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Our History
Women Who Are Women (WWAW) first emerged in response to Women Who Want to Be Women (WWWW), a right-wing women’s group founded in 1974. WWWW and the concept of “women who want to be women” connected to Phyllis Schlafly’s work against the women’s liberation movement and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Also referred to as “the W’s,” “the Association of the W’s,” and “WWWW,” this group transitioned into a national organization under the name “Pro-Family Forum.” With the Moral Majority, it was part of the growing national countermovement to feminism on the right during the early 1970s. It affirmed sex-role stereotyping for women as the meaning of womanhood.
By contrast, WWAW and the concept of “women who are women” emphasized women not having to mold themselves by feminine sex-role stereotyping to be women. Women simply are women: adult human females. There is no role necessary.
In 1975, WWAW engaged in the first beauty pageant protest in Dallas at the Miss Dallas pageant in July, held in McFarlin Auditorium at Southern Methodist University (SMU). Eight women, including Nikki Craft, distributed leaflets by posing as “official pageant welcomers.” They wore bright pink t-shirts with the image of a defaced billboard emblazoned across that read “Myth America 1975.”
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The women stood in each aisle and passed the leaflets into the hands of those seated, like ushers at a theater, successfully putting one leaflet into the hands of every person who came to see the pageant. One woman threw a piece of raw meat on the stage, calling out, “In this pageant you are parading people as meat!” Protesting these beauty pageants was grassroots-level resistance among women to misogyny, racism, and corporatism.
" I only took one Women’s Studies class in my whole life and I think I did fine without them. It was a class at the University of North Texas (UNT) in Denton. It was literally called: ‘Denton: The Town That Grows Beauty Queens.’ UNT was where all the contestants went to beauty obedience school. There was a big billboard that was put up all around Dallas and surrounding areas. They were obnoxiously everywhere. It was an experiment with name identification—it was my understanding. My assignment in the Women’s Studies class was to do something that I would not ordinarily do regarding women. I went out one night and enhanced the billboard and a friend photodocumented the whole action. I wrote ‘Myth’ over ‘Miss.’ When I turned in the project, my teacher looked at me like I was insane. I never took another Women’s Studies class. "
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- Nikki Craft, Facebook, July 1, 2022
In one action, a woman protested against Miss California, but officials told her she could not leaflet on the sidewalk. However, WWAW committed to return the following year, where the woman threw meat on the stage during the bathing suit portion of the pageant. These actions led to several years of Myth California protests until the pageant moved from Santa Cruz. By this time, the protest had gotten so large that it was difficult to hear inside the auditorium.
WWAW went dormant in the 1980s. On September 5, 2016, the day Schlafly died, Craft discussed her founding of WWAW in response to WWWW. “I think we need to get that group going again to altogether different purposes,” she said. WWAW’s reemergence marks a challenge to the false claims of men who want to be women. It represents one among the many grassroots efforts led by women against transgenderism’s “new” brand of sex-role stereotyping.
We invite all women who feel inspired, agree with us, and want to, to join us.
