The sudden collapse of support for the ERA shocked activists. Since the civil rights era, old understandings of the Constitution had seemed so antiquated and feeble that anyone speaking in the name of reform could knock them over with a breath. Now, it appeared, Americans didn’t want the Constitution tinkered with. They had found ways to resist. The ERA promised to feminize public space just as the civil rights acts had promised to desegregate it. People didn’t want that. As early as the spring of 1975, among those who blocked its passage, the reason most often cited was that “equal rights for
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