Discussion Post 6: Skilton and Edgerton-Tarpley

Gendering Natural Disaster: The Battle Over Female Hurricane Names

Liz Skilton

Journal of Women's History, Volume 30, Number 3, Fall 2018, pp. 132-156 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI:

For additional information about this article

[ Access provided at 30 Jul 2020 02:06 GMT from University of California @ Santa Cruz ]

https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2018.0033

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/702626

Gendering Natural Disaster: The Battle Over Female Hurricane Names

Liz Skilton

This article reviews the history of the hurricane naming system between the 1950s and 1970s. Introduced publicly as a female-only naming system in 1954 by the US Weather Bureau, hurricane names and the sexualized descriptions that followed incited outrage from the first year of use. It took twenty-five years of protest, however, to officially change the naming system to the alternating male/female list used today. Through a look at three activists’ stories of protest, in context with other feminist discourse about sexist language in US society, it is possible to see a larger picture of the reaction to feminism in everyday life. Ending with recent discourse on the effects of hurricane names, this article draws conclusions about the historical effects of gendering natural disaster.

In early 1970, a puzzling cease and desist letter landed on the desk of the director of the US National Weather Bureau, Robert Simpson. The letter was from two representatives of the National Organization for Women (NOW), demanding that the bureau abolish its practice of assigning female names to hurricanes. The director of the bureau, scanning the missive, reflected that the feminists’ demand was not so surprising; ever since the female-only naming method had been introduced in 1953, it had proved to be both popular and problematic. The director had already received hun- dreds of letters during his tenure from women expressing either support of or opposition to the naming system. Still, this cease and desist letter, coming two decades into the controversy, was different from previous complaints. Rather than calling for a simple change to the hurricane naming system, the NOW letter called for the outright abolishment of it: “Hurricanes are disasters destroying life and communities,” the letter read, “and leave a lasting and devastating effect on those affected. . . . Women are human beings and deeply resent being arbitrarily associated with disaster.”1 The letter writers further argued that, because the use of only female names for hurricanes “reflects and creates an extremely derogatory attitude toward women,” the bureau should immediately abandon the practice.2

Dated early 1970, the director knew the cease and desist letter was a direct reaction to the previous year of hurricane naming and the descrip- tions of storms that followed. The 1969 season had been a particularly bad year for hurricanes, and the descriptions had reflected the public’s dismay over the hurricanes’ devastating effects. In August, reporters throughout

© 2018 Journal of Women’s History, Vol. 30 No. 3, 132–156.

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the country described how “Camille the Terrible” had “shrieked” “like a woman in labor,” leaving the coastline “like Hiroshima,” with a whop- ping $1.5 billion in damage.3 That same summer mankind conquered the moon while the atomic-strength hurricane “ladies” were wreaking havoc at home.4 The season reached a climax as an experimental government program known as Project Stormfury attempted to “tame” Hurricane Deb- bie, Camille’s “husky,” slow-moving “sister.”5 Watching avidly on home television sets, Hurricane Hunter fighter pilots “penetrated” the eye of the storm and “seeded” “her” with silver iodide crystals.6 As initial reports cheerfully stated that “Debbie seemed to calm down” after the “cold treat- ment,” they were soon replaced by others bemoaning the fact that Debbie remained alive.7 The experiment was eventually deemed a failure by the scientific community, crushing the collective hope of turning a “tropical tiger . . . into a pussycat.”8

As easily spotted in the descriptions of the 1969 hurricanes Camille and Debbie, Americans had for decades systematically described storms like their female namesakes, relying on gendered language to emphasize movement and destruction. This tradition was introduced in 1953 when the US Weather Bureau made history by officially deciding to label storms with female names, thus attributing a gender to the wind.9 The decision altered perceptions of the hurricane, from being genderless to a gendered object. Until this point, nothing about hurricanes had suggested their be- longing to one sex or the other—no biological markers, no sex organs or chromosomes. But gender, unlike sex, is subject to social construction and definition, and by assigning a gendered name or label to a thing, one can associate all manner of gendered attributes with that thing. For this reason, the practice of giving female names to hurricanes could both reflect a wide- spread association of destructive characteristics with the female gender and perpetuate these associations.10

It is in this context that the NOW cease and desist letter emerged. When it arrived at the US Weather Bureau in early 1970, the director knew that the NOW representatives’ arguments were driven by a single force, gather- ing momentum like a terrifyingly inevitable natural disaster: the feminist movement. By driving discussions of “sexism” and “women’s rights” into everyday conversation, feminism was upending social practices, weakening institutions, and overturning policies. The movement had recently gained traction with the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) and the founding of feminist groups like NOW.11 The Weather Bureau direc- tor, reading the cease and desist letter, knew that the bureau must finally address the hurricane-naming issue head on. So the director, hoping the contention could be promptly quelled, invited the primary NOW represen-

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tative, Roxcy O’Neal Bolton, to the Interdepartmental Hurricane Warning Conference so that she could present the case against the female-only naming system.12 Little did Simpson know that the debate over hurricane names and their impact would ultimately span twenty-five years and would figure into monumental shifts in how Americans perceived both women’s roles and the weather. By the end of the twentieth century, these inculcated ideologies of gendered disaster would affect even the hypothetical perception of wind.

What We Call the Wind Matters: A History of Hurricane Naming Ever since the 1950s, the US Weather Bureau—and later the World Me-

teorological Organization—have released lists of the names to be assigned over the coming seasons to hurricanes and such other tropical storms as cyclones and typhoons. These lists reflect a bifurcated sex-based naming system, with an alternation between male and female names that is generally taken for granted today. Yet the current system has not always been in place, and its effectiveness has recently been the subject of considerable debate. For example, a 2014 psychological study became a month-long media spectacle as journalists and TV personalities quarreled over whether female-named storms were more powerful than male-named storms.13

Despite recent attention to the current hurricane-naming system, scholars have not yet analyzed the system’s history in detail, particularly how hurricanes became gendered and what happened after they were. Nearly all hurricane histories do touch briefly on hurricane-naming prac- tices and mention that the system has developed over time, but so far only two historians—Theodore Steinberg and Raymond Arsenault—have considered the cultural impetus for the US Weather Bureau’s introduction of the system in 1953. Steinberg makes one small reference to the system in an endnote, stating that the names were introduced post-WWII and changed in the 1970s.14 Arsenault’s more detailed reference to the system clarifies that it was part of a larger post-World War II shift in the cultural perception of storms, during what he describes as the “Public Storm Period” in US meteorological history.15 As Arsenault explains, the advent of such modern meteorological technology as satellites and favorite nightly news weathermen transformed storms into a cultural commodity, and it was in this context that the hurricane-naming system evolved as a method of track- ing and warning of impending danger. Although Arsenault does attend to the important history of the naming system, he says little about its cultural significance or impact. As this gap persists in the scholarly understanding of American disaster history, each new hurricane season brings fresh confusion over the peculiar history and implications of the naming system. Articles appear asking why hurricanes are named and whether these names create

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stereotypes that harm more than they help.16 We tend to brush the concerns aside, however, as the first storm of the season’s “cone of probability” begins to materialize ominously on a weather map.

