control, the only thing you want is to have it back and prevent yourself from losing more control. They saw violence as a solution to the problem therefore they used it. Another reason why the Civil Rights movement was met with violence is because of the shock of it all. Whites were not aware that being enslaved and inferior to whites was not what the African Americans wanted (think about the interview in one of the documentaries). Whites did not know how to react, so fight-or-flight syndrome came into play and the whites weren’t going to up and run, so they fought the protest with violence and threats. The difference however, is that the Civil Rights violence was seen more in the public eye (filmed, news papers, etc) while the women were violated behind closed doors by their husbands as well as other men who disagreed with what they were trying to prove.

"The Small Group Process" and "About my Concsiousness Raising" makes the distiction between raising concsiousness through talking in groups and group therapy. Group therapy does not bring consciousness. Consciousness raising occurs when women can share experiences in terms of social structures and not their own weaknesses (Susan, 490).
Both articles mention the need to include as many women as possible to develop a movement. They must admit their differences, try and understand one another, and come together to analyze the oppression that they collectively endure.
Consciousness raising highlights the importance of coming together and contributing knowledge so as to better understand the situations they are fighting against. They have to first define the problem before they can change it.
I am sure the other movements began with a concsiousness, but for others, like the CRM, opression was much more obvious and open. For women, it is subtle. They must first collectively become aware of what is wrong with society so they can advance their causes and happiness.

In "A Year Living Dangerously", the author describes men's hostile reactions to feminist ideals. The author says that whenever a woman would speak up about women's rights that men would get really aggressive, hostile and even subtlely threaten them. She says that even the leftists and hippie men would act violently toward feminist ideas. I think this happened for many different factors. First, men who were arguing against the war were already under intense pressure and emotions were running high. I think they were already thinking in terms of "them against us", and so anybody who expressed a different opinion than theirs was automatically an "enemy". Secondly, it is human nature to be frustrated by things that you cannot control. Leftist men were struggling to control injustices that they perceived in the world. I can see how control over the female population was a way for them to feel in control in a world where they were otherwise somewhat helpless. They could not control the war or US government policies, but at least they could control the women! I think this lack of control is the cause of much of the violence that occurred in the 1960's. For example, the Civil Rights Movement forced new ideas on the white population that threatened to turn their world upside down in many ways. Many of these white people acted with extreme violence against blacks in an attempt to control them. It is human nature to react negatively to change. When change is being imposed on such a large scale, during a time when tensions are running high, it is not surprising that people will act out in violent, aggressive ways. The way I see it, violence is a dramatic reaction to fear. In the case of the women's movement (and other movements of the 1960's), the opposition is reacting violently as a reaction to the fear of change. The author of "A Year Living Dangerously" says that men would talk of women's intention of "castrating them...of our wishing to kill all men." This is a perfect example of a person being confronted with a radical change and reacting very dramatically.

"The Small Group Process" and "About my Concsiousness Raising" both discussed women coming together in inimate settings to discuss their lives. The women were finally able to express exactly what they believed and were not criticized for doing so. The group meetings mentioned in these articles were outlets for women to realize that they had more worth than society told them.
Besides the initial similarities, the two articles show that there were differences between Small Group Process and Concsiousness Raising. It seems taht the small group process was more a place for women to openly express their feelings where as, conciousness raising was designed to target the injustices women faced.
Counsciousness raising was very similar to "teach ins" set up by the antiwar/student movemennt and the temporary schools which were set up by the civil rights movements. These social movements used discussion to educate others about the topic at hand.

Many women faced violence during the movement. They were constantly threatend with rape and other things of a violent nature. This was almost a daily occurance with most of the women as they were met with fierce oppostion by a lot of men throughout the movement. One reason for this would be the fact that they were trying to change the status quo. Looking at the past and the present most people don't like change. It seems like a bad thing to a lot of people. As a lot of people say "if it isn't broke, don't fix it". Now most people felt that it wasn't broken while these women felt it was. So trying to make a change to peoples lives upset them very much. Another reason for the violence would have to be the fact that they made men the enemy. It was the man's fault for everything. Most men don't take kindly to that. So when you come into their men's club and tell them what they are doing is wrong, they get violent. they don't want to be told they are the enemy or that it's their fault. You need to go about your buisness without blaming them and then they won't get as mad.

This wasn't the first movement to be met with violence and I doubt it will be the last. Look at the civil rights movement for example, lynching and beatings were normal. The violence the black people saw was a lot worse than what the women saw. This violence was around because the movement wanted to change the way people lived their lives. None of the white people felt there was anything wrong and they wanted to keep it that way. Why should they have to change their lives for these black people? It upset them and when people get upset it leads to violence most of the time.

Women faced a lot of pressures and a lot of threats of violence. Men would try to trick women, manipulate them, and bully them. The author also states that men used economic pressures towards women and played on women's sense of responsibility towards their children. There are a few reasons men would go about doing this. Frankly, men liked they way they were living. They go to work and the woman does all the chores, has dinner ready when they get home, does the laundry, and so on. Men freaked out about this possibly going away and having to cook and clean themselves. You could compare this part of the women's movement to the civil rights movement, which, in both curse words and slangs were used to threaten those in the movement. The pressures and bullying were used by men to frighten women and African Americans to get them to stop their movement or atleast to get some to drop out of the movement.