Phyllis Chesler (born October 1, 1940) is an American writer, psychotherapist, and professor emerita of psychology and women's studies at the College of Staten Island (CUNY). She is a second-wave feminist psychologist and the author of 20 books, including the best-sellers Women and Madness (1972), With Child: A Diary of Motherhood (1979), and An American Bride in Kabul: A Memoir (2013). Chesler has written extensively about topics such as gender, mental illness, divorce and child custody, surrogacy, second-wave feminism, pornography, prostitution, incest, and violence against women.
Chesler has written several works on subjects such as antisemitism, women in Islam, and honor killings. Chesler argues that many Western intellectuals, including leftists and feminists, have abandoned Western values in the name of multicultural relativism, and that this has led to an alliance with Islamists, an increase in antisemitism, and to the abandonment of Muslim women and religious minorities in Muslim-majority countries.
Personal life Chesler is the eldest of three children raised in a working-class Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York.McGinity, Keren R. "Phyllis Chesler". Encyclopedia Judaica, 2004. She attended Hebrew School from the age of six until she graduated from Marshalliah Hebrew High School, an after-school program for the study of Torah, at 14. As a youth, she was a member of the Socialist-Zionist youth movement HaShomer Hatzair, and later the even more radical left-wing Zionist youth movement Ain Harod. Despite her parents' disapproval, she continued to rebel against her religious upbringing.Fern Sidman, Interview with Dr. Phyllis Chesler , righttruth.typepad.com, July 20, 2007.
She attended New Utrecht High School, where she was the editor of the yearbook and of the literary magazine. She won a full scholarship to Bard College, where she met Ali, a Westernized Muslim man from Afghanistan, the son of devout Muslim parents. They married in a civil ceremony in 1961 in New York State, and visited in Kabul, in the large, polygamous household of her father-in-law. She credits this experience with inspiring her to become an ardent feminist."The ardent feminism that she embraced on her return to America was forged in Afghanistan, she told me last week." Baxter, Sarah. "Feminism's Blind Spot", The Sunday Times, August 15, 2006.Chesler, Phyllis. "How Afghan Captivity Shaped My Feminism" , Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2006, pp. 3–10.
According to Chesler, her problems began on arrival in Afghanistan. Afghan authorities forced her to surrender her U.S. passport, and she ended up a virtual prisoner in her in-laws' house. Chesler describes this as how foreign wives were treated.Chesler, Phyllis. "My Afghan Captivity". This phenomenon has been documented by others.Edward Hunter,The Past Present: A Year in Afghanistan, London, Hodder And Stoughton Limited, 1959.Mahmoody, Betty, with Arnold D. Dunchock, For The Love of a Child, New York, St Martins Paperbacks, 1992.The Death of Feminism; What's Next in the Struggle for Women's Freedom. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 1–235. Print. She reports that the U.S. embassy refused to help her leave the country. After five months, she contracted hepatitis and became gravely ill. At that point, her father-in-law agreed to allow her to return to the U.S. on a temporary visa.Chesler, Phyllis. "How my eyes were opened to the barbarity of Islam", The Sunday Times, March 7, 2007.
Upon her return, she completed her final semester and graduated from Bard College, embarked on a doctoral program, worked in a brain research laboratory for E. Roy John, published studies in Science"Observation Learning in Cats". E.R. John, P. Chesler, I. Victor, P. Bartlett, Science, v. 159, 1489–90, 1968. magazine and received a fellowship in neurophysiology at the New York Medical College at Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital. She later earned a Ph.D. in psychology in 1969 at the New School for Social Research and embarked on a career as a professor, author, and psychotherapist in private practice.Phyllis Chesler Organization Web site, CV page
Chesler obtained an annulment from her first husband and married an Israeli-American, whom she also later divorced. She has one son. She describes their relationship, pregnancy, childbirth, and her first year as a mother in With Child: A Diary of Motherhood. In the 1998 edition, her son wrote the preface to the book.Phyllis Chesler, With Child: A Diary of Motherhood. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1998.
Career
Psychologist In 1969, Chesler cofounded the Association for Women in Psychology.Feminist Foremothers in Women's Studies, Psychology, and Mental Health, Phyllis Chesler, Esther D. Rothblum, Ellen Cole, Haworth Press, 1995, p. 1. In 1972, she published Women and Madness, whose thesis is "that double standards of mental health and illness exist and that women are often punitively labeled as a function of gender, race, class, or sexual preference". The book sold more than 3 million copies worldwide.Phyllis Chesler Organization Web site The book received a front page New York Times review by Adrienne Rich, who described it as "intense, rapid, brilliant, controversial ... a pioneer contribution to the feminization of psychiatric thinking and practice".