To review the history of hurricane naming is to discover that this system has not always purported to be about efficiency and practicality, if it really ever was; rather, the naming system is part of a much larger story about the intersection of twentieth-century meteorological and cultural history. Be it Andrew or Katrina, the names of past hurricanes have an enduring trans-national legacy that impacts our memories of the trauma these storms have wrought, as well as our present perception of oncoming storms. To study a hurricane is to examine a microcosm of society at its moment of greatest stress and dismay, to see cultural trends and assumptions laid bare, like the exposed foundations of a home swept away by gale-force winds.

For scholars, hurricanes provide a unique case study of how gender- based assumptions can color perceptions of even patently sexless natural occurrences. This gendering of nature is far from a new phenomenon; scholarly work shows that nature has been subject to gendering for centu- ries. In the historian Joan Wallach Scott’s seminal discussion of gender as a useful category of analysis, she inaugurated a scholarly effort to unpack underlying gender expression in everyday life, particularly in the field of the history of science and the environment. Leading the eco-feminist charge is Carolyn Merchant, who has described the connection between the environment and gender by tracing the history and usage of the term Mother Nature.17 Merchant argues that the term Mother Nature was used by Europeans to sublimate the uncontrollable forces of nature into a sort of comforting and knowable, if intense, presence. This construction was reinforced during the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution through humans’ increased ability to harness nature and even predict potentially fatal occurrences. As humans gained control of their surroundings through technology, “Mother Nature” became less omnipresent in the everyday but still used as a rationalization for the larger destructive environment existing beyond the bounds of scientific control. From the nineteenth century to the present, according to the historian Virginia Scharff, the concept of “Mother Earth” has continued to express the link between gender and nature.18 As a result, the feminization of nature has created a gendered natural world that extends beyond just referring to nature as a matriarchal figure; the construction encompasses ideas of extinction, scientific rationalization, reproduction, and conservation.19

This article builds on previous scholarship by tracing how gendered views of nature are both expressed in and shaped by the language we use to refer to and describe hurricanes. The practice of naming hurricanes began in a period when nature was already feminized, but storms were not yet

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explicitly or consistently referred to as gendered objects. Through a multi- city statistical analysis of ten thousand newspaper articles published about twenty-eight major hurricanes over fifty years in twelve US cities, I show how, through the attachment of names to storms, they quickly took on the status of gendered objects and were assigned the gendered characteristics assumed at the time to be appropriate.20

This article also provides an excellent illustration of how feminists met resistance in the seemingly banal matters of everyday life. As soon as the female-only naming system was introduced in 1953, women began protest- ing it in letters to the Weather Bureau, editorial comments in newspapers, and appearances on television. This article traces the efforts of three activists who, over the course of twenty-five years, fought publicly to change the hurricane-naming system: Jane Pickens, Roxcy Bolton, and Juanita Kreps. The struggle faced by these three women, the ridicule they experienced, and the results they did or did not achieve illuminate the everyday battles that women fought in the public sphere from the 1950s to the 1980s as they campaigned for gender equality not only in law but also in everyday linguistic expression.

“She Blows”: Jane Pickens and the Cold War Hurricanes Jane Pickens, a famous Georgia singer, was an unlikely lightning rod

for the hurricane-naming debate. She had been accustomed to the spotlight since touring the nation in the 1930s as a member of the “Pickens Sisters” singing group; in the 1940s and 1950s, she had even gone solo and starred on Broadway and television. It was in 1955, while hosting the short-running The Jane Pickens Show on ABC, that she ran afoul by speaking out against the new female-only hurricane-naming system. The system had been in- troduced that year for public use, and Pickens was like many other women in how she experienced it—awed by the rapid adoption and acceptance of female-named storms and corresponding characteristics.21 The first name on the list was Alice, which was popular at the time due to Walt Disney’s recently released Alice in Wonderland film. The media’s excitement over Hur- ricane Alice was palpable but quickly died down as Alice caused regional damage to the Rio Grande Valley. Subsequent storms nevertheless quickly became fascinating subjects of attention as the 1954 season heated up with major storms Carol, Edna, and Hazel. Newspaper reporters and television weathermen described the storms as “sisters” with varied personalities.22 Carol was the petulant “howler,” while “violent twins” Edna and Hazel were more aggressive and “angry.”23 Some storms were characterized as having “raging,” “erratic” behavior, while others were described in more demure terms, such as “dragging her heels” along the coastline.24 With

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each new reference in the media, gendered expletives were added to the lexicon of hurricane discussion. By the end of the 1954 season, references to repeatedly impacted areas were couched in terms of promiscuity, with one storm called a “slut” because “she” could not “make up her mind” and was “flirting” with states that “she” might strike next.25

As gendered obscenities about these phenomena made their way into popular discourse around the country, Jane Pickens’s frustration only grew. The year after the introduction of the new female-only naming system, Pickens, like many others, felt that these stereotypes applied to storms could damage the perception of women in American society, especially considering that every major news outlet from Miami to New England was employing the stereotypes. Calling a storm a “slut” or warning that it was as erratic or destructive as a woman was, Pickens thought, detrimental to the image of women in general. Weathermen jumped to defend the naming system, claiming that when assembling the lists of female names for the year “only two names were picked with real people in mind”: “Orpha” for a girl in one of the Weather Bureau’s offices and “Wallis” for the Duchess of Windsor, who was infamous for her deviant sexual behavior including divorce and extramarital affairs.26 The use of human names, explained Weather Bureau officials, was merely intended to enable the bureau to “avoid confusion” when identifying hurricanes in public broadcasts and warnings—not to level implicit insults against women.27 Batting away “bristling protest,” the officials asserted that there was “no other [storm-naming] system that had the same advantages of brevity, ease of pronunciation and recognition.”28 Systems of the past—including Greek gods, the military, phonetic alpha- bets, and numerals—all led to exhaustible lists and mass confusion, they concluded, while the all-female list provided a plethora of options. While Orpha and Wallis may have been the only female names that bureau officials admitted to consciously choosing for the list based on specific women, the other female names were hardly conjured from thin air; most of the names selected for the 1954 list were popular baby names. Throughout the 1950s, as the number of newspaper articles about hurricanes increased significantly and the storm characterizations in the press grew almost Shakespearean in their level of detail, the bureau basked in the public fascination and quickly announced that they would extend the female-only naming system another year.

