Remembering Ann Snitow (1943–2019)

Laurie Stone at n+1:

Last night I was talking with our mutual friend S, and she said, “I always wanted to hear what Ann would say. She would listen to others present arguments, and then, when it was her turn to speak, she would find the beautiful bits in what she’d heard and put it all back together in a way that was brilliant and original and made people think she was extending their ideas.”

I googled you after you died, and a piece popped up about Shulamith Firestone, in which you are quoted calling her “incandescent” and saying “it was thrilling to be in her company.” That’s so like you. Pretty much everyone else in the essay says how difficult she was, and the piece is depressing to read, not only because Firestone went mad and died one of those emaciated-bag-lady feminist deaths, but because it described the awful fractiousness in the early days of the women’s movement, where, if you signed your name to a piece of writing, other women called you an egomaniac and worse, said you were acting like a man.

more here.