Heterodoxy was the name adopted by a

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

debating group in

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

, New York City, in the early 20th century. It was notable for providing a forum for the development of more radical conceptions of feminism than the

suffrage Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in representative democracy, public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally i ...

and

women's club The woman's club movement was a social movement that took place throughout the United States that established the idea that women had a moral duty and responsibility to transform public policy. While women's organizations had always been a par ...

movements of the time. The heterodoxy club was also known to be a space filled with people living remarkably diverse personal lives, allowing for women to congregate and talk about their experiences with one another in what was considered to be a safe space for conversation and change. The group was considered important in the origins of

American feminism Feminism in the United States refers to the collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending a state of equal political, economic, cultural, and social rights for women in the United States. Feminism has ha ...

History

Heterodoxy was founded in 1912 by

Marie Jenney Howe Marie Jenney Howe (1870–1934) was a feminist organizer and writer born in Syracuse, New York. She was deeply involved with the movement for Women's suffrage in the United States. Career Howe worked as a Unitarian minister and suffragist, grad ...

, who specified only one requirement for membership: that the applicant "not be orthodox in his or her opinion". The club was formed on the basis of the motto: "The only taboo is taboo." The club's members had diverse political views, but used those differing views to focus on a multitude of different political and social issues centered around the rights of women. The membership also included bisexual and lesbian women, in addition to heterosexuals. The luncheon club, which started with 25 members, met every two weeks on Saturdays. Most of the women who belonged in the club were part of the generation born between the 1870-1880s, making this generation the first to emphasize women's rights. The club was disestablished in the 1940s. Group members referred to themselves as "Heterodites". Among the notable members were

Mary Ware Dennett Mary Coffin Ware Dennett (April 4, 1872 – July 25, 1947) was an American women's rights activist, pacifist, homeopathic advocate, and pioneer in the areas of birth control, sex education, and women's suffrage. She co-founded the Nationa ...

Susan Glaspell Susan Keating Glaspell (July 1, 1876 – July 28, 1948) was an American playwright, novelist, journalist and actress. With her husband George Cram Cook, she founded the Provincetown Players, the first modern American theatre company. First known ...

, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and

Ida Rauh Ida Rauh (March 7, 1877 – February 28, 1970) was an American suffragist, actress, sculptor, and poet who helped found the Provincetown Players in 1915. The players, including Susan Glaspell, George Cram Cook, John Reed, Hutchins Hapgood, E ...

. Heterodites Alice Kimball, Alison Turnbull Hopkins, Doris Stevens, and Paula Jakobi were arrested in 1917 and 1918 suffrage protests, and served time in the

Occoquan Workhouse The Lorton Reformatory, also known as the Lorton Correctional Complex, is a former prison complex in Lorton, Virginia, established in 1910 for the District of Columbia, United States. The complex began as a prison farm called the Occoquan Wor ...

, jail, or prison psychiatric wards.

Grace Nail Johnson Grace Nail Johnson (February 27, 1885 – November 1, 1976) was an African-American civil rights activist and patron of the arts associated with the Harlem Renaissance, and wife of the writer and politician James Weldon Johnson. Johnson was the ...

was the only African American woman who belonged to Heterodoxy. Beatrice M. Hinkle was another notable Heterodite, adding credibility to the group by being its only trained psychoanalyst while also examining a subcategory of psychology called feminist psychology. Many non-members addressed the group, including Helen Keller,

Margaret Sanger Margaret Higgins Sanger (born Margaret Louise Higgins; September 14, 1879September 6, 1966), also known as Margaret Sanger Slee, was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term "birth control ...

Emma Goldman Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940) was a Russian-born anarchist political activist and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the ...

, and

Amy Lowell Amy Lawrence Lowell (February 9, 1874 – May 12, 1925) was an American poet of the imagist school, which promoted a return to classical values. She posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. Life Amy Lowell was born on Febru ...

Heterodoxy In religion, heterodoxy (from Ancient Greek: , "other, another, different" + , "popular belief") means "any opinions or doctrines at variance with an official or orthodox position". Under this definition, heterodoxy is similar to unorthodoxy, wh ...

meetings were valuable sources of information on the struggles for women's rights for its members. Although full of diverse lives and ideas, the women in the group were connected by their passion and desire to think unconventionally.

Activism

The Heterodoxy Club provided a safe space for activism to begin and progress, as it was the main feminist group in the early 20th century where diverse types of women could gather weekly to discuss their opinions on issues regarding women's rights while also reflecting on their diverse political views and personal lives with open minds. The majority of the members of the Heterodoxy had completed an undergraduate education, and many even pursued post-graduate degrees in fields including education, sociology, psychology, and law; moreover, their education arguably allowed them to be prepared to take stances on a multitude of women's rights issues while participating heavily in both political and social activism. Political activism within the club included members of the Heterodoxy fighting to ensure suffrage for all women, promoting the usage of birth control, and evaluating employment disparities between men and women. Social activism within the club revolved around the field of psychoanalysis, where members of the Heterodoxy examined Freudian ideas regarding psychosexual theories in order to form a branch of psychoanalysis that focused on feminism and the psychological disparities between women and men.

