At first the men in those movements totally rejected any suggestion that they were oppressing the women working by their sides and the suggestion that they, in fact, were the recipients of the same sorts of privileges and rewards from their oppression of women that Caucasians got from the oppression of Afro- Americans and that Americans got from the oppression of Third World peoples. There were some truly monumental confrontations. Over time, and out of a willingness on the part of some of the women and fewer of the men in these movements, the idea of making the personal political and the political personal arose and "consciousness raising" was born. The effort to understand how the traditions of society shape the expectations and behaviors of the people in that society has led to immense social change. Of course the changing requirements of society, and technological advancements also assisted in the success of this movement. As individuals began doing serious analysis of society, the gap between beliefs commonly accepted and what the realities really were, astounded most of those doing the research, and the people who were working for social justice. When Walker and other women and men began doing research in the mid 70's to determine how much violence was occurring between spouses, the first thing they all discovered was that there had been no previous research in this area. For example, John O'Brien, who wrote "Violence in Divorce-Prone Families" (1974) stated: "In the index for all editions of "The Journal of Marriage and the Family", from its inception in 1939 through 1969, not a single article can be found which contains the word "violence" in the title....Apparently violence....was either assumed to be too touchy an issue for research or else thought to be unimportant as a feature in normal" families." As the Women's Movement gained strength and credibility, more and more attention has been directed to discovering and reporting ...
