• DOI:10.1086/689745
• Corpus ID: 151760112

A Response

@article{Carmon2017AR,
  title={A Response},
  author={Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik},
  journal={Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society},
  year={2017},
  volume={42},
  pages={796 - 798}
}

• I. Carmon, Shana Knizhnik
• Published 1 March 2017
• History
• Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

W e dedicated our book “to the women on whose shoulders we stand,” so we appreciate that the thoughtful respondents tackled Notorious RBG in that same intergenerational spirit. “Crucially, despite the fame of these two icons,” Catharine Stimpson writes, “these books are about the need to honor one’s debts and to rebuke any crude sense of entitlement” (790). Indeed, as we celebrated the legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who herself has a finely tuned sense of giving credit, we were conscious of those debts. We recognize that we risk the problem of the single story in celebrating one woman, who is singular but who has always seen herself as part of a movement. Or, as Sady Doyle notes, “though Steinem and Ginsburg both insisted on working with feminists of color, it’s their names—the names of white, professionally successful women—that we remember” (788). We intended in our book to add a few names for readers to remember and to situate RBG, and the book itself, within a larger history and movement. Some of that was done by highlighting the ways in which progress for women was not equally shared and writing back into history the women who shaped it. Our time line includes the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment but also highlights its unfilled promise of suffrage for all women. It was