Admittedly, not all were in favor of continuing this system. After the 1955 release of the second-annual list of female-only hurricane names, newspaper articles reported a new round of protests. “Well, once again this year a lady is protesting against the tagging of hurricanes with girls’ names,” sighed the editors of the Raleigh News & Observer in August 1955. They proclaimed Jane Pickens to be the leader of the charge, identifying her

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as a “notable” singer from Georgia who had protested to the Weather Bureau that “the association of women’s names with ‘tragedy and havoc created by hurricanes’ is ‘a personification of extremely poor judgment.’” Pickens’s suggestion was that in order to avoid perpetuating misleading stereotypes of women, storms should be designated “A, B, C or 1, 2, 3.” The Raleigh editorial board disagreed with Pickens.29 They dismissed her concerns, stat- ing that while Pickens “had a right to protest” the current naming system, the fact was that “no insult to a whole sex has been intended.” The editors added, “most of us can speak with more real feeling about a wind named after a girl than a letter or number.” They implied that assigning female names to hurricanes enabled the weather officials to more easily identify the hurricanes and predict their behavior. In short, the editors concluded that the Weather Bureau was right to continue to “christen the powerful, capricious things with girls’ names” as a reminder “to never underestimate the power of a woman.”30

In news reports of Pickens’s remarks, reporters always mentioned at least one of three facts: that Pickens was a woman, that she was a singer from Georgia, and that Weather Bureau officials agreed neither with her negative assessment of the hurricane-naming system nor with her claim that an alternative was needed. The journalists’ skepticism implicitly raised the question of what a singer could possibly know about storm naming or weather forecasting. The response to Pickens was similar to the responses to other outspoken women during the 1950s. As the historians Joanne Mey- erowitz and Alice Kessler-Harris have noted, the redefinition of gender roles in the post-World War II era encouraged women to focus on their homes, leaving professional obligations, including the analysis and prediction of weather, to men.31 The redefining of gender roles, or rather the exacerbation of traditional gender roles, significantly affected how divergent women were perceived by society. As the historian Elaine Tyler May has explained, the Cold War and threat of communism left people feeling anxious over any potential expression of abnormality in American life, particularly internal and external forces that affected the domestic sphere. To most Americans, the fact that hurricanes were named after women appeared rational in a sense: atom bombs were a force controlled by man, as opposed to hurricanes, which had an unwieldy analogous allegedly feminine power. At a time when the ideal woman was one who blended into a homogenized suburban America, many perceived Pickens’s protests as unwanted and unwarranted. Her at- tack on the naming system only reinforced assumptions that Pickens herself was abnormal or different from other women, and by extension that any woman who protested the naming system must be abnormal or different. In the end, Pickens’s voice and ideas about hurricane naming soon faded into the background. The following year, the Weather Bureau released lists

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of female-only names for both 1956 and 1957, signifying that the protests of women like Jane Pickens were futile. From this point on, the feminized naming system was widely assumed to be permanent.

Sexism and the Hurricane: The Feminist Movement Picks up Steam From 1955 to the late 1960s, Americans obsessed over hurricanes and,

especially, the newfangled processes meteorologists used to track them. With the introduction of satellite imagery, the glorification of hurricane hunters, and the airing of live footage on home television sets, Americans’ consump- tion of weather news reached previously unimagined levels. Along with this consumption—and amidst a particularly active storm period—came new terminology to describe feminized hurricanes in increasingly dramatic ways. Storms were routinely referred to as women, and even “witches,” who possessed superhuman atomic strength and whose behavior was morally repugnant. New negative phrases associated with storms were not only repeated with the next storm cycle but also attached to retrospec- tive discussions of storms. For example, Hurricane Camille, frequently described derogatorily as “no lady” during its coverage, is still popularly remembered as such today.32

Although women remained skeptical as they watched their name- sakes Hilda, Betsy, and Camille wreak considerable havoc, the system was renewed without discussion year by year. This complacency began to ebb only when feminists reframed the hurricane-rhetoric debate as an issue about sexist perceptions of women. The evolving feminist concern over gendered hurricanes arose from a confluence of three major movements: the civil rights movement, second-wave feminism, and the environmental movement. As the civil rights movement brought attention and eventual policy changes to racial discrimination and segregation in American society, the issue of gender discrimination was also addressed. Amidst displeasure over the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission’s (EEOC) failure to investigate reports of gender-based employment discrimination as dictated under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and motivated by eagerness to change other aspects of gender relations, NOW was formed.33

NOW focused on several key issues that it considered vitally impor- tant to American women during the resurgent feminist movement of the late 1960s and 1970s: professional discrimination; political involvement; redefining concepts of marriage, family, and women’s lives; and the desire to change the increasingly “false image of women” that spread in the me- dia through television shows, advertisements, and general discussions of women.34 Hurricane descriptions, with their increasingly negative portrayals of women, were just one of the many cultural concerns that feminists focused

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on in their new initiative. Coining the term sexism to refer to prejudicial stereotyping based on sex roles, NOW and other feminist groups argued that sexism occurred in everyday life in the form of harassment, discrimi- nation, and linguistic representation. Between 1970 and 1972, nearly every major news outlet in the country devoted some time on the air or in print to discussing issues of sexism.35 Through such coverage, the concept of sexism seeped into public discourse.36 Emboldened by discussions of sexism and linguistic representation, feminists worked to identify and remedy gendered language inequities. An important early example of this came in 1971, with the publication of Ms. magazine and the popularization of the title “Ms.”37 As described in the Washington Post, “the name of the magazine was chosen to indicate [a] new freedom from traditional roles.”38 As co-founder Gloria Steinem explained, this new title did not distinguish women on the basis of marital or age-based status and thus was preferable to “Mrs.” or “Miss,” which reinforced two distinctly homogeneous stereotypes of women.39

Feminists soon promoted other gender-neutral terms in addition to “Ms.” In the poet Robin Morgan’s 1970 work Sisterhood is Powerful, she introduced the concept of “Herstory,” initiating a movement of studying history through the eyes of women.40 Morgan and others argued that history tended to focus on men and left women on the periphery, whereas “herstory” would focus entirely on women’s role in civilization. While Morgan’s term herstory was meant to be both serious and comedic, women-centered presses were created around the concept of herstory, and various academics and newspapers also took up the term.41 Many college campuses began offering courses in women’s studies, and major “Herstory Weeks” were celebrated throughout the country, complete with marches and organized strikes.42

Introduction of the terms Ms. and herstory provoked larger discussions of the gendered lexicons that frame the ways in which men and women engage in the world and not all were supportive of these new terms.43 While some proclaimed the new language terms a “feminist fad” that would fade, others stated decisively that the “Language Lib” was around to stay.44 Because of the various discussions over women and words circulating in popular culture, between 1974 and 1976 scholars increasingly took an inter- est in deploying feminist analysis, invigorating every discipline with books and articles that placed women at the center of their investigations and intro- duced new gender-neutral language. Most noticeable was the editors Casey Miller and Kate Swift’s Words and Women that proclaimed that “chairman” could become “chairperson” or even “chair” without inciting linguistic or cultural chaos.45 Following this discourse, changing trends were gradually reflected in revisions of textbooks, library catalogues, dictionary entries, official documents, and newspapers’ rules of style. While a discussion of lexicographical gender use was gaining traction, NOW disagreed about

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which issues on their agenda they should prioritize while the media began to depict feminists as one-dimensional, irrational extremists.46 In various mediums, from late-night television show jokes to anti-Equal Rights Amend- ment campaign posters, feminists were portrayed as demonic, self-centered man haters who threatened the social order. Despite the negative backlash, feminists created a “moral climate for reform” through varied forums of discourse that seeped into nearly every aspect of American society.47

While the resurgent feminist movement, which focused on social justice issues, picked up steam, the modern environmental movement also took root. Arising from similar ideas about social impact and society that caused a resurgence of the feminist movement, the environmental movement focused on changes in the environment and particularly brought attention to the relationship between humans and their environments, especially during disasters like hurricanes. With these three confluent movements, focus soon shifted yet again to the descriptions of hurricanes.

