Sonia Johnson
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Sonia Johnson (born February 27, 1936) is an American feminist activist and writer, and was an outspoken supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). In the late 1970s she was publicly critical of the position of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church; see also Mormon) against the Equal Rights Amendment and was excommunicated from the church for her activities.
She was born in Malad, Idaho and raised as a fifth-generation Mormon. She attended Utah State University and married Rick Johnson following graduation. Following her marriage she successfully pursued a Master's degree and a Doctor of Education degree from Rutgers College. She was employed as a part-time teacher of the English language in universities both in the United States and abroad for the following decades. The couple changed their residence often, due to the transfer of Rick to new places of employement.
The Johnsons returned to the United States in 1976. Sonia began speaking out in support of the ERA in 1977 and founded an organization, Mormons for ERA. National exposure occurred with her 1978 testimony in front of the United States Senate's Constitutional Rights Subcommittee, and she continued speaking and promoting the ERA and denouncing the LDS Church's political activities against the amendment. After a well-publicized church trial in December 1979, Johnson was excommunicated for allegedly preaching false doctrine, undermining authority of church leaders and hurting the church's missionary effort. [citation needed] Afterwards, she continued promoting the ERA as a speaker at numerous functions throughout the country as well as television talk shows.
She wrote an autobiographical book about her embrace of feminism, titled From Housewife to Heretic (1981). Other, later, books include:
- Telling the Truth (1987)
- Going Out of Our Minds: The Metaphysics of Liberation (1987)
- Wildfire: Igniting the She/Volution (1989)
- The Ship that Sailed Into the Living Room: Sex and Intimacy Reconsidered (1991)
- Out of This World: A Fictionalized True-Life Adventure (1994)
Johnson's excommunication coincided with her divorce from Rick Johnson. They were parents of four but Rick was involved in an affair with another woman and successfully asked for a collaborative divorce. In the United States presidential election, 1984, she became the U.S. Citizens Party and Peace and Freedom Party national candidate for the position of President of the United States. The election was won by incumbent President Ronald Reagan. One of her campaign managers later authored a novel about a first female president, Madame President.
Johnson later became a lesbian and started a relationship with an African American woman. After ending that relationship, she declared in The Ship that Sailed Into the Living Room that even relationships between female couples are a dangerous patriarchal trap, because "two is the ideal number for inequality, for sadism, for the reproduction of patriarchy", and that relationships are "slave Ships" (a concept from which she derived the title of the book). "Nearly four years after I began my rebellion against relation/sex/slave Ships," she wrote, "experience and my Wise Old Woman are telling me that sex as we know it is a patriarchal construct and has no rightful, natural place in our lives, no authentic function or ways. Synonymous with hierarchy/control, sex is engineered as part of the siege against our wholeness and power." She also founded Wildfire, a short-lived separatist commune for women that disbanded in 1993.
[edit] References
- Majorie Hyer, "Mormon Bishop Excommunicates Woman Who Is Supporting ERA," Washington Post, December 6, 1979, p. A1.
| Preceded by: Barry Commoner |
Citizens Party Presidential candidate 1984 (lost) |
Succeeded by: — |
