• FEMINIST CULTURE • POLITICS • RELATIONS^
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THE PROGRESSIVE WOMAN'S QUARTERLY Molly Haskell on Wild Women at The Movies South Africa's Feminist Frontier Chronic Fatigue: The Plague Years BY PHYLLIS CHESLER PLUS: Pastors Whafs So & Pimps Great About the Goddess?
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YES, Deal me a fresh hand! Send me 6 months of The Nation at the special introductory rate of just $15.95 — that's just 66 Card number Expiration Signature Address City State Zip Mall to: The Nation, P.O. Box 37072, Boone, IA S0037 For new subscribers only. All foreign subscriptions, please add $27.50 for airmail postage, or $9 for surface mail postage, payable in advance in U.S. currency only. The basic rate is $52 for 47 issues. I • FNYRB297 TheNation. I SUMMER 1997 VOLUME VI • NUMBER THREE ON THE ISSUES THE PROGRESSIVE WOMAN'S QUARTERLY features 16 COVER STORY Get Reel! Feminists Refocus Film ..MOLLY HASKELL These days, women and girls are actually driving the plots. 21 RELIGION St SOCIETY Casting Stones: The Theology of Prostitution RITA NAKASHIMA BROCK Are women "sewers" or saints? The church can't decide. PACE 16 The vieiu ahead 26 ACTIVISM Girls and the Business of Sex From Senegal to Philadelphia, girls getting out of "the life." • One Woman With a Mission DYLAN FOLEY • African Girls at Risk, A Half-Million Teen Prostitutes and The U.S. in Denial ...ANDREA D'ASARO 29 BREAKING RANKS Beyond Nostalgia: Rethinking the Goddess ...JUDITH S. ANTONELLI The pagan temple was the original brothel. PAGE 21 32 GENDER-BASED ADVERTISING Virgin or whore? Some Couch Potatoes Are More Than Equal to Others CAROL VINZANT The dollars and nonsense of TV advertising. 35 FRONTLINE REPORT Atlanta: Women and Choice Under Attack . MARY LOU CREENBERG Anti-abortion activists renew threats to reproductive freedom. 38 CULTURAL POLITICS OTI Goes to a Wedding )ACLYN GELLER The celebrity bride as cultural icon. PACE 3 departments columns New beginnings 9 Feedback 2 Rosemary L. Bray Front Lines: Ways of Seeing 10 Talking Feminist 3 Merle Hoffman Warrior Healers of South Africa • Court of First Resort: 7 Phyllis Chesler The Mystery and Tragedy of Another Way to Fight the Drug War Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome ELEANOR J. BADER • Butterflies Are 32 Cents: book &film reviews The Woman Behind the Stamp ANDREA M. COUTURE 41 The Wages of Motherhood is Poverty PACE 12 • In Search of Safe Places: Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy Pioneering art Thoughts on Tolerance from Colonial Times to the Present, by Mimi Abram- MICHELE WOLF ovitz and The Feminine Econony & Economic Man, by • Thou shalt not complain about Shirley P. Burggraf REVIEWED BY RITA HENLEY JENSEN anything I might have to fix 45 The Media Mirror Has No Face A POEM BY MARGE PIERCY Real Majority, Media Minority: The Cost of Sidelining • When They Took the Bed Away: Women in Reporting, by Laura Flanders, Slick Spins A Daughter's Memories and Fractured Facts: How Cultural Myths Distort the MARIA BENNETT News, by Caryl Rivers and News Coverage of Violence PAGE 52 52 Back Page The Little Cult Against Women, by Marian Myers Blind faith That Couldn't JOAN HILTY REVIEWED BY LOUISE ARMSTRONG ON THE COVER Molly Haskell photographed for ON THE ISSUES by Marianne Barcellona at the Pavilion Theater, Brooklyn, NY. Grooming by Shelley VanGage. front lines Rosemary L. Bray ON THE ISSUES THE PROGRESSIVE WOMAN'S QUARTERLY VOL. VI • NO. 3 SUMMER 1997 Publisher/Editor-in-Chief MERLE HOFFMAN Editor WAYS ROSEMARY L. BRAY Editor-at-Large OF SEEING PHYLLIS CHESLER Art Director JOY TOLTZIS MAKON Managing Editor ALL my Life, I've been an avid reader and writer. Long PORTIA HAWKINS-BOND Special Projects Advisors before I knew I'd make my living with words, I reveled in the chance to im- JULIA KACAN merse myself in the worlds that words can create. And like every serious ANNE MOLLECEN SMITH reader, I found myself drawn, again and again, to the women and men who Production Assistant used language to broaden my vision, to change the way I looked at the world. MARY LOU CREENBERC The words of Abraham Lincoln and John Brown taught me to both love and Contributing Editors Charlotte Bunch, Irene Davall, criticize America. The words of Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois, Anna Katherine Eban Finkelstein, Julia Cooper and Sojourner Truth, inspired me with the history and bravery Jan Goodwin, bell hooks, Flo Kennedy, that is my legacy as a woman of African descent. The stories of Alcott and Harriet Lyons, Julianne Malveaux, Fred Pelka, Marge Piercy, Arlene Raven, Cheever, Morrison and Hurston have eased my mind and nurtured my spirit. Ronni Sandroff And always, there's been the anticipation that comes with opening that book Webmaster I've never read, the hope that something I'll find between its covers will en- SARA YAGER lighten me. Assistant to the Publisher DONNA MATTHEW Lots of things about me have changed, but not my passion for the written Marketing Director word—or for new perspectives. It's that passion that inspires all of us at ON JOY SILVER THE ISSUES, it's the reason we seek out articles that help you to see all manner of things differ- ON THE ISSUES: THE PROGRESSIVE WOMAN'S I'm drawn to QUARTERLY: a feminist, humanist magazine of critical ently. In this issue, we continue our reflections on thinking, dedicated to fostering collective responsibility for the women and religious and spiritual matters. Theologian Rita positive social change. Nakashima Brock surveys Christianity's split ON THE ISSUES: THE PROGRESSIVE WOMAN'S QUARTERLY men who use (ISSN 0895-6014) is published quarterly as an informational personality concerning women and sexuality— and educational service of CHOICES Women's Medical specifically prostitution—and discusses the Center, Inc., 97-77 Queens Blvd. Forest Hills, NY 11374-3317. language to Fax: (718) 997-1206. church's influence on public policies toward the World Wide Web: broaden my sex industry. Judith Antonelli challenges propo- Home page: http://www.echonyc.com/~onissues i nents of Goddess-based spirituality to look again or http://vvww.igc.apc.org/onissues vision, to at its sexist roots and seeks to reclaim a vision of E-mail: [email protected] Unsolicited Manuscripts: All material will be read by Judaism as a theology of hope for women. the editors. For return, enclose a self-addressed, stamped change the way envelope with proper postage. Articles should not be more Closer to home, activist Mary Lou Greenberg than 2,000 words. All editing decisions are at the discretion I see the world. chronicles the latest threats and terrorist tactics of of the editors. Feminist cartoons are also acceptable under the anti-choice movement in Georgia, including the same provisions. ON THE ISSUES does not accept fiction or poetry. information on a chilling website that focuses on abortion clinics and Advertising accepted at the discretion of the publisher. providers. Cultural critic Jaclyn Geller dissects the ultimate icon of femininity: Acceptance does not imply endorsement. the celebrity bride; her analysis of People magazine's wedding issue provides a Publisher's Note: The opinions expressed by contribu- tors and by those we interview are not necessarily those of reality check for the romantic longing such brides induce in any of us. And our the editors. ON THE ISSUES: THE PROGRESSIVE WOMAN'S editor-at-large, Phyllis Chesler, details her personal odyssey through the night- QUARTERLY is a forum where women may have their voices mare of chronic fatigue syndrome. heard without censure or censorship. Subscription Information: 1 year $14.95; 2 years As we continue to evolve, we invite you to take a look at the world through $25.00; 3 years $34.95. Institutional rate: Add $10 first year, the many different lenses we provide. In that spirit, it's an honor and a plea- $5 each additional year. Add $4 per year for Canadian orders; $7 per year foreign (surface mail) or $20 per year sure to welcome Molly Haskell to our magazine as its resident movie reviewer. foreign (air mail). Send to ON THE ISSUES: THE PROGRESSIVE Molly's groundbreaking book, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women WOMAN'S QUARTERLY, PO BOX 3000, Dept. OTI, Denville, NJ in the Movies, forever changed the way we looked at women in film. Her 07834. Periodicals postage paid at Forest Hills, NY, and newest book, Holding My Own in No Man's Land, is a collection of essays that additional mailing office. . Customer Service: 1-800-783-4903 challenge readers to reconsider women both behind and in front of the camera. Advertising and Sales: (718) 459-1888, ex. 270 We're delighted to showcase her keen insights on contemporary film in the Postmaster: Send address changes to ON THE ISSUES: pages of ON THE ISSUES. We think you'll be pleased, too. • THE PROGRESSIVE WOMAN'S QUARTERLY, PO Box 3000, Dept. OTI, Denville/ NJ 07834. Copyright © 1997 by CHOICES Women's Medical Center, Inc. ON THE ISSUES • Summer 1997 on the issues Vision of the new South Africa: a political mural in |i # ft ffl the township of Crossroads. 1 |g if 1/ ad y ». • ^ Cf fOOKH f;(taiK Of. LANS • \ i9 WARRIOR HEALERS OF SOUTH AFRICA "Routine is a seductive mistress." I had followed the struggles of Nelson Mandela, the —NELSON MANDELA closest living example of Plato's philosopher King, and had witnessed with the rest of the world the mir- "We the People of South Africa acle of South Africa's nonviolent political transition. Recognize the injustices of our past In a conversation for this magazine with Rep. John honor those who suffered for justice and freedom Lewis, a hero in our own civil rights struggle, I had in our land heard firsthand of the wonders of Mandela's inaugu- Respect those who have worked to build and ration and sensed the hope that filled not just those develop our country and who attended but everyone who ever dreamed of cre- believe that South Africa belongs to all who ating a new and just society. live in it, united in our diversity" In a sense I had come to think of the country in —PREAMBLE OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE semi-spiritual terms—as a kind of morality play writ REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA, ADOPTED MAY 1996 large. And indeed, with the recent formation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a unique polit- "Women who seek equality with men lack ambition." ical and psychological experiment, concepts of sin —COMPUTER SCREENSAVER OF CAROL BOWER, DIRECTOR and redemption and words like transcendence, heal- OF RAPE CRISIS CENTER, CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA ing, love, and justice take on a kind of physical imme- diacy. Almost every person I met with spoke intense- N MARCH OF 1997 I TRAVELED TO SOUTH AFRICA, ly of the "new South Africa" or "our new country" in Iintellectually knowing what to expect, but not ex- this shared vision of reclamation and truth. pecting what I would feel once I arrived there. Everything moved me—the corrugated metal •=. I had read a great deal about the obscene history of shacks of the townships, the hopeful friendly faces of apartheid; the media images of the townships and of the children who peered out from them, the unpar- Soweto's agony were burned into my consciousness. alled physical beauty of the place, the primal drama MERLE HOFFMAN is Publisher/Editor-In-Chief of ON THE ISSUES magazine, and founder/president of both CHOICES Women's Medical Center, Inc. and CHOICES Mental Health Center. Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES amazingly progressive. Abortion on demand is entrenched in our Constitution simply Bower: Oh yes. This is one of the strange as reproductive freedom. anomalies of this country now. Jn some ways we have among the most liberal laws in the world and we certainly have an incredible Bill of Rights and an amaz- of the wildlife in the bush, and most of the job is to make sure women know ing Constitution. But it's one thing to put vividly and profoundly, the community what those rights are and how to access legislation in place; it's another for it to of women I met, who are hard at work what they need to live their lives. have real effect and impact positively on nation-building, justice-making and ac- women's lives. Having the legislation in tualizing the feminist vision. May their Hoffman: I understand that abortion was place is a big step in the right direction. energy, ambition and skill match their recently legalized here. Now what we need to do is make sure challenge, for the residues of apartheid Bower: Abortion was legalized on the women know what their rights are and are daunting. second of February, just under a month what that legislation is, so they can take The state, it seems, is in a state of re- ago, and there have been a large number part in it. covery. South Africa has an almost 40 of demands for abortion subsequent to percent unemployment rate and an 80 that. For many years, the only way you Hoffman: Tell me about your staff. percent illiteracy rate. A precipitous rise could get a legal abortion was if you re- Bower: We work a lot with volunteers. in violent crime, particularly crimes ported a rape and the police person to Rape Crisis started out primarily as a against women, have recently given it whom you reported the rape believed counseling and education organization, the dubious distinction of being labeled you. but over the years that has changed. But the "rape capital" of the world. our volunteer base is currently concen- It was that fact that sent me to visit Hoffman: Abortion was only legal in the trated in those two areas. Carol Bower, a longtime feminist activist case of rape? and progressive, and first director of Bower: Rape, incest, and if there was Hoffman: What type of counseling do Rape Crisis, which she and four other clear indication that it was life-threaten- you do? women founded more than 20 years ago ing to the mother, or if there was some Bower: We do couple and conjoint. We in Cape Town. genetic problem with the child. It was will counsel any family member or part- The center is nonprofit, receives all its horrendously complicated. Now in the ner particularly if they were witnesses to funding (about $250,000 a year) from for- first trimester, any woman, whatever the rape and themselves were restrained eign sources and has approximately 50 her age, can get an abortion without and weren't able to assist. We are offer- volunteers. It is located in a small private parental or spousal consent. And in ing a series of counseling up to a maxi- house 25 minutes outside the city. There terms of rape it's possible to get an mum of twelve sessions. Thereafter if is a protective metal gate, feminist abortion without any problem up to you need more, we will look at why. As posters on every wall, and women work- four months—and you don't have to is often the case, there is a history of ing at computer screens and speaking in- have reported it. abuse and we have an extensive referral tensely into the phone—everything to network. We have an annual training make me feel instantly at home and at Hoffman: That is a major political and course which is very intensive including work among feminist warrior healers. philosophical advance—definitely more the history of the organization and a Then there was Carol herself, whose en- liberal than some of our state laws. How feminist analysis of rape, a feminist per- ergy, enthusiasm, commitment and faith did that happen? spective on rape, and a feminist perspec- have inspired me to continue to connect Bower: That all changed because we're tive on counseling. and work with this community of femi- in a new South Africa, and there is a Entry into the organization is reserved nist visionaries. What follows is a con- much better awareness of human rights. only for women. We don't have male versation between us. And this is about reproductive rights members. We've been asked a lot about and a woman's right to make her own it, especially in the new South Africa, but Hoffman: Tell me about your beginnings. choices. Details like, "How many we've stuck to that very adamantly. Bower: Most of us who started Rape Cri- weeks?"were debated, but abortion on sis had in fact been raped. Twenty years demand was a principle that is basically Hoffman: What are your relationships ago, when we started Rape Crisis, if you entrenched in our Constitution simply as with other rape crisis centers? went with a woman to report a rape you reproductive freedom. Every woman has Bower: We differ quite strongly ideologi- guaranteed her a really horrendous time. the right to make those sorts of choices cally from some. Twenty years ago, I was thrown out of for herself. courtrooms for obstructing justice. Now Hoffman: In what ways? we train public prosecutors and magis- Hoffman: Do you have an anti-choice Bower: Well, they're not specifically fem- trates; we are training police personnel. movement here? inist organizations, and we are. And al- We have a Constitution in place which Bower: Yes. They've been around for a though our counseling services are a guarantees basic rights to all people and while with their little bottles of pieces in very visible and important part of what has provided us with a window of op- formaldehyde. Normal stuff. And the we are doing, for us its one of a range of portunity to address a whole range of is- Catholic Church has spoken out very things that we are doing. sues that we have not been able to ad- strongly against our abortion and preg- dress before. This doesn't mean that nancy goals. Hoffman: You move beyond treating ca- anything is perfect or that we're closer to sualties? what the ideal is. It just means that part Hoffman: But your Constitution is Bower: When you lobby barristers and ON THE ISSUES • Summer 19 97 1956 A omen* iMarc* Rape Crisis has an Carol Bower at extensive Rape Crisis, which referral she and four other network and women founded about 50 over twenty years volunteers. ago, above. Right: Membership Two members of is for women this community of only, and feminists, which there is an focuses on intensive counseling, annual education and training research. course. legislators, when you do research, when they call Operation Camelot calling for one came into the cottage where she was you do public education, then you are the immediate castration of rapists. In staying at 10:30 or 11:00 at night and improving the situation for a much that particular case, a man was arrested raped her. There were only fourteen wider number of women. We have a re- the very next day and within twenty men on the island at the time. No one search project that is looking at the sexu- four hours was released on bail of can quite figure it out. But she is very al offensives court started in Wynberg [a $1,000. Everybody went completely high profile and she was prepared to suburb of Cape Town] a couple of years batty. Charges against him were speak out, which is relatively unusual to ago. Our researchers are doing an evalu- dropped. It was a case of mistaken iden- find. ation of the experience of women who tity, a difficult position to be in. have been through that court in terms of We are a country with an appallingly Hoffman: Is she black? their own recovery and the way they bad human-rights record. We do have to Bower: She's black, yes. But she says the feel they were handled in that situa- presume people are innocent until rapist was a white man. South Africans tion... proven guilty. Our demand is that bail aren't used to this stuff yet. They still get There were a couple of high-profile conditions be looked at very carefully touchy about it. Fascinated maybe more rapes recently that caused us a lot of and tightened up, particularly where than touchy. We have about 2.3 rapes a trouble in a lot of ways. One was a fami- there's a history of previous arrests or minute in this country. Every minute of ly in Observatory, in Johannesburg. It's a previous convictions, but at the same every day. horrendous story, an absolute nightmare. time we have to go with the basic provi- Two assailants broke into their home, sions of the Bill of Rights. Hoffman: What is the racial breakdown? tied them up, raped the two teenage There's also the Robben Island Rape. Bower: The breakdown follows the racial daughters in front of the parents and the The woman who was raped was a re- composition of the country. Less than 5 various other relatives who were there, searcher of some kind working on the percent of rapes are interracial. And of cleaned them out and left. There was a museum that they are putting in place that the vast majority are white men who great deal of frothing at the mouth, as [Robben Island was the prison island rape black women and not the other way one can imagine, and the family con- where Nelson Mandela was jailed.] She around. And people say the rate of rape cerned started an organization which was spending the night there and some- is increasing. Summer 19 97 • ON THE ISSUES Hoffman: Is there a difference in the way Feminism was a dirty word in this country for a long time. black and white women define femi- We need to Africanize it. nism? Bower: Feminism was a dirty word in this country for a long time... We need to Hoffman: What do you think is the rea- Bower: Oh yes. I don't think you can have Africanize feminism in a way. I went to son for that? a system that systematically represses Swaziland last November to evaluate a Bower: There are many reasons. We are and suppresses the political aspirations of program for a funder. It was amazing. often asked why the rate of rape is in- huge numbers of people for as long as we Swaziland is one of the most traditional creasing. My response to that is always, did it —[and I expect that] when you lift patriarchal countries I've ever encoun- I'm not saying that it isn't increasing; I'm that lid, something is going to happen. tered. The king is all powerful and his just not convinced that it is. I think that The history of this country is that there is advisory committee is a hand-picked there are two things happening. South a lack of respect for human life. It's just group of chiefs. It's very hierarchical and Africa is a country with an extremely another life. It's just another day. That's they are most interested in maintaining high violent-crime rate in general. Violent why I like to try to look at it as a pattern. the status quo. Swaziland is so tiny that crime in this country— murder, assault Violent crime has gone through the roof. it is practically another province of with dangerous weapons, hijacking— It's not just on the level of rape; domestic South Africa. It blew my mind that in happens on a daily basis. Those are in- violence has also increased, incidents of this tiny, traditional country where creasing too. So, rape as a crime of vio- abuse of children appear to have in- women do not matter at all, I met some lence is increasing. creased. The positive effects of the demo- of the strongest black feminists I had cratic changes that we have undergone, ever met. Hoffman: So your analysis is that the in- are starting to be felt, but it's slow, slow, slow. crease is part of a general trend? Hoffman: You are describing a kind of organic, non-ideological feminism. Bower: It is a strong grassroots, bread- and-butter feminism that I have not en- countered, particularly in this country. The idea that feminism isn't something that black women had time or space for is only now beginning to change. One of the things that is changing is the much more visible presence of strong black women. We have a lot more in govern- ment—M.P.s, deputy M.P.s, Speakers, Premiers. They are being seen in much more important places. Women realize that they have a certain amount of eco- nomic power, political power—just by sheer force of numbers. Just the concept. To stop and think that a third of our Par- liament is female. It has to make you think. We live in a strange place. So much is changing and is good and won- derful. Hoffman: It's extraordinary. Its pioneer- ing work—conceptually, theoretically, One of the most vivid impressions of South Africa: the hopeful, friendly faces of children. and operationally—and it is a gift to be part of it! Bower: Part of that. The other thing is, I Hoffman: Do women relate to each other Bower: Just to see the credibility that we do believe it is easier for women to re- collectively, as a class? have now. When once we were scorned, port rape these days. But there is no Bower: Not as strong as it could be. In laughed at, and thrown out. Now impor- doubt that we have a very serious this country feminism and feminist is- tant—and I mean very important—peo- problem. sues were, until comparatively recently, ple ask for our input, or ask us to com- seen as a white middle-class thing. Black ment on current issues. We go on radio, Hoffman: I did work in Moscow after the women did not have the time or the en- we go on television. It's amazing for me break-up of the Soviet Union, and there ergy to get involved in all that "wishy- to look at us and our credibility in those was a definite increase in violent crimes washy stuff"—when the bread-and-but- terms. Having been the far left lunatic —particularly against women. The in- ter issues of political equality were fringe for most of my life to suddenly creased level of male frustration and literally killing their sons and brothers find ourselves in the middle... My fear is anxiety with the political system was around them. It was difficult for us as we'll lose our activism. I'm nervous that projected onto women—the usual scape- white feminists to come to terms with we'll be corrupted. I'm nervous that it goats. Do you think a similar thing is that, but they honestly didn't have the will be all so comfortable and so won- happening here? space to accommodate it. derful, (continued on page 47) ON THE ISSUES • Summer 1997 columnist Phyllis Chesler The Mystery and Tragedy of CHRONIC FATIGUE IMMUNE DYSFUNCTION SYNDROME These are plague years. Governments, insurance companies, even scien- tists—we, the people, too—are scared. Who'll fall ill next, who'll have to pay? What if the burden of caregiving is insupport- walked fast. When I talked I gestured. I never hesitat- able? What if there's no cure? What if someone is het- ed. Then, one day, in 1991,1 literally couldn't get out erosexual, middle-class, God-fearing, not an IV drug of bed. I felt like I was in a waking coma. At first, I user, not a world traveler, not promiscuous, but sud- thought I was depressed. But I knew that I was sick denly, one day, is stricken with a mysterious illness? beyond depression." Panic in the streets? Hardly. The cruelty with which our society treats those we HAT SPRING, I CAME DOWN WITH A "FLU" THAT view as differently abled or mentally ill is painful to Twould not go away. My throat was burning-sore, contemplate. The cruelty we reserve for those who my glands swollen. I had either a low-grade fever or may or may not be mentally ill, but who are suffering a killer night fever with extreme chills. I was dizzy, from a disabling, possibly infectious, illness for which disoriented, sometimes nauseous, sometimes gripped there is no cure is overwhelming. "Watch out, stand by headaches. I had severe joint pain, unbearable back." We deny that such people are really ill. We say: muscle ache and muscle weakness (I kept dropping If they are, it's their own fault. They could get better things), heightened sensitivity to light and sound, if they tried. and a serious sleep disorder. I began suffering from Dr. Naomi Weisstein formerly directed a brain re- first-time "allergies" and from repeated infections in search laboratory. She had a stellar reputation. "In my teeth, gums and jaws. In addition, my fatigue was 1980 when I first became too weak and dizzy to get overwhelming. I couldn't walk to the corner store. It out of bed, friends and family visited," she recalls. was even physically hard to get out of bed. "But I didn't get better. People got annoyed, suspi- These physical symptoms were nowhere near as cious. They felt powerless. Some people blamed me, traumatic as the cognitive and neurological deficits I which in this culture meant they attributed my illness was experiencing. I would forget what I was about to to psychological causes. One good friend, a physician say. I couldn't remember, pronounce, or spell familiar herself, decided that I'd become mentally ill. There names. I had trouble adding or multiplying simple could be no other explanation. She cut me loose. She sums. I confused "left" and "right." I couldn't read told everyone we both knew that I was a crazy malin- more than a few pages a day. Such cognitive deficits gerer. When I finally found a doctor willing to con- would frighten anyone; they terrified me. I am used sider that my overwhelming physical suffering re- to reading the equivalent of a book a day, writing 20- flected an organic, not mental disease, my own 40 pages daily of manuscript and correspondence, mother wrote to him to tell him that I was just being and having at least one, often two, working meetings, hysterical. Some of my friends have been absolutely in addition to lecturing. unswerving in their loyalty and commitment. But for Hardly a week passed without someone calling to most people, their own terror keeps them from reach- say: "Listen, my brother-in-laws cousin said a friend ing out and staying connected to a plague victim." of hers also thought she had this, but it turned out to Aviva Rahmani, an artist and former dancer, al- be—the list was endless: parasites, allergies, Candida, ways prided herself on a good appearance. "I moved repressed incest, a brain tumor, a thyroid problem, through life with my whole body," she says. "I was a depression, menopause." very physical painter. I painted on large canvases. I Since the mid-1980s my illness (Weisstein's and PHYLLIS CHESLER, a professor of psychology and cofounder of the Association for Women in Psychology, is the author of eight books, including Women and Madness. Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES Once asthma, arthritis, Lupus, multiple sclerosis, Lyme's disease and allergies were dismissed as primarily psychiatric in nature. Rahmani's too) has come to be known as While I would like to believe that psy- The first of many physicians my dis- Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunc- che and soma are one, I also know that ability insurance company ordered me to tion Syndrome: CFIDS or CFS, or viruses, parasites, bacteria, funguses, see said that I did not have CFIDS. He Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), Ep- sexually transmitted diseases and toxic insisted that CFIDS did not really exist, stein-Barr virus, or "yuppie flu." In the chemicals are real, and can also cause or, if it did, was rare—but that I might be mid-1980s, physicians here and all over neurological and cognitive dysfunction. I suffering from a psychiatric ailment. The the world first began seeing cluster out- know that depression is often a sec- second disability company physician breaks of this illness among urban and ondary symptom of chronic pain. said that if I could turn up for an office rural, young and middle-aged, rich and We do not know whether CFIDS is visit and wait for hours in her office, that poor, men and women: pilots, house- caused by a virus or a retro-virus, is or is I could not be "that sick." The company wives, athletes, doctors, nurses, bankers, not infectious, or is or is not an acquired insisted that I see a psychiatrist. secretaries, academics, teachers and immunodeficiency or whether it is due He diagnosed me too—with an unnec- even children. to other, unknown causes. We do know essary amount of vitriol and misogyny— Some physicians became alarmed. that there has been research—underre- as "practically psychotic." Perhaps he Most were not believed. For example, in ported by the media—which demon- thought he was doing me a favor. He'd 1985, Dr. Paul Cheney, practicing in In- strates that the illness has an organic said that the only way he ever got an in- cline Village, Nevada, persuaded the basis. surance company to cover his early Centers for Disease Control and Preven- For example, in 1994, Dr. Mark Demi- AIDS patients was if he'd diagnosed tion to interview his patients. The CDC track, a clinical research physician at the them as psychiatrically impaired. A year excluded all those patients who subse- Lilly Research Laboratories and adjunct later, when the company forced me to quently developed cancer, or who had associate professor of psychiatry at see him again, this psychiatrist pro- seizures, as suffering from these post- the University of Michigan Medical Cen- nounced me "completely cured." CFIDS complications, and not from ter, compared CFIDS and psychiatric Surely, the man deserves a Nobel CFIDS itself. The CDC and the National patients. He discovered that in the Prize for being able to cure psychosis Institutes for Health insisted that what CFIDS patients, the hypothalamic- within a year and in only two visits! these physicians were seeing was really pituitary-adrenal axis (DHEA) is signifi- Sadly, being psychiatrically diagnosed a psychiatric condition, not a real, i.e., in- cantly lowered. Depressed patients in did not cure me. No matter how dutiful- fectious or viral illness. Dr. Stephen that study showed exactly the reverse— ly I took the recommended low dosage Straus, the director of virology at the Na- they have significantly high DHEA lev- of antidepressants prescribed by my in- tional Institute of Allergy and Infectious els. In addition, other studies have ternist, my physical symptoms never Diseases, concluded that CFIDS was pri- shown brain abnormalities. Brain lesions went away. The medication allowed me marily psychiatric or "psycho-neurotic." are evidenced on MRI. In a 1992 study to sleep, for which I was exceedingly His views have been seconded by many brain perfusions, which resemble those grateful. Some physicians believe that psychiatrists, both here and abroad, and seen in AIDS and in Alzheimer's—al- some antidepressants are effective be- often, but not always by journalists. though reversible in a CFIDS patient— cause they also have antiviral effects. As a professor of psychology, a psy- were detected. This means that less blood is getting to the brain of a CFIDS chotherapist and courtroom witness, I AND MANY OTHERS HAVE ALSO HAD TO am an expert in how frequently women patient. Ilive with the myth that CFIDS is are diagnosed as mentally ill when they Other studies have demonstrated that caused by stress. It is true: physical and are not. I also know that mental illness is CFIDS patients have statistically low lev- psychological suffering are stressful. I real and deserves our compassion and els of the hormone cortisol; statistically believe that one has to be healthy, not understanding, as well as state-of-the-art high (abnormal) levels of immunological impaired, to be able to handle normal, treatment. titres in blood samples; and, in some ordinary stress. I believe that CFIDS (and cases, neurally mediated hypotension. other disabled) patients are often sub- HEN I FIRST EXPLORED SEXIST BIAS University of Miami immunologist Dr. jected to a level of stress that is more Wamong mental-health profession- Nancy Kilmas has shown that CFIDS pa- than a healthy person can bear. als in Women and Madness in 1972,1 did tients suffer a greater deficiency of nat- It is stressful not to be able to work, not realize that when Western medicine ural killer cells (which control viruses earn money, see friends, take a vacation, does not understand and/or cannot and cancers), than AIDS patients do. Dr. even take a walk. Many (not all) CFIDS cure an illness, it first denies that the ill- L.O. Simpson, a research fellow at Otago sufferers became ill in their prime, many ness is real by saying it is merely a psy- Medical School in Dunedin, New (not all) were formerly highly produc- chiatric disorder. Once asthma, arthritis, Zealand, has found a consistent red tive people. Once stricken, you cannot lupus, multiple sclerosis, Lyme's dis- blood cell abnormality in the blood of predict how you will feel on any given ease, allergies and Gulf War Syndrome both Gulf War Syndrome and CFIDS pa- day, you cannot honor even cherished too—were dismissed as primarily psy- tients. This abnormality results in an in- commitments—or can do so only at chiatric in nature. Patients were told adequate delivery of oxygen, nutrients, great cost: a week or a month in bed af- they were exaggerating or imagining chemicals, to muscles and tissues, fol- terward. That's stressful, as is learning lowing exertion. things. how to accept the fact (continued on page 50) ON THE ISSUES • Summer 1997 Deep down, I knew I was pregnant...I had weight gain, no period for five months, nausea,...but feedback denial was so much safer than accepting reality. —LAURA M. LAMAR, CHICAGO, IL Life After Denial induced abortion was done at Wicker- broad-minded and not bound by tradi- I wanted to thank Merle Hoffman for her sham Hospital. Two women employees tion. Thus those of us who consider our- article, "Fatal Denial" (spring 1997), dis- who I believe were social workers were selves to be liberal and proud of it agree cussing the denial of pregnancy. You most kind. I will never forget them. My with what I think you are saying about could have been writing about me 25 regret is that I never had the chance to the need for more self-determination and years ago. I was 17 years old, single and a tell them that things worked out well, in sexual empowerment of young people senior in a Catholic high school. From an large part because of their kindness. (in addition to the need for accurate facts early age, I learned denial as a coping That experience, painful as it was, and information). Perhaps I need more mechanism from my ineffectual, down- shaped the rest of my life in a positive background on what "mass education" trodden mother. Deep down, I knew I way. I learned that I can make difficult de- programs you seem to be criticizing. was pregnant....I had weight gain, no pe- Catherine Briggs riod for five months, nausea, engorged fEMlMIST CULTURE • POLITICS • RELATIONSHIP i • ANALYSIS Sudbury, MA breasts and finally, quickening. But denial was so much safer that accepting reality. Iff"; ( \ f 1 ; More About Alice Finally, I went to see a doctor who con- )j il'i I would like to thank you for your com- firmed what I already knew. On the way ko mendable magazine. Having read the last home, I contemplated suicide. At the very Alice Walker I "qj three issues, I find your articles lucid and least, I expected a nasty beating (I had on God, Magic W^k 1 thought-provoking and the topics of the survived a few before). Possibly, they and the Pagan Self fl I %c? 1 day are dealt with objectively and with would force me to carry the pregnancy to Bosnia: IJK' singular perception. I am particularly im- term and raise the result (in which case I A Nation of .^flflfl Widows. a pressed by your strong pro-choice stance would opt for suicide). I never expected 1 .^ i '"' 1 and your insistence on discussing the my parents to be understanding. They 1 many different aspects of the abortion surprised me. Guerilla issue, a topic unfortunately overlooked or I walked in hysterical. My mother Health PUB • distorted by most of today's media. Care knew exactly what the problem was and Kate Hillett's Unknown Art ii As a devout Wiccan, I was particularly said, "If you don't want this baby, no one Tara and Other Lies _ ^. mm moved by Alice Walker's article, "The will make you have it." She informed i \ Only Reason You Want to Go to Heav- my father, who immediately arranged en..." (spring 1997). Although Walker's for an examination. The doctor con- cisions and that valuable lessons, even joy, Southern black childhood consisted of firmed that I was five months along. He can come from painful experiences. I am harsher realities and less freedom than said to my father, "If she weren't so far now active in the pro-choice movement, mine, the "tender, loving people" she along, we could send her to Jane." In my serving on the Auxiliary Board of Planned grew up with were very similar to the ignorance, I thought this was a colleague Parenthood Chicago Area, The Pro-choice people I recall from my rural Canadian who could take care of my problem. I Alliance, and The Women's Bar Associa- background. Likewise, my childhood learned years later they were sending tion of Illinois, a pro-choice organization. love of Nature as God/Goddess grew their patients to the underground abor- I woke up from a state of denial and have out of the very same pagan perception of tion service in Chicago. learned to enjoy life. I would not trade the the all-pervasive mystery which the On the way home, my father told me experience for anything. March 20 is a young Alice had experienced. Her article that this would be my decision to make, day each year that I celebrate, because it so eloquently states what I have believed and that if I needed help in making the was on that day I began to live. for years—that we are all indigenous decision, I would have it. I told him that I Laura M. Lamar, R.N., J.D. and marginalized people and will never wanted an abortion. There was no ques- Chicago, IL be free until we rediscover our collective tion in my mind. After my father did a "heathen" past. review of the literature and spoke to doc- The '1/ Word Sue Taylor tors to find the most qualified, we went I appreciated your article, "Fatal Denial." New Westminster, British Columbia to New York. In March 1972, the saline- However, I was rather taken aback by this phrase: "Her story is another lesson EDITOR'S NOTE: Alice Walker's essay, ON THE ISSUES welcomes letters and considers for liberal optimists who think mass edu- "The Only Reason You Want to Go to them for publication in the magazine and on its cation is the antidote to the epidemic"; Heaven..." is excerpted from her latest website, unless otherwise specified. Letters may my question is specifically about your collection, Anything We Love Can Be be edited for clarity and space. Send to ON THE use of the word liberal. To me, liberal is Saved, published in April by Random ISSUES, CHOICES Women's Medical Center, Inc., one of the words we need to stand up for, House. We inadvertently omitted this in- 97-77 Queens Blvd., Forest Hills, NY 11374- rather than use it in a denigrating fash- formation in the last issue, and we regret 3317, ore-mail to onissues@>echonyc.com. ion. If we are liberal, we by definition are the error. Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES talking . feminist Vietnam Syndrome, the theory that if you put in more troops—in this case more police—and spend more money on law enforcement, we will win the Court of First Resort: war. But we're losing the war. We're taking in prisoners, women and men Another Way to Fight the Drug War who populate poor communities and are drug addicted." by Eleanor J. Bader downstairs to meet with the team who Indeed, by all accounts the War on will facilitate her treatment. She will Drugs has targeted poor communities It is 3 P.M. on a cold, dreary January af- meet Judge Ferdinand again in early for intense scrutiny, a policy that has re- ternoon and Mary is noticeably agitat- February. sulted in an ever-escalating number of ed. Although her hands are cuffed be- "We are trying to use the court sys- African-American and Latino prisoners. hind her back, she fidgets continuously tem to help addicts beat their habits and It is by now well-known, for example, as she listens to the many cases being live law-abiding lives," says BTC coor- that one-third of all African-American heard by Judge Jo Ann Ferdinand. Fi- dinator John Feinblatt. "We know men between the ages of 20 and 29 are nally, her name is called and she slowly there's a cycle for most addicts: arrest, under criminal court supervision: in jail, proceeds to the front of the courtroom. prosecution, jail and re-arrest. To break prison or on probation or parole. While The site is Brooklyn Treatment Court the cycle you need to break the addic- big cities across the U.S. have been hit (BTC), one of more than 300 drug courts tion. We see an offender as quickly as hard by the Drug War, few match New across the U.S. that have opened in the we can, often within 48 hours of arrest. York City. last eight years—and the first in New We seize the arrest, taking advantage of "First there are the 1973 Rockefeller York City. With no prior arrest record the crisis by offering the person a way Drug Laws, the most egregious manda- and no history of violent behavior, out." tory sentencing laws in the country," Mary is exactly the type of person BTC While few are critical of the court's says Shirley Cloyes, Executive Director was set up to assist: a drug user, in this approach, most criminal justice advo- of JusticeWorks Community, a national case a crack addict whose crime was the cates are quick to point out that drug nonprofit public education and advoca- direct result of her drug use. courts offer help to a tiny fraction of the cy organization for women prisoners, "Is it true that you sold a controlled clients who need it. BTC, for one, sees ex-offenders and their families. "(For- substance, crack, to an undercover po- approximately 30 clients a day; about 30 mer New York Governor) Nelson Rock- lice officer?" Judge Ferdinand asks her. percent are female. Some were recently efeller truly believed that if you applied "Yes, it's true," Mary says. arrested, while others are in court to re- these absolutely harsh sentences, the "You met with the DA and our social port on their progress in getting, and use of drugs would stop. He epitomized workers this morning and they both be- staying, clean. the problem. Drug abuse is a medical lieve that you are an appropriate candi- issue, not a criminal issue. Over the last date for drug treatment. You have a job, ore than 20,000 men and 25 years we've seen that criminalizing and we've verified your address. We M women are presently incarcerated addiction will not succeed." are going to develop an outpatient in New York City jails, pending trial or Nonetheless, the "tough on crime" treatment plan for you. While your case sentencing, according to Sister Marion approach hit its apex in 1984, when is pending, if you are re-arrested for DeFeis, chaplain at Rikers Island, the Congress passed the Sentencing Re- any other crime, or if you fail to com- largest penal system in the world. form Act, which imposes mandatory plete the drug treatment I am ordering, "Most are drug addicts," she says. jail terms for specific offenses. The act, you will face a jail sentence. But if you "Roughly half are HIV-positive. They in concert with the introduction of complete the program, the charges don't belong here. Most of the women large numbers of uniformed and un- against you will be dropped. Is that who are on Rikers Island use drugs to dercover police officers into "drug sat- clear?" self medicate. They have been abused urated" communities, caused arrest Again, Mary signals her assent. With- and are trying to help themselves. One rates to rise and jail cells to fill at previ- in minutes she is whisked from the study reported that 90 percent of incar- ously unheard of rates. "Florida, Cali- courtroom by a court officer and sent cerated women are victims of sexual fornia and Texas already spend more abuse. Federal Judge Whitman Knapp on corrections than on education," ELEANOR J. BADER is a freelance once said, as he was retiring, that the Cloyes states. "And Michigan and writer and teacher living in Brooklyn, NY. U.S. policy on drugs is similar to the New York are moving in that direction. 10 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 1997 Drug courts are experimenting with different strategies: one woman-only program has a 96 percent success rate. This is not the way to deal with the le- been in operation for more than two they leave the program. In addition, gitimate needs of communities." years. "As of March 1997, more than across the board the drug courts strive A report compiled by the National 40,000 people have been through drug to match clients with appropriate sobri- Conference of State Legislators bears courts," says Caroline Cooper, a staff ety programs and recognize that differ- this out. According to the study, state person at the OJP Drug Court Clearing- ent people need different types of treat- spending on corrections jumped 218 house and Technical Assistance Project. ment. For example, while inpatient percent from 1965 to 1990; $5.1 billion "About 30-35 percent have not complet- programs may work best for some drug was spent on prison construction in ed the drug court requirements, but 65 users, remaining in the community and 1994-95 alone. percent of participants have succeeded. attending outpatient treatment may The U.S. tops world incarceration This is dramatically more successful work better for others. For the staff of rates, with 1.6 million people currently than other corrections strategies." the Brooklyn Treatment Court, making behind bars—a 113 percent increase the link between treatment and com- since 1985. During that same period, ndeed, despite the relatively small munity is paramount in breaking down the number of women in jails and pris- Inumber of people affected, different the perception of the court as a puni- ons rose astronomically, from 10,000 in drug courts are experimenting with tive, adversarial institution. BTC Judge 1985 to more than 129,000 today. "At treatment strategies, and are beginning Jo Ann Ferdinand, a mayoral ap- least 80 percent of women now in to make inroads in defining those that pointee, states that, "We're trying to prison are there for nonviolent offens- work. "Some courts," says Cooper, figure out how to connect with the es," Cloyes adds. "And many of the so- "have found that women may be reluc- community, how to get family involve- called violent offenders are in jail be- tant to participate in mixed-sex treat- ment in the treatment process. Our goal cause they killed their abuser. ment groups. Where special compo- is to get people off drugs, not into the Seventy-eight percent of women in jail nents for women exist, they appear to criminal justice system... This court are mothers, and at least 70 percent complete drug court programs at a wants to be proactive. We work with have a history of substance abuse. Most higher rate than their male counter- the schools, the hospitals, the police. are in jail either for possession, low- parts." This may be because of difficul- We also build in an understanding that level drug violation or nonviolent of- ties in arranging for child care, or a re- relapses may occur, that they're often fenses such as shoplifting or prostitu- luctance to discuss incest or sexual part of a recovery process. The court tion. In fact what's going on is a abuse with men present. One court in speaks to the social workers, the people woman supporting a drug habit, or Kalamazoo, Michigan, has set up a from the drug program, the health care children, or both." woman-only program and has seen a 96 provider. We coordinate treatment in Enter, albeit tentatively and slowly, percent success rate. Other courts have ways that have not been tried before." the drug courts. During the last decade special groups for women, or optional Treatment courts are being advanced of prison expansion and increased ar- woman-only treatment. Another, in Ft. as a viable, cost-effective option for rests, "a lot of jurisdictions have come Lauderdale, Florida has a group for nonviolent offenders, and supporters to realize that the traditional way of males to discuss parenting concerns. range from prosecutors to Legal Aid dealing with drug offenders is explod- Still other courts run groups for adoles- lawyers and Republican lawmakers. ing the jail population and not doing cents and young adults. Among their most potent tools are the anything about either crime or drug Across the nation, drug courts share numbers: Incarceration costs $64,000 usage," says Steven Belenko, a senior in an effort to provide a coordinated per year, per inmate in New York City research associate at the National Cen- approach to treatment and recovery. jails, and $30,000 per inmate, per year in ter on Addiction and Substance Abuse "No participant can successfully com- New York State prisons, while rehab at Columbia University. plete the program without also ad- costs somewhere between $2,000 and "People have begun to get together to dressing needs relating to his or her $7,000 per person, per year. link treatment and criminal justice. The long-term rehabilitation," according to "Treatment needs to be a sentencing 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill allocated a report issued by a drug court pro- norm," Shirley Cloyes of JusticeWorks money for drug court planning and im- gram. In addition to sobriety, common Community. "We also need to look at plementation—$8 million in fiscal 1995; requirements of most drug programs our societal desire to punish and ask $15 million in fiscal 1996 and $30 mil- include: obtaining a high school diplo- ourselves why punishment is our pri- lion in fiscal 1997," Belenko says. ma or GED certificate; obtaining mary response, why we're willing to As a result, most drug courts are ex- and /or maintaining employment, and destroy families and communities by tremely new. While the first one opened developing mentor relationships within arresting and incarcerating nonviolent in Miami in 1989, only 55 courts have the community to sustain clients after drug users." • Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES 11 Butterflies Are 32 Cents: The Botanical Art of Maria Sibylla Merian by Andrea M. Couture Two billion stamps proclaim the art and science of a unique 17th-century German in obscurity for hundreds of years. Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) is getting her due, courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service's spring issue of two of her lyrical botanical drawings. Both were made during her two years in Surinam, South America, where in 1699, at the age of 52, she traveled at her own expense, accompanied only by her young daughter— breaking all the rules. Merian risked her life in tropical conditions to study exotic insects and plants until a near- death illness, probably malaria, forced her to return. Her resulting masterpiece, The Metamorphosis, was translated into several languages, amazing her contemporaries who thought most insects spontaneously generated from mud as Aristotle had opined. Amazing too was its anthropology on the people of Surinam, including their use of the peacock flower for abortion, Merian established her reputation astonishingly early: in her 20s, with a three-volume set of flower engravings; and yet another three volumes in her 30s on the life cycle of insects. She was one-of-a-kind in examining nature's beauty, process and relationships— aesthetically. Similarly unique in transcending barriers of education and gender, Merian nurtured her daughters to do the same. Merian's books were published well after her death and today are cherished in rare-book collections in Europe and the Americas. • ANDREA M. COUTURE is a journalist who lives in New York City, 12 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 1997 In Search of Safe Places: Thoughts on Tolerance by Michele Wolf me that when she was a little girl, my grandfather showed her a nail ham- Last year, just before the burning of mered into a tree on his property. "When black churches began getting the media the bark grows over the nail," he said, attention it deserved, a new acquain- "we'll know this is a safe place for Jews tance asked me what I thought of affir- to live." mative action. "I'm for it," I told him. "I I didn't lose any relatives I know of in think it's needed to rectify past wrongs." the Holocaust. Both sides of my family "How can you say that?" he asked ve- made it to the United States before 1915. hemently. "I'm not responsible for past In my grandfather's case, his family fled wrongs. Why should anybody else have the Ukraine after pogroms in which Jews special advantages over me or you? It's were attacked in 1907. After hearing a not fair." shot one night, his mother ran with him He was 37 and had a master's degree and his sisters through the mud behind but didn't seem to have a sense of histo- the houses to his grandparents' house, ry. "Blacks didn't get the guaranteed where all night the children were hidden right to vote until 1965," I said. "That's in the cellar—a dark, cold tunnel usually not so very long ago." used for storing food. On the way, my He paused, scrunching up his face. great-aunt Syd, then only five, lost her "That can't be," he said. "I'm sure that shoe. It was left behind. It was more im- can't be right." portant to run. Having recently spent time in Amster- dam, where most of the lovely circa-1600 lthough it's been months since buildings along the canals are warped Athey made the news now, those and tilted because of the way they've set- burning churches haunted me. They tled over the centuries, I realize how par- were enough to make any thoughtful ticularly American it is to have such a person, but perhaps especially those lack of memory, how American to believe who find themselves perceived as differ- that each person has the power to shake ent from the majority culture, wonder free of the past to shape his or her destiny. where is it safe to live. When I heard about the church burn- In Amsterdam, while waiting in line to ings, I was reminded of my paternal go into the Anne Frank House—the grandfather. The only male among seven Secret Annex in the spice factory her sisters, he was the patriarch of our family, father had managed, where she and a warm and generous selfmade business- seven others hid from the Nazis for two man who always encouraged the entire years, I stood outside the adjoining clan to gather at his lake house in New building, the factory's offices, which Jersey every summer for our annual were being renovated to replicate the "Cousins' Club." Though he died in way they had looked in 1942. Posted on 1968,1 have vivid memories of his easy the plywood enclosure around the laugh and the total joy he took in being construction site was a children's art with children, of my grandmother serv- exhibit, with titles in Dutch and English, ing huge quantities of spaghetti to packs called "The Rights of the Child." One, of ravenous kids, and of joining my with a green fist holding a sign that said grandfather in his motorboat, my hair "Stop Discriminatie," was entitled "The flying as we tore across the lake. My Right of Self-Expression." Among the grandparents led a comfortable, prosper- others—in vibrant primary colors, some ous life. Yet an older cousin recently told with smiling faces, some with sad ones—were "We are all equal," "The MICHELE WOLF is the author of The right to freedom," and a concern that Keeper of Light (Painted Bride Quarterly American children don't think about but Poetry Chapbook Series). She has written for is raised in the Dutch schools: "The right The New York Times Book Review, to grow up." Harper's Bazaar, Audubon, Child, and The bells chimed from the church numerous other magazines. tower down the block, the same bells Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES 13 Frank had relied on to mark her day lived there peaceably—had been noticed in any city anywhere. behind blackout curtains, bells whose welcomed—since the 1500s. When I got home from my trip, the sudden silence had so distressed her. From the Anne Frank House, 1 went to church burnings were the primary news Although the Nazis had confiscated all the remarkable Jewish Historical story, and at least people who were not the furniture in the Annex and it is still Museum, opened in 1987. Remarkable in African American weren't being silent bare, in Frank's room the walls are that it exists at all, it houses a vast and about it. This, for all the tragedy of the covered with pictures of the movie stars glorious collection of Dutch Judaica— arsons, is inadequate but modest and others she idolized, such as Greta one of my favorite items was a 17th progress. It is only a generation ago that Garbo, Ray Milland, Rembrandt and the century silver menorah embellished with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. young English princesses, Elizabeth and an intricate tulip design—with clear, Before that we had legal apartheid, and Margaret. It breaks your heart. informative descriptions and displays of in the South, for decades, lynchings were commonplace. Amsterdam is no Utopia of tolerance, every celebration and ritual of Jewish nor was it in Frank's time. After all, it life. Ninety percent of Holland's Jews In Amsterdam a friend and I wanted to was an Amsterdam resident, in an were exterminated during World War II; attend services at the stately Portuguese anonymous phone call, who informed the first floor is devoted to this. The Synagogue, opened in 1675, the oldest the Nazis of the Secret Annex. But it is third floor honors prominent Jews who synagogue in the city. We knocked on the also a place where, in 1941, the have influenced Holland's history, locked door of the guard structure dockworkers went on strike to express culture and commerce. surrounding the shul, and an intensely their solidarity with the Jews, who had It did not surprise me that, staying in serious young man in a yarmulke asked made up 10 percent of the population Amsterdam for only three days, I saw us "How did you get here? Where are before the German occupation and had more interracial couples than I'd ever you staying? What is your name? Where are you from? May I see your passport?" I was