Roxcy O’Neal Bolton: Hurricanes, Himicanes, and the Women’s Lib Storm

It was Roxcy O’Neal Bolton who, in 1970, had issued the aforemen- tioned cease and desist letter to the National Weather Bureau regarding female-only hurricane names. A Southern-bred feminist from hurricane- prone Mississippi and Florida, as well as the national vice president of the feminist organization NOW, Bolton took up the case against sexist hurricane names with great zeal, decrying the way in which women were subtly—or not so subtly—vilified through storm descriptions.48 Bolton knew from the start that changing the hurricane-naming system would be an uphill battle; the press was daily printing contemptuous reactions to feminist calls for change in American society, and hurricanes were a favorite subject of discussion that had not been addressed in some time. Bolton’s protest ultimately took place on two fronts: first against the US Weather Bureau officials whom she met in person to critique the system and suggest alter- native naming solutions and, second, to the media, who in their reportage framed everything she said before the US Weather Bureau as yet another example of radical feminism in action. On both fronts, Bolton faced extreme backlash but held firmly to the claim that the naming system “reflects and creates an extremely derogatory attitude toward women”—an attitude that was, she argued, detrimental to women everywhere.

After reviewing her 1970 cease and desist letter, the director of the National Weather Bureau invited Bolton to represent NOW at the 1971 Interdepartmental Hurricane Warning Conference.49 There Bolton submit- ted the hurricane-naming system cessation demand to a panel comprised

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entirely of men.50 The system was “humiliating and degrading” to women in general, she told the panel, but especially to “women whose names are identical with the names of those hurricanes.” In fact, she argued, “the ma- jority of American women would be happier to have a woman named to a top job in the Commerce Department rather than to some hurricanes.”51 The panel then asked Bolton to provide a different naming system. Suggesting offhandedly that hurricanes be named after birds instead of women, she was immediately shot down with the retort that “the Audubon Society would object.” Disgusted, she responded to the weathermen, “You’re concerned about the Audubon Society and regard for birds—but not for women?”52 Despite Bolton’s vigorous debate, the discussion was tabled until the follow- ing year. The Weather Bureau’s Steering Committee Chair Karl Johannessen, responding officially to Bolton’s comments, later issued Bolton a statement commending her “calm manner of presentation.” While the committee members were “sympathetic” to her concerns, he wrote, they believed that “the majority of women do not hold Mrs. Bolton’s views on the naming of hurricanes.” Because no “suitable alternative methods” were proposed, the Weather Bureau voted to retain the current system.53

Bolton was, unsurprisingly, undeterred in her quest to change the bureau’s hurricane-naming policy. Appealing immediately to the Weather Bureau, she proposed that hurricanes be named after US senators starting in alphabetical order “or in some method whereby all Senators would have a Hurricane named for them during their 6-year term.” By way of explanation, she noted that senators “delight in having streets, bridges, buildings—es- pecially Federal buildings—named for them.” So why not hurricanes?54 As she awaited National Weather Bureau Director Robert Simpson’s response to her proposal to use US senators’ names, she was invited to attend the 1972 meeting of the Interdepartmental Hurricane Warning Conference. The director let her know that while he did find her suggestion to be a “most interesting innovation,” he thought it might be “fraught with more politi- cal consequences than is implied by [the] conclusion that all Senators enjoy having things named for them.”55 After presenting her case to the confer- ence, Bolton was denied her request because she again failed to provide a sufficient alternative to the naming system. Explaining that the usage of senators’ names “clearly involves political considerations and individual personalities,” the weathermen argued that “Senators are not uniformly distributed alphabetically” and therefore were an unsuitable option. As a result, the issue was again tabled until the next year, to give Bolton more time to devise a suitable alternative.56

In 1973, Bolton made her third appearance before the Interdepartmental Hurricane Warning Conference. The meeting minutes from the conference, less than one paragraph long, indicate that she appeared for the third year

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in a row without “substantiating evidence nor acceptable alternative pro- posals.”57 The delegation thus decided that the issue of hurricane naming would be tabled once and for all, marking the end of an era. Despite Bolton’s suggestions of changing the names entirely or, later, adding new names to the mix (including senators and wildlife), the delegation was exhausted by the continued debate and expressed the feeling that it was unproductive to review suggestions that had already been denied. The issue of changing the hurricane-naming procedure would not be approached again by the National Weather Bureau until 1978.

While dialogue between Bolton and the representatives at the Weather Bureau occurred in person over a multi-year period, a larger debate over female-named hurricanes and other sex-specific labeling processes took place in text as articles appeared describing Bolton’s quest to change the names, encouraging public discussion through opinion sections and political cartoons and in interview commentary. This debate, both behind the scenes and in the press, clearly illustrates how the American media influenced the perception of feminist causes in American consciousness.

Following Bolton’s first appearance at the Interdepartmental Hurricane Warning Conference in 1971, newspaper articles throughout the country applauded the Weather Bureau’s decision to keep the current system of hurricane naming. “By maintaining the tradition,” declared US Meteoro- logical Director George Cressman, weathermen were simply continuing “a part of American heritage.” Getting rid of the system of names that “had a personality” would be detrimental to the public, he concluded.58 In an article reviewing the decision, the New Orleans’ Times-Picayune agreed, “Betty sounds more powerful than Bob.” In fact, they argued, female names “carry a fundamental message to mankind: ‘Ignore us at your peril’”— which was exactly the effect the Weather Bureau was trying to achieve.59 In another defense of the old system, a weatherman in a 1971 Irish Times interview stated that in fighting to keep naming hurricanes after females, “We intend no slur on women.” The Los Angeles Times went so far as to as- sert that women should see it as an honor to have hurricanes named after them. Why else, they asked, would the Weather Bureau receive ten letters from women requesting their name be added to the annual list, to every one protesting the system?60

While national media quickly reprinted key statistics and quotes from Cressman and others in 1971, few mentioned Roxcy Bolton by name. Weather Bureau officials were meanwhile always identified by their proper titles and names. Headlines proclaimed that the only people complaining about the naming process were those affiliated with “women’s liberation groups.” The unacknowledged Bolton is missing from the headlines, sig- naling a lack of care for the naming discussion and exemplifying the ways

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in which feminist activities throughout the country were lumped together as an indistinct conglomerate that was deemed to be of “little relevance.”61 Political cartoons and editorial articles instead mocked feminists outright. When Bolton was mentioned by name, it was often with the formal appel- lation “Mrs. Bolton” and the appositive “feminist,” pointing out her marital status and identification as a feminist at a time when the popular feminist stereotype was of an unmarried woman.

