Town Bloody Hall

For many (maybe most) people born after, say, 1975, the words "women's liberation" conjure up slightly comical images of women burning their bras. It's hard for them to get their minds around how revolutionary and bitterly divisive a social phenomenon the women's movement was. In 1970, a standing-room only audience filled New York City's Town Hall for a "dialogue on women's liberation" moderated by Norman Mailer. Harper's magazine had just published Mailer's contentious essay "The Prisoner of Sex," an impassioned response to Kate Millett's controversial cultural and social history Sexual Politics (1970), which included a chapter on Mailer. The evening's...