carrying a purse. "Did anybody give you anything to put in your bag this morning?," he asked. "Has anybody handled your bag but you?" We were let Thou shaLt not complain about in, but he held our bags. Afterwards, when we went to retrieve them, I asked, "Have there been any anti-Semitic anything I might have to fix incidents in recent years?" He gave me a big smile. "Oh, no. This kind of security by Marge Piercy is normal." Well, I thought, this is better than in Rome, where the synagogue was It's always embarrassing when some woman You weep into my telephone, leaving attacked by terrorists in 1982 and two rolls up her blouse sleeve to show you a bruise desperate messages on my guards have to stand outside the building with machine guns. not sexy even, just colored like a charcoal answering machine. sunset, the fingerprints of pain. You write me long handwritten notes ne of the children's paintings I throw into the paper shredder. Ooutside the Anne Frank House, depicting a classroom, was called "The We have been trained to ignore the cries Right to an Education." It is what through the motel wall. After all, maybe You buttonhole me in the hallway, children are taught, or not taught— he's paying for it. Some women like stand beside my table while I consume whether they'reprovided with context my brioche, march outside with signs. and history—that will make or break to be hurt. You know hoiv cats sound then. their sense of tolerance, of right and I step into your hard luck on the street. wrong. It is as if she stripped in the committee room, Can I identify with the African- American experience? I wish I could, but so awkward, so tiresome, her pain Don't you understand your pain bores the color of my skin prevents that. Can I scattered around the room like used me? 1 am all for free expression empathize? I do my best. I consider underwear, not bustiers but nylon slips. except for those who whine, myself fortunate to live in New York who weep, who moan, who scream. City, where my friends have myriad looks and backgrounds and I can hear an It's comfortable here in my office, assortment of accents on the street. Here the corner office finally. It's cosy I will listen gladly to am/ complaint nonconformity is not only an option, it is even appreciated. And here, on my twenty-fourth floor ivith balcony, I share; I will sign on for any charity philosophically, I am safe. It is a place here in the compound with a guard I don't have to smell. I only object where, with my large brown eyes and at the gate. to demanding change from me. dark curly hair, people repeatedly start talking to me in Spanish, assuming I'm Puerto Rican. This always makes me MARGE PIERCY is the author of 13 novels and 12 collections of poetry. smile. It makes me aware of another all- What Are Big Girls Made Of? is her most recent work. © 1997 Marge American woman I'd be happy to be. • 14 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 1997 SUBSCRIBE NOW AND SAVE! Please enter my subscription to ON THE ISSUES: THE PROGRESSIVE WOMAN'S QUARTERLY. • 1 year (4 issues) only $14.95 • 2 years (8 issues) only $25.00 Name [please print) Institution |H applicable] Address (Apt. No.) City State Zip D Payment enclosed D Bill me NO POSTAGE NECESSARY IF MAILED IN THE UNITED STATES BUSINESS REPLY MAIL FIRST-CLASS PERMIT NO. 272 DENVILLE NJ Postage will be paid by addressee ONlUElSSUES SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES DEPT. OTI B.O. BOX 3000 DENVILLE NJ 07834-9838 peace with the ironies of the past. But the stroke had done sufficient damage to her brain, and her hearing was negligi- When They Took the Bed Away: ble. I shouted, she grew frustrated, and whatever connection could be made had A Daughter's Memories to be accomplished through touch, glances, gestures, a kind of Noh ritual version of Final Payments in the form of by Maria Bennett railed at me for my extravagances of sign language. For me, I guess, those Carita creams, Sisley foundations and the payments just weren't enough. It came to me unexpectedly, as I watched armamentaria of upwardly-mobile New the kindhearted but scary looking mov- York women that I took as my birthright. O, in the end, I am left with a ing men upend my mother's bed, doing High maintenance was a sin; we were Sbagful of ironies as the last piece of the macarena with it as they hopped out nothing if not Roman Catholic. I am taken my mother's life is carried away. The the front door. The mother is the first back to a chilling memory of being ready feisty mother gives birth to the shy child, home, I thought. This came to me with to graduate from grammar school and the fiery temperament to the withdrawn. no great training in psychology or dream being awakened on graduation morning We cannot choose what we inherit, or interpretation; I am usually the most ob- by my mother standing over me with a what we give to the next generation. tuse person in the world when it comes pair of kitchen shears. Shortly before she died, my mother fell to interpreting the realities of my own "Pull it back now, or I'll cut it all off." and broke her hip, necessitating a brutal life. The mother is the first home, I re- she shrieked, our private hair war stay in the hospital. Tubes were hooked peated to myself. With this came the un- brought to culmination. I had, like most up to every orifice; she had to be tied to derstanding of a recurrent dream, which had been plaguing me since my mom My mother's bed took up symbolic as well as real space died six months earlier. In the dream, I return to my childhood in my living room; as it made its way to the junkyard, home, but there is clearly another family in residence, although I can see no one. I felt something had collapsed inside me. The house is the same, but little things have changed inside it. I know I am girls in the 1960s, been wearing my hair the bed at all times, and each day's trip home, but I am not really home. I played down to my waist. It did, I suppose, to the geriatric floor caused me to vomit with the usual Jungian analyses of the have the tendency to fall in front of my as soon as I hit the elevator. A strange home-self analogy, going back to a part face quite a bit. Her point, so thing happened, though—it was almost of my youth that hadn't perhaps been dramatically expressed at the time, was as if she gave over her role of adult/ worked through. When I realized that that she wanted to see my face. My point protector/controller to me. She, in turn, my first real "home" was my mom's was (and perhaps still is, if we look at became the child, asking for help, womb, it all made sense. That bed took our makeup as a kind of mask) that I quiescent as never before. She was up so much symbolic as well as real didn't want anyone to really see it. The letting go of life slowly, giving the reins space in my tiny living room. As it made problem for me now is, did I realize this to me. In doing so I started to change as its way to the junkyard, instead of feel- too late? she faded away, until one Sunday ing relief and release at the sweeping In most traditional families, it is the afternoon, as I sat beside her reading the away of the effects of her passing, I felt responsibility of the daughter to take News comics, her chest stopped moving, something enormous had'collapsed in- care of aging parents. My mom was no the odd breathing quelled in an instant, side of me. exception, taking care of her mom in our and she was gone forever. home until she passed away at the age of Perennial nervousness, an addiction to y mother was not the sort of 100. After her first stroke, Mom expected coffee and the propensity to hold on to M woman who would talk for 20 my sister and I to do the same, only we things for too long (report cards from minutes about the natural curve of her had a big problem: we both were work- first grade, a chipped ceramic plate won eyebrow. I've known more than a few ing and couldn't give up our jobs. We at a local theater 50 years ago, real and such women in my life, but vanity was each did yeoman's services, however, ar- imagined slights of the spirit that should never one of mom's sins. At the nursing ranging our schedules so there would al- have been long ago abandoned)—these home, there were a few men who would ways be someone at home in case of a things I inherited straight from the salute her as "Katherine Hepburn" and, if problem. And that's exactly what hap- womb. But these other things—re- truth be told, they weren't far from pened: Mom became the problem. silience, awareness, consciousness—can wrong. Even after the strokes, the As I have only recently, at age 41, only grow as gifts from her through me, emphysema and the fractured hip, her stepped out of a prolonged adolescence after the house has been emptied. We cheekbones, upswept wave of hair, and marked by mortifying self-involvement, were each other's foils for so long; just a day before she died, she barked at me defiant gaze were tokens of a forceful I can only now begin to articulate my for wearing a skirt she thought was too beauty that she never took for granted. feelings for my mother. A few years ago, short. Her wishes for me to change, our Never a stitch of makeup, she constantly when I started to get an inkling of the importance of all this, I tried to speak of constant pull-and-push that was the def- inition of our lives together—how will I MARIA BENNETT is an essayist my childhood and our constant rubbings define myself now? • living in Yonkers, New York. against each other, attempting to make Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES 15 ON THE ISSUES Summer 19 97 GET REEL! FEMINISTS REFOCUS FILM These days, women and girls are driving the plots. BY MOLLY HASKELL WENTY YEARS AGO every area of public and at Academy Award professional life, women in Ttime, there weren't Hollywood were nowhere, enough leading actresses to with female stars fast be- fill the five slots for Best Ac- coming an endangered tress nominee. Supporting species. The studio system roles had to be upgraded to that kept actors and actress- leads and Europeans in for- es, those lucrative invest- eign-language films filled in ments, under contract in the simply to round out the previous decades had been quota. In 1977 Faye Dun- dismantled, and women away won for Network: themselves (think of Jane every man's nightmare of Fonda and Vanessa Red- the New Career Woman, a grave) were more interested television executive ballsy in becoming "real people," enough to blast through the political activists, free glass ceiling, but one who agents, than—the invidious quotes Nielson ratings term of the time—"sex ob- while she's making love. jects." Trailing Dunaway were The glamour mystique Sissy Spacek, nominated for went out with Marilyn Mon- Carrie, a high school re- roe and Elizabeth Taylor. venge monster out of the Women no longer wanted to perfervid imagination of be discovered at Schwab's Stephen King; Talia Shire for drugstore, but Paul New- Rocky (a supporting part if man and Robert Redford ever there was one); Marie- Haskell's View: Women in film are no longer an anomaly happily moved in to fill the Christine Barrault for Cousin Cousinc and Liv Ullmann for vacuum as the new pin-ups. Buddy movies, disaster stories Bergman's Face to Face. and gangster epics built around bankable male stars were It was the great irony of the 1970s: In counterpoint to the the genres of the moment, and even those male-heavy dra- success story of feminism and its propulsion of women into mas came to look Shakespearean, compared to the mind- less special-effects extravaganzas that Hollywood now puts MOLLY HASKELL s latest book, Holding My Own in No out for male teenagers. Man's Land (Oxford University Press), is a collection of pieces Nevertheless, 1996 was a banner year for women, thanks written in the 20 years since the publication of her landmark to a bumper crop of great independent films and even a From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the few Hollywood testimonials to the fact that there was life Movies (University of Chicago Press). in the ladies yet. 16 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 1997 Bumper Crop: Last year we were Ill treated to the rich and adventurous performances of Academy Award Winner Frances McDormand in Fargo (Left) and her sister nominees—Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Brenda Blethyn (below) in Secrets and Lies and Kristin Scott Thomas in The English Patient (bottom). % In fact, our numbers had been in- creasing throughout the 1980s, though women were still a long way from commanding salaries or sustaining ca- reers in anything like the star stratos- phere occupied by Cruise-Schwarzen- egger-Pitt-Gibson-Willis-Ford-Stallone- Eastwood, et al. But last year we did get to savor the rich and adventurous performances of Frances McDormand, Emily Watson, Brenda Blethyn, Diane Keaton and Kristin Scott Thomas. And there was Debbie Reynolds (one of my own favorites) redeeming not only her own cutsie 1950s image, but the Hol- lywood Mother, that breed of demons T'S STILL A MAN'S WORLD OUT there, but we're beginning to see Inot just the occasional stellar or quirky female performance, but women and girls actually driving the plot. The First Wives Club, like Waiting to Exhale, provided an exhilarating re- venge fantasy for older women dis- carded for younger models and proved there was an audience for women's films. The operating maxim in Hollywood is that females will go to see male rite-of-passage movies, but males won't go to see the girls doing their thing. Too threatening, perhaps. So this provided a convenient and not entirely erroneous rationale for stick- Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES 17 New Breed: In notable directorial debuts this summer are All Over Me's Alex Sichel (left) with producer Dolly Hall, (background) and Lynne Stopkewich of Kissed (bottom left). You won't soon forget her star, Molly Parker (below). ing to formulaic one-size-fits-all stories of male derring-do. need of blind critical approval as a form of hand-holding or But after years of getting only the guy side of bonding—lit- affirmative action. tle men, little men in groups, little men come of age, little men blow each other up—we're at last in the midst of a E\rENTIES FEMINISM DEMANDED SOLIDARITY AND LOY- blizzard of estrogen-driven fables. alty, and gloried in the discovery of common goals, of From nonexistence to a virtual cornucopia, what ac- Sa mutual sense of oppression and the need to forge counts for the change? Women writers, directors and pro- new opportunities. Now we're at the stage where we can ducers, for one thing. Certainly there have been influences take advantage of opportunities, and take delight in our di- and inspirations: The exuberantly groundbreaking Thelma vergences. Directors like Kathryn Bigelow (who cut her and Louise combined the themes of female bonding, female filmmaking teeth on action directors like Sam Peckinpah), outlaws and the revenge melodrama to set up most of the Amy Heckerling, Penny Marshall, Agnieska Holland, Jane major story lines to follow. Women bonded more gently in Campion and Nora Ephron are almost as different from Little Women and How to Make an American Quilt and less each other as they are from most male directors. Moreover, gently in Girls' Town, Foxfire and the marvelously weird, as we've opened up the screen and our minds to the previ- true-life based Heavenly Creatures. But the real change is in ously taboo—to homosexuality, to shameful sexual and ro- the landscape of filmmaking itself: women emerging from mantic fantasies, even to incest—the task of appraisal and film schools (where they constitute half of all enrollees) and analysis, of maintaining some moral center without becom- the flourishing of independent cinema under the aegis of ing moralistic, is hard enough from a human point of view. festivals like Sundance. The attempt to view art from a "woman's point of view" So prevalent have women become that we must now ad- when we are so busy celebrating a tapestry of difference just our sights and alter our critical vocabulary. No longer seems almost impossible. is each woman an anomaly, bearing the burden of her sex, It is no longer sufficient—if it ever was—to unmask the obliged to fulfill some sort of politically correct agenda— evils of the patriarchy by simply labeling this or that act or which, in any case, in this era of multiple feminisms and gesture sexist or misogynist. Yet, my own feeling is that it's wildly differing individual needs and ambitions, could also impossible, as any kind of a feminist living in this day never be agreed upon. And no longer should women be in- and age, not to look at movies from a "woman's point of dulged just because they are women, new at the game, in view." How can you not respond viscerally and sponta- 18 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 19 97 ©1997 F: At left, Coming of Age: In Alt Over Me, Tara Subkoff (far left) and Alison Folland, play best friends who gradually find different interests. The film presents a deeply sympathetic account of how each of these girls embraces her destiny, how one is lost and one is found. Right, like the friends of All Over Me, Ripe's, Daisy Eagan (left) and Monica Keena, as fraternal twins, drift apart. neously to the adventure of being a woman and how it is tor) and writer Sylvia Sichel, the movie is set in New York's portrayed, how it infuses and shapes our stories? Hell's Kitchen, and vividly explores a web of relationships It inevitably infuses criticism, too, mine anyway, but not, I among a mixed group of dangerously drifting teenagers. hope, in a programmatic way. I've always maintained that Like Kids, the young people are chronically unchaperoned, the greatest service one can perform as a reviewer is to vulnerable to drugs and mad about music, but there the judge the work of art on its own terms, and I fully believe similarity ends. Instead of the scabrously sensational and that the women who are making films today would feel in- titillatingly voyeuristic view of a doomed generation that sulted and patronized if sympathetic reviewers were to tem- Larry Clark gave us in Kids, the Sichel sisters present a per their standards in the name of favored-nation treatment. deeply sympathetic, insider account of how each of the I don't expect to devote all my critical attention to girls gradually embraces her destiny; how one is lost and women's films or films about women, either, just because one is found. the directors are struggling, or the films are low-budget or Claude (Alison Folland) and Ellen (Tara Subkoff) spend need help. They must take their place in the marketplace, hours in Claude's bedroom, playing their guitars, working and in the competition for viewers' hearts and minds: we on music with the plan of starting a band, sometimes col- should support them because they are good, not because lapsing in giggles or sleep. At 15 they have been central to they are worthy. each other's lives, but as the outside world beckons they As our celluloid cup fills, this summer's releases bring us gradually find different friends and interests. Ellen, fragile some notable debuts by women directors. With remarkable and blond, becomes involved with a boyfriend (a nastily candor, they confront female growing pains, sexual confu- seductive Cole Hauser), while Claude becomes acquainted sion and the different kinds of love that disrupt friendships with a fellow waiter (Wilson Cruz) at the pizza parlor and drive a girl wild. where she works and a gay musician (Pat Briggs), who en- courages her to try out for a band. LL OfH? ME, THE STORY OF TWO HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS In an early scene, the girls' horseplay slides into the erot- during a fateful week's crisis in their friendship, is ic, and the film illuminates that shadowy realm when sexu- A one of the best of the new films, a marvel of tight ality is not yet an either/or thing. But as Ellen's sinister, construction and distinguished acting despite a low-bud- abusive boyfriend takes her in one direction, Claude, who get, laid-back look. The work of sisters Alex Sichel (direc- is at first devastated by her friend's desertion, gradually, Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES 19 After years of only getting the guy side of bonding, we're at last in the midst of a blizzard of estrogen-driven fables. with the help of new friends, comes into her own, as musi- DAPTED FROM A SHORT STORY BY BARBARA GOVVTJY, cian and as lesbian lover. We So Seldom Look on Love, the film also resembles In the surface dynamic of the friendship, Ellen is the ACrash in that the female protagonists don't wait to "pretty one," petite and self-aware, more evolved socially be asked: they seek the release (and the protection?) of sex while Claude is the awkward one, phlegmatic, unassured. without love to pursue their bizarre tastes ruthlessly. But Yet Alison Folland's Claude is the stunner, with one of while Crash is shot with metallic grays and silvers, echoing those faces that speaks to the camera, registering the move- the coldness of the characters and the automobile-saturat- ments of the soul as she emerges before our eyes. Watching ed near-future it depicts, Kissed sees its characters through her is like watching yourself at 15 and suddenly remember- a warm, cheerful glow. ing that heavy slumberous feeling when everyone else's What's unusual is that main character Sandra Larson feet seemed to be able to fit into Cinderella's slippers ex- (Molly Parker), far from being the sort of creep we imagine cept yours. necrophiliacs to be, is a surprisingly smart, more or less Like Heavenly Creatures, the story of a murder that came well-adjusted young woman who happens to discover a out of the fierce bond between two teenage girls in New taste for cadavers. She even goes out with an attractive Zealand, All Over Me shows the hothouse environment of man, but the pull of death is stronger than he is, so strong that sort of insular friendship. Indeed, this is one of the she pulls him into her morbid netherworld. most striking themes in recent movies, the us-against-the- The director, like her heroine, is drawn to death and the world mentality that can spill over into violence or tragedy, feel of it, the stillness and quiet of the funeral parlor in or can simply be the source of deep hurt when one of the which Sandra works (her job choice is more than coinci- two divides her allegiance. Last year's Walking and Talking dence). Stopkewich follows the trajectory of the story with by Nicole Holofcaner, showed the effect on two friends, an unflinching eye, as if the young woman's increasingly buddies from childhood, when one became engaged. Be- rapt communion with her dead lovers were the most nor- cause we're taught from childhood to anticipate marriage mal thing in the world. More than the act of congress with as the great fulfillment of our lives as women, it comes as a dead flesh, the director's quietly imperturbable gaze is the shock to realize how terribly sad it is, for the one who ties most haunting thing about the film. the knot, "forsaking all others," and perhaps even more, at Injecting a wild note of deadpan humor into the sisters- least at that moment, for those forsaken and left behind. and-rivals theme is Australian writer-director Shirley Bar- rett's Love Serenade. Shown at the New Directors Festival HAT MARRIAGE WAS TO THE VIRGINS OF EARLIER and winner of the Camera d'Or at Cannes as best first fea- generations, the first sexual experience is now. ture, the movie tells the story of the agitation that occurs WMo Ogrodnik's Ripe, like All Over Me explores when a radio personality from Brisbane, a smooth-voiced that moment in the lives of two closely bound girls, in this lounge lizard named Ken Sherry (George Shevtsov), case fraternal twins. Like the friends of All Over Me, Violet moves in next door to the Hurleys. (Monica Keena) and Rosie (Daisy Eagan) have developed Vicki-Ann Hurley (Rebecca Frith), the beautician sister in different ways, Monica being the pretty seductive one, and sophisticate of the duo, runs right over with a marlin Rosie the tomboy. the girls have just caught, and is perfectly unruffled when In a setting that seems more lurid fantasy than plausible Ken, saying he doesn't eat fish, shuts the door firmly in reality, the sisters find themselves hiding out in an army her face. The virginal Dimity Hurley (Miranda Otto), an base after surviving an automobile accident that leaves oddball who works at a local Chinese restaurant, proceeds their parents dead. Ogrodnik rushes over scenes of to hang around Ken's studio, draped on her bike. She's the parental abuse and the accident itself to concentrate on the persistant type, and it's only a matter of time before she interaction of the sisters with men they meet in the camp: winds up first in his bed, losing her chastity when the among them a sweet but ineffectual drifter who takes them thrice-divorced Ken lazily accepts her offer to ease his in; a black officer who teaches Rosie to shoot. loneliness. Bordering on exploitation, the film dwells on sordid de- The two actresses are uncanny in the roles, crazy in that tails: casual thievery and lawlessness by the two girls, a way that passes for eccentricity in the backwaters of Aus- strange bonfire scene in which soldiers strip in an apparent tralia. The town called Sunray, with its flat, unpeopled homoerotic ritual, and a sense of sex—on the mind, ever landscape, is a character in the film, a place so backward ready to erupt—that is more overripe than ripe. the radio station has yet to discover CDs. It's the end of Women directors are certainly pulling no punches where the earth, and the trio in the film are as stuck as the carp sex is concerned. Kissed is not just the first film by Canadi- mounted on Ken's wall. Director Barrett uses the theme of an Lynne Stopkewich, but the first film, as far as I know, hooking a fish and letting it go, to wittily echo the game whose heroine makes love to corpses in a mortuary. Kin to that is being played without ever tipping her hand as to another Canadian export, the ultra-kinky Crash, in which who is hooking whom. jaded couples, seeking some transcendent experience, are Two's company and three's a crowd, even at the earth's turned on by car crashes, Kissed is fascinated by the links edge. The violent climax is both a surprise and not a sur- between sex and death, and carries this fascination to the prise: an absurd yet logical way of putting an end to an outer limit. Is it worth the trip? Well, yes and no. impossibly crowded threesome. • 2(1 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 199 7 religion & society CASTING STONES: THE THEOLOGY OF PROSTITUTION Are women "sewers" or saints? The church can't decide. BY RITA NAKASHIMA BROCK URING THE 1996 NATIONAL U.S. ELECTIONS, THE about the body and sex from the experience of celibacy and news media had some ironic fun at Dick Morris' they problematized sexuality altogether and most forms of Dexpense, commenting that the Presidential advisor human intimacy. and architect of family values got caught with them around In God's good providence, the fathers believed even the his ankles. If we think his relationship with a prostitute vi- drag of the flesh had its purposes, and God had provided olates patriarchal family values, however, we would be that all things work toward the good. Prostitutes were a wrong for much of Christian history. In fact, many of the necessary evil, according to the medieval theologian church's major formative theologians and the social poli- Thomas Aquinas, as they were permitted by God in order cies they espoused assumed that prostitutes were necessary to prevent male lust from becoming totally out of control. to preserve the patriarchal family. "Sewers," he noted, "are necessary to guarantee the whole- Christianity has had a profoundly ambivalent attitude someness of palaces." Otherwise, Aquinas worried, toward sexuality, an ambivalence often projected through "sodomy" and worse crimes might result. While the money race onto darker-skinned peoples. On the one hand, the paid to prostitutes is paid for an unlawful purpose, accord- doctrine of the incarnation, that God became an actual ing to Aquinas, the giving itself is not unlawful and the human being, led official Christianity to repudiate theolo- woman could retain what she received. In other words, gies such as Gnosticism that equate the physical world, in- prostitutes protect the "good" women of the family from cluding the body, with the fall and human sin. On the other the demands of male sin. hand, Christianity, under the influence of Paul, early Chris- This dichotomy of female sewers and saints is one of the tian ascetics and Augustine, a bishop and theologian of the origins of the madonna/whore phenomenon in the West, early Christian church, split the spiritual and the body. In where women are regarded as either pure and "good" or this theological dualism, the spirit (and the male as the sexually active and "bad." The feminist writer Simone de spiritual principle) is always at risk from the drag of the Beauvoir noted that "it has often been remarked that the sexual impulse (the female). necessity exists of sacrificing one part of the female sex in Aristotle, as is well known, equated women with the ma- order to save the other and prevent worse troubles... a caste terial principle in the existence and equated men with the of 'shameless women' allows the 'honest woman'to be rational principle. For the correct ordering of existence, the treated with the most chivalrous respect." rational had to rule over the physical and give it, the pas- sive element, shape and direction. Most theologians wrote EGISLATION ABOUT PROSTITUTION FOLLOWS THIS division of women into good, virginal women (the RITA NAKASHIMA BROCK is the Professor in the L"virgin") and bad, sexual women (the prostitute Endowed Chair in the Humanities at Hamline University in St. Mary Magdalene—who was a resurrection witness and is Paul, Minnesota. Reprinted by permission from Casting Stones: never said to be a prostitute in the Christian scriptures). Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States by Medieval canon lawyers developed the legislation sur- Rita N. BrOCk and Susan TMslethlVaite. Copyright @1996 Augsburg Fortress.rounding prostitution that came to dominate in Europe. Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES 21 Prostitutes were tolerated and more mobile in medieval Europe. scaia/Art Resource, NY Modesty in behavior was women's protection. Any made a profit from her, i.e., pimps, procurers, brothel woman who did not act modestly—who, for example, keepers, even customers. While they recognized that was sexually ardent—was deemed at heart a prostitute, many women turned to prostitution out of economic ne- though she need not be classified as one as long as she re- cessity, this was not a mitigating circumstance (despite the mained faithful to her husband. During periods in history fact that poverty was taken to be a mitigating circum- when wives were severely restricted as to movement, stance in stealing or murder). The canon lawyers did, clothing, residence etc., prostitutes were tolerated and al- however, count a woman or girl sold into prostitution not lowed to move with few restrictions. In the early Middle culpable for her actions. Ages, prostitutes in Europe had guilds, women who The church had great influence on the development of worked as prostitutes even marched as a guild in reli- secular law regarding prostitution, an influence that was gious processions. quite ambiguous. In the later Middle Ages prostitution The attitude of medieval canon lawyers toward prosti- was regulated by forcing prostitutes to live in certain tution was complicated by several factors. In the first in- parts of the city, to wear certain types of dress and to re- stance, they regarded women as having a different sexual- frain from public soliciting. The only King of France to be ity from men. Since it was Eve who led Adam astray in named a saint, Louis, was disturbed about tolerating the garden, women were regarded as having no self con- prostitution and sought to eliminate it. He gave instruc- trol, particularly in regard to sexual matters. Hence, the tions to his son Philip to carry out this edict when he be- rigidity of dress, conduct and movement of women testi- came king. Prostitution was held to be a misdemeanor fied to their status as "good" or "bad." This meant, how- and prostitutes prosecuted. This prohibition was found ever, that medieval church lawyers did not especially con- impossible to maintain and France quickly went back to demn the prostitute for her activities, as she was merely regulating prostitutes. acting out sexuality that good women repressed. They felt Other rulers tried harsher penalties to eliminate prostitu- that the more severe punishment should fall on those who tion before turning to regulation. Frederick Barbarossa, the 22 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 1997 German king, began the practice of cutting off the noses of was good; enjoying marital sexuality was evil. women found to be prostitutes. In central Europe during The regulation and toleration of prostitution that had de- the 12th century, mutilation was used for a variety of of- veloped both in church and civil law during the Middle fenses. Mutilating a prostitute's face was held to impair her Ages was deeply suspect to both Luther and Calvin. effectiveness by making her less attractive. Luther, in a short tract called "Thoughts Concerning Broth- The sex industry flourished in medieval Europe, as it has els," disagrees with church fathers such as Augustine or throughout human history when women are economically Aquinas, who had held that prostitution was a necessary dependent on males and when traditional patriarchal pat- evil. In a posted warning to students at Wittenburg Univer- terns of economic support are disrupted by wars, poverty, sity about consorting with prostitutes, Luther prefigured rapid urbanization or natural disasters. Prostitutes fol- the several changes that would come about in both ecclesi- lowed German, French or other armies and were regarded astical and civil attitudes towards prostitution as a result of as essential not only for sexual services, but also for taking "religious reform." care of the wounded, cooking meals, washing laundry and "Through special enemies of our faith the devil has sent cleaning the camp. An example of the use of prostitutes by some whores here to ruin our poor young men. As an old religious leaders was the Council of Constance, held in and faithful preacher I ask you in fatherly fashion, dear Switzerland between 1414 and 1418 in order to end the children, that you believe assuredly that the evil spirit sent great Schism and to reform the medieval church. Nearly these whores here and that they are dreadful, shabby, stink- 700 prostitutes also came to town to provide sexual ser- ing, loathsome, and syphilitic, as daily experience unfortu- vices for the ecclesiastics. nately demonstrates." Luther shifted the locus of evil from male lust to the prostitute who has been sent by the devil to corrupt "poor Blaming the Victim young men." The reformers blamed the prostitute far The Protestant Reformation abolished celibacy and more than they blamed the pimp, the procurer or the monasticism, but it did not affirm the sexuality of women brothel owner, and they were certainly not blaming the as part of this "reform." In fact, there is some evidence to customer. suggest that one of the things the Protestant Reformation When Fortress Press, a Lutheran publishing house, is- sought to reduce was the increasing feminization of the sued Casting Stones, Marshall Johnson, who is director of church, exemplified in such areas as Mariology, courtly the company, received complaints from a number of indig- love and aesthetic richness. Architects of the Reformation nant pastors who were appalled that they had published a such as Martin Luther took the harshest possible reading book on prostitution. Johnson's response: "One of the few of the Pauline literature to mean that the original equiva- things about Jesus of which we can be certain is that he had lence of Adam and Eve had been shattered in the fall and, a positive attitude toward prostitutes." Unfortunately, the because Eve caused the fall through her disobedience she, attitude of Jesus in the Gospels has been far superceded by in the form of her daughters, had to be evermore sub- the history of the influence of theology of figures from Paul servient to her husband or father. The closing of convents to Luther. Their focus on sexuality as sin and its assign- removed one of the only escapes for women from the de- ment to women has long influenced social and legal policy mands of domestic life, including forced pregnancy, child- in Christian states. hood molestation and physical violence. The Protestant The dominant American WASP (White Anglo-Saxon church in Europe and America killed more women as Protestant) culture is shaped by this legacy of religious du- witches than did the Catholic Inquisition, and virtually all alism, which projects blame for embodiment on females, accusations of witchcraft involved tampering with materi- and especially on women of color. The body and its ambi- al reality and /or engaging in illicit forms of sexuality. guities have been used, through American political and While the Protestant reformers of the 16th century are economic processes, to legitimate slavery, racial genocide, widely regarded as having a more positive view of sexual- sexual and domestic violence and prostitution. ity (i.e., they repudiated celibacy), it is more accurate to state that they held a more negative view of celibacy as a possible means of grace. Luther contended that those who The Protestant Legacy practiced celibacy out of a belief that they could win di- By the second decade of the 21st century, it has been esti- vine favor were mistaken; Calvin disapproved of celibacy mated that Christianity may become numerically only one only when those who had chosen this path found they of many religions represented in the United States. In the could not stay on it. While Luther and Calvin regarded popular culture and in social policy, however, Christian marriage much more positively than did the Church Fa- values about sex and sensuality predominate, either in thers, their view of sexuality is little different. Sexual inter- prudishness about the body or in reactions that overem- course carried the taint of carnality and was intrinsically phasize sex and use it to shock or sell products. opposed to the spirit. The best that could be said for mari- Christian theologians made the prostitute into the arche- tal intimacy was that it prevented worse evil. Indulgence typal sinner. This theological perspective begins with the in marital intercourse, however, could cause the marriage assumption that sexuality embodies sin. Far from illumi- to become a pigsty of sensuality, according to Luther. nating the reality of the sex industry as a system of ex- Calvin was a little more positive, arguing that sexuality ploitation of the vulnerable, young and poor, the Christian was a good, having been created by God for the purpose pathologizing of sex has obscured its dynamics. The ideol- of procreation, but that the pleasure accompanying coitus ogy of sin has often entrapped women, because once hav- did contain an element of evil. Hence, marital sexuality ing been labeled as "fallen" they had little hope of ever Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES 23 getting free from prostitution, except under the paternalistic benevolence of the church, many of whose clerics were themselves customers. The combining of the sinner with the victim implies that only victims who do not deserve their suffering are innocent, because the opposite of sin is innocence. By innocence, I mean the sense that our actions are not willfully chosen between good and evil because we do not know evil—that we are doing what we do by faith and do not sin. To be innocent is to be a worthy victim, deserving of compas- sion. But if a victim can be proven to lack innocence, the implication is that she no longer is entitled to justice or compas- sion—that is, she deserves her suffering. Any hint of moral ambiguity, or the pos- session of power and agency by a victim, implies that she had a choice to do other- wise and did not. But such dualistic no- tions about innocent victims and sinful victims are disempowering to those most victimized by oppression; the notions admit no understanding of the ambigui- ties within which people live their lives and survive adverse circumstances. This tendency to identify with innocent victims and to avoid discussions of the moral complexities of life continues to place responsibility for sexual exploita- tion on the victims of the system, who are regarded as helpless by their sinful na- ture. Their helplessness is not seen as caused by the misuse of power by ex- ploitive systems. Women who escape are supposed to feel grateful that they are forgiven and regarded as redeemed de- spite their "fallen" natures, which rein- forces the idea of their powerlessness, even as they are held responsible for what happened to them. Women were perceived as temptation—or the embodiment of evil. Exploitation is wrong not because of NY Public Library Picture Collection the moral status of the victims, but be- cause the misuse of power, even by good people for a good cause, dehumanizes all involved. Hence, tion of all that is stable and noble in our civilization, the we need to focus not on innocence and forgiveness of the best guaranty of that reverent morality which is the fallen girl, but on what is wrong with exploitive systems source of all beneficent progress in social and political im- and behavior—on misuses of power. provement." Defining prostitution as female promiscuity, the court echoed the Church Fathers of 10 centuries earlier. Prostitu- What Public Policy Has Wrought tion was deemed criminal by theologians because it was a The Supreme Court of the United States in 1908 succinctly moral evil due to women's disobedient nature as shown in gave the moral and paternalistic arguments for the prohibi- the behavior of Eve. For the Supreme Court, it violated tion of prostitution. "holy" matrimony, the bedrock or civilization and guaran- "[Prostitution] refers to women (sic) who for hire or tor of morals. This mentality about marriage echoes still in without hire offer their bodies to indiscriminate inter- the conservative rhetoric surrounding gay marriage, out of course with men. The lives and example of such persons wedlock pregnancy and feminism. are in hostility to the idea of the family, as consisting in Arguments both prohibiting prostitution in the latter half and springing from union for life of one man and one of the 20th century in the West and in the United Nations woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure founda- rhetoric that has influenced Asia have shifted from im- 24 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 1997 morality and paternalism to the language of human rights. towns looking for children and young women to perform The practice of prostitution itself is deemed harmful to the for them. To survive being repeatedly raped, having person soliciting prostitution and the customer. Whether strangers violate one's body, enduring repeated physical vi- this harm is deemed disease, vulnerability to exploitation olence, working 365 days a year and living under the con- or sexual dysfunction, the argument is that people must be stant shadow of arrest requires the psychological resources protected against this "self-inflicted" harm. Because people used by those under torture and war. Under such circum- are deemed to possess certain inalienable human rights stances the innocent do not survive. and prostitution is now defined as harm, people must be prohibited from engaging in sex work in order to protect their human rights. Demystifying Theology, Policy, and Law That is the foundation of the United Nations "Conven- It is time we gave up the male gaze, which has done little tion for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the but mystify prostitution and project sin and blame in the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others." The Universal wrong direction. Instead of seeing sin in sexual behavior, Declaration of Human Rights, prepared by the commission which has created veils of shame and guilt even around on Human Rights set up by the U.N. Economic and Social healthy sexual feelings, I propose we see it in the abuse of Council, was adopted by the General Assembly in 1948. It power. A major tragedy of male dominance has been to concentrates heavily on "Western civil and political rights" confuse sex with power and with violence. As the theolo- and tends to ignore or downplay economic or social rights. gian Mary Potter Engel suggests, we should measure sin by The two main premises of the document are the autonomy what destroys right relationship. Engel proposes that we or capacity for self-governance of each individual and the identify sin as the distortion of feeling, as the betrayal of equality of each person under the law—which we know for trust, as lack of care and as lack of consent to vulnerability. most of U.S. history and much of the world means the By these criteria, the Christian mystification of prostitution, male, propertied individual. as well as the pimp, procurer, police and customer partici- pate in creating evil. Our social and legal policies need to HE THEOLOGICAL PRONOUNCEMENTS, SOCIAL ATTI- reflect this understanding of what creates evil. tudes, and legal policies that surround prostitu- Attitudes toward the body, women and sexuality form Ttion are based on the male gaze. They have little and are formed by the structures of a culture, its laws, to do with the reality of those who work as prostitutes. economic practices, familial relationships, religions and For the workers and those exploited, their acts have noth- political processes. The history of a culture reveals how ing to do with lust, sexual desire, personal choice or self- these structures interact with attitudes, values and behav- inflicted harm. Here is the report of a girl who depicts the ior. To understand sex industries more completely, there- reality of sex work: fore, we must attend closely to the historically contingent "A fifty dollar bill...When I stepped into your car you vi- constructions of the body, women and sexuality they mir- olated my body, asking me to call you 'daddy.' ...You not ror. In the U.S., it means noting the long pathological only fucked with my body, you fucked with my mind. Af- Christian legacy around sexuality, suffering and women. terwards, I held the fifty dollar bill to my stomach as I Western Christianity has had an enormous impact on threw up, sickened by what had just happened. And that how the laws about prostitution throughout the world, and feeling is still the same, even after four years have passed especially in the Unites States and Asia, have been devel- me by. I've been violated by every type of man—rich, poor, oped. Though U.S. constitutional law forbids an explicit ugly, good looking, every race. I have no respect for you." link between the church and the state, in fact many of the The primary goal of those prostituted is survival. During laws surrounding prostitution are deeply rooted in the the transaction, the objective is to satisfy the customer with Christian history of the West. Religion has had a direct role the least disgusting, most efficient means possible—to do in social attitudes towards the body and sex, and those so- the least amount in the fastest time possible, or to fill the cial attitudes carry over into legislation. time with the least objectionable activities. That objective must be fulfilled while avoiding arrest, or being cheated, S WITH ALL SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS, SEX INDUSTRIES humiliated, beaten, mutilated or murdered. and sexual exploitation exist within particular soci- The history of prostitution involves the use of slave Aeties because political, economic and other forces brothels by armies, the selling of children, the kidnapping enable, undergird and reinforce their presence, even when and entrapment of girls and women into prostitution, the those forces are at odds with other forces that prohibit such disruption of economic support systems for women and exploitation. children and the gender ideology that women and others Prostitution, because it constitutes a major aspect of legal who are young and vulnerable are supposed to serve the and social policy, provides a window on the pathology of personal needs of men. The current average age of entry sexuality in a society. The spirit/flesh split, the association into prostitution in the U.S. is 14; from 85 to 99 percent are of sexuality and profound embodiment with sin, the subor- victims of sexual abuse. Most adult women began prostitu- dination and exploitation of women and children, the pro- tion as children. Pimps wait in bus stations, roam city tection of power and the political/economic nature of mar- streets and wander shopping malls recruiting girls and riage become clearer when we look carefully at how boys. The pimps provide the commodity purchased by the Christianity and American culture have handled prostitu- politicians, blue-collar workers, foreign diplomats, doctors, tion, or perhaps more accurately, tried not to see it. If we media stars, judges, law-enforcement officers, priests and look in the window, we will see it, not only as a local or na- pastors who cruise the poor neighborhoods of cities and tional issue, but also as a global one. • Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES 25 activism GIRLS AND THE BUSINESS OF SEX From Senegal to Philadelphia, girls getting out of "the life." USINESS HAS BEEN SLOW FOR THE BROTHEL OWNER IN official in the Saigon regime, was sent to prison for what the western end of Ho Chi Minh City. The police are in would be an 11-year sentence. Truong's career as a sex Bthe middle of a crackdown on prostitution as part of a worker started at this point—she sold her virginity at the campaign against "social evils," and the owner's husband re- age of 21 and became a prostitute to support her mother cently ran off with one of the girls who worked for her. and two younger siblings. A few years later, she became "My girls are free to leave the house, not like other girls addicted to drugs. in the area," boasted the madam, sitting in front of her two- In 1992, Truong was still a commercial sex worker when room shack, located on a dirt road within the city limits. she was approached by volunteers from the Save the Chil- The young women and girls who work for her range in age dren. "I was skeptical about them," said Truong, but they from 15 to 25 and earn 70,000 dong per customer—a bit convinced her to become an outreach worker. At this point, more than $6 dollars. From this, the madam subtracts a her father became sick and she sought help from her new hefty amount for rent and food. boss, Van Thanh Pham. "I went to Mr. Van's house at 11 Several times a week, the madam and the girls and P.M., and borrowed money for medicine. Mr. Van and his young women who work wife were so kind... I felt I should change my life." Truong for her are visited by Tarn stopped being a sex worker and became a staff member for One Woman Hong Truong, an outreach Save the Children. j . j. -, worker for Save the Chil- "I'd say 70 percent of the women who work as commer- V\ltlt Ci dren UK, and a former pros- cial sex workers do it to support their families or them- a titute herself. Truong dis- selves. It is because of the poverty," she said. tributes free condoms and Truong took me to two brothels. The first was the brothel Mission teaches the women working with the unlucky madam; she is friends with the brothel in the area about safe sex. owner. The outhouse was truly outside: a deck hanging BY Truong is a small, seem- over a stagnant pool. The two rooms were dark and without ingly fearless woman, ventilation. One woman was 25 and had been a sex worker DYLAN FOLEY trained in the harm-reduc- for a year. The second was 17 and had a melancholy and tion model of AIDS preven- tired expression on her face. A girl came out wearing a Don- tion, in which moral judgments are suspended. Outreach ald Duck T-shirt. She was probably 15 years old. Truong workers make contact with people engaged in risky behav- had an easy manner with the madam, her women and her ior—such as unsafe commercial sex or sharing needles girls, talking about local gossip. She and the madam talked while injecting drugs—and teach them to protect them- about the girl who ran off with the madam's husband; she'd selves. The first goal is to stop the spread of AIDS. had a baby and tried to sell the child for $270. The madam I met Truong for the first time in the offices of Save the complained to Truong about business. The police crack- Children, located in a spacious house near the center of down has shut several other brothels in the area. As a result, Saigon. She talked frankly about her past. When Saigon fell there are fewer customers than usual. The madam said that to the North Vietnamese in April 1975, Truong's father, an her girls had sex with one to 10 customers a night. Truong, the translator and I got back on our scooters and DYLAN FOLEY, a freelance writer presently living in went to the second brothel. Four young women sat in front New York, has written frequently on internationalissues. of a shack under an awning, trying to stay cool in the op- 26 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 1997 Sex dealers increasingly seek young girls in the mistaken belief that they are less likely to be HIV positive; in reality, children are most vulnerable. pressive humidity of the pre-rainy season. They were heav- ily made up; several were wearing lingerie. One of them was getting a pedicure from a local woman. All four T AGE 14, VICTORIA FLED TO THE AFRICAN CITY OF women had recently come from the countryside, and had Accra in Ghana to escape sexual abuse at home. Ex- been in Saigon for two to six months. Despite the crack- Aploited by a male "minder" and sold to other men down, a fifth woman emerged from the shack with a sol- in exchange for food and protection, Victoria became preg- dier in uniform. nant. Deserted by her pimp, she took to sleeping on the At lunch in a vegetarian restaurant, Truong recounts the streets along with 10,000 other destitute children there. story of how she saved a 13-year-old girl from being sold Victoria is one of the more than one million children to a pimp. The girl made her living selling lottery tickets under 18 who are exploited through prostitution through- on the street. Two days in a row, her tickets were stolen, a out the world, according to United Nations International loss of $20 for the lottery company and almost a month's Childrens' Fund (UNICEF). If sexism and the abuse of male salary for the girl. She was afraid to go back to her grand- power creates the climate for prostitution, it is poverty, mother and stayed on the street. A 17-year-old hustler and abuse at home and lack of opportunity that force girls like part-time sex worker found out about the girl's plight and Victoria onto the streets, where many become easy targets befriended her. She was planning to take the girl to a near- for pimps. Street children often turn to "survival sex" to by beachfront resort to sell her to a pimp. Truong also got pay for food or earn money word of the girl's situation and took her out for dinner. /\ lY1C(1Y\ their families. Approxi- "The girl was still very naive and wouldn't even look at -^ V mately one hundred million me," said Truong. She gained the girl's confidence and re- /*"r • I street children around the turned her to her grandmother, who was so overjoyed, \jVYLS world start their days early in Truong said, she collected the money to pay back the lot- the morning, earning a mea- tery company. nj- J^IQIC ger income selling candy, According to the official government figures, there are VIV -IVt-D/V shining shoes, picking rags, 3,700 cases of HIV in Vietnam. Estimates by the World or engaging in petty crimes. Health Organization put the actual figures at 100,000. Ac- BY ANDREA "If they don't earn enough cording to Van Thanh Pham of Save the Children UK, the for the day, some know they cases of HIV and AIDS in Vietnam are projected to jump to D'ASARO can always turn a trick," says 500,000 by 1998. Marilyn Rocky, director of ChildHope International in New York. HE VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT OBSERVES A CON- Sex dealers increasingly seek young girls in the mistaken tradictory policy on AIDS prevention. They allow belief they are less likely to be HIV positive. Male customers Tsmall-scale innovative programs to curb the spread sometimes believe sex with a girl will cure the infection or of AIDS prevention education for sex workers and hypo- boost their virility; in reality, children are most vulnerable to dermic needle exchanges for intravenous drug users. But in HIV infection because of easily torn genitals, as well as a a crackdown on "morals" they arrest prostitutes and drug lack of power or education to insist on safe sex. One users, taking them away from the AIDS outreach that UNICEF estimate from Zambia finds HIV/AIDS infection might help them. among girls in the 15-19 age group seven times higher than In the face of such contradictions, Truong continues her that of boys. Girls often fail to take precautions against AIDS outreach to commercial sex workers. On this particular because of lack of education, according to Rocky of Child- morning, she was at the Save the Children headquarters, Hope. "They think they'll be protected against AIDS if they scrounging for clean clothes for a client—a sexually abused take an aspirin after having sex, for example." The cycle con- mute woman. The woman was living in a local park after tinues as AIDS orphans become prostitutes to earn a living. serving a one-year jail sentence for prostitution; again she "Counting who is a prostitute and who isn't is nearly im- was doing sex work to survive. The other sex workers on possible," says Rocky. "Those who occasionally get paid for the street intervened with the woman's clients, forcing the sex should be counted differently than those forced into the men to pay her the right price. whorehouses of Sri Lanka or the Philippines." Cultural dif- Truong took the woman to the other room, showing her ferences also make the problem hard to define, says Rocky, through sign language how to put on a condom. She then whose agency trains educators to help street kids around scheduled another appointment with the woman, this time the world. "In some countries, you're an adult at 13." to try to find her a place to live. The woman's face wore the The growing number of under-age girls and boys lured pleased, embarrassed expression of someone who is not into commercial sex work initiated a global conference on used to kindness. the issue last August, 1996. Experts from 125 countries at- The last time I saw Truong, she was in a good mood. "A tacked the problem at the World Congress Against Com- friend of mine, a wealthy, gay woman is going to give me mercial Sexual Exploitation in Stockholm. UNICEF execu- some money, maybe two million dong, [about $180]" she said, grinning. "If I can, I want to set up a house for women ANDREA D'ASARO writes on women's issues from her who want to stop working as prostitutes." home in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES 27 The same society that has no money to pay these girts a salary has money to pay them for their bodies. tive director Carol Bellamy, who spoke at the Congress, lage to live with relatives. However, as an unskilled, uned- said among the reasons the sex trade flourishes are gender ucated teen mother, she may easily fall victim to sexual ex- discrimination, rapid urbanization, growing poverty and ploitation again. Programs for girls like Victoria often fail the break up of the traditional family. The Congress re- to return these girls to society due to the stigma girls carry solved to boost awareness of the problem, step up legal from living on the street and selling their bodies," says measures to stop the sex trade, emphasize prevention and Gardinier of ICCB. education, especially for girls, and provide programs to "People feel street children can't be trusted in the work- help exploited children. place. They see girls as damaged goods." Such girls often In Africa, as in other developing countries, poor parents end up on the streets again because of this stigma, said frequently send sons but not daughters to school, seeing Gardinier—and because of the big money they can earn. In the male role as breadwinner more important. Girls, denied Dakar, Senegal, for example, street girls report they can education, health care and job opportunities are more at earn up to $90 a day as prostitutes, but only $17 a day beg- risk for sexual exploitation. Girls in sub-Saharan Africa ging. What's most needed is a third choice. often "take up with a 'sugar daddy' in order to pay their school fees," according to a report by Maria Nkunika, di- rector of an anti-AIDS project in Zambia. In many countries, agents will visit rural villages 1994 UNICEF REPORT DESCRIBES THE START OF AN promising domestic jobs for girls who often can't find evening's work of a Brazilian teen prostitute: other work, says Meg Gardinier, Executive Director of In- A "It's after 9 P.M. near the docks in the port city of ternational