A year later, in 1972, Bolton did make national headlines when she ap- peared for the second time at the Interdepartmental Hurricane Warning’s annual conference. In stark contrast to the reportage on Bolton’s appear- ance at the previous conference, the 1972 newspaper articles not only listed Bolton’s name but also included a photo. This image captured Bolton at the conference, standing with an unknown “weather service official” who was later identified as National Weather Bureau Director Robert Simpson.62 The image that showcased Bolton and Simpson in front of a map covered with female hurricane names is a prime example of the popular characteriza- tion of feminist activists as radical. The day after the picture was released, Simpson’s expression became the focus of dozens of newspaper articles. As described, the image summed up the shock and frustration that weather- men and reporters felt in response to Bolton’s ideas. The fact that Director Simpson is not mentioned in either the caption or the article is peculiar. Omitting Simpson’s name and his central role as weather bureau director gives the impression that Bolton is just a raging ideologue directing her anger at whatever weather official happens to be standing in front of her, rather than a reasonable petitioner explaining her concern to a key deci- sion maker.63 This sentiment is also reflected in the tagline, which refers to Bolton as “Ms. Roxcy Bolton.” This reflects a shift from the previous year’s feminist symbolization. The idyllic housewife, Mrs. Bolton, had been turned overnight into a bossy feminist with one word—“Ms.” Director Simpson would later issue an apology to Bolton, sending her a copy of the picture as well as an article from an Alaskan newspaper that had printed it. Simpson explained that, to his knowledge, no one from the Weather Bureau had released the picture to the press.64 While the bureau chief’s apology was sincere, the damage had been done to Bolton’s reputation as soon as media outlets across the country ran the photo alongside articles skewering her statements.

In addition to the increasingly unflattering visual representations of Bolton, the descriptions of her in print also soured. Gone were the respect- ful descriptions of Bolton’s commendably “calm manner,” and in its place were images of a woman giving a “warning.”65 As the articles would have it, Bolton was “bellicose,” “demanded action,” and attacked the weathermen as though she were a storm herself, forcing the poor men to “batten their

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hatches” by pummeling them with such suggestions as hurricanes should be made more egalitarian by being renamed “himmicanes.”66 Reporters and weathermen across the country, presenting this version of events, pro- claimed that Bolton had gone too far. Just because hurricane sounds like “her-icane,” they protested, did not mean that the word should be changed. Not only that; Bolton’s request was cast as another example of the so-called “Women’s Lib Storm” that was brewing throughout the country.67 While wreaking a different type of havoc, this feminist political storm seemed to confirm why “everyone knows a hurricane is a feminine phenomenon.”68 In the case of Roxcy Bolton, reporters fell back on humor as a mechanism of cultural negation in order to belittle Bolton and her suggestion of altering the hurricane-naming system. On a larger scale, they compared feminist actions in general with negative storm-like behaviors, thus repudiating the feminist movement as a whole. Such dualistic references to the “Women’s Lib Storm” continued long after the Bolton debate.

The fact that the “himicane” debate would inspire resistance is not surprising, as it was part of larger rhetorical shifts taking place in the cultural environment. It would in fact lead to further discussion of words and women resulting in the addition of such terms as chairperson and chair to the lexicon.69 What is surprising, however, is how much this hurricane/ himicane debate appears in discussions of naming practices. While Bolton had off-handedly remarked at the 1972 conference that the word hurricane did sound like “her-icane” and could be altered to “himicane” to be equal, her comment was only made as an aside; it was never meant to be taken as a serious proposition. There is similarly no evidence that the comment, when it was made, was received by the bureau as anything more than an aside. Nowhere in Bolton’s correspondence, future conversations with the committee, or supplementary addresses is the “himicane” discussion brought up again. When placed in context, this argument, like many oth- ers at the time, can be seen as addressing the major changes taking place regarding gendered titles, pronouns, and suffixes. The response to the offhand comment was defensive, disproportionate, and indicative of other cherry-picked inflammatory remarks made by feminists that the media extensively focused on.

The hurricane/himicane debate did serve its purpose, however; it drew attention away from the larger issue of hurricane names, rendering the debate as just another example of US feminist protest against “trivial” issues. In 1973, after the Weather Bureau decided to suspend discussion of whether to change the hurricane-naming process, journalists throughout the country quickly proclaimed that weathermen had “won” this round against the feminists. Feminists involved in the hurricane-naming protest sensed the fight would be a protracted battle and thus withdrew their energies to

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focus on larger concerns. It would take major pressure from a governmental figure, further evolution in American culture, and cooperation from newly formed world meteorological organizations to bring the issue of hurricane naming to the forefront again.

Juanita Kreps Steps In: “Weathermen Bow Down to a Different Storm”

In January 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Dr. Juanita M. Kreps as the first woman US Secretary of Commerce. As one of an unprecedented number of women appointed to governmental positions by Carter, Kreps, the fourth woman in US history to hold a cabinet position, was well aware of the significance of the timing of her tenure in the scheme of other cultural changes. As the first female director of the New York Stock Exchange, Kreps knew how to assert her authority in a male-dominated business world. By the time she was appointed to the cabinet position, Kreps was extremely conscious of her roles as both a feminist and an educated woman. In in- terviews later in life, Kreps openly stated that she had “always considered [her]self a feminist and [thought her] actions would bear that.” Similarly, she claimed that at the time of her appointment, there “was an important exchange . . . on the question of qualified women,” in terms of seeking them out and understanding their potential roles in shifting workplace settings.70 Kreps knew that her decisions would be judged under this light—whether she was qualified to make them, whether she was simply a “token” female in a position of power, or whether her actions would be perceived as an extension of radical feminist activities. While the “Commerce [position] was perhaps the most unglamorous, thankless job in the cabinet” due to its strenuous micromanagement requirements and wide variety of service and public work projects listed under it, it did have one significant organiza- tion under its oversight.71 Commerce included regulation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Weather Service (NWS).

As an advocate for women, Kreps’s attention immediately turned to the hurricane-naming debate. The debate had stagnated in 1973 but had regained attention in 1975 when Australia decided to introduce a rotating male-female naming system for its tropical cyclones and other storms. Australia, one of the last countries in the World Meteorological Organiza- tion (WMO) to adopt the naming system in 1963, proclaimed the decision to alter the naming system to a male-female list as part of a recognition of the United Nations’ International Women’s Year. The decision, however, was not heralded by reporters as a grand feminist achievement. In fact, as the Oakland Tribune reported, Australian feminists were reportedly uncon-

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cerned with the name change, which they described as “only a gesture” because it “didn’t really advance the cause of women.”72 This negation of a national-level policy shift was, according to the historian Leila Rupp, typical of the minimization of feminist gains throughout the world.73 The oft-repeated statement that this change meant little to US and Australian feminists again confirmed that the hurricane-naming system was a debate of the past. Juanita Kreps, however, read the situation differently.74

In 1977, the newly appointed Kreps, aware of past attempts to alter the naming system, took a page out of the Australian science minister’s book and informed Dr. Bob White, administrator for the NOAA, that the agency would adopt an alternating male-female hurricane naming system the very next year. As the secretary of commerce, Kreps had the authority to issue this direct order. Dr. White, stunned, informed National Hurricane Center Director Neil Frank of the dramatic policy change, leaving Frank with a significant dilemma to sort through.75 According to Frank, this was a problem because the United States had just ceded control of the naming system to the broader World Meteorological Organization; any changes to storm-naming lists now had to be approved by designated regional com- mittees after an extensive discussion and voting process.