Political Activism

The political activism of the Heterodoxy Club includes a wide variety of political women's rights issues, including ensuring suffrage, working to create and promote different types of contraceptives, advocating for mothers, advocating against war, fighting for equal work opportunities, and advocating for immigrants. Because of the diversity of the ideas of the Heterodites, the political activism demonstrated by the club varied from person to person. The club began after women's suffrage laws had been passed; however, the group did discuss ways that women needed to fight to ensure that their right to vote would remain permanent. When the group began to move away from the women's suffrage movement after they were confident women's right to vote would not be outlawed, they moved into playing an active role in the birth control movement. They promoted and hosted many original members of the birth control movement, like Emma Goldman, Mary Ware Dennett, and Margaret Sanger. These non-official members of the Heterodoxy Club attended meetings in order to collect ideas from the Heterodites about how women would like to see different birth control forms being used in the future, discussing reproductive rights as a whole. The platform that the Heterodoxy Club gave these non-members played a role in Dennett's formation of the Volunteer Parenthood League and National Birth Control League and Sanger's ''The Birth Control Review,'' all contributing to the legalization of contraceptives''.'' Heterodites often advocated for mothers, providing mothers with psychological evaluations and assistance, sharing how motherhood impacts women's lives, and by pushing the idea that women are not only meant to be mothers, meaning that they have more skills than mothering and can be creative and work as well. Many members of the Heterodoxy Club identified themselves as pacifists, advocating against the usage of wars as a way to solve conflict through sharing their ideas and protest. Women in the Heterodoxy Club also fought for fair employment and fair wages, pushing women to get jobs and dismantling the idea that the man of the house needs to be the only one to provide financial support. Many women in the Heterodoxy Club also supported and advocated for immigrants, specifically immigrant mothers, by helping them find needed resources and reassuring them that their existence and their lives are legitimate.

Activism Relating to the Field of Psychology

Psychoanalysis done by Beatrice M. Hinkle, a widely recognized member of the Heterodoxy Club, provided a way for the club to participate in social activism; moreover, this specifically includes activism within the field of psychology relating psychological differences between men and women based on self-realization and expression. Hinkle originally studied with

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

, but began to become wary of his ideas regarding psychosexual theories, as they sexualized women while also not considering them fully capable people. One of Freud's theories suggests that women are a part of the psyche of men which Hinkle heavily disagreed with, so she moved to create an area of psychology driven by feminism. She turned to analyze and support the ideas of Jungian psychology, which focused on the psychological growth of individuals as well as their creative outlets. In order to perform her psychoanalysis research, she utilized the help of many members of the Heterodoxy Club. Many Heterodites volunteered to, or paid to, participate in her analyses where Hinkle focused on allowing the participant to realize their full potential, open their creative minds, and think about sex and sexuality in a way that opposed the morals regarding sex typically seen during this time period. Through her analyses, she promoted the usefulness and creativity of women, the theory that women are more dominant than men when attempting to change societal views on sex and sexualities, and the idea that women face psychological consequences due to the power complex and social dominance of men. Hinkle critiqued the biases of psychoanalysis through a feminist lens by performing psychoanalysis on members of the Heterodoxy Club, promoting the psychological study of women, allowing women to achieve self-realization, and contradicting the sexism that frequented the psychology field. Hinkle also collaborated with other members of the Heterodoxy Club to spread awareness about her research on the psychology of women through her psychoanalyses. Her most significant partnership within the club was with

, who wrote ''The Verge'', a play about unorthodox and creative experiments done by women, similar to the types of experiments Hinkle performed. This play reflected on Hinkle's research by showcasing the creative minds of women, which allowed Hinkle's ideas to reach a larger audience and in turn cause more women to emphasize creativity in their lives in order to find self-realization.

Members

The members of Heterodoxy lived primarily in Greenwich Village,

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), ...

, and the

Lower East Side The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Traditionally an im ...

. While some Heterodites were famous in their own right, little is known of many of them. *

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Bessie Beatty Elizabeth Mary "Bessie" Beatty (January 27, 1886 – April 6, 1947) was an American journalist, editor, playwright, and radio host. Early life and education Elizabeth Mary "Bessie" Beatty was born and raised in Los Angeles, one of four children o ...

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Frances Maule Bjorkman Frances Maule Bjorkman (1879–1966) was a New Yorker prominent in the woman's suffrage movement. She was a member of the National Woman Suffrage Association. She was a member of the Heterodoxy women's group. She lived at the Helicon Home Colony, a ...

Mary Bookstaver Mary A. Bookstaver (1875–1950) was a feminist, political activist, and editor, widely known by the nickname "May." Daughter of Judge Henry W. Bookstaver and Mary Baily Young, she attended Miss Florence Baldwin's School (now Baldwin School) and gr ...

Elinor Byrns Elinor Byrns (1876 — May 27, 1957) was an American lawyer, pacifist, and feminist, co-founder of the Women's Peace Society and the Women's Peace Union. Early life and education Elinor Byrns was born in Lafayette, Indiana in 1876, attended th ...