Catholic Child Bureau (ICCB) in North Ameri- Recife, Brazil. A girl of about 15 emerges from the shadows, ca. "Those who find domestic work are often sexually half walking, half dancing toward a group of foreign abused by a husband or older brother; others are forced sailors....Her eyes are red and glazed from the glue she in- into brothels. Men abuse women and children because hales; her forearms are scarred from self-inflicted wounds. they can." As she approaches, the sailors eye each other and begin to Manhood initiations also encourage prostitution, says follow her...." Rocky. "Fathers buy their sons young women as they In Latin America, as in other parts of the world, 70 to 90 emerge into manhood. In order for the boy to become a percent of prostitutes come from abusive backgrounds, man, the girl must become a prostitute," says Rocky, who says Sara Freidman, a writer and consultant for UNICEF. travels the world evaluating ChildHope programs. Y -w- -is* Sexual abuse in the family Combat forces refugees into hostile areas where women A and children are forced to exchange sex for food, money Tj.dLT~ often leads to child prostitu- and even relief supplies. In Liberia, ravaged by war since J tion. "In every country, abuse 1989, children as young as 10 are exploited by soldiers at A A-i 11-is~\ Beyond Nostalgia: RETHINKING THE GODDESS The pagan temple was the original brothel. BY JUDITH S. ANTONELLI nce upon a time there was a Great Mother desses—held women, sexuality and nature in high regard. Thus the "feminist fairy tale" (described above) was born. Goddess who was worshiped all over the world. In the last 20 years it has become widely accepted as histor- O Under Her benevolent care, humans lived in peace ical fact and, in one form or another, it continues to fuel the witheach other and in harmony with nature. Women were imaginations and feed the spiritual hunger of women who honored as Her earthly representatives and served as Her are understandably searching for an alternative to male- priestesses, enacting Her sacred sexual rites in groves and dominated religion. temples at seasonal festivals. THERE'S JUST ONE PROBLEM WITH THIS STORY: IT'S INACCU- One day a band of male warriors with a violent male god rate. It whitewashes the male supremacy and militarism of invaded this Utopia, destroying the Goddess and installing ancient paganism, falsely attributing the origin of these their god as the "one and only" deity. From that day phenomena to "the Hebrews." It completely ignores the forward, women were subjugated, nature was exploited, fact that sexual abuse and exploitation, ritual castration, phallus worship and even human sacrifice were all integral militarism was glorified, and sexual repression became the aspects of the worship of the earth-mother goddess and her law. This new order is described in the Hebrew Bible. consort, the vegetation god who was her son or brother. Even this divine incest does not seem to provoke any re- pugnance among feminists who are justifiably outraged by TWO DECADES AGO, THE FEMINIST SPIRITUALITY MOVEMENT human incest. emerged from the general women's liberation movement. Do modern women who are enchanted by the Egyptian Many women who had rejected the male God and sexist goddess Isis know that her worship included the annual teachings of their religious upbringings nevertheless found drowning of a young (virgin) girl in the Nile River to as- that they needed some form of spirituality to nourish their sure a plentiful inundation and harvest? James Frazer tells souls. A kind, nurturing mother Goddess seemed to fill the us this in The Golden Bough—a commonly cited source in void. feminist spirituality—and Egyptian feminist Huda In searching for female images of the Divine, we turned Shaarawi also mentions it. to ancient pagan goddesses such as Asherah and Anat of Do modern women who are attracted by the Babylonian Canaan, Isis of Egypt and Ishtar of Babylonia. Not only did goddess Ishtar know that many of her priestesses were we embrace these goddesses, however, we also adopted the simply temple slaves? These women, captured in warfare perspective that these societies—because they worshiped god- and dedicated by the king to Ishtar's temple in thanks for the military victory, were branded with a star (Ishtar's JUDITH s. ANTONELLI is a feminist and a religiously symbol), just like the animals that were dedicated to her. observant Jew who lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Her book, In They were not free to leave their "priestesshood." the Image of God: A Feminist Commentary on the Torah Lenore Walker, writing about battered women, claims (Jason Aronson, 1995), has just been released in paperback. that "prior to the creation of the Bible, women were not Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES 29 It is definitely the Christian interpretation of the Hebrew Bible that has predominated in Western Civilization. treated this way; rather, women were worshiped as the • that the term czcr knegdo, usually translated as "help- Goddesses of Life." Ironically, we must turn to a male au- mate," actually means "a help against him": If he is worthy, thor to learn that, in fact, an Egyptian husband had the she will help him; if he is unworthy, she should oppose right to beat his wife and a brother to beat his sister. him. This is clearly not a prescription for an obedient wife; Without ever using the word "Jew," Walker is neverthe- rather, it validates a woman's ability to accurately judge a less telling us that the Jews started wife beating. Would she man and treat him accordingly. really have us believe that the ancient Egyptians and Baby- • that the serpent spoke to Eve alone because Adam was lonians, whose empires were literally built by slave labor, "asleep" (a metaphor, perhaps, for male consciousness?). never beat their wives? Both of these cultures predated the • that the consequence—not necessarily a "punishment"— Hebrews by at least a millennium (Abraham and Sarah, the for Adam was having to till the earth for food; before that, first Hebrews, were originally Babylonians). In the feminist food was ready-made. The consequence for Eve was the fairy tale, however, these cultures are portrayed as benevo- nine-month gestation period; before that, children were lent, peaceful and matriarchal. "ready-made." Versions of the feminist fairy tale can now be found in • that Genesis 3:16, "For your husband you will long, and New Age and mainstream books, articles and television he will rule you," is a statement that (most) women will documentaries on the history of Western religion. Like the have sexual desire for men in spite of the results—that is, proverbial Big Lie, which is believed simply because it is the discomfort of pregnancy, the pain of childbirth, and the repeated so often, historical revisionism on the subject has fact that men can be real jerks. The Hebrew word translat- literally spun out of control. ed here as "rule," mashal, does not mean to rule by domina- tion (that would be malakh). It is the same verb used to say O UNDERSTAND THE HEBREW BlBLE, FIRST YOU that the sun "rules" the day and the moon "rules" the must forget everything that Christianity has taught night. From this we can deduce that it refers to a kind of Tyou. When Christianity appropriated Hebrew affinity between man and woman. scriptures as its Old Testament, it ignored all the centuries While it is true that the sociological sexism in the Jewish of rabbinic commentaries that, in Judaism, are considered community has prevented these interpretations from being essential to understanding any biblical verse. This is not to in the forefront of Jewish education, the fact remains that deny that sexism exists in rabbinic Judaism, but only to say these interpretations are nevertheless there in the tradi- that that should not be confused with Christianity's sexism tion. Hidden gems such as these make it imperative that and its distortion of another people's writings—a people women undertake traditional Torah study and not just whom Christianity then persecuted for 2,000 years. And it leave it to men. is definitely the Christian interpretation of the Hebrew Bible that has predominated in Western civilization (even HE GOD OF THE HEBREW BIBLE IS .MEANT TO BE A in the minds of many Jews raised in a Christian culture). noncorporeal (and therefore genderless) Being. He- It was not Jewish tradition that used Exodus 22:17, "A Tbrew is a gendered language, however; there is no sorceress you shall not sustain," as a rationale for the mass neuter. The masculine gender, which is the root form, is murder of women as witches in the Middle Ages. It was used in most cases to describe God. There are exceptions; King James I who translated this as "Thou shalt not suffer a for instance, Moses addresses God as feminine in Numbers witch to live," and then used it to justify the Inquisition. 11:15. Also, many of the words could be either masculine or King James' fervent belief in demonology (he wrote a book feminine; it is how they are vocalized that determines their about it) is actually more akin to what the Torah verse gender—and vocalization was determined by men. means by sorcery than are any of the activities or beliefs of The "linguistic maleness" of God is exaggerated by the women who were burned at the stake. translation into nongendered languages such as English. It It was not Jewish tradition that interpreted the story of has been solidified into a physical image (totally prohibited Adam and Eve as a rationale for women's subordination to in Judaism) of maleness by Christian theology, which has men, that equated the forbidden fruit with sexuality (and God "impregnating" a woman and "fathering" a son. made the woman a temptress), or that claimed that all of The notion that God is beyond gender was radical and humanity is born with the stain of original sin as a result. potentially very liberating in the context of Canaanite, As is typical in rabbinic commentary, there are a number of Egyptian and Babylonian religion in the first and second diverse views; you've heard the saying, "three Jews, four millennia B.C.E. opinions"? Among these views, there are certainly some The Canaanite pantheon was completely a product of in- sexist ones, but they are a minority. The majority of rab- cest. According to the Canaanite epic poetry found on the binic opinions tells us the following: Ras Shamra tablets, an archeological discovery from 14th- • that the first human was created as a hermaphrodite, a century B.C.E. Ugarit (northern Canaan), the goddess male and female joined back to back. Asherah had 70 children by her brother, the god El—in- • that the "creation of woman" was actually the separation cluding a son, Baal, and a daughter, Anat. His daughter of the female from the male by cutting them apart at the was also impregnated by El. Baal castrated El and then took "side" (tzela, a Hebrew word that often gets translated as Asherah sexually. To complete the incestuous circle of this "rib"). divine dysfunctional family, Baal then had sex with Anat. 30 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 19 97 In spite of "linguistic maleness," the God of the Hebrew Bible does not have a phallus, commit rape and incest, or create the universe through masturbation or the murder and mutilation of a female! Abraham and Sarah's radical vision of one genderless God must have been a welcome relief from these pagan gods made in the image of abusive men. The service of these gods was also primarily sexual. Con- trary to the feminist fairy tale, this service was exploitative and sometimes mutilating. The pagan temple was, in effect, the original brothel. The priestess of a goddess lived in the temple and was required to have ritual sex with any man who came and paid the price to the temple treasury; she was not free to refuse anyone. The priestess of a god was required to have ritual sex at harvest festivals with kings, pharaohs, and em- perors. The priest of a goddess was a transvestite eunuch who had ritual sex with men. Castration was the means by which these men were "dedicated" to the goddess; their phalluses were often gilded and treated as sacred objects. Asherah was served by eunuch priests. The priest of a god was in charge of "feeding" the god with daily sacrifices and libations and honoring him with song, music, and incense. His was the only type of service that had no sexual component. To "wean" the Jews from pagan sex rites yet leave them with something familiar to cling to, the Torah had to use the model of a male priest- hood serving a (linguistically) male deity. This, then, is the context in which the Torah (the first five "Veiled Goddess" by Nancy Azara, 19XX. 15" x 12" x 6", books of the Hebrew Bible) was given on Mount Sinai. Its carved and painted wood with gold leaf. laws concerning marriage, divorce, adultery, rape, inheri- tance, slavery and conduct in warfare reflect an already-ex- A symbolic reenactment of the incest between Baal and isting social reality. Because of this, what appears to be the Asherah formed an essential part of Canaanite fertility Torah's sexism is actually a reflection of the sexism of rites. This is why the Hebrew Bible has such repugnance Babylonian, Egyptian, and Canaanite societies. for it and commands the Jews to eliminate "the Baal and the Asherah" from their midst. Instead of applauding this, IVORCE IS A GOOD EXAMPLE. THE TORAH (DEUT. feminists have criticized it as "patriarchal." 24:1) states that a man who wants to divorce his In Egyptian mythology, creation of the universe was ac- Dwife must write her a bill of divorce. In the ancient complished through an act of masturbation by the sun god world, divorce was a unilateral prerogative of men. A man Atum. When Isis' brother and husband Osiris was killed could divorce his wife simply by verbally dismissing her. and dismembered, she recovered all his body parts except The wife could not contest it, nor could she institute any his penis; she therefore made an artificial one for him, similar proceeding against him. And in a society where which became a focus of Egyptian worship. At Osiris' bull women had no economic independence and were valued festival, women carried a genitally explicit replica of him only as wives and as mothers of sons, being cast out by her that they set in motion by means of strings. husband could leave her homeless and penniless. In Babylonian mythology (the Enuma Elish), creation is Requiring a man to write a bill of divorce actually pro- described as occurring through the murder and dismem- tected a woman from being divorced on a whim. He had to berment of the goddess Tiamat by the god Marduk: give the matter some forethought and could not cast her out in a temporary, impulsive fit of anger. Today, sexist He released the arrow, it tore her belly, male interpretation in Judaism insists that this verse means It cut through her insides, splitting the heart. that only men may initiate divorce! How utterly ironic that Having thus subdued her, he extinguished her life. a law meant to protect women from male abuse has been He cast down her carcass to stand upon it.... twisted into another form of male abuse. The lord trod on the legs of Tiamat, This illustrates the distinction that often needs to be With his unsparing mace he crushed her skull. made between what the Bible says and what men say the When the arteries of her blood he had severed... Bible says. Indeed, far from oppressing women, the Torah Then the lord paused to view her dead body... began to improve women's status in the ancient world—in He split her like a shellfish into two parts: small steps, to be sure, but it was only meant as a start. If Half of her he set up...as sky... that was its mandate then, how much more so should it In her belly he established the zenith.... continue to be in modern times! • Summer 19 97 • ON THE ISSUES gender-based advertising SOME COUCH POTATOES ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS The dollars and nonsense of TV advertising. BY CAROL VINZANT HAT WOULD YOU THINK OF A JOB WHERE YOU in general. Anyone else seeing the show doesn't count. were paid 44.4 cents an hour for mind-numbing In reality, networks are not really selling their shows. Wwork with no opportunity for advancement? They're selling the attention of their audience. And ever Well, 44.4 cents an hour if you were a woman, but 55.2 since ratings have been able to distinguish among viewers, cents an hour if you were a man. Once you hit 65, you'd networks have been trying to sell their specific audiences continue to do the work, but you wouldn't get paid at all, as specialty products. and because there are so many more women willing to do The advertising market makes TV viewers into simple the job, the people who run the operation choose to gear commodities, like copper and sugar, says TV consultant Joe the environment toward men to attract more of them. Mandese, of the Myers Report, who also has covered tele- No, this job isn't working in a sweatshop, making clothes vision advertising for Advertising Age. Anything plentiful— with a celebrity's name on them. It's watching primetime in this case women and seniors—comes cheap. Any group network television. The work is easy—except for maybe that watches less TV—in this case young men—becomes a sitting through an entire episode of The Single Guy. The real rare and therefore expensive commodity, he says. "The net- task is absorbing advertising messages. For that, car mak- works try to put together a large audience and a large audi- ers, phone companies, banks and other advertisers will pay ence that people will pay for. They want hard-to-reach tar- you. Rather than pay you directly, however, they'll pay the gets. Men tend to be hard to reach," says Lyle Schwartz, a network who, in turn, will entertain or inform you for a pe- senior vice-president of Young and Rubicam. riod of time. In the early 1970s, networks got the notion that young Television ad rates work in mysterious ways. Networks people drive the economy. Older viewers have been dis- sell ads for the same show through many different av- counted ever since, says Frank Campisi, senior vice-presi- enues. Some are sold upfront, before the season. Some ads dent for national broadcast research at SFM Media. From are sold once the season starts, and everyone knows how The Lawrence Welk Show to Murder, She Wrote, high-rated popular the program is going to be. Most are sold as part of shows that attract older viewers have gotten the ax. packages: some ads on popular shows, some ads on obscu- The message to women is just as clear. There are plenty rities like Sunset Beach. of ways in everyday life when a woman is told implicitly To make sure they don't waste their advertising dollars, that her time is not worth as much as that of a man. Broad- networks guarantee advertisers a certain price to reach cast television networks have found a way to do it outright. 1,000 people in a certain demographic group. Advertisers In current prices, advertisers pay an average of $23 to pick who they want to target. Then the network gives reach 1,000 men during primetime, but only $18.50 to reach them a certain cost per thousand (CPM). For instance, the same number of women, according to Myers Reports. marketers might target men 18-34, women 35-64 or adults Networks have so little interest in seniors, they don't even offer a price for them, because no one is buying, says ad- CAROL VINZANT is a writer for Smart Money Inter- vertising consultant Erwin Ephron. If advertisers buy an active, an online magazine. audience of those aged 35 and over, seniors get lumped in. 32 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 1997 That's a big premium for young male attention. Sitcoms are another way to look at the advertising versus To figure television ad prices another way, advertisers viewer issue. Sitcoms have overwhelmingly female audi- pay each man 2.3 cents for 30 seconds of commercial- ences. But, did you ever think Home Improvement was writ- watching and each woman 1.85 cents. With 12 minutes of ten with women, its primary fans, in mind? One anomaly commercials an hour, that works out to an hourly wage of of this system was that Coach, a mindless show whose 44.4 cents for women versus 55.2 cents for men. That's 24.3 sports theme helped lure male viewers, at times had higher percent more for men. Everyone is familiar with women ad prices than those of Roseanne, which was intelligent, getting paid less for equal work, but few people realize that funny and—at the time—the top-rated show. the gender differential also applies to time spent lounging in front of a TV set. ELE\1SION ANALYSTS OFTKN POINT TO ALL THE FE- Women make up about 20 percent more of the primetime male leads as evidence of true societal change. To television audience, according to A.C. Nielsen. For the typi- hear many media critics tell it, women have won cal primetime show, the adult audience is split 55 percent the revolution against stereotypes and misrepresentation women, 45 percent men, says Frank Campisi of SFM Media. on TV. After all, advertisers finally picked up on the fact Overall, women make up 51.2 percent of the American that women buy all kinds of products, not just dishwash- population. Among adults aged 18-49 population, women ing liquid. And that's led to all those shows in which slightly outnumber men—51 percent vs. 49 percent. Then, women are more than pallid housewives. men start dying early. After age 55, women pull ahead and CBS has all those women on Monday. (Well, okay, two, account for 56 percent of the population. Murphy Brown and Cybill.) There's Roseanne, The Nanny, According to advertising consultant Erwin Ephron, Grace Under Fire, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and there's while men in general watch 30 hours of television a week, Caroline in the City. (Okay, it's unwatchably annoying, but those over 55 watch 43 hours weekly. Older women watch it's still a female lead.) 43 hours a week, compared to the 34.5 of their younger Looking at a handful of female leads ignores what's counterparts. going on among the television character masses. How So, which drives programming more, the fact that more many of the major characters on television are someone viewers are female or the fact that networks can get higher women would like to emulate? Sure, cop shows even have advertising rates for a more "male" audience? None of the women. Law and Order even has a tough, effective black four major networks would return calls for comment. women lieutenant. But just about any woman who walks into the N.Y.P.D. Blue precinct is eventually trans- formed into either a jealous nut, a victim of rape Advertisers pay an average of $23 or incest or just some guy's idea of a trashy to reach 1,000 men during primetime, broad. There are two categories of people that a view- but only $18.50 to reach the same er typically wants to see on television: someone who looks like them and someone who looks like number of women in the same period — someone they want to date. But, who do we see on television? Mainly gorgeous women and seniors are thrown in. many kinds of men. Naturally because they are actors, a lot of the men tend to be good-looking. Many in advertising say that since the majority of the audi- But, a lot of them are not. The balding, paunchy, pasty man ence is female, this shows that network television is a is a staple of primetime. Typically, they are dating a sexy medium devoted to women. Primetime, it is said, has al- young thing, an improbable phenomena that will go unno- ways been considered time for parents—particularly moth- ticed by the other characters on the show. ers—to watch TV with their kids. Weekends, however, When there is an attractive male character, no one gener- were considered male TV-watching time. If women were ally goes to the trouble to gratuitously show him in reveal- not satisfied with what television was offering, advertising ing clothes to please female fans. (Except, of course, The X- executives argue, they wouldn't watch it. Files, which is notorious for generously throwing its female At least one avid television watcher disagrees with the fans a bone and gratuitously having its fabulous male lead, idea that primetime network television is designed for David Duchovny, go swimming or lie around half naked). women. George Gerbner, president of the Cultural Envi- No data is out there to document how many schlubby ronment Movement, has been tracking television content looking guys there are versus how many overweight, flat- for 30 years. He was one of the first media watchers to chested or plain-looking women; how many strong, smart sound the alarm on television violence, and his Pennsylva- women there are versus the number of women characters nia-based international coalition promotes gender equality who are there for their long hair and big breasts. and diversity in the media. But George Gerbner, who is also dean emeritus of the "To say so many people are watching, so they must be University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Com- satisfied is like saying so many people are breathing the munications, has compiled data on the less subjective char- polluted air, so they must like it!," Gerbner says. acteristics of primetime characters. He studied the demo- Just looking at television tells you it is not designed with graphic make-up of primetime drama shows and recently women in mind. (Has the Senate held hearings lately on released the results for the 1995-1996 season. too much programming with gratuitous references to day- Gerbner says that the number of women in primetime care, breast cancer or relationship issues?) did go up as more women entered the workforce. In the 33 Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES 1960s, women characters made up only 27 percent of the Campisi of FSM Media says. But most advertisers, he says, characters on primetime. During the 1970s, their number figure "Monday Night Football has become almost like an grew—but only to about one in three characters. And it's event, a party. You (a woman) might be there, but are you been at a standstill ever since. glued to it like your boyfriend or husband is?" Yes, there is finally an agent Dana Scully, doctor/FBI Cars, beer and athletic equipment are the big sports buy- agent. But for every one of her, there are two Men Behaving ers. Athletic shoemakers say they want sports to target men Badly. And in cartoons, male characters dominate by six to and athletic women, Campisi says, despite women buying one. (Each Cinderella has to have at least six dwarfs, it a comparable amount of sneakers, usually for fashion seems.) Gerbner found that just about every group other rather than athletic needs. than white males is underrepresented on television. Only For decades car makers, one of the most crucial indus- 36.9 percent of the characters are women in primetime dra- tries to advertisers, simply ignored women. Cars and me- mas, though women make up just over half of the actual chanics were a male domain, they assumed. Then con- population. sumer surveys started to prove them wrong; many of them What does advertising have to do with what kinds of showed women buy half of the cars in the U.S. and influ- programming we see? A lot. Whether or not ad rates are ence most purchases. Suddenly car makers started to pay based on any sexist assumptions, they may have the effect attention. They made a few high-profile gestures to solicit of favoring and encouraging programs for men."The ex- women's sales. Ford hired perennial award loser Susan Lucci to appeal to all those women who know her from All My Children. Despite some women-tailored Only 36.9 percent of the characters marketing campaigns, automobile manufacturers still are women in primetime dramas, buy lots and lots of sports ads. "What I've observed is, it doesn't matter how much though women make up just over research you have if you also have an executive who 'has a hunch' that runs contrary to it," says Tinianow. half of the actual population. Start-up and cable television networks have tried to exploit these irregularities in demographic advertising. pected purchase power of the individual and the amount of When UPN started recently, it alluded to how the major the purchase definitely influences programming," says Dan networks' audiences skew female. They said they planned Tinianow, an assistant professor of communication arts at to program for the "underserved male audience." The male Austin College in Sherman, Texas, who has worked in the audience is about as underserved as Manhattan is underde- production of TV commercials. "If there were research that veloped. Following the path of the other start-up networks, showed children played a role in car-buying decisions, UPN is trying to serve the advertisers who are willing to you'd suddenly see a lot more children's programming." pay the most to reach a young male audience. When ABC was struggling to gain ground on the better established ERBNER AND OTHER EXPERTS FEEL THAT—ASIDE networks, it aimed young. More recently, when Fox started from all the numbers on more women viewers, up, it aimed young and male. Gaside from all the talk about the supply and de- Donna Allen, founder of Women's Institute for Freedom mand of the audience—the real reason advertisers are will- of the Press, does not hold much hope for the current ing to pay more for male attention is that they still believe broadcast system. She doesn't think there's much hope for men have more power. advertisers paying attention to women and thus solving all "Advertisers still believe that even though women do our problems. Her center believes that the problems with more buying, men control the money," Gerbner says. network programming stem from the networks being They believe, Gerbner says, that while women may make owned by a very small group. Women need to have their lots of purchases and may influence lots of others, that men own networks to tell their own stories themselves, she are really the ones making the decisions on the big ticket says. items. So, if you could make a show that people would pay About the only operation to see the opportunities to more for, just because of the people who watch it, why reach more women in cable was Lifetime, which an- wouldn't you? nounced it was Television for Women in 1994. The network "I tend to think it's one of these things that's a business targets women by advocating women's issues and looking decision," Tinianow says "The motivation isn't just "let's at current events from a woman's perspective. All of this keep women down," any more than blaxploitation films of was possible, says Meredith Wagner, a Lifetime spokes- the 1970s were motivated by anything more than a desire woman, because of the shift on the part of advertisers. Ten to make money. But that doesn't mean it doesn't send a years ago