September-October 1974

PAULINE JEWETT i Contents Coordinating Editor Susan McMaster Every Issue Fiction Susan McMaster - Coordinator Marylu Antonelli letters 2 Karen Lawrence Miriam Mandel editorial Text and Context Helen J. Rosta 3 Helen Rosta here and there 5 Non-fiction both sides now I'll trust you if you'll trust me Harry Rensby 6 Sharon Batt Coordinator Mary Alyce Heaton perspectives The Peddle: Naomi Loeb Meg Shatilla the '70s divorce and how to survive it Carla Van Oyen Wensel 39 Photography Women in Music Beverley Ross 43 Alice Baumann-Rondez Coordinator bookends Karen Lawrence 45 Art Linda Donnelly Coordinator people in this issue 48 Barbara Hartmann lona MacAllister Features Ada Nanning Audrey Watson The books . .. Linda Cullen 8 Production Alice Baumann-Rondez ... the kids Brenda Inkster 15 Gisela Baumann Beatrice Bottema Books for Children 17 Barbara Hartmann Kerry Lewis Pauline Jewett an interview Georgina Wyman 20 Naomi Loeb Susan McMaster Honey and Wild Raspberries Virginia Naeve 35 Meg Shatilla Women in the Arts Audrey Watson Public Relations Children's Poetry Helen J. Rosta 12 Naomi Loeb The Puzzle Ellie Tesher 16 Business Mary Alyce Heaton Coordinator pollywollydoodle — for christa Karen Lawrence 19 Cheryl Boon Distribution Kerry Lewis Advertising and Subscriptions Eunice WUIar 24 Sophia Bella macrame into sculpture Eleanor Norrie Advertising Three Wheel Drive Vibeke Ohm 26 Branching Out is published every two Sonnet to My Daughter Mary Lile Benham 28 months by the New Women's Magazine Society. Edmonton, Alberta. Please send all correspondence to Box The Dancer photoessay Vivian Frankel 29 4098, Edmonton. Altwrta T6E 4T1. Submissions should be typed, double-spaced and accompanied by a Woman's Day Goes Swift "I'll Be 50 in May' Isabel Huggan 34 stamped, self-addressed envelope. Advertising rates are available on request. Encore Miriam Mandel 42 Vol. 1, No. 1, September/October 1974 Cover photograph by Vivian Frankel Opposite drawing by Ada Nanning Industrial Printing & Litho Ltd., Edmonton September/October 1974 tatters We welcome letters to Branching Upon reading the "story", 'Both becomes sexless and mechanical. Out on any topic. We reserve the right Sides Now' by Judy Sinclair, a most Such an environment would mean to edit letters, and will assume we may controversial and thought provoking certain extinction. publish part or all of any letter article, I was stricken with the urge Sandy Bolting, Calgary, Alberta the sender states received unless to debate, at length, my own views. otherwise. I - being a mother of three children, a divorcee and recently remarried twenty seven year old. A brief de scription of my life as such: "HOUSEWIFE" or whatever term one may use to describe a woman who is married and stays home with her children. I, myself, in search of freedom, or liberation, have travelled many paths in search of the "light" that would illuminate my existence, and have felt bitter, depressed, suffered many anxieties in being female (as do males). I could go into much more life detail, but do not wish to describe my total life in expressing why I feel the way I do. I have strong and healthy love relationships with many people - more female fri ends than male, at present. I do believe that people have With the enlightened thinking of their own definition of liberation. I women's lib, fathers are now just as I have just read "Perspectives" in recognize individual freedom and the proud of their family of daughters as your August issue in which Denise Seg- right to express it. I am struck once they once were of sons. Signs at the stro described the brutality of a Cal more with Judy Sinclair's emptiness, end of a barn and on the door of a gary gynecologist. Having a very full and demanding truck, both near London, Ontario, If a woman as experienced and in life myself. Full of much laughter sorrows, I still retain show this change. telligent as Segstro can be cowed by and the usual my sense of humour and enjoyment, Norma Bice, llderton, Ontario this man, he is a danger to every wo vital to my existence. I realize that man in Calgary. Doctors usually see at I have more to learn in my life - in least 20 patients a day. my relationships, in my creativity - I sincerely hope that you de and I am thankful everyday I am mand that the Birth Control here to experience living. Learning is Association blacklist the creature life. Growth and development in any I only and that you make a protest to the living thing requires energy. V hope Judy Sinclair finds that energy provincial medical association. I and can continue developing her hope also that someday soon we own resources. Let's all get on with strength to reveal the will have the self-development and the growth names of doctors who humiliate and that is needed to