Radical feminist staffers forcibly seized control of the underground paper Rat in January 1971.

Evidence

On January 24, Rat’s female staffers formed a collective and, aided by Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (WITCH), staged a coup. As reported in the paper’s February 9 issue, which also covered the opening of the Panther trial, the Rat office was “yielded” to them, although some of the high school boys and two male critics—Vince Aletti and Leon Gussow—hung on for a few more issues. … A manifesto published beneath a cartoon of a cute feminine rodent raising one fist and brandishing an automatic rifle in the other, saying “Up Against The Wall RAT!,” ended with a utopian, anarchist assertion: “If we throw out our absurd hierarchy of Editor, Assistant Editor, etc. etc. down to the minute irrelevant divisions of labor that are dragging on both the men and the women here—we will have made a strong start in the right direction.” No President! (A week later, Rat was busted for the S. Clay Wilson cartoon of a sliced penis that ran in the issue before the women took power.) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1539

Categorization

• XREF: An institution-level instance of the counterculture imploding from within — relevant to the reader’s argument that scenes become markets/disintegrate through their own contradictions.
• SHARE: The Rat coup story, including the WITCH assistance and the later bust over the sliced-penis cartoon, would interest a zine/underground press historian.