everybody was ignoring women in advertising, message. If you can make more money skewing a program she says, now they're not. Lifetime is proof that you don't towards men, that's the show you're going to make,'"Tini- have to target men to make it; 1994 Lifetime's ad revenues anow says. have gone up by half and its ratings are up 75 percent. Sports shows are a way to attract a male audience. That's That's encouraging. Because the real hope for changing why you see so many of them. That's why ventures like the way television advertisers and programmers think ESPN have been successful; they have been able to charge a about women can't depend on an epiphany on the impor- premium for their male viewers. Advertisers like sports au- tance of treating women equitably. The real hope is that diences so much that they often call them "pure male." someone will realize that treating women fairly is prof- In fact, sports shows skew about 70 percent male, Frank itable. • 34 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 19 97 A: WOMEN AND UNDER ATTACK Anti-abortion activists renew threats to reproductive freedom. BY MARY LOU GREENBERG HE NORTHSIDE FAMILY PLANNING SERVICES CLINIC around offensive—from physical attacks to restrictive is located on a small hill, just off a major highway laws—against women's reproductive freedom. A similar Tinterchange in an Atlanta suburb. When I drove by bomb attack that injured five people on Feb. 21 at The Oth- a few days after it had been demolished by a bomb on Jan- erside, a lesbian-owned nightclub in Atlanta, made it clear uary 16, police crime-scene tape blocked the road. The clin- that a broad, reactionary social agenda continues to assert ic had occupied part of the first floor of a three-story office itself with deadly force. It was only pure luck that no one at building, which was almost hidden from the main road. either the clinic or the crowded club was killed. There was no sign with the clinic name or any indication The club's owner, Beverly McMahon, is the sister of the women's services were offered there. Still, the anti-abortion late California abortion provider James McMahon, who bomber evidently knew exactly where the clinic was locat- was one of the physicians who pioneered the D&X proce- ed and where to place the bomb. The first bomb was fol- dure. (He testified at the 1995 Congressional hearings on lowed by a second about an hour later; it exploded in the the issue and died of a brain tumor later that year.) She adjacent parking lot, injuring seven people. told me that both she and her brother had a commitment to This vicious attack came just a few days before the 24th "do what you believe in." The club bombing, she said, had anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the January 22,1973, Supreme made her determined to speak out on abortion and Court decision that legalized abortion in the U.S. In the women's rights, as well as gay rights. past, the anti-abortion movement has used the anniversary In the weeks that followed the club bombing, few devel- opments were reported in the offi- of Roe to escalate its activities. Convicted clinic bomber The Atlanta Michael Bray, who advocates "justifiable homicide" of cial investigation. This is not sur- abortion doctors, was quoted in the Atlanta Constitution as prising. Only a tiny fraction of the bombing signaled saying he was "relieved" by the bombings, that they were a 41 bombings, 108 arsons and 69 at- a newly intensified, sign of "revival" of the anti-abortion movement. tempted bombings and arsons at all-around offensive clinics from 1977 to 1996 have ever Not to be left out of the Atlanta anti-woman sweep- against women's stakes, the Georgia legislator and religious conservative been solved. These numbers don't Ron Crews, along with other anti-abortion advocates, held include the hundreds of clinic in- reproductive a press conference later that day to announce new legisla- vasions, occurrences of vandalism, freedom. tion banning what they call "partial-birth abortions." This or bomb and death threats. In- deliberately inflammatory term was invented by anti- deed, this was not the first time Northside Family Planning choice forces in an effort to equate abortion with infanti- itself was the target of violence. In 1984, in another loca- cide. The procedure is known medically as intact dilation tion, it was hit by a firebomb; eight days after that attack, a and extraction, or D&X. The combination of physical and Molotov cocktail was thrown through the front window of another area clinic. No one was ever arrested in either legislative attacks were like a one-two punch aimed bombing. But it's not just in Georgia that abortion access squarely at the women of Georgia. and abortion service providers are under serious threat. The Atlanta bombing signaled a newly intensified, all- The January 16 bombing itself was part of a string of physi- cal attacks that occurred as 1996 ended and has continued MARY LOU CREENBERC, a revolutionary activist, has well into 1997. On December 18 of last year, Dr. Calvin defended clinics and worked with many abortion providers. Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES 35 Jackson was attacked and stabbed repeatedly outside his This ACLA list is a call to the would-be Michael Griffins, New Orleans abortion clinic by a man who was later arrest- Paul Hills and John Salvis (the convicted assassins of two ed outside a Baton Rouge clinic (an hour north of New Or- doctors, one escort and two clinic workers in three separate leans) with a fillet knife in his possession. Despite losing deadly attacks at clinics in 1993 and 1994) and suggests four pints of blood and requiring hospitalization for many possible targets. It also provides a way for other anti-abor- days, Dr. Jackson is now back at his clinic providing ser- tion advocates to contribute to the cause while not actually vices to women. There were three arson attempts on a having to pull the trigger. It is, in short, a hit list. Phoenix clinic in December; a Tulsa, Oklahoma clinic was firebombed with Molotov cocktails on New Year's Day and attacked twice more in January. There was an arson attack at a clinic near Washington, D.C. on February 18 that A few weeks after the Atlanta caused $100,000 in damages; another at a North Holly- Late bombing, I attended a hear- wood, California clinic March 7. A noxious substance was Abortions ing of the Georgia State spread in the hallway of the office building that houses an House Judiciary Committee abortion clinic in Bozeman, Montana; on March 17, a man Under Fire on the bill to ban D&X. Geor- drove a pickup truck with explosive materials into the gia already bars third- Family Planning Associates in Bakersfield, California. trimester abortions unless The Atlanta explosion was the first clinic bombing three physicians "certify that the abortion is necessary...to known to have taken place during the day, when it was preserve the life or health of the woman." (Itself a tremen- likely to injure or kill people. Fortunately, the clinic was not dous burden on women who need third-trimester proce- seeing clients that day, although several staff members dures.) This bill, therefore, is directly aimed at restricting sec- were on the premises. The Atlanta attack signaled a new ond-trimester procedures (done at several Atlanta clinics that willingness by anti-abortion bombers to target staff and serve women who come from all over the South and many clients as well as the physical facilities. Nancy Boothe, di- other states). In using a deliberately vague term and defini- rector of the Feminist Women's Health Center in Atlanta, tion of "partial-birth abortions" and calling for felony prose- told me, "It's time to draw a line in the sand, to say we're cution with up to a $5,000 fine and not going to tolerate this!" five years imprisonment as penal- The late-term ties for physicians who do them, abortion ban sets a even clinics and doctors who don't dangerous precedent use the D&X itself may think twice that will be followed New Hit List The specter of continuing about performing any late second- murderous assaults on trimester procedure. The D&X pro- by attempts to Targets providers was raised, short- cedure itself, generally performed ban other abortion after 20 weeks, is considered by ly after the bombing, by a procedures. Providers vicious posting on a right- some doctors to be the easiest, wing website maintained by quickest and safest for the woman. Banning it means that Neal Horsley, who is run- women may have to undergo riskier procedures. It also sets ning for governor of Georgia on the Creator's Rights Party, an extremely dangerous precedent that surely will be fol- a far-right organization he founded. The site includes an lowed by attempts to ban other abortion procedures. extensive piece by the American Coalition of Life Activists At the Atlanta hearing, there was a sharp contrast be- (ACLA) announcing that they are "cooperating in collect- tween those promoting the bill and those in opposition to ing dossiers on abortionists in anticipation that one day we it. On one side, State Representative Ron Crews held up a may be able to hold them on trial for crimes against hu- model of a woman's womb with a detachable fetus. It manity." This project is called "The Nuremberg Files," an struck me that his words and attitude towards women attempt to equate abortion providers with Nazi war crimi- were well represented by this plastic prop. There was no nals and abortion with genocide. concern for or even mention of the lives of women in his This website lists hundreds Right-wing groups pious speech—as if the womb and fetus he held up could of names. Its main listings are, equate abortion exist without a woman! "Abortionists: the shooters;" providers with In contrast, a woman from an Atlanta suburb spoke "Clinic Workers: their weapons against the proposed law and told her very human story bearers," and "Miscellaneous Nazi war criminals about how women need the right to have late-term abor- Blood Flunkies." It explicitly calls and abortion tions. Phyllis Baker testified that she had longed to have a for fellow anti-abortion advocates with genocide. child, but in the third trimester of pregnancy, doctors had to collect personal information on discovered that her fetus had an abnormally large head these people, along with their families, associates and oth- (hydrocephaly) and would not survive long after birth. Her ers, and to send such information to ACLA before January physician also told her that if she carried the pregnancy to 1,1998, the "target deadline" for "the posting of an exhaus- term and gave birth, they would need to get a court order tive listing of every Abortionist presently plying their to withhold medical treatment or else the hospital would bloody trade in the USA." The site includes detailed insist on keeping the infant alive by extraordinary means. dossiers on two people—one clinic director and one doc- She and her husband decided an abortion was best. They tor—complete with photos of them, their residences and decided to go to Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas, who their cars, as examples of the "kinds of things we need." specializes in late abortions. 36 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 1997 Phyllis Baker said Dr. Tiller "truly cares for the welfare of ment of abortion providers; 100 protesters appeared out- women" and explained that it was only because of his con- side a Philadelphia clinic the same day. cern and skill that her cervix didn't rupture during the pro- While I was in Atlanta, anti-abortion groups announced cedure (which would hove prevented her from giving birth they were going to picket outside Atlanta's Midtown Hos- in the future). At the conclusion of her moving testimony, pital, a women's health facility that does second trimester she said with great passion, "Do not allow the government abortions, to urge passage of the bill banning D&X. Armed, to tell my doctor how to care for me!" uniformed security guards were on the property that The Georgia legislature did not listen to her; it passed the morning, visibly patrolling. Despite the fact that only about bill in late March and the governor signed it. At least four a dozen protesters turned out (equalled in numbers by clin- other states have similarly ignored the needs of women. As ic escorts that day), the atmosphere was heavy with the of this writing Arkansas, Michigan, Utah, and Ohio have memory of the recent blast and with the potential for fur- also banned the procedure. A similar ban came up again in ther incidents. the U.S. Congress this spring, refueled by the statement of Even when clinics are not tar- Other forms Ron Fitzsimmons, head of the National Coalition of Abor- geted by those marching outside of harassment that tion Providers, that he had lied about the frequency of the the doors, other forms of harass- have the power to use of D&X. Frankly, it really doesn't matter how often it is ment including unannounced $hut down fadUties used: What matters is that doctors and their patients must visits by state regulatory and li- be able to decide what procedure is safest, easiest and best censing agencies—which have for minor or even to use at any stage. the power to shut down facilities bogus violations keep One important fact that has been missing from this de- for minor or even bogus viola- clinics on edge, bate is that those who decry late abortions are, in fact, re- tions—keep clinics on edge. sponsible for making it more difficult for women to get safe "We have to be twice as conscientious as any other med- abortions earlier in the pregnancy. Some later abortions ical office," Beth Petzelt, director of AtlantaSurgiCenter and virtually all third-trimester procedures are done be- told me. "We have to develop detailed protocols and proce- cause the fetus has severe abnormalities, or because the life dures for everything. It's like living in a glass house, where and health of the pregnant women is threatened by contin- everything you do is always scrutinized." ued pregnancy and childbirth. But many women seek abor- Shortly after the Atlanta clinic bombing, Hilary Clinton tions later than the first trimester because they have been and Al Gore were guests at a pro-choice event January 22 denied information about their own bodies and reproduc- in Washington, D.C. They urged "dialogue" between pro- tion, they lack access to a clinic or doctor (84 percent of U.S. choice and anti-choice forces. One provider I talked to was counties have no abortion provider), they lack funds, or scornful of this approach. Trying to foster dialogue with they have to deal with restrictive laws. the anti-abortion groups or find common ground with Young women are especially affected. Thirty-nine states them, she said, means "we can either come over to their have laws on the books that prevent a minor from getting agenda or they'll kill us." an abortion without parental consent or notice. In Dayton, Talk of "dialogue and compromise" covers over the fact Ohio, one study estimated that women having abortions that the anti-abortion movement stands for the enslave- later than 20 weeks were more than three times as likely to ment of women. Denying abortion access—through violent be women under 18 years old. attacks, harassment or legislative means—denies women the right to control their own lives. There is nothing to compromise or "dialogue" about. I have heard some peo- ple say the pro-choice side should not be too "extreme." Continuing In an anti-choice climate, But in the face of these recent attacks, being "extreme" in in which 20 states have the defense of women is the only rational response. We Harassment and governors who have stat- must be extremely nonapologetic and nondefensive about ed they want to outlaw abortion and extremely diligent and fearless in standing Disruption abortion outright, it's no alongside and defending abortion providers. • surprise that harassment of both women and THESE RELEVANT WEBSITES WILL KEEP YOU POSTED: providers as well as disruption of clinic functions continue. • http://www.bodypolitic.org (Website of the Body Politic) Statistics by the National Abortion Federation show that A monthly pro-choice news report with links to other pro-choice "nonviolent disruption" such as picketing, harassing sites, as well as anti-abortion sites to keep track of the enemy. phone calls and hate mail more than doubled from 1995 to 1996. There are also increased efforts to blockade clinics in • http://www.calvx.com/~refuse or some locations. • http:www.walrus.com/~resist (Website of Refuse & Resist) On March 15, 17 anti-abortion protesters were arrested promotes building resistance to reactionary political agenda; includes a brochure on abortion by and for high school youth while attempting to blockade an Englewood, New Jersey and 10-point program for Defending Abortion Rights. clinic. This was the second blockade attempt in two months. As reported in the Record of Hackensack, the pro- • http://www.christiangallery.com (Know the Enemy) testers stormed a police barricade in their efforts to reach Neal Horsley uses this site to promote the so-called Creator's the clinic door. About 300 anti-choice protesters demon- Rights Party. (Be warned of the hard-core porn, ostensibly exam- strated outside a Brookline abortion clinic on March 28, ples of what they're against!) Also includes "The Nuremberg Files." which was Good Friday, another traditional day for harass- 37 Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES c u I tural politics OTI GOES TO A WEDDING The celebrity bride as cultural icon. BY JACLYN GELLER N PSEUDO-ARISTOCRATIC FASHION, JOHN F. KENNEDY, JR. sory knowledge of social history and a general sense of the kisses the hand of his new bride as she smiles at him modern evolution of gender roles clues one into the cultur- I seductively. Grasping a bunch of white roses, super- al values being celebrated. People's wedding photographs model Christie Brinkley flashes a professional smile as she are anything but natural or spontaneous. They contain a se- takes yet another trip down the aisle. The shiny-faced tele- ries of rigidly stylized poses that idealize marriage, obscur- vision actress Candice Cameron beams from beneath a ing the institution's inequities, incongruities and contradic- massive, flower-studded headpiece, leaning down to em- tions. One sees, in the series of apparently random, brace a red-haired flower girl whose tiny body is sheathed haphazard images, the preservation of a code of sexual re- in heavy white satin. lations. The model Angie Everhart assumes a softcore porn In "Celebrity Weddings '97," People magazine's annual pose, pouting at the camera and lifting the skirts of her February rite of passage in celebration of St. Valentine's plush satin gown to display her legs. Wrapped around her Day, the reader is treated to what appears to be sponta- right thigh is a lace garter. Swathed in virginal white, she neous eruptions of joy. There is a wedding—actually many displays her perfectly toned body as a bandanna clad weddings. The natural course of events has taken place; makeup artist combs her mane of thick red hair. She is both two fragmentary halves have become a Platonic whole. virgin and coquette, embodying the modern ideology of Loneliness has been alleviated. A reciprocal identity has femininity, described by scholar Joseph Boone as "a para- been forged. The central—the only—source of earthly hap- doxical combination of chaste innocence, sexual overtures piness has been achieved for two individuals. and economic opportunism." A trance-like inevitability characterizes these wedding Like many of People's celebrity brides, Everhart is a photographs: personal fulfillment, sexual satisfaction and pure, visual exemplification of this ethos. Indeed, the pop- economic solvency have been neatly compressed in a ges- ularity of marriage-oriented magazines attests to the con- ture of order and resolution supported by a community. tinuing dominance of 18th- and 19th-century notions of fe- The plethora of brocade and lace, pearls, roses, crystal, male domesticity. The historian Lawrence Stone has china and champagne appear to be physical manifestations described how, in the 1700s, the conception of female deli- of each couple's self-sustaining love. Clad in a "white cacy emerged in Western Europe in full force: "By a Pamela Dennis dress," singer Judy Collins poses, arm in strange twist of cultural fate, the sex which is the toughest arm, with feminist activists Mario Thomas and Gloria and most resilient of the two became identified with both Steinem. The copy reads, "Fittingly, it was songwriter physical and psychological delicacy and ability—defects in Leonard Cohen who said it best. When singer Judy Collins fact artificially induced in the interests of conformity to the wed industrial designer Louis Nelson last spring, Cohen's current ideal of beauty. The cultivation of feminine debili- gift to his longtime friends was two dozen roses and a note ty had the same symbolic significance as the crushing of that read simply, 'I love you. It's about time.'" the feet of upper-class Chinese women...Loving parents Reading between the lines—or in this case behind the now believed that their daughters' chances on the mar- image—there is something else going on here. Even a cur- riage market would be seriously impaired unless they had the correct, rigidly upright posture, emaciated bodies, pal- JACLYN GELLER is a doctoral candidate in English literature lid complexion and languid airs, and were prepared to and an instructor in New York University's writing program. faint at the slightest provocation." As opposed to the sali- 38 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 19 97 My 1st gift to: Name Address City Slate Zip 1 My 2nd gift to:1 Name Address City State Zip 1 My name is: Name Address City State Zip Include my subscription Total Order at $14.95 each $ • New • Renew • Payment enclosed D Bill me Gift will be mailed In your name. New subscriptions begin with Die Spring 1997 issue. Canadian subscriptions add S4; other foreign add $7 (surface mail) or $20 per year (air mail) payable NO POSTAGE NECESSARY IF MAILED IN THE UNITED STATES BUSINESS REPLY MAIL FIRST-CLASS PERMIT NO. 272 DENVILLE NJ Postage will be paid by addressee ONlHElSSUES SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES DEPT. OTI B.O. BOX 3000 DENVILLE NJ 07834-9838 The celebrity bride is our culture's standard bearer for marriage. She enjoys epiphanic happiness based on the belief in her own self-improvement through marriage. cious woman of medieval lore, turned away from his embrace, the modern female was delicate, and in a gesture of apathy, she sensitive and sentimental. Grant- views the traffic on the avenue ed total immunity from sexual below. She is the picture of mod- feelings, she was a romance-dri- est, female restraint: delicate, ven creature, born and bred for poised and appropriately disinter- marriage and motherhood. ested. Decarnalized, she was more de- In a complementary image, pendent than ever on a pleasing Duffy stands at Hopper's side. Be- exterior to lure a husband, for the hind the couple is a row of four long-standing tradition of bridesmaids dressed in lavender, arranged nuptials was eroding sleeveless gowns, each looking and sexual attraction was gaining bored and distracted. In front of credibility as a motive for mar- the pair is Hopper's 6-year-old riage. son from a previous relationship. Today's celebrity bride is an Duffy beams down at the boy immensely powerful stereotype with maternal benevolence. He of femininity. She wields the kind stands in rigid defiance, his back of cultural influence that popular turned to her. The message under- heroines of 18th- and 19th-centu- lying the photograph's composi- ry novels did, prior to the inven- tion is clear: friendship has been tion of the camera. She is glam- relegated to the background; all orous and popular. More often previous relationships are now than not, she is young. If older, subordinate to the marriage bond. she is remarrying, often, after "Ancient Armor'' 1996, by Miriam Schaer. Standing in the foreground is the years of hardship, to become 18" x 17" x 12", girdle, acrylic, xerox. married couple, two counterparts young again. People likens the newly married, middle-aged of a newly formed unit, which Joseph Boone points out, re- author Mary Higgins Clark to a teenager in love. If young, flects a fantasy of social coherence and stability, bolstering she tends to exemplify the ambitious female parvenu. The "the myth of a tightly knit social order." The female partici- drama of Carolyn Bessette's "grand entrance into the pant assumes and publicly affirms her role as nurturer, im- Kennedy clan" is heightened by the "sleek" Nacisco Ro- posing her maternal will on a sullen, unwilling recipient. driguez gown "that has already launched countless imita- tions." "MAGES OF FEMALE DELICACY ABOUND IN PEOPLE'S VIF.W The celebrity bride is our culture's standard bearer for of celebrity weddings. The bride swoons, not from sex- marriage. Like the romance of the heroine of the previous I.ual ecstasy but from the thrill of self-completion. Sur- century's fictions, she enjoys epiphanic happiness based on rounded by beaming friends and family members, im- the belief in her own self-improvement through marriage. mersed in contrived elegance, and outfitted in the only "Marriage is a different kind of commitment, very valu- ritual garment that she may ever wear, the contemporary able, I think, and very life affirming," proclaims Judy bride revels in the privilege of her own centrality. No other Collins, who is photographed at the altar of St. John the Di- ceremony or rite of passage in her life will compare to this vine Cathedral in New York, clasping her groom's arm, one; there will be no comparable expenditure of money, no while looking past him into the crowd of wedding guests. similar outpouring of gifts and emotion, no other moment Victoria Duffy, the 29-year-old bride of 59-year-old actor at which she is the focal point of so many people's atten- Dennis Hopper, is captured in two separate images. In the tion. She has reached the narrative apex of her own exis- first, she stands with Hopper on the balcony of an apart- tence, and both posed and candid wedding photographs ment overlooking New York's Fifth Avenue. Wearing a assert this fact. Through her entry into the realm of sanc- tioned conjugal relations, the woman has, each image as- white dress, she is the tangible symbol of female decarnal- serts, become whole. People quotes scandal queen Gennifer ization. While no longer a literal symbol of virginity, the cos- Flowers: "I'm ready to shut out the darkness, go for the tume denotes female purity—that marked disinterest in the light, and get on with my life." In her wedding photograph, sexual that is essential to our culture's perception of the Flowers kisses the hand of her husband, real estate broker married woman. Duffy's cumbersome white gown is Finis Shelnutt, in a gesture of religious self-abnegation. counter-balanced by Hopper's black suit; their attire demon- strates a total separation between the male and the female, The language of religious epiphany is used deliberately signifying two distinct natures, two discrete social roles. in contemporary wedding literature, suggesting the sacro- Hopper lunges toward the waif-like Duffy, grasping her sanct status of an institution that was, at one time, merely waist and kissing her neck passionately, displaying his sexu- an economic arrangement between families in which al appetite. She smiles demurely, looking down; her head is women were bartered to solidify dynastic alliances. Both Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES 39 ness, suggesting, without flaunting, the physi- cal satisfaction that she will provide her mate. The lower portion of her gown covers her feet entirely, presenting an image of discomfort and immobility, but the dress' plunging neck- line displays her cleavage. Her attire is that of the contemporary bride envisioned as a de- pendent, sexual toy. "A lot of young women want a dress like this," say the judges when they come to Can- dice Cameron's beaded Pucci gown. The enor- mous dress, with its cumbersome train, sits on Cameron's petite frame like a jungle gym cov- ered in brocade. The pubescent, 20-year-old actress beams angelically at the camera, incar- nating another key marriage plot: the child bride who plays house with her new partner. The contemporary bride's conscious self-hero- ization is most clearly stated by People's judges in their embrace of Mary Higgins Clark's green and gold gown: "This is a mystery writer who chose a romance story." ET "CELEBRITY WEDDINGS '97" SEEMS TO be neither a sweetly innocent album of Yromance nor an elaborate piece of campJ_ .r 40 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 1997 • Two books—one new, one classic— books reexamine the economic consequences of having and raising children; • Three authors question the assumptions about & films women in mainstream news media. THE WAGES OF MOTHERHOOD IS POVERTY REVIEWED BY RITA HENLEY JENSEN both optimal and optional. Regardless, the young human needs watch- ROGRESSIVE WOMEN WILL HA\Ti TO REAS- ing over and costly supplies: shelter, food, Psume their historic role as advocates for medical care, education. Most often, it is the the poor and clean up the welfare mess creat- mother who is left alone with the responsibili- ed last year by the Democrat and Republican ty of raising children—the parent often least Washington Boys. We will be the eyewitnesses able to earn sufficient income through market to the devastation caused by their joint deci- labor, even if she could find a parent-substi- sion—made while pumped up with misogyny tute to tend her children while she worked REGULATING THE LIVES OF and racism and in the lustful throes of desire elsewhere. WOMEN: Social Welfare for reelection—that single parents can no How should the community intervene? Policy from Colonial Times longer count on the federal government for fi- Should single mothers live with their child in to the Present nancial assistance while coping with the liv- their home and be supported by the larger by Mimi Abramovitz ing, breathing results of heterosexual inter- community? Should the children of single (South End Press, $22) course. While it might be unfair to be mothers be placed in orphanages, freeing the compelled to take on this burden, in addition mother to work and protecting the child from to all the others we shoulder, clearly we can their mothers' immoral character, proven by ;L; tkt Hole <>l not leave such important work in the hands of the child's very existence? Or is separating a Family in the current elected officials. mother and child an additional evil? Or The Poatindustrial Age Before we so much as attend a conference, should impoverished mothers be denied all however, we must read and understand two aid and their survival depend on the invisible Feminine important works that approach welfare issues hand of the marketplace? from very different viewpoints: the recently Throughout our history, Abramovitz ar- Economy updated Regulating the Lives of Women: Social gues, America answered those questions in Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present various manners, but whatever the plan, it al- by Mimi Abramovitz and The Feminine Econo- ways codified the mom and pop family ethic my & Economic Man by Shirley P. Burggraf. and was riddled with race bias. Abramovitz, a political activist and profes- In Hester Prynne's era, towns were respon- sor of social work at Hunter College in New sible for their own poor. Most towns passed York, has written a carefully researched and settlement laws that required the person seek- Economic heavily annotated account of how the coun- ing aid to be an official town resident. Towns try has dealt with a basic fact of life since had ways to encourage paupers to move on; Man BK$riF Hester Prynne's Puritan New England: When Male and female paupers could be stripped to a penis is inside a vagina, semen escapes and the waist and openly whipped with as many THE FEMININE ECONOMY & occasionally, an ovum is fertilized as a result. as 15 strokes of a lash before being ordered to ECONOMIC MAN Any additional input from men during the look for help elsewhere. by Shirley P. Burggraf production of the next generation is, frankly, As time passed, the settlement laws became (Addison-Wesley Publishing more exclusionary, often to the disadvantage Company, Inc., $24) RITA HENLEY JENSEN writes frequently of unmarried women. A pregnant woman on economic issues. stranded by a runaway husband could not EDITOR'S NOTE: Beginning next issue, look for Molly Haskell's film revieivs in ON THE ISSUES. Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES 41 claim residency in their hometown, for were once slaves remained the responsi- low-wage work, racial discrimination example, but had to return to hers, bility of their masters, even in the North. and the removal of children from their which might reject her as well. New York allowed slaveholders to use parents—have continued to characterize Those who needed aid and succeeded its poorhouse—for a fee of course—to American programs for mothers needing in proving they were legally settled in support or for whipping of their unruly assistance. town had to prove they were deserving: slaves. African-Americans who had not After the Civil War, public antagonism a widow or married to someone sick, been slaves often were simply denied as- toward the poor grew even as the nation temporarily disabled or otherwise tem- sistance and forced to rely on the smaller became more and more prosperous. So- porarily unavailable to support her. and poorer resources of their own com- cial Darwinism began to take hold These women, usually mothers, were eli- munities. throughout the country. Eventually, all gible for what was known as outdoor re- The law of the era also permitted the major cities cut back or phased out all lief, that is, outside of the workhouse government to separate children from outdoor relief. In the most frightening that permitted them to live in their own their pauper parents, their very poverty passage in her nearly 400 pages, or a neighbor's home and receive fire- being an indication of parental vices Abramovitz writes of this era: wood, bread, clothes, medical care and such as idleness. The children could then "We do not know for sure what hap- possibly a small sum of money. be indentured and apprenticed to pened to women once outdoor relief was The undeserving female paupers often strangers for the purported purpose of contracted, or abandoned, but cutbacks were forced to work and live in the jail saving the children's characters. Often, both before and after the Civil War must or later the poorhouse, Abramovitz unmarried mothers without resources have sent women (and men) into the writes. Those denied outdoor relief and not sent to a workhouse had their ser- Forced low-wage work, racial bias, taking children from vices auctioned off. their parents—these characterize America's history of programs for By the mid 1800's, these auctions be- mothers needing help. came a recognized source of cheap labor. Women often found themselves forced to indentured their own children rather labor force or looking for a spouse for leave their homes and live in the family than wait for the town to take action. support. Some also turned to prostitu- residence of the man who purchased tion. Those who went to private charities their labor. S THE NATION'S POPULATION HAS discovered that the charities preferred to Black women [and men] were often Lgrown and become more urbanized, aid only those who they thought could ineligible for aid—either for the deserv- these four elements—preferential treat- be resocialized to accept the proper fami- ing or for the undeserving. Those who ment for widows with children, forced ly roles. The remainder became separat- ed from their families as they entered the institutions or the workhouses that had proliferated in the period." The author ZSUZSANNA BUDAPEST does not mention it, but surely some fell GATHERING THE GODDESSES ill and died. After the Civil War, the Freedman Bu- " Controversial paradigm-challenging reau aided African-Americans in the utterly engrossing" A documentary South for a brief period until its minimal by Peg |ordan effort ended in 1872—undone by protest- A compelling and intimate portrait of how the ing whites who claimed that the bureau's aid created idleness and pauperism. In contemporary Goddess movement impacts fact, the author and other historians be- women's lives today. The film covers the lieve that the intense, racially inspired emotionally moving experiences of women animosity toward that first federal wel- attending a three-day Austin-based workshop fare program burned bright for decades taught by author and feminist witch afterwards and was responsible, in part, for the fact that the nation had no federal Zsuzsanna Budapest, often called the aid to the poor until the 1930s. "founding mother" of the women's During the Progressive Era of the spirituality movement. 1910s, political leaders were strongly in- fluenced by the women's and settle- To Order send check to: ment-house movements. They began ex- Women's Spirituality Forum pressing concern for the well-being of P.O. Box 11363 children raised in institutions or foster Oakland, CA 94611 families. In both the white and African- American communities, proponents of a To order with Visa or Mastercard system of cash aid to poor mothers Call: (510)444-7724 based their campaigns on the argument that a mother's care at home was needed Video: to raise a productive work force. States Shipping & Handling: began to respond, creating Mothers' Pen- sions, but they invariably limited the aid Total $34.95 42 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 1997 to the "deserving," which in practical sive income-support program for all sin- still measured the same way by statisti- terms meant widowed and white. gle mothers who can not work and for cians; and economists wonder why it is In fact, racism and bias toward unmar- those whose work does not provide declining!" Burggraf writes. ried mothers remained embedded in the them with an income above poverty programs of the 1930s. The Social Securi- level. Yes, that is clearly the way to go, HOSE ONCE INVISIBLE NOW HAVE THE ty Act of 1935 created a two-tier system: but she left unstated the intellectual jus- Topportunity to earn, say $200 an Social Security for the deserving, that is, tification for such a policy. Shirley hour as lawyers. Therefore, those of us the elderly, the widowed and disabled; Burggraf, an economics professor at who stay home to care for children and and Aid to Dependent Children for the Florida A & M University, does not pro- perform unwaged labor pay an enor- unmarried mothers and their depen- vide the answers. She does, however, lay mous opportunity cost through de- dents. One was and is respectable assis- the foundation of a brand new way of creased lifetime earnings and lower So- tance; the other is highly stigmatized, thinking about the issue. She views fami- cial Security retirement benefits, with rules limiting aid to morally fit ly issues through a market-economy according to Burggraf, and the author in- mothers with suitable homes. Decoded, lens, a perspective that she argues has cludes charts and tables galore that that meant celibates, and the provisions been missing up to now. prove her point. were often used to systematically exclude "Economists still measure labor pro- With their own money in their pock- African-Americans, Abramovitz writes. ductivity as they always have—the ratio ets, women have begun to insist that all It was not until 1968 that the Supreme of output to number of workers em- human rights be extended them. Such a Court invalidated such rules. During the ployed—without adjustment for the fact fundamental redrawing of the human ensuing four years, 368,000 additional that there used to be millions of invisible contract means that women's investment single-parent families became eligible for employees. Employers who once got two in reproduction can no longer be as- aid. Another reform of the 1960s, called (an employee with a back-up spouse at sumed, she says. "We are actually going Aid to Families with Dependent Chil- home) are now most often getting just to have to talk about it." dren-Unemployed, provided for the first one. Managers who used to get To begin the conversation, Burggraf time aid to poor families with both par- overqualified secretaries and assistants asks a question so basic that, just by ents present. Its purpose was to end the are now more likely to be getting what reading it, one immediately sees how economic incentive for low-income they pay for, as the talented and ambi- threatening women's economic freedom women to hide from the welfare authori- tious woman goes for an MBA instead. is. It clarifies that the current backlash is ties their relationships with low-income Yet the manager's productivity ratio is not only about men worried about addi- men. But few states adopted the pro- gram, and it remains an underutilized NEW FROM COMMON COURAGE PRESS and tragic artifact of the slave era when African-Americans were not permitted to officially marry and establish house- The Other Half of The Story holds. Now the powerful forces of "An indispensable book—funny, angry, fact-filled and racial animosity and antagonism toward brilliant." unmarried mothers have risen again. The 105th Congress threw back to the —Katha Pollitt states the management of aid to unmar- "[Flanders'] thorough reportage and smart analysis poke ried mothers. At the same time, the Con- gaping holes in the culture's conventional wisdom. If only gress demanded the states find jobs for there were a hundred of her." mothers on welfare within two years —Susan Faludi and approved a five-year lifetime limit for a family to receive federal aid. Aid $16.95 for child care was extremely limited. There is no denying that AFDC was an A meditation book to awful program that embodied the worst clear your political sinuses. gender, class and race biases of the na- tion. It also assured the survival of "THIS BOOK IS PURE FIRE . . . roughly 11 million mothers and children. Now, each state must grapple with de- I was more deeply moved and 'sinspired' by Like There's No signing an assistance plan for poor sin- Tomorrow than by anything else I've read in years ... a work gle parents—about 85 percent of whom of uncompromising vision and daring." are single mothers. —Mary Daly In this new dark era, what should feminists argue for? After we pushed our way into the paid labor force, will we be $14.95 VISA/MC orders call: 1-800-497-3207 left speechless or idea-less when low-in- or send check to: Common Courage Press • Box 702 • Monroe, ME 04951 come mothers are marched out of their s/h $3.00 on first book, $1.00 each additional homes to join us? Are our sisters being hoisted on our petard? Also available at bookstores Abramovitz argues for a comprehen- 43 Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES "Warning! tional competition for jobs or being un- that financial assistance for those over When I Am An Old Woman willing to change diapers. retirement age be reconfigured so that "Why should women value their tra- only those who invest either time or I Shall Wear Purple!" ditional roles as important when society money in children are eligible for federal assigns them little value?" she asks. In retirement benefits. Everyone else—most Handmade other words, what if many more women especially fathers who don't pay their beanbag dolls then at present became unwilling to child support—should put aside their dressed in purple bear children because the pay is bad own funds for retirement. She adds they with a red hat. and the benefits few? Or for that matter, should have plenty of excess cash since Black or whitePId what if even more women abandon- they did not pay child support or spend years at unwaged work. Woman; gray, or ed altogether their other low-wage ca- reers such as teaching in elementary The logical conclusion for Burggraf's gray with red, schools to become, for example, man- arguments is that single mothers should brown or blond agement consultants? Obviously, the receive some compensation from society hair. Includes full wage structure of the economy would at large for raising the next generation. color calligraphy have to shift to begin compensating But—trapped as she is in market reason- copy of original women fairly for their previously un- ing—she apparently can not bring her- ,00* poem. paid work. However, after asking such a self to do it. When she finally turns to $23 basic question, Burggraf's focus shifts the issue late in her book, she leans and becomes extremely narrow. Rather heavily on the aspect of her argument Phone: (719)522-1740 than follow through on exactly what ad- that would provide higher retirement Fax: (719) 522-1976 equate compensation might mean for benefits for stay-at-home moms. She ad- so-called women's work, she concen- mits that none of her suggestions ad- Send check or phone/fax MC, trates on making an argument for in- dress the short-term concerns of welfare Visa, Discover info to: creased compensation for schoolteachers recipients, "but they could have consid- Out Of Focus and changes to the federal retirement erable indirect and long-run effects," she system. adds cheerfully. 8031 N. Academy Blvd. #507. Dept. OO-l Colorado Springs, CO. 80920 She states that school vouchers would That may not be enough for a single produce accountability in the education mother who is compelled to surrender 'All iirdi-r.s Jild 101! S&H and Cul.irjju r^iikiiK jdj -!•: vilcs i.n system and, at that point, higher wages her child to foster care because she has could be proposed. She also proposes no income, or to ask her 5-year-old child to care for an infant sibling while the mother is at work. Burggraf's arguments Help us rebuild IIN BRIEF are further weakened by her biases and America's • WHO SAID IT WOULD BE shallow research. Throughout the book, EASY? ONE WOMAN'S LIFE IN she uses the word "family" to refer to a inner cities... THE POLITICAL ARENA by two-parent family. In addition, her ex- Elizabeth Holtzman with Cynthia L. • amples are consistently $200-an-hour and we'll pay you Cooper (Arcade Publishing, hardcover, lawyers or other elites, not the average back with interest! $24.95). Elizabeth Holtzman's activist male employee. career began as a lawyer in the civil Beyond that, she frequently cites The Every South Shore deposit is targeted rights movement, but it hardly ended Wall Street Journal, newspaper columnist directly to the inner-city neighbor- there. Her pioneering run for Congress William Raspberry and other less-than- hoods we serve. While you're earning made her the youngest woman ever scholarly sources when discussing a satisfying return on your savings, elected to the House of Representa- national demographic, political or eco- money market, tives, and eventually placed her at the nomic trends. She mentions Betty CD or IRA, you center of the Watergate hearings, as a Friedan but once and, overall, gives know your dollars member of the House judiciary Com- short shrift to other, more daring, femi- are helping build mittee. Holtzman was among the first nist writers, even those who write for a strong new cen- of a new generation of women who newspapers. tury for America's fused feminist understanding with ac- Nevertheless, Burggraf puts us on the cities. For details tion in the political arena. Her biogra- right track. Federal welfare programs contact John phy reminds us how hard it can be to have actually been wages for mother's have principles in the political world— Houghton at: work—low and miserable wages, but and how costly it can be to stick with 800-669-7725, wages nevertheless. The new welfare them. The book records her transition ext. 5636, or laws are now requiring these mothers to to local politics, including her work as continue to do the same job with little or [email protected]. Brooklyn district attorney and New no compensation, as well as find and MEMBER FD1C York City's first female comptroller. Liz keep additional full-time employment. I Holtzman's decisive voice calls every believe it is here that progressive South Shore Bank progressive woman to do her part, women can begin, in discussing fairness regardless of the consequences. Wliere America banks Us values. and equity for all low-income single mothers. • 44 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 199 7 probably subconsciously—that they were somehow suspect. When my source was THE MEDIA MIRROR a white male, I have never been asked to go and find a woman or a black to bol- ster the credibility of the information, HAS NO FACE but the reverse has often been true."(Em- phasis mine) REVIEWED BY LOUISE ARMSTRONG to rely on what sociologist Alvin Gould- Reading Rivers' book in full, the un- ner describes as 'the managers of the sta- consciousness/subconsciousness attribu- T'S AN OLD BOYS' PUT-DOWN THAT tus quo'—the prominent and the elite." tion seems overly generous. Combined Iwomen can't pass a mirror without What this means is that those wielding with the study done by Marian Myers, looking into it. Well, for me, that's true. the 'objectivity' ax presume that the bias News Coverage of Violence Against Women, The boys say it's vanity. I say bull—I am of their own norm is so—well, normal— and with Laura Flanders powerful com- simply checking, desperate to make sure that it constitutes no bias at all. Rivers pendium of her writings in Extra! (The I really exist. For sheer wear and tear on tells us that when maleness and white- publication of Fairness and Accuracy in feminists' spirit, nothing beats living ness being the social norm, people who Reporting) and interviews on her nation- with the absence of any reflection or ac- are other or who hold different attitudes ally syndicated radio show Counterspin, knowledgment of our reality, our re- "are nearly always seen as being biased the evidence alone points more to flam- search, our voices, in the mainstream or as being 'advocates.'" .. ing bigotry, dressed up as neutrality and media. I've had my personal watershed This, then, explains how it is that fem- parading about as lofty-minded scien- moments on this one. In 1988, two books inist voices, opinions, attitudes, data, are tism. What women suffer then, is more by male journalists were published on nowhere to be found in stories about is- insidious than invisibility. It is deliberate the subject of the developing war on in- sues feminists have researched, ana- erasure. cest/child abuse—to intense media adu- lyzed, studied, for twenty years—on In 1994, on Counterspin, Flanders in- lation. Not only did neither one mention which they are the experts. terviewed filmmaker Margaret Lazarus women's role in raising this issue, or al- Even male ignorance is not an impedi- about her Academy-Award-winning lude to feminist analysis, but "feminist" does not appear in either book's index. And. "women" appears only once, , in one: "Women, as child i.!, abusers." (You can bet I spent whole days, then, seeking out • mirrors.) If, in books, we are written out of history, in the daily news media we are constantly being written out of the men "rough draft of history." It is Blundering no wonder that we often feel crazy. It is no wonder that, as "Blame a movement, we sometimes Marian Meyers seem to self-abuse. Trust the fellows, though. They've got a perfectly reasonable-sound- REAL MAJORITY, SLICK SPINS AND NEWS COVERAGE OF ing explanation for this. We FRACTURED FACTS: VIOLENCE AGAINST are biased. They know this* MEDIA MINORITY: WOMEN: because they are objective, and- The Cost of Sidelining How Cultural Myths Distort objectivity is (they have de- Women in Reporting the News Engendering Blame clared) the cardinal virtue of by Laura Flanders by Caryl Rivers by Marian Meyers reality's gatekeepers (journal- (Common Courage Press, (Columbia University Press, (SAGE Publications, $38.95, ists). Award-winning journal- $16.95) $24.95) hardcover; $18.95, paper) ist Caryl Rivers, author of .,- Slick Spins and Fractured. Facts, character- ment to authority. Rivers writes, "Once I documentary on domestic violence, izes this ideal of objectivity as the "re- was doing an article for a 'newspaper in "Defending Our Lives." PBS had re- porter as android." She quotes Stanford which I used as my major sources a fused to air the documentary because journalism professor, Theodore L. Glass- black academician and a female profes- they alleged, it was co-produced by a er: "Objectivity is biased in favor of the sor. But an editor asked me to add an- group—Battered Women Fighting status quo; it is inherently conservative other source, a white male professor Back—that had a vested interest in its to the extent that it encourages reporters who had no history of research in the subject matter, even though the film was area. Clearly, the editor simply did not made and paid for by Cambridge Docu- mentary Film. To my knowledge, no LOUISE ARMSTRONG, social critic have confidence in the 'facts' offered by television outlet has ever had a similar and author of five books, lives in London. the woman and the black, believing— 45 Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES attack of scrupulousness when the issue that "all women who are the victims of male bias as well (an interview with me has been, say, a study alarming us about violence—regardless of race or class—are is included, so I am sure of this). The some new mental disorder in women represented within the news as potential- more radical of the books, with a tone of (the study funded by a pharmaceutical ly to blame for causing their own victim- greater urgency, her work assumes the company, perhaps, which has just the ization. The burden of guilt lies with the chauvinism, assumes the credentialism, pill for the problem). As Flanders points victim, and only when cultural norms and is driven by concern about the out, documentaries that aired on PBS in- and values concerning children, the el- media's mean joke of 'giving voice to clude one on The New York Times pundit derly, torture and mass murderers con- women' by elevating such as Mona James Reston, funded in association flict with accepted myths and assump- Charin and Camille Paglia. with the Times; an eight-part multimil- tions about women and violence can "My purpose in pulling together this lion dollar series on oil, funded by Paine female victims be considered innocent." collection," she writes, "is to draw atten- Webber (which has investments in oil As guys with press passes stuck in their tion to an emergency. Counting beans, be exploitation and production); and a pro- hatbands have given way to middle-class they female or queer or multi-racial is gram, funded by Chevron, making the journalism-school graduates, their social not enough. When the Right got savvy to point that "we have to stop pointing the finger at industry for every environmen- Women victims of violence are represented in the news as tal hazard." potentially to blame for their victimization. Myers' book, a more academic study of reporting on violence against women distance from oppressed minorities has the media's 'gender gap,' they groomed in Atlanta, Georgia, makes the power of become a chasm. It is not surprising, then, well-connected women to fit the previ- the bias painfully clear, demonstrating that they tend to wonder what is wrong ously male-only pundits' chairs. Main- "how the news draws on traditional no- with those "others." Myers writes, "By stream media obediently filled that gap- tions of appropriate gender roles in the presenting stories of violence against ing 'women's space' with the anti- representation of violence against women as separate, discrete incidents, the feminists who were driven to their women. Those notions are rooted in pa- news also reinforces that idea that this vi- doors. Now women's rights advocates triarchy, which is the systemic institu- olence is a matter of isolated pathology or are fueling their own media machines to tionalization of women's inequality deviance, related only to the particular churn out daily press releases and edito- within social, political, economic, and circumstances of those involved and un- rials, or they're hiring good public rela- cultural structures." Myers' study found connected to the larger structure of patri- tions firms to do it with them. And that's archy, domination and control. This mi- imperative. A serious effort to match the rage of individual pathology denies the Right's media assault with comparable Ancient Wisdom social roots of violence against women vigor is crucial, if only to respond to for this Time and relieves the larger society of any those newspaper editors and TV anchors obligation to end it." To make this con- who claim they don't hear from femi- nection would "be to bias the news" be- nists as they do from their opponents." silver fa=>A) Goddess cause "advocates for battered and raped bronze m•M, Jewelry women are unreliable news source be- HE IS CORRECT, OF COURSE. AND gold Bf Catalog cause they are not neutral." Sthere is enough vigor in this book to Perhaps this explains how weird the convince and motivate you—whether resulting coverage is (apart from horri- the topic is the media's take on welfare, ble). Have you ever noticed how bewil- homophobia, women in prison, rape or dered most mainstream journalists seem the menopause "industry." Her work is 'es when covering male crimes against further impassioned by the currently es- P.O. Box 389-U women and children? Like so many Can- calating conglomeration. "If current Brimfield MA 01010 dide clones, when confronted with atroc- merger plans go ahead, two out of three Phone/Fax: (413) 245-9484 ities against females, they turn from one of the world's richest television net- doctor (Pangloss) to another, seeking ex- works would be controlled by nuclear planation for what, time after time, seem power companies, both of which have THE MAKING AND UNMAKING to them unfathomable events. To these the U.S. military as their most important OF A FEMALE SCIENTIST mainly male, mainly white, "scientific" client."And by the fact that the purpose experts, they time and again pose such of the profit-makers who determine the SLAM THE DOOR GENTLY questions as—but why would a woman 'news' in the 1990s is profit-making. let herself be battered? And no matter About the last—well...Reading.these Author Ruth Glater, Ph.D., tells the story how many such stories they cover, no three books left me with some skepti- of her struggle to gain work, recognition, matter how many times they learn and cism about Pure Market Force Theory as and respect in a field dominated by men. report "social scientists agree that..."