Toronto 1979 bra-burning confirmed

Historical b.s. debunker W. Joseph Campbell follows up on his earlier post:

One of the participants, speaking by phone from Vancouver, confirmed the incident, saying, “The photo is authentic. Absolutely. It happened.”

The participant was Vicki Trerise, who is shown at the far right in the photograph…

Given periodic claims that no bras ever were burned at a feminist protest, the image, I suspected, may have been unethically altered. (…)

Trerise, though, assured me the photograph was legitimate. And her confirmation effectively represents a challenge to claims that feminist bra-burning is a media myth.

Trerise said the bra-burning that day “was a bit of a reverse spoof,” a parody of media claims that burning bras was commonplace at feminist protests in the late 1960s and 1970s. “It was like a joke,” she said, and “it wasn’t planned.”

She also said the demonstrators “all had been involved in street activism for many years.”

Dangling the bra above the burn barrel was Pat Murphy, who died in 2003. In the center of the photograph with her right arm upraised was Adrienne Potts.

Murphy and Potts were two members of the so-called “Brunswick Four” — lesbians arrested in 1974, following an episode at [The Brunswick House] in Toronto where they sang a parody of “I Enjoy Being a Girl.” For “girl,” they had substituted “dyke.”