Following Kreps’s order to change the names no matter what, Frank appeared in front of the regional committee to sway votes for an altered international naming system. While the WMO agreed that it would be too difficult to change the naming system for the current 1978 season, it was proposed that the now-global system could change in 1979.76 But Kreps was not content with this progress and insisted that the change be made im- mediately for the coming year’s hurricane names. To appease Kreps, NWS worked out a deal with Mexico to change the naming system for the Eastern Pacific Ocean region, or for any storm that might hit the Pacific side of the United States during the interim year. In exchange, Mexican-influenced names, including Fico, were added to the 1978 Pacific Coast naming list.77

On May 12, 1978, the NOAA, overseeing the NWS, announced that eastern Pacific hurricanes of the 1978 season would not be named solely after women. They would instead alternate female and male names, starting with Bud.78 If all went well, all lists would include male names in the future. Reaction to the name change decision was mixed in the United States. Some media playfully introduced the male-named hurricane as if introducing a birth announcement. “Meet the Himicane: Liberated Wind that Still Does No Good” read a front page article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune with an attached editorial cartoon. The cartoon showed a gynecologist exclaim- ing to a female hurricane that she “had a son,” or a male hurricane—a once-outlandish suggestion. The caption on the cartoon more accurately captured the dismay of reporters and weathermen throughout the country: “Feminists Prevail: Storms Now Him and Her.”79

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While the NOAA’s official reaction to the decision was supportive, it was decidedly brief. “There’s been some pressure in the United States, no question about it,” Director Frank explained in a press release; however, “we at the NOAA decided that in this day and age it was the sensible thing to do to name some hurricanes after men.”80 Editorial opinions reflected much less confidence in the change. “We guess that it was good news” finding out that hurricanes would no longer be solely named after women, stated the Los Angeles Times, “but we are not too sure.” They complained that they did not like the old system or the new and that “there has to be a better solution.” They asked, “Why not name hurricanes numerically [or] after things?”81

Judgment of the decision continued in the “Headliners” section of the New York Times, which included a picture of Director Frank with the tag- line “Goodbye to Chauvinism.” As described sarcastically in the opening sentence of the article, “hell hath no fury like a woman stormed.” The final line quipped that the change surely had “nothing to do with the fact [that Frank’s] boss, Secretary of Commerce Juanita M. Kreps, is a woman.”82 The quip was true; the facts all point to the conclusion that this decision was anything but a random action. It was directly influenced by Kreps.

While the national media mercilessly teased weathermen for losing to feminists, they also roundly castigated Secretary Kreps—in explicitly gendered terms—for her role in changing the naming process. They likened Kreps’s decision to a “storm” of “fury” that had no contextual basis or justi- fication. In this manner, reporters and weathermen again compared storms to feminist activity. And the historical record shows that Kreps was indeed reacting to a series of changes occurring on a broader scale in the United States. By 1978, feminists had ushered in sweeping reforms in American law, public policy, and social consciousness. This included victories in the Supreme Court for women’s equality, inclusion in the US military, and even the placement of key women, like Kreps herself, in once male-dominated professions.

As with other gender equality changes of the 1970s, there was no discus- sion of a return to the all-female naming system; reporters agreed that the new male-female naming system was here to stay. In late 1978, representa- tives of the NOAA “went to the international community” of twenty-one Atlantic Ocean hurricane-affected countries requesting to change the global hurricane-naming system. Upon the completion of a trial equal-naming season, in 1979, the WMO introduced a standardized system of alternating male-female hurricane names globally.83

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Conclusion: The Problem with Gendered Disaster Events pieced together through archival documents, correspondence,

and newspaper articles paint a vivid picture of how gender-based rheto- ric changed over a twenty-five-year period in American cultural history. Reflecting upon the arguments that women, reporters, and weathermen made about hurricanes during this period, it is easy to see how the hurri- cane-naming controversy figured into larger concerns within the feminist movement. The most important conclusion to be drawn from this hurricane history lies in its depiction of feminist protest on an everyday and seem- ingly mundane level. Within the larger context of complicated debates over workplace sexism, abortion, and sexual freedom at all levels of US society, the hurricane-naming debate becomes an illustrative example of how ferociously feminists were forestalled as they struggled to accomplish even relatively small changes. Hurricane descriptions became a tool used to negate feminist beliefs, separate ideas of the movement, and conquer its leaders, creating lasting impressions of storms and the movement as inseparable feminine objects. Given the protracted hurricane-naming de- bate, it is a wonder that any change was enacted at all, yet the length of the struggle also makes the feminists’ ultimate (qualified) success all the more significant. While the naming debate is critical for understanding the femi- nist movement and the reactions to it in the twentieth century, the length of that debate speaks to the volumes of pushback and negativity met by any attempt—especially legislative—to redefine sex or sexuality in America.

Jane Pickens, Roxcy O’Neal Bolton, and Juanita Kreps encapsulate key moments in America’s gender history. In the 1950s, Pickens’s voice was largely ignored, her comments dismissed as those of a housewife or entertainer who had little experience in matters of scientific importance. She was even portrayed as a deviant exemplar of the undesirably outspoken Cold War-era woman. Later, in 1970, when Bolton first approached the US Weather Bureau as a representative of NOW, momentum from the femi- nist and environmental movements was just beginning to build. Bolton’s invitation to appear at the Interdepartmental Hurricane Warning Confer- ence was a sign of the era’s cultural shifts. As Bolton continued to appear at conferences in 1971, 1972, and 1973, attention to the issue of sexism and the relationship between gender and the environment continued to increase in American culture more broadly; however, sympathy for the cause had not increased enough to force change. By the time Carter appointed Kreps as secretary of commerce in 1977, the US feminist movement was enjoying a moment of triumph, with broad and sweeping changes taking place in government. Just as feminism had helped Kreps to achieve her powerful position, Kreps in turn used her position to help the cause of feminism,

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enacting critical change in various areas including the hurricane-naming system. Had Kreps been voicing her concern from a less powerful place, as Bolton and Pickens had before her, it is unlikely the female-only hurricane- naming system would ever have been dismantled.

Today, the consumption of information about hurricanes and the con- structing of narratives surrounding them have increased with the develop- ment of twenty-four-hour news cycles and specified weather programming. Hurricanes still make headlines, and they are still personified through gendered names and descriptions. Since 1979, however, the alternating use of male names has made it possible to also apply male stereotypes, some derogatory, to the storms. Popular descriptions of male-named storms evoke controlling behavior and machismo; these storms are more likely to be termed “hurricanes of the century” and are attributed greater strength than female-named storms. Epithets for male storms include “monster,” “terror- ist,” and “killer.”84 Yet female-named storms are arguably no less associated with sexual deviance than they were in the days of the female-only naming system. Both Hurricane Katrina and “Superstorm” Sandy—devastating and costly storms—have frequently been characterized as “bitches.”85 As such insults reveal, changing the naming system to reflect both male and female names has done little to stop the attachment of malicious sexist slurs to sexless objects.