Chesler has been consulted by lawyers, psychologists and psychiatrists on diverse subjects including sex between patient and therapist, rape, incest, domestic violence, custody, honor killings, and the mistreatment of women in jails and in psychiatric institutions. For many years she maintained a small psychotherapy practice and in 1997 taught a course in Forensic Psychology at John Jay College. In 1997, she was the sole expert witness in a class action lawsuit in Nebraska on behalf of female psychiatric patients who had been sexually, physically, medically, and psychologically abused.Phyllis Chesler, "No Safe Place", On The Issues, Winter 1998. In 1998, she taught a course in Advanced Psychology and Women's Studies at Brandeis University. From 2008 to 2012, Chesler submitted courtroom affidavits in cases where girls and women have fled being honor killed and applied for asylum in America.
Feminism Chesler is considered a radical feminist and a second wave feminist leader. Chesler believes that men can and should be feminists, and she wrote in her book Letters to a Young Feminist that she envisions her heirs as both women and men.Phyllis Chesler, Letters to a Young Feminist. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1997. Chesler has studied male psychology and published a book on the subject (About Men) which discussed the father-son, mother-son, and brother-brother relationships; the book also tried to understand male conformity, how and why men obeyed the orders of male tyrants, and what kind of men resisted doing so.Phyllis Chesler, About Men. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978.
Chesler taught one of the first Women's Studies classes in the U.S. at Richmond College (which later merged with Staten Island Community College to form the College of Staten Island) in New York City during the 1969–1970 school year. She turned the Women's Studies course into a minor and then a major at the university. With Vivian Gornick, she created an early feminist salon. In 1975, she co-led one of the first feminist Passover seders and continued to do so for 18 years. During her time at Richmond College, she established many services for female students, including self-defense classes, a rape crisis center, and a child care center. She was also a leader in the class action lawsuit against CUNY on behalf of women which took 17 years to be resolved. In 1975, she became one of five cofounders of The National Women's Health Network, with Barbara Seaman, Alice Wolfson, Belita Cowan, and Mary Howell, and is a charter member of the Women's Forum and a founding member of the International Committee for Women of the Wall.
In 1969, Chesler, together with others, co-founded the Association for Women in Psychology. With Dr. Dorothy Riddle, Chesler presented a series of demands at the 1969 annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, demands which an Association for Women in Psychology group had worked on together. Chesler prepared a statement on the APA's obligations to women and demanded one million dollars in reparation for the damage psychology had perpetrated against allegedly mentally ill and traumatized women.Robert Reinhold, "Women Criticize Psychology Unit; $1-Million in Reparations Is Demanded at Convention", The New York Times, September 6, 1970.
In her early work, although Chesler argued for integration, she also stated in 1972 that "feminists" and feminist values must gradually and ultimately dominate public social institutions—in order to insure that they are not used against women",Chesler, Phyllis, Women and Madness (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972 ()), p. 299 (emphasis so in original), and Chesler, Phyllis, Women and Madness (N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, rev'd & updated ed., 1st ed., 2005 ()), p. 347 (similar text). and argued that there has always been "a war between the sexes".Chesler, Phyllis, Women and Madness (1972), op. cit., p. 297.Chesler, Phyllis, Women and Madness (2005), op. cit., p. 345. In 1977, Chesler became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press. Chesler worked for the United Nations (1979–1980) and coordinated an international feminist conference that took place in Oslo, just prior to the 1980 UN conference on women.Feminist Foremothers in Women's Studies, Psychology, and Mental Health, ed. Phyllis Chesler, Esther D. Rothblum, Ellen Cole. Hayworth: New York, 1995. 13.
In 1986, Chesler co-organized a speakout about mothers losing custody of children at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. Nearly 500 custodially embattled mothers and speakers attended, including Ti-Grace Atkinson, E.M. Broner, Paula Caplan, Toi Derricotte, Andrea Dworkin, and Kate Millett. New York State and national legislators and feminist leaders participated.Sharon Johnson, "The Odds on Custody Change", The New York Times, March 17, 1986; Sharon Johnson, "Casualties of Custody Battles", March 24, 1986. Also in 1986, Chesler co-organized a congressional press briefing in Washington, D.C., on mothers and child custody. It was sponsored by then-Representatives Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA). Some of the mothers she interviewed for her 1986 book Mothers on Trial spoke at the briefing.Phyllis Chesler. Mothers on Trial. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2011.
In 1987, Chesler worked with Mary Beth Whitehead's lawyer Harold Cassidy in the landmark Baby M case, in which the New Jersey Supreme Court declared that surrogacy contracts violated New Jersey law. Chesler organized demonstrations outside the courthouse, wrote articles, created an alliance of diverse groups, and ultimately documented this struggle and the issues raised by a surrogacy contract custody battle in Sacred Bond: The Legacy of Baby M.Phyllis Chesler, Sacred Bond. New York: First Vintage Books, 1988. In 1989, Chesler began publishing in On the Issues magazine and also functioned as its Editor-at-Large. She did so for fifteen years until the magazine became an online edition.