preserve life. them maul the people who come to What upsets me, in reference to for help. Judy Sinclair's article, is the lack of My thanks to Denise Segstro for reference to "feelings", such as love, reminding us all that you pays your affection, sadness, or any of our ba premium and you takes your chances. sic human emotions or instincts. I do not wish to see the day that our A Montreal Reader. society erradicates these feelings and 2 Branching Out EDITORIAL Text and context When I was in high school, my English teacher, a that refused to allow her to be lumped into the aggre young man with enormous, crooked teeth brought a gate Non-Person, Flower, Reproductive Appara magazine article to class. I remember his teeth in this tus? Granted, all these incidents occured before the context because the article gave him many a full feminist movement, but I must admit that I've at -mouthed giggle. It was entitled, "Are Women tended meetings within the last year where women People?" and catalogued an incredible number of have been put down and they have not protested. supposedly female follies, the soJe one I remember I've been in groups where women have smiled shame being, "only women go to the toilet together". facedly at the mention of Women's Liberation. As a teen-ager, my consciousness was not dor Perhaps my expectation that all women are hear mant; I argued for People status. But the article was ing the same thing is naive. If I've incorporated a funny; didn't I have a sense of humour? And wasn't negative self-image, why should I be upset if someone it true that women skulked to the toilet in groups. reiterated my failings. In fact, I don't even notice Certainly teen-aged females bunched up at the mere that failings are being discussed: I hear scientific thought of urination. A misgiving wormed itself into data, and humour, and true statements, like...like the recesses of my mind. "My God," I asked myself, "women go to the toilet together". And, of course, it "am I inferior because I go to the bathroom with follows that if women go to the toilet together and Susan?" men don't, then women must be inferior. Simple as A year or so later, my biology teacher likened that. Which is why consciousness raising sessions for women to flowers. Women, he said, blossomed, at women came into being. Afterwards you hear the tracted the bees, so to speak, and then started to same things, but they sound different. fade. He pin-pointed the age eighteen as the time of Women's consciousness raising, however, is kind the big blossoming. After that it was all down-hill of late in the game, after the messages have been bloom-wise. He mentioned no corresponding dead encoded. What about the consciousness of female line for the male, because, of course, there was more children? What kind of messages are they receiving? to life for the male than attracting bees and making Individual teachers may err but the School, itself, the seeds. institution, that bastion of concern for the "whole When I was in social work school, we were child", surely it is making certain that girls receive assigned a paperback entitled Your Body and Your healthful, positive messages about themselves, mes Mind, written by a Frank G. Slaughter, M.D. One of sages that prepare them to develop their full the chapters was called, "Woman! The Enigma Ex potential, and to become proud, independent adults plained". Slaughter (who never did explain what the in a rapidly changing world. Unfortunately, that enigma was) "explained" woman as a being whose doesn't seem to be the case. For example, Linda whole life meaning was tied to her "reproductive Cullen's study reveals that female children in Alberta apparatus", which he described as the "centre of her are receiving from their school textbooks a rigid role existence". I could reach into my library at this very definition for themselves. They are depicted as minute and pull out numerous books which purport cookie cutters par excellence. While opportunities for to "explain" women, but I doubt that I could find women may still be limited, the books present a life one book in all the libraries in this country which style that is downright archaic. Numerous studies would attempt to "explain" man, or one sentence have been done recently on sex-stereotyping in child tying man's total existence to his sperm count. ren's textbooks and all of them have revealed this I've often wondered why women have put up rigid role definition for females. Linda Oliver in an with all the nonsense uttered about them the hum article entitled "Women in Aprons: The Female Ster ourous put-down, the vicious statement, the biased eotype in Children's Readers" (The Elementary treatise, the drivel that masquerades as scientific fact.

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