More troubling still, there is evidence to suggest that the alternating male-female naming system has undermined weather officials’ goal of effectively warning populations of impending disaster. A recent study by the psychologists Kiju Jung and Sharon Shavitt, et al. showed that since the introduction of the equal-gender naming system, individuals have reacted with less seriousness to female-named hurricanes than to male-named ones, choosing to evacuate dangerous areas at lower rates for a storm named “Betsy” than for a storm named “Bob.”86 Even accounting for biases and variations in this hypothetical study, Jung and Shavitt, et al.’s findings are clear: highly significant differences are found in the perception of natural phenomenon based on the gendered attributes that are assigned to those phenomena. The disturbing result has been historically higher death rates for female-named storms than for male-named storms.87

The gendering of hurricanes, in a culture that is already plagued with gender-based pressures, has had disastrous implications. If the twenty-five- year-long collective struggle of Pickens, Bolton, and Kreps is any guide, fu- ture attempts to alter the hurricane-naming system will not succeed without first withstanding many years of failed attempts and dismissive ridicule. The time is nevertheless ripe for a renewed discussion of the problems in- herent in Americans’ habit of gendering natural objects. As we continue to

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name destructive events like hurricanes, winter storms, and other cyclonic forces, we effectively affix adverse stereotypical human characteristics to them, thus perpetuating damaging stereotypes and misconceptions that affect not only us but future generations exposed to these beliefs.

Notes

This article is dedicated to Roxcy O’Neal Bolton—the inspiration for this work—whose spirit and legacy live on through its text. May she be remembered for more than just her words about wind. The author wishes to acknowledge Karissa Haugeberg, Rachel Devlin, Mary Farmer-Kaiser, Margy Thomas, the editors at the Journal of Women’s History, and the anonymous reviewers for their generous advice in preparation of this work.

1Roxcy O’Neal Bolton to Director of Hurricane Center, n.d., M94-001: Hur- ricanes, Roxcy O’Neal Bolton Papers, State Library and Archives of Florida, Tal- lahassee, FL (hereafter ROBP).

2Ibid. 3“Camille the Terrible” in “Camille the Terrible Zeroes in on Florida,” Hous-

ton Chronicle, August 17, 1969, 1, 19; “shrieked” in “12-Foot Water Rise at Biloxi,” Mobile Register, August 18, 1969, 1, 6; “like a woman in labor” in “Great Hurricane Reaps Destruction in Vacation Area,” Mobile Register, August 19, 1969, 1, 6; and “like Hiroshima” in “200,000 Without Homes,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, August 19, 1969, 1A, 8A.

4“Ladies” in “Hurricane Camille Leaves Trail of Destruction on Mississippi Coast,” Mobile Register, August 19, 1969, 1C.

5“Tame” in “Will Debbie Freeze to Death?” Raleigh News & Observer, August 19, 1969, 1; “husky Hurricane Debbie” in “Hurricane Seeders May Tackle Fierce Debbie Today,” Miami Herald, August 18, 1969, 22A; and “sister” in “Storm Fighters Ready Again: Prepared for Another Attack on Debbie,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 20, 1969, 3.

6“Penetrated” in “Storm Fighters Ready Again: Prepared for Another Attack on Debbie,” New Orleans Times-Picayune; “seeded” in “Seeding Starts Today,” New York Times, August 18, 1969, 22; and “her” in “Sister Storm Being Seeded,” Baltimore Sun, August 19, 1969, A1.

7Ibid. 8Steven Bechtel, Roar of the Heavens (New York: Citadel Press Books, 2006), viii. 9“Why Gales are Gals: Hurricane Namers (Male) Prove It’s to Avoid Confu-

sion,” New York Times, September 26, 1954, SM57. 10While this process of naming storms after women was American influenced,

it had evolved over time to become a global system.

Journal of Women’s History152 Fall

11Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963 repr., New York: W. W. Norton, 1997).

12Bolton to Director of Hurricane Center. 13Kiju Jung, Sharon Shavitt, Madhu Viswanathan, and Joseph M. Hilbe, “Fe-

male Hurricanes are Deadlier than Male Hurricanes,” Psychological and Cognitive Sciences Journal, PNAS Early Edition (May 2014): 1–6

14Theodore Steinberg, Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 67–68.

15Raymond Arsenault, “The Public Storm: Hurricanes and the State in Twenti- eth Century America,” in American Public Life and the Historical Imagination, ed. Wendy Gamber, Michael Grossberg, and Hendrik Hartog (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 274–75.

16A Google search done on September 3, 2015, for the phrase “Why Are Hur- ricanes Named?” produced over twenty million results.

17Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1989).

18Virginia Scharff, Seeing Nature Through Gender (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005).

19For the development of eco-feminist scholarship, see Audra Mitchell’s latest blog post on “Gendering Extinction,” Worldly, August 3, 2015, https://worldlyir. wordpress.com/2015/08/03/gendering-extinction; and Emily Martin’s work, “The Egg & the Sperm,” Journal of Women in Culture and Society 16, no. 3 (1991): 485–501.

20This work is based on a comprehensive historical linguistics study of hur- ricanes affecting the following cities: Atlanta, Baltimore, Biloxi, Charleston, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Mobile, New Orleans, New York City, Raleigh, and Richmond. The text of selected articles was mined for references to gender attachment and gendered descriptors. The cities were selected due to their location (including states bordering the Gulf, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans), role in hurricane-naming discourse, or national distribution.

21The system had been tested internally by the Weather Bureau the year before and mimicked a US military code used in the Pacific theater during WWII. “She Blows,” Raleigh News & Observer, August 16, 1955, 4.

22“Sisters” in the front page image caption, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 11, 1954, 1.

23“Howler” in “Hurricane Carol Hits Coast, Fades,” Atlanta Journal-Consti- tution, August 30, 1954, 1; “violent twins” in “Hurricane Grazes Northeast, Hits Tip of Nova Scotia,” Baltimore Sun, September 12, 1954, 1; and “angry woman” in “Hurricane Misses Charleston, Steers For New England Coast,” Charleston News & Courier, September 10, 1954, 1A, 2A.

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24“Raging” in “We Waited in Darkness while Donna Raged,” Raleigh News & Observer, September 13, 1960; “erratic” in “Storm Threat to Land Ends; Curves North,” Mobile Register, September 9, 1954, 1, 4; and “drag heels” in “Hurricane Dolly off North Carolina,” Miami Herald, September 2, 1954, 1A.

25“New York, New England Preparing for Hurricane,” Raleigh News & Ob- server, September 11, 1954, 1–2.

