Public Relations: Why the Rush to Same-Sex Marriage? And Who Stands to Benefit?

Julie Abraham

The Women's Review of Books, Vol. 17, No. 8. (May, 2000), pp. 12-14.

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http://www.jstor.org Thu Dec 6 12:10:50 2007 the constituency and vocabulary of the find in any gay publication he has the gay and lesbian public." Who is to be part courage to pick up. As Bawer's passage of this new constituency? And who rep- indicates, the child in question is invariably relations resents that constituency? Do we want male and equally invariably in pain. Public marriage? Who is the "we" who might The child in question must be a boy, b_y Julie Abraham want marriage? All of these questions are and must be in pain, because anti- and inextricably linked. pro-gay marriage advocates agree that the goal of marriage is to improve the lives Why the rush to same-sex marriage? lmost all of the contributors to of males, through the civilization-that And who stands to benefit? the national media discussion of is, the domestication-of men. As Asame-sex marriage have been Warner notes, the subtitle of legal schol- white, and almost all have been male. ar William Eskridge's 1996 book, The Case Their subject is clearly gq marriage rather for Same-Sex Marriage: From Sexual Libe~ grew up in a world in whch grls and in his view ra&cal alternative, to be than same-sex marriage.- But if same-sex to Ciuili~edCommitment, perfectly captures were less valued than boys. found among the queers who prefer to marriage becomes a possibility, the land- this assumption. The misery of the gay I Educating girls was understood to identie themselves in terms of their hos- scape will change irrevocably for lesbians boy child, with nothing before him but be a wasteful proposition-after all, they tility to heterosexual norms. He identifies as well as gay men. As the gay marriage the sexually excessive, emotionally empty, would just get married. The only women himself with the more radical queers. In rhetoric reveals, you can't have marriage profoundly self-destructive universe gay who did not marry were nuns and dutiful practice, this queer label seems to cover a without women, even if the subject is men naturally inhabit, becomes itself an daughters who stayed at home to care for range of more specific identities: leather- marriage between men. argument for gay marriage. Marriage will their agng parents. The nuns were anoth- men, androgynes, clones, circuit boys, The advocacy of gay marriage is relieve his suffering. er species; the dutiful daughters were dildo dykes, the transgendered, and so framed by the two central arguments The gay marriage advocates find pitied. I was pretty sure I did not want to on. The difference he is actually identify advanced by those opposed to it: first, that themselves with something of a problem be a nun. The prospect of staying at ing is between those who understand the goal of marriage is the production of at ths point, however. Heterosexual con- home forever was frankly terrifving. But I themselves to be defined by sex and children; and second, that the goal of mar- servatives such as Hadley Xrkes argue knew by the time I was ten years old that those who resist such an understanding. riage is the civilization of men. Gay mar- that "it is not marriage that domesticates I did not want to marry. As an advocate for a politics of sex, riage advocates must of course disagree men; it is women." Gay marriage advo- It took almost another decade before I however, Warner denies that there can be with the proposition that children are the cates must stake their all on the institu- understood that women could make lives any real escape from definition by sex. purpose of marriage. But they can claim, tion of marriage as in and of itself together. (h'ews traveled sloa,ly to isolat- Marriage may be presented as a way for as they do, that gays have children--chil- domesticating: the institution of mar- ed children in lower-middle-class lesbians and gays to neutralize the shame dren who need married parents. They can riage itself becomes the necessary female Catholic circles in the colonies.) That was of sex, and so escape the stigma of homo- also retain a child as a touchstone of their figure in the narrative of gay marriage. tu7enty years ago. To come out then was sexuality, but all that WLU be achieved, he &scussion-the gay- child who needs the And in fact the gay marriage advocates' to escape the prospect of marriage as believes, is a sham dipty paid for by the prospect of marriage in his future. trump card, the one they invariably flour- definitively-and who knows, perhaps repression of desire. At the same time, I began with reference to my own ish at this