* Elizabeth Ellsworth Cook * Marion Cothren *

Mabel Potter Daggett Mabel Potter Daggett (February 14, 1871 – November 13, 1927) was an American writer, journalist, editor and suffragist. Daggett reported from France during World War I, wrote a biography of Queen Marie of Romania, and was active in the woman's ...

* Maida Castellun Darnton *

Agnes de Mille Agnes George de Mille (September 18, 1905 – October 7, 1993) was an American dancer and choreographer. Early years Agnes de Mille was born in New York City into a well-connected family of theater professionals. Her father William C. deMill ...

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* Mary Dennett *

Rheta Childe Dorr Rheta Louise Childe Dorr (1868–1948) was an American journalist, suffragist newspaper editor, writer, and political activist. Dorr is best remembered as one of the leading female muckraking journalists of the Progressive era and as the first e ...

* Elsie Dufour *

Crystal Eastman Crystal Catherine Eastman (June 25, 1881 – July 28, 1928) was an American lawyer, antimilitarist, feminist, socialist, and journalist. She is best remembered as a leader in the fight for women's suffrage, as a co-founder and co-editor with ...

Edith Ellis Edith Mary Oldham Ellis (née Lees; 9 March 1861 – 14 September 1916) was an English writer and women's rights activist. She was married to the early sexologist Havelock Ellis. Biography Ellis was born on 9 March 1861 in Newton, Lancashi ...

Mateel Howe Farnham Mateel Howe Farnham (1883, Atchison, Kansas — 1957, Norwalk, Connecticut , image_map = Fairfield County Connecticut incorporated and unincorporated areas Norwalk highlighted.svg , mapsize = 230px , map_caption ...

Mary Fels Mary Fels (, Fels; March 10, 1863 - May 16, 1953) was a German-born American philanthropist, Georgism, Georgist, Zionism, Zionist, Women's suffrage in the United States, suffragist, economics, economist, author, and journal editor. She was interest ...

Eleanor Fitzgerald Mary Eleanor Fitzgerald (March 16, 1877 – March 30, 1955) was an American editor and theatre professional, best known for her association with Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, and with the Provincetown Players. Early life and education Mary E ...

* Elizabeth Gurley Flynn *

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* Charlotte Perkins Gilman *

* Myran Louise Grant *

Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale (1883 – 5 September 1967) was an English actress, lecturer, writer, and suffragist. Early life Beatrice Forbes-Robertson was born in England, the daughter of Gertrude Knight and Ian Forbes-Robertson, and the gran ...

* Ruth Hale * Anne Herendeen * Ami Mali Hicks * Beatrice M. Hinkle *

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* Alison Turnbull Hopkins *

* Helen Hull *

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Elisabeth Irwin Elisabeth Antoinette Irwin (29 August 1880, Brooklyn, New York–16 October 1942, Manhattan, age 62) was the founder of the Little Red School House. She was an educator, psychologist, reformer, and declared lesbian, living with her life partner ...

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* Paula O. Jakobi *

* Gertrude Kelly * Edna Kenton * Fannie Kilbourn * Alice Mary Kimball *

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* Eleanor Lawson * Katherine Leckie *

Rose Strunsky Lorwin Rose Strunsky Lorwin (1884, Russia – 1963, New York City) was a Jewish Russian-American translator and socialist based in New York City. Early life and education Rose Strunsky was born to a Jewish Russian family in what is now Belarus and was pa ...

* Mabel Dodge Luhan *

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* Mary Field Parton * Ruth Pickering Pinchot *

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* Ida Sedgwick Proper *

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* Netha Roe * Lou Rogers *

Florence Guy Woolston Seabury Florence Guy Woolston Seabury (April 1881 – October 6, 1951) was an American journalist and feminist essayist, and a member of Heterodoxy. Early life and education Florence Guy was born in 1881 in Montclair, New Jersey, the daughter of Ernest Gu ...

* Mary Shaw *

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* Doris Stevens *

Rose Pastor Stokes Rose Harriet Pastor Stokes (née Wieslander; July 18, 1879 – June 20, 1933) was an American socialist activist, writer, birth control advocate, and feminist. She was a figure of some public notoriety after her 1905 marriage to Episcopalian mill ...

* Vida Ravenscroft Sutton * Kathleen de Vere Taylor * Signe Kristine Toksvig * Mary Heaton Vorse * Elizabeth C. Watson *

Helen Westley Helen Westley (born Henrietta Remsen Meserole Manney; March 28, 1875 – December 12, 1942) was an American character actress of stage and screen Early years Westley was born Henrietta Remsen Meserole Manney in Brooklyn, New York on March 28, ...

* Vira Boarman Whitehouse * Margaret Widdemer * Margaret Wycherly *

I. A. R. Wylie Ida Alexa Ross Wylie (16 March 1885 – 4 November 1959), known by her pen name I.A.R. Wylie, was an Australian-British-American novelist, screenwriter, short story writer, and poet and suffragette sympathiser, who was honored by the journalisti ...

* Rose Emmet Young

Notes

References

*(=Thesis M.A., 1977) {{Authority control Feminist organizations in the United States Feminism in New York City