26“Orpha and Wallis,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, October 13, 1954. 27“Why Gales are Gals,” New York Times. 28“26 Females in the Wind: Weatherman Picks New Set of Names for This

Year’s Lady Hurricanes,” Washington Post, February 15, 1955. 29“She Blows,” Raleigh News & Observer. 30Ibid. 31Joanne Meyerowitz, Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America,

1945–1960 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994); and Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States, 20th Century Edi- tion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

32“Jim Davidson, Camille…She Was No Lady, Post-Storm Gulf-Coast Fundrais- ing Benefit Booklet (Batesville, AK: Dav-Mac Publishing, 1969).

33In addition to her other feminist activities, Betty Friedan is best known for her book, The Feminine Mystique (1963).

34Nancy Woloch, Women and the American Experience, 5th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011), 364–66.

35Ibid. 36Ethel Klein, Gender Politics: From Consciousness to Mass Politics (Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1985). 37“Liberated Ladies to Have Their Own Magazine,” Chicago Tribune, October

28, 1971. 38“Ms. Steinem’s ‘Ms.,’” Washington Post, October 28, 1971. 39“A ‘Populist’ Magazine for Women: Ms.,” Washington Post, December 12,

1971. 40Robin Morgan, Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the

Women’s Liberation Movement (New York: Random House, 1970). 41For examples of resulting “Herstory” texts, see June Sochen, Herstory: A

Woman’s View of American History (New York: Alfred Publishing Co., 1974); and Ruth Ashby and Deborah Gore Ohrn, Herstory: Women Who Changed the World (New York: Viking, 1995).

Journal of Women’s History154 Fall

42“College Campuses to Offer Range of ‘Herstory’ Courses,” Los Angeles Times, September 14, 1970; “Women’s Suffrage: Celebrating ‘Herstory’ Week,” Chicago Tribune, August 19, 1972; and “Coming Wednesday: A Herstory-Making Event,” New York Times, August 23, 1970.

43“Can Feminists Upstage Miss America?” New York Times, September 8, 1974. 44“Feminist Fad,” Times of India, November 23, 1975; and “‘Language Lib,’”

Chicago Tribune, September 15, 1970. 45Casey Miller and Kate Swift, Words and Women (New York: Doubleday &

Company, Inc., 1976), 136, 138. 46Alice Echols, Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975 (Min-

neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989). 47Woloch, Women and the American Experience, 374. 48“Roxcy Bolton, Pioneer Feminist,” Roxcy O’Neal Bolton Collection,

Florida Memory Project Online, https://womeninfloridahistory.wordpress. com/2012/03/28/roxcy-bolton-pioneer-feminist/.

49Roxcy Bolton to Director of Hurricane Center, ROBP. 50Interdepartmental Hurricane Warning Conference, Report of the 1971 In-

terdepartmental Hurricane Warning Conference, Coral Gables, Fla., January 13–14, 1971 (National Hurricane Center, 1971), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association Regional Library, Miami, FL.

51Roxcy Bolton, Speech before Interdepartmental Hurricane Warning Confer- ence, 13 January 1971, ROBP.

52Roxcy Bolton to Dr. R. H. Simpson, 1 January 1972, ROBP. 53Karl Johannessen to Roxcy Bolton, 9 February 1971; and Roxcy Bolton to

Dr. R. H. Simpson, 17 January 1971, ROBP. 54Roxcy Bolton to Dr. R. H. Simpson, 1 January 1972, ROBP. 55Robert H. Simpson to Roxcy Bolton, 17 January 1971, ROBP. 56Dr. R. H. Simpson to Roxcy Bolton, 26 January 1972, ROBP. 57Interdepartmental Hurricane Warning Conference, Report of the 1973 In-

terdepartmental Hurricane Warning Conference, Coral Gables, Fla., January 24–25, 1973 (National Hurricane Center, 1973), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association Regional Library, Miami, FL.

58“Hurricanes—No Slur on Women,” Irish Times, May 27, 1971. 59Bill Neikirk, “Hurricane Naming after Women to be Continued,” New Or-

leans Times-Picayune, May 27, 1971.

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60R. H. Simpson to Roxcy Bolton, 25 March 1970, ROBP. 61Dick West, “Sexually Balanced Language,” New York Journal and Guide,

February 12, 1972. 62“Female of Species Not More Deadly?” Los Angeles Times, January 21, 1972. 63Dr. R. H. Simpson to Roxcy Bolton, 1 February 1972, ROBP. 64Ibid. 65Karl Johannessen to Roxcy Bolton, 9 February 1971; and Roxcy Bolton to

Dr. R. H. Simpson, 17 January 1971, ROBP. 66Art Buchwald, “Women and Hurricanes: a Natural Relationship,” Los An-

geles Times, April 30, 1972: L3. 67“Hurricanes—No Slur on Women,” Irish Times. 68Art Buchwald, “Stormy Women,” Washington Post, April 27, 1972. 69Miller and Swith, 136, 138. 70“Interview with Juanita Kreps,” interview by Lynn Haessly, January 17, 1986,

Interview C-0011, Southern Oral History Program Collection, #4007, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

71“Juanita M. Kreps, Commerce Secretary, Dies at 89,” New York Times, July 8, 2010.

72“Hurricane Names Turn Bisexual,” Oakland Tribune, February 25, 1975. 73Leila Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Feminist Move-

ment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). 74Eleanor Clift and Tom Brazaitis, Madam President: Shattering the Last Glass

Ceiling (New York: Scribner, 2000), 107. 75Neil Frank email correspondence with Neal Dorst of the NOAA/AOML/

Hurricane Research Division regarding hurricane naming tradition, as passed on to the author, August 21, 2012.

76Neil Frank, telephone interview by Neal Dorst, August 20, 2012, as cited in email correspondence with Neal Dorst and author, August 21, 2012.

77“Hurricane Bob? Stormy Feminists Sink Tradition of Feminine Storms,” Wilmington Morning News, May 13, 1978.

78“Weathermen Blown Over; Hurricanes to be Unisex,” Los Angeles Times, May 13, 1978.

79“Feminists Prevail,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, May 13, 1978; and “Hur- ricanes to become Himmicanes in 1979,” Mobile Register, May 13, 1978.

Journal of Women’s History156 Fall

80“Hurricane Watchers Now Prepare for . . . Bud, Hector, Sergio,” Washington Post, May 13, 1978; and “Another Sexist Bastion Falls: Hurricanes Renamed,” New York Times, May 13, 1978.

81“What’s in a Number?” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1978. 82“Goodbye to Chauvinism” in “Headliners,” New York Times, May 14, 1978. 83“Hurricane Watchers Now Prepare,” Washington Post. 84“Monster” in “Forecasters Predict David will Head into Gulf,” Mobile

Register, August 31, 1979, 8A; “terrorist” in “Beachfront Homes Tossed in Winds,” Miami Herald, September 23, 1989, 20A; and “killer” in “Hurricane Andrew begins to worry Guice,” Biloxi Daily Sun-Herald, August 23, 1992: A1.

85Jill Filipovik, “Stop Calling Sandy a Bitch: It was a Storm, Not a Woman to Hate,” The Guardian, November 2, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/ nov/02/stop-calling-sandy-bitch-jill-filipovic.

86Jung and Shavitt, et al., “Female Hurricanes are Deadlier than Male Hur- ricanes,” 1–6.

87Ibid.