— the dominant motivator. No group of Her account "personalizes the statistics, reveal- nonetheless when the very same kind of people who flatly declare their own bias ing the extraordinary psychological costs that horror comes into their reportorial objective is, in my opinion operating out such discrimination exacted." purview again, they are as tabulae rasae, of perfect and controlled rationality. If JANE SHERRON DE HART, UCSB required to once more turn to experts for you could ever disentangle male self-in- even those flimsy answers they cannot terest from corporate self-interest, I sus- Paperback, $12.95 + $2.50 S&H seem to retain. The pieces that make up For information call Fithian Press pect the male stuff would win hands 1-800-E62-8351 Flanders' collection testify eloquently to down. I think good-for-business ideas do 46 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 1997 not necessarily triumph if they make HOFFMAN (continuedfrom page 6) your peaceful transition away from men in power uncomfortable. They sim- apartheid so miraculous! ply declare that good-for-business ideas Hoffman: A feminist paradise? Unlikely. Bower: I was driving home from work things are not really good-for-business But I was amazed to see no billboards when it happened, and I saw someone things, eliminate them—creating a vacu- here—no visible pornography. Do you holding up the newspaper, and it says um, and thus a loop. expect it to happen as society becomes "ANC Unbanned." I was flabbergasted. After a spate of successful femi- more "open"? It was such a shock. I mean when you nist books had been published in the late Bower: I think so, and as things just talk about it afterward there were some 1970s, during the early 1980s it suddenly open up in general, I know there is a indicators, but it seemed to come out of became axiomatic that "feminist books growing market for the hard-core stuff. nowhere. One minute we were in the don't sell"—around the time when The And a lot of pornography involving chil- middle of a state of emergency, which New York Times began doing its annual dren is starting to develop. I'm not sure was horrible, then next the ANC obituaries of feminism (the "news" ap- what that means. There is definitely a [African National Congress] was un- parently being that feminism was still bigger drug problem than we use to banned, and a week later Mandela was dead). have. And these problems often seem to released. And suddenly it got to the For the most part, mainstream, mass- go together. point that you didn't dare miss the news. market publishers stopped buying femi- It was the most incredible thing. nist books. Occasionally, one got Hoffman: You talked about the feminists I remember voting, and I'd never through (like Susan Faludi's Backlash) being—or your being—far left, radical voted until the general election in '94. and became a best seller. But those best left. What about the gay movement, the But I voted in the townships as a matter sellers stopped no one from continuing lesbian movement? of principle because I worked in the to say that feminist books don't sell— Bower: At one point they were insepara- townships for so long and I wanted to and since they don't if they aren't pub- ble. Rape Crisis was started by women vote with the people I had worked with. lished, voila\ The wisdom of Pure Mar- who were mostly gay. The majority of And it was such an incredible experi- ket Forces. the membership is still gay women. I ence. We all queued and shared bread or Which leads me to suggest that you think there are reasons for that, beyond whatever food there was because it took pick up one or two, or all three of these the fact that it is comfortable to be gay in hours. The queues went on for miles. exceptional books. Rivers' book is a live- an organization like Rape Crisis. I think Watching the television, there were all ly, witty insider's view, invaluable as it goes to other responsibilities, whether these talking heads supposedly analyz- anthropology among the Mainstream people have children or not. I left, for in- ing, but there was nothing for them to Media Peoples. Myers' book is an excep- stance, because I had a child three years say because the results were coming in. I tional resource, a unique validation of earlier, and I found it extremely difficult think we rode on the euphoria of that all that those who work on violence to be the mother of a small baby and an for a long time. And obviously the reali- against women have long suspected. active member of Rape Crisis, so coming ty sets in and the honeymoon is over, And Flanders' collection of her work is back to it now that she's fourteen has and we have a long hard road. I think extraordinary—informed by passion, been a different experience, and there are this country has enormous potential, but thoroughly infused with documentation other women in the organization who we can't pretend our history just didn't and reason: radical in the most responsi- have children. happen. ble sense. And I think the vast majority of white You choose. Hoffman: One of the ways the feminist South Africans don't have a clue. I re- You'll see your concerns, your exis- movement is minimized or marginalized member my sister phoning me right tence, reflected. by the establishment in America, is to after things were starting to improve and Better any day than a mirror. • make it a "gay" issue. there was a movie showing on television Bower: Certainly in the '70s and"80s I called "A Dry White Season." So she think that was the case in this country, phoned me all in a flap and said, "Please IN BRIEF and f think it was based on the American tell me it wasn't this bad." 1997 by Lester R. model. The difference in the mid- to late- I said, "I'm sorry, but it was much Brown, Michael Renner, Christopher 90s has been the large number of black worse. That's nothing." Flavin, edited by Linda Starke. (W.W. women in any organization that take on She asked, "Well, why didn't you tell Norton, hardcover, $24.95; paper gender issues; there are large numbers of me?" $12). This report of global trends black women involved in them. We I said, "Well what do you think we gathered by the WorldWatch Institute work quite closely with a wide range of were doing for the last twenty years?" is filled with solid information for pro- different organizations. One organiza- That's the thing. Whites, they just didn't want to know. They couldn't believe it, gressive folk across the spectrum. tion, the Triangle Project, has grown and they didn't want to know. And it Though the news it documents is from just dealing with gay-rights issues, to dealing with health care, adoption, didn't matter what you said; people sim- often troubling (maternal mortality ply refused to believe it. And they still rates around the world remain high, and basic human rights. Another difference in South Africa is don't. The things that you hear come out for example, despite decreases in pop- of the Commission—it breaks my heart that the majority is a black majority. ulation growth) some trends are cause to hear it. for optimism, including a surprising Forty-three million people in this coun- decline in military troops and arms try and only three million are white. production over the past several years. Hoffman: What do you think of the con- Hoffman: That's what makes the fact of cept behind the Truth and Reconciliation 47 Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES Commission: the idea that you can re- don't think we should run around act- with the opportunity to make radical deem yourself by confessing? ing out the extreme measures that are change. Bower: Oh, I have lots of problems with being called for. I believe there should Bower: Just having the chance to say a it. I think it's an amazing idea. I think we be some point at which it's not OK to law stinks, like the problem of defining need to heal and to talk, but some of it is get on with it. rape. so bad. I don't see why people should get away with it. Just because you admit Hoffman: The challenge is to balance the Hoffman: How has the definition that you did it. need to'heal and move the country for- evolved? ward "with the demands for justice, Bower: Rape used to be ''unlawful sexu- Hoffman: Where is the justice? And how whichjincludes the personal accountabil- al intercourse between a man and a can you heal? ity of'the perpetrators. woman who were not married" and had Bower: I had friends killed, you know. Bower: I think of all the people in prison, to involve penile-vaginal penetration. David Webster was a friend of mine, I all the people shot in cold blood outside Now marital rape is acknowledged. But knew him well. He got shot by these of their homes. I don't see that it's possi- it's still gendered and must involve pe- people. I can't just...I can't, I can't. It just ble to pretend none of that happened or nile-vaginal penetration. So anal rape, doesn't make sense to me when we lost even to acknowledge that it happened, oral rape, male-on-male, whatever— Steven Biko. We came close to losing but not do anything about it besides that's all sexual assault. Mandela. Let's face it: If the state had got talking. But I do believe that if the Truth At least we don't also have the death its way he would have been hung. and Reconciliation Commission does sentence now. There are some reac- We did such stupid things for such nothing else, it will take home to the vast tionary groups calling for its reintroduc- ridiculous reasons—the cruelty. Not just majority of white South Africans what tion. But that will never happen while what they did, but how they did it. The actually happened. Because when my Mandela is President. Which is how it way it was a sort of sport or a game. I sister says "Why didn't you tell me?" should be. I believe the death sentence don't expect we should be able to say she's forgotten how many times I tried. never rriade any difference. As a sheerly "I'm terribly sorry," and everybody says And how my family wouldn't speak to practical issue, if rape was a capital of- "Its OK, it doesn't matter anymore." It me for years. fense, which it used to be, it was limited does matter. And I think you send out basically to blacks. In the history of bad wrong messages, and I think it con- Hoffman: But now you are at such an ex- South Africa there were something like tributes to the general lawlessness. I citing place—a critical point in history 120 [rapists executed] since 1910. All of them were black, except two white men who kidnapped a young black woman, raped her repeatedly over three days, put her in a car trunk and set it on fire. Relationships Every other single rapist wjho ^as hung Transforming Archetypes in this country was black. .,: : We always had problems, with the Dr. Marina Valcarenghi discusses the violence/power death sentence. For one thing, when rape imbalances that she feels are inherent within heterosex- was a capital offense, the court process is so much m«>re traumatic because there's ual sexual relationships and the impact of that violence a man's lifainvolved. It becomes a more on women. She explores how the conscious integration complex issue. Beyond that, we have ev- of masculine energy can counteract this and allow women idence that when a man can be hung for the rape of a woman, he is likely to kill and men to share more meaningful relationships. her so she can't recognize him. I'm not Translated from the Italian. A Nicolas-Hays title. $14.95 Paper saying that happens in all cases, but it has happened in several. We were happy about the moratorium on the death sen- Healing Quest tence, and we will not support its rein- troduction. It's enormously, enormously In the Sacred Space of the complicated. Medicine Wheel Hoffman: What is your plan for the im- After the death of her young daughter, Marie Herbert mediate future? chose to undergo a traditional Native American Healing Bower: There are a couple of things I Quest with the help of tribal Shamans, and the guidance would like to look into. One is the devel- opment of a resource center, specifically of a few special matriarchs. Her journey offers hope, looking at rape in the subcontinent and encouragement, and spiritual insight to all of us. research on these issues in southern A Samuel Weiser title. $12.95 Paper Africa. I'll need funding for that. I would also like to fund the research depart- ment, which is on a contract that ends in Samuel Weiser, Inc. & Nicolas-Hays encourage you to support your local bookseller when May. So that needs to be looked at. I looking for our titles. If you are unable to order our titles from them, then contact us: Tel: 800/423-7087 would also like to see our counseling 48 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 1997 service go much more into the communi- es for the past 26 years—but I know I'm want—a secure home, education for ty. We shouldn't have centralized ser- just part of a long process—women's their children, food on the table, and vice. Counseling should be something freedom is the work of generations. money for the movies." It's not such a you can walk to or get to easily. After working on reproductive rights big deal. We all want basically the same We're not going to be funded forever. I for more than a quarter of a century— things. Apartheid worked well at keep- want to start finding ways to make some we are still in a place where doctors ing blacks and whites apart. It didn't of the things we do generate some in- and health care workers are being work in the sense that it gave black peo- come. Plus, flinders are much more com- killed—sometimes you feel that you are ple an advantage it never even consid- fortable when they can see that you're continually running in place. It's a joy ered; that was because they worked in doing your bit. We also don't have a to hear and see your enthusiasm in whites' homes and gardens and lives. board yet, and I want to start thinking building in a sense a new society. It was They know us far better than we know about putting one in place. But I believe what I tried to do in Russia, but it was- them. They do. Black people have a far the biggest thing is to be high profile. If n't time. better understanding of white people every woman in Cape Town gave Rape Bower: Sometimes I find myself asking, and where we're coming from than we Crisis twenty-five cents a month, we "Is this what it's all'about?" And of do of them. • wouldn't need any funding at all. course -it is, the day-to-day stuff. Making sure the place runs smoothly, building' a Hoffman: You need to raise that commitment with staff, a sense of going consciousness...that each woman is re- somewhere. I think this could be the best sponsible for the movement. work I ever do. Bower: That's right, that we own this. If My dream for this country is to take we don't do this, no one will, and we the best that we can of communism and can't do it without money. capitalism and make it into something i that works for us. I think in a very real Hoffman: Build an infrastructure based sense we do have an opportunity's to do on'ifeJfcnist entrepreneurship. Teach that. I don't think it will be perfect; but it womenffiow to get into business; what to can be. do with economic power, job training— There's a huge opportunity around all of it; I call it "Feminomics"—capital- human rights issues, the criminal justice ON THE ISSUES ism with a conscience and a conscious- system. So much has been looked at, and SUBSCRIBER SERVICE ness? -j because it's a new society, it's possible to RO. Box 3000 Bower: What' I like about that idea is say, "I think we should change this," and Denville, NJ 07834-9838 when women realize they have power people will listen. -J Change of Address: Please allow because ihere are so many of us and get three weeks. Attach label with your old them to stop thinking, "Oh I can't do Hoffman: That is so important because in address and write your new address below. that/'Ifwealldid. my country there is the assumption that U New Subscriber Fill in your name and we are already living in the "best coun- address in the new address space. Check term Hoffman: It's not enough to individually try in the world" and that all the vision- price of your subscription below.* hold power. There has to be A conscious- £ ary and radical work has been done—so LJ Renewal: Attach label if available. Check ness of women as a politicamclass. That * you are left to recapitulate or do varia- term price of your subscription below.* there is a commitment that once you rise tions on a theme. In your "New South • One year $ 14.95 _l Two years $25.00 up, you look back. Many women may Africa" everything is collectively being • Three years $34.95 singularly have economic and political questioned and deconstructed—which • Payment Enclosed • Bill Me power, but you have to look back and allows you much more freedom to look around and make that power collec- change almost anything. OLD ADDRESS: tive. Bower: It's new for us. None of us know Bower: That's what we need.to do. If what it means to go on with this experi- NAME (PRINT) you think about it, it doesn't matter if a ment. It's very flexible. It's an enormous- women's group is international or local; ly creative process we're engaged in and ADDRESS it needs that acknowledgement. a very challenging and exciting time. So many left for many reasons. When I had CITY/STATE/ZIP Hoffman: That we're all standing on my daughter it was tempting, but I could never quite do it. And I'm so glad each other's shoulders. NEW ADDRESS:" Bower: That's right, and;, if we don!t do I stayed. We definitely have problems, but there's something underneath, a it, no one will. And if (we all make a NAME (PRINT) bedrock that is sound. minor contribution as a conscious act, then there are enough of us to swing it. The people of this country are amaz- ADDRESS So I'm looking to have outside funding ing. Such a huge reserve of kindness and tolerance. for the next three to five years, and then CITY/STATE/ZIP I want Rape Crisis to be self-sufficient. Maybe it's because I've always worked so closely with blacks. I always 'Canadian subscriptions add $4 per year; other foreign add $ say to white South Africans, "They don't (surface mail) or $20 per year Airmail. Institutional rate: Add Hoffman: That's the vision that I have $10 first year; $5 each additional. Payable in U.S. funds only been following with my work at Choic- want anything different from what you Mail to our Subscriber Service address above. 475SS 49 Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES CHESLER (continued from page 8) practic, Chinese herbs and dietary sup- formed, sophisticated, philosophical, plements. compassionate, super-capable of cri- that you may be permanently disabled. I have learned to live with this illness. tiquing the latest study or media cover- It is stressful to be forced to cash in I have a CFIDS specialist and a primary- age of that study, capable of calling for your life insurance policy, mortgage Ccire physician who believe that CFIDS is studies that have not yet been done. your home to the hilt, spend all your real, are fully familiar with the standard I've learned to listen to my body, not to savings, borrow from everyone you and experimental Western medications push it. I have just returned to full-time know, be denied your rightful health and such as ampligen, gamma globulin, cud- university teaching and writing. I am disability benefits or forced to fight for apressin, lydocaine, fluorinef, neurontin, lucky, blessed, to be able to do so. And, it them precisely when you are totally in- antidepressants, and who also prescribe turns out: All this time, I had Lyme's Dis- capacitated. the so-called alternative treatments. I ease too. I am now flourishing on antibi- It is stressful to be interrogated by have befriended others who also suffer otics. (Like some others, my blood tests hostile insurance company bureaucrats who talk to you as if you're an imbe- We do not know whether CFIDS is caused by a virus, is infectious or cile—or a corporate adversary. Imagine an acquired immunodeficiency. We do know that there has been trying to sue for your benefits when you research supporting the theory that the illness has an organic basis. are sick; imagine confronting company lawyers and executives, who are not from CFIDS with whom I can joke about always yielded a false negative). only robust and healthy, but who can my symptoms and exchange information There are those who trust our govern- bring all their considerable resources to about what works. ment and God; they know best. If there's bear against your individual claim. Last year, I published a letter in The a plague in our midst, surely, the au- New York Times criticizing a column on thorities would warn us. Perhaps, per- T IS STRESSFUL WHEN YOU CAN'T AFFORD CFIDS. I was asked to join a by-invita- haps not. In the 1930s, our tax dollars Itraditional or experimental Western tion only e-mail group of physicians, subsidized government scientists who medications. Above all, it is stressful if medical researchers and mental health experimented on human beings—the you don't have the money for so-called professionals who themselves suffer Tuskegee study in which antibiotics alternative (which are really ancient, tra- from CFIDS. This group constitutes a were withheld from African-American ditional, oriental and natural) approach- magnificent think tank and data bank. men with syphilis and from their wives es to illness such as acupuncture, chiro- The members are exceedingly well in- in order to chart the course of the dis- ease. In the same and subsequent decades, African-American women were You Knew These Women Were Rebels experimentally lobotomized at state asy- lums. In the 1940s and 1950s, U.S. gov- ernment scientists injected plutonium and uranium into uninformed prisoners and non-prisoners alike. In the 1960s, government scientists gave mentally re- tarded children radioactive cereal; and in the 1970s, they exposed university residents to radiation for studies on ra- diation poisoning. iargaret Hanger Susan B. Anthony They didn't tell, we didn't ask. For But did you know how heretical they really were? years, our government denied the facts of Vietnam's Agent Orange and the Gulf WOMEN WITHOUT SUPERSTITION War's sarin nerve gas and pesticides. "No Gods - No Masters" Military computer logs were destroyed: The dog ate my homework. Edited by Annie Laurie Gaylor Conspiracies? Cover ups? Sometimes. Ideal Summer Reading! The first anthology of women freethinkers. Featuring more More often, the enemies are ignorance, than 50 activists and writers critical of religion, including Stanton, Anthony, Sanger, terror, denial, incompetence, passivity, Emma Goldman, Matilda J. Gage, Charlotte P. Gilman, Sonia Johnson, Katha Pollitt, greed. and Barbara Ehrenreich. With biographical sketches, 51 photos, 696 pages. Hardback. EARS AGO, MY FRIEND, THE WRITER Order from: FFRF, Inc., PO Box 750, Madison WI 53701 YSusan Griffin, wrote that "In a terri- Send me copies of Women Without Superstition @ $25.00 each, postpaid. ble way, no one who has CFIDS is truly (Wis. residents add 5.5% sales tax) alone. Sadly, we are all part of this global process. Those who are ill [are] like ca- naries in the mine—our sickness a signal Name of the sickness of the planet. An epidem- ic of breast cancer, the rising rate of lupus, MS, a plethora of lesser-known Address disorders of the immune system." Perhaps she was right: • Lity/i>tate/Ztp http://www.infidels.org/org/ffrf/books.htrnlttwws 50 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 1997 YOUNG GIRLS (continued from page 28) ments often lack financial and social re- sources to crack down on prostitution N THE U.S., "PEOPLE DENY CHILD PROS- rings, says Teresa Klingensmith of the Ititution is a problem; they don't want Center for Missing and Exploited Chil- ONlHE ISSUES to believe it's happening," says Susan dren in Arlington, Virginia. "You need Has the last really good Breault, assistant director of the Paul & enough staff to handle the load and then conversation you've had Lisa Program for exploited youth, based must refer children, who are often run- in Essex, Connecticut. Though UNICEF aways, to foster care or shelters." been with yourself? estimates that 300,000 juveniles in the In New York City, the Paul & Lisa pro- Ever wish you could talk about gram works with two officers from the what you've read in ON THE ISSUES? Vice Unit, says Breault. "They let us Interested in starting a discussion The U.S. know when a juvenile is trying to get off group in your area? Become a the streets and when pimps are moving group leader, or join a developing in Denial juveniles to a new location." Prosecution group! We'd like to hear from of pimps is tough because prostitutes, readers who are ready to take on U.S. are involved in prostitution, Breault usually girls, are unwilling to testify—a the issues—with each other! and other advocates say the number is necessary step for juvenile prosecutions, Contact us at (718)459-1888, ext. 270 "closer to one million." says Breault. "If a girl turns a pimp over, or e-mail [email protected] As in other countries, American teens she could be killed, beaten or punished We'll help you get started! often fall into prostitution after fleeing severely." from abusive families. At age 9, Varee Efforts to protect girls from sexual Become an Outpost of the Suthireung started running away from abuse and exploitation are being compli- Feminist Government in her San Antonio, Texas, home to escape cated through the proliferation of tech- Exile. ON THE ISSUES seeks beatings and sexual abuse by her stepfa- nology, particularly the unfettered nature regional representatives to attend ther, a serviceman. Her mother, a Thai of the Internet, which allows pedophiles laundry woman, didn't protect her to "market to a broad audience," says synergistic conferences, exhibits daughter in a household where alcohol Teresa Klingensmith, legislative counsel and events. To find out more, fax reigned. Suthireung's parents finally for the Center for Missing and Exploited (718)997-1206 or call (718)459-1888, gave up custody of their daughter at age Children. "People can send and down- ext. 210. 13, but she ran away from her place- load thousands of pages of child porn or ments—foster homes, juvenile detention carry it around on a disk." centers and state schools—and survived In the U.S. it's illegal to possess, re- There may be on the streets through prostitution. ceive, or mail child pornography. With hidden ingre- "After the first time it was so easy. I'd millions of users accessing the free- dients in the trade sex for hamburgers and fries. Guys wheeling Internet around the world, products you were more than willing," said Suthire- however, it's nearly impossible to control use... cruelty, ung in a 1993 interview. By the time she what users send and receive. pain, suffering. Rabbit with burned back Irom a skin was 15, Suthireung was selling her body toxicrty study at a product testing lab to support a drug habit. The following HE U.S. CONGRESS, IN AN ATTEMPT Let us send you a free Cruelty-Free year, after a night of drugs, drinking, and Tto regulate such Internet exchanges, Shopping Guide so you can make being passed from one man to another, last year heard testimony from 14-year- compassionate choices on your next she tried to kill herself by driving a mo- old Donelle Gruff, who was stalked by a trip to the store. To receive a copy torcycle into a brick wall. Miraculously, man she met through a bulletin board call us toll free at (800) SAY-AAVS or she survived and moved in with a drug chat room. Exploited children are fre- write to The American Anti- dealer and pimp until, strung out on quently photographed by pedophiles Vivisection Society, 801 Old York Rd. heroin, she could no longer sell her body. during sexual encounters, then their pic- #204, Jenkintown, PA 19046. "They couldn't dress me up anymore. tures are sold through the Internet. One day, the key didn't fit the lock." The lack of legislation and the difficul- When Suthireung became pregnant ty in monitoring the Internet challenge for the second time and diagnosed with both investigators and lawyers. Ron O'- HIV, she finally kicked drugs and prosti- Grady, International Coordinator for End tution for a new life. She moved to Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism Adults: Philadelphia and became an activist for (ECPAT) questions who is a criminal S,M,L, when pornography is transmitted elec- We The People, a Philadelphia AIDS ad- Ex-L $15 vocacy organization. She staffed the hot- tronically. "Is the criminal the one who line, and gave talks about her life as a places the material on the Net, or is it the prostitute to students and social work- server who transmits the message; or is it Youth: ers. As she grew weak from AIDS, she the one who downloads the material onto 2-4, 6-8, found adoptive homes for her two chil- their computer? The person sending the 10-12, dren; she wrote them a letter telling her material may send it from a country 14-16 $12 story before she died a year ago. where it is legal to do so, but it may go to a country where it is illegal, so who deter- In the U.S., as in many countries, child Visa/MC 1 -800-891 -2126 10% discount with ad mines the standard for the crime?" —A.D. prostitution is illegal, but police depart- Mail orders: Add $3 for shipping Summer 1997 • ON THE ISSUES 51 back page TH£ LITTLE CULT THAT COULPNT ELIEVHS OF CULT OF FEMINISM SECLUSION, BirriTPiPM'T WHICH KINO, AEEVOU MV LITTLE" MMH5 SO-CALLQ? FBMIMSTU ^FEMINIST CULT". V7 TC/fl? MOVING THEM UB£&TAp.(At4? AROUND 7H£ CDUNW2/ON fi, QUEST R3R fFOTH, BUT o /THAT'S SO *E7/». A < '^UT W£ LAST f -THE BODV 1$ BUT A STRAW WAS DURING MY$BMiNAROfJ U05E5 XR6 MERELY TO ^FX RIN6IN6... BUIL-PA CULT OF0 WORSHIP |OAN HILTYisn cartoonist and illustrator living in New York. 52 ON THE ISSUES • Summer 199 7 SHE'S A DOCTOR TODAY BECAUSE HER ROLE MODELS WEREN'T MODELS. She's delivered babies in rural South Carolina, performed surgery while on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana and treated tropical diseases in The Gambia in West Africa. Dr. Nicole Lang is a role model for girls today thanks to the role models she had growing up — parents and a grandmother who were education advocates. Show your daughter how achieving in math and science in school can open doors for her in the future. Call 1-800-WCC-4-GIRLS. Or visit us on the Internet at http://www.academic.org. EXPECT THE BEST FROM A OIRL. THAT'S WHAT YOU'LL (iET. Women's College Coalition WHY HISTORY MAnERS GERDA LERNER Life and Thought "With her customary brilliance and clarity, Gerda Lerner offers us her own story and in the process explains how history happens, is interpreted, utilized, transmuted into meaning and memory, and denied and distorted by those with the power to do so. This book is a gift to all who hope to understand the role of the past in the present"—Letty Cottin Pogrebin. "This moving collection of essays is testimony—if more were needed—to the breadth of Gerda Lerner's spirit and her humane wisdom"—Linda K. Kerber, co-editor of U.S. History as Women's History: New Feminist Essays. In Why History Matters, Gerda Lerner brings togeth- er some of her most significant thinking and writing on history that she has done in her entire career. A founding member of NOW and a past president of the Organization of American Historians, Gerda Lerner is a pioneer in the field ofWomen's History and one of its leading practitioners. Wliy History Matters is the summation of the work and thinking of this distinguished historian. $30.00, 288 pp. RACECHANGES White Skin, Black Face in American Culture SUSAN GUBAR "This rich and fascinating study testifies to the long history of white Americans' ingenious and insatiable envy of blackness"—Barbara Johnson. Co-author of the influential The Madwoman in the Attic, Susan Gubar now turns her attention to the incendiary issue of race. Through a far-reaching exploration ot the long overlooked legacy of minstrelsy—cross- racial impersonations or "racechanges"—throughout modern American film, fiction, poetry, painting, photography, and journalism, she documents the indebtedness of "mainstream" artists to African-American culture, and explores the deeply conflicted psychology of white guilt. Drawing on a stunning array of illustrations, including paintings, film stills, computer graphics, and even magazine morphings, Racechanges sheds new light on the persistence of racism and on the exciting aesthetic possibilities for lessening the distance between blacks and whites. $37.50, 336 pp., 96 illustrations HOLDING MY OWN MOLLY HASKELL IN NO MAN'S LAND Women and Men and Film and Feminists "At their best, Ms. Haskell's essays not only make us rethink the history of women in film, but also provide a tresh, ideology-free look at the noisy gender Jvars"—-Michiko Kakutani, The NewYork Times. "I can't think of a better way to refresh my mind'.than by reading Molly Haskell. She is the most sophisticated, well-informed film critic of our time, and she has a genius for putting unconventional insight into witty, gracetul, seemingly effortless prose. I read many of these pieces when they first appeared with delight and discussed them with glee. Collected, the delight remains, the impact grows. Holding My Own in No Alan's Land is a major state- ment—and a treat!"—Phyllis Rose. "Watch this elegant, razor-sharp mind weave through the forest of our prejudices—these essays interest, challenge, amuse, awake the desire to give chase"—Anne Roiphe. $25.00, 216 pp. N E from X F O At better bookstores. Or call 1-800-451-7556 (M-F, 9-5 EST) OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS www.oup-usa.org