point in their discussions, is with as much relief-as if one had "any politics," he claims, "that makes full childhood because so many gay marriage that there are already legions of homo- become a nun. social membershp conditional on the pro- arguments begm with the figure of a chdd. sexuals epitomizing the domestic future hip childhood is hardly ancient hsto- prieties of the marital form is ultimately a The opening scene of conservative gay of same-sex marriage-long-term loving ry. Different versions of the fate vivid to way to pave over the collective world that journalist 's A Place at the Tabh monogamous couples, free of any taint my ten-year-old self remain in place for lesbians and gays have made." is, as Warner points out, hard to overlook: of out-of-control sexuality, and perhaps many young girls in this country, not to Social membership is what is crucially an innocent (white, blond, middle-class, of any sexuality at all: the lesbians down mention most of the rest of the world. It at issue, and of interest, in Warner's argu- protected) boy hovers anxiously before a the block. This invocation of lesbians- is impossible for me to think about mar- ment. "The campaign for gay marriage," Grand Central Station newsstand, poised in Love Undetectable, Andrew Sullivan riage apart from either second-class sta- he points out, "is not so much a cam- on the verge of shame at--or corruption describes "lesbian culture" as "a tus for women or constraint. And in fact, paign for marriage as a campaign about by-the sexually explicit images he udl monogamist's dream of political and both second-class status for women and social community"-can also be traced in constraint are integral to much of the the work of Bawer, Gabriel Rotello in rhetoric fueling the current campaign for Sexual Ecology, Michelangelo Signonle in same-sex marriage in the United States. Books cited The Life Outside and others. My memories were prompted by read- Not only do you need women for ing Wchael Warner's recently published marriage, you apparently also need gen- Mchael Warner. The TroubL mth 1C'ormal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics discussion of contemporary lesbian/ of der norms. Women are only present in gay/queer politics, The Trouble iuith Queer L;fe New York: The Free Press, 1999, 227 pp., $23.00 hardcover. the gay discussions of marriage when Aromal, in conjunction with the predor11- identified with marriage. Even E.J. Graff, Bruce Bawer. A Place at the Table: The Gg Indindual in American Sociep. inantly gay, largely conservative, literature one of the very few lesbians with a of the past decade that he engages. New York: Poseidon, 1993. speaking part in this drama, frames her Warner argues-not always persuasive- advocacy of same-sex marriage with mchael Bronski. The Pleasure Ptinl;;ple:.Yex, Backhsh, and the Stmgqlefor ly-that political differences within the descriptions of herself and her partner. gay community cannot be explained as a Gajl Freedom. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. Graff concludes her book, What is matter of Left vs. Right, separatist vs. Marriage For?, by proposing the celebra- Samuel R. Delaney. Tinles Square Red Times Square Blue. New York: assimilationist, pro-sex vs. anti-sex, or tion of "each individual spirit." But no- radical vs. pragmatic. He maintains New York University Press, 1999. one else is discussing individual spirits. instead that we are enmeshed in a conflict Not only do these discussions of mar- William Eskridge. The Case fir Same-Sex Martiage: From .5'exual Lbeq to between "a politics of " riage demonstrate the femininity of les- and "a politics of sex." Ths conflict, Gili/iped Commitment. New York: The Free Press, 1996. bians, they confirm the masculinity of gay based on "long-simmering tensions," has men. Lesbians marry because they are E.J. Graff. What is Marriage For? Boston: Beacon Press, 1999. taken a "newly destructive form" in the women, and therefore incapable of doing context of the Clinton era's rapid devel- Valerie Lehr. Queer Famzb Ifalues: Dehnhtg the Myth of the Nuclear anything else. They hardly need the opment of a national, me&a-based les- church or the state: they have the force of Farnib. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999. bian/gay/queer political presence. At the the cumulative femininity of the female center of hsconflict is the campaign for Gabriel Rotello. Sexunl Ecology: AIDS and the Destiy of Gq Alen. couple on their side. But gay men need marriage because they are men. As same-sex marriage. New Yorli: Dutton, 1997. There is now, Warner argues, "a Sullivan opines, "gay male society is far widening gap in the United States Michelangelo Signorile. Ltfe Outside: The SiRnorile Repon' on Gq Men: Sex, more persuasively explained-and under- between the national lesbian and gay stood-in terms of its gender than of its Drugs, Musc/es, and the Passages of I.&. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. movement" and "queers." The move- orientation. The landscape of gay life is, ment is increasingly committed to the Barbara Smith. The Truth that Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and indeed, almost a painting in testosterone." pursuit of "lesbian and gay rights'-and The sign of the masculinity of gay Freedom. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998. an understanding of those rights- men, in this schema, is unrestrained sexu- stripped of all sexual connotations. The Andrew Suhvan. L~veUndetectahlu: Notes on Ftiendsh;P, Sex and S~rvi~?al. ality. "Gay male society is often 'blamed' chief goal of this effort is same-sex mar- for being promiscuous," Rotello laments, New York: Vintage, 1999. riage. At the same time, the campaign for "as if it were possible for a male society same-sex marriage is itself being used to Andrew Sullivan, ed. Sanze-Srx hlarnkge: Pro and Con, A Reader. whose members have no sanctioned rela- tionships and no responsibility to anyone consolidate "lesbians and gays" as a New York: Vintage, 1997. homosexual silent majority, the "good but themselves to be othetwise." Marriage gays," in opposition to the "bad queers" Urvashi Vaid. Virtclal Equalih: The h1ainstrearniq of Gay und Les/~ian will civilize and domesticate gay men by joined under the sign of sexual shame. restraining gay male sexuality. hberation. New York: Doubleday, 1995. Warner rehearses the distinction Consequently advocates of gay marriage, between an identity politics associated such as Rotello and Signorile, not only play with "lesbians and gays" and a more fluid up the pain but, in conjunction with elab-

12 The Women's Review of Books / Vol. SVII, No. 8 / hlay 2000 orate accounts of gay male sexual excess, When Sullivan goes on to insist that stituency is being created-at the queers are at an unprecedent- downplay any other elements of gay cul- "gender dfferences... are deeper than the expense of the second, a queer counter- ed rate, but into a rapidly shrinking public ture; all gay social or cultural institutions differences between heterosexuals and public. Gays stay home and cook dinner space. How do you come out if there is other than bars, bathhouses, gyms and cir- homosexual^,^' I have to wonder if the pain for their boyfriends. Their community nowhere to go? It seems that for some, cuit parties seem to have vanished. The and shame of his homosexuality is some- involvement is limited to buying maga- the answer is, you get married. As Warner gay boy chdd can have nothing to look how tied to the prospect of being unfairly zines and donating money. But queers notes, "Many of the gay people who now forward to except sex, without marriage. forced into the company of the girls. meet in the bars and on the streets; their say they want marriage ... seem to want ...[a] In the course of developing his argu- community involvement is simultaneous- form of coming out"; "when gay men any of us, though uninterested ments against gay marriage, Michael ly sexual and politichl. Many of the gay and lesbians think about marriage.... [tlhey in marriage for ourselves, are Warner recognizes and rejects the many marriage advocates are explicitly anti- assimilate it to the model of coming out," susceptible to the proposition gay marriage advocates' commitment to urban; they present the city as hosule to they are "driven by expressive need." most often articulated by the national les- denial of choice. But he too embraces the very possibility of gay marriage. In The interest in visible expression bian and gay organizations, that we should pain and shame along with the gay child. contrast, Warner, like other sex-positive Warner records echoes Sullivan, who at least have a choice in the matter. But "Almost all children grow up in families gay commentators such as Michael sees the gender transgression he much of the pro-gay marriage argument is that think of themselves and all their Bronski in The Pleastlre Penciple and deplores in lesbian/gay/queer cul- founded on a denial of choice. members as heterosexual," he writes, Samuel Delany in Times Square Red, Times tures-the ,unfeminine women, the less Lesbians/gays/queers did not choose "and for some children this produces a Square Blue, identifies the city as a crucial than masculine men, the butches and the their sexual difference, the argument goes; profound and nameless estrangement, a site of lesbian/gay/queer cultures. queens-as the "products of deep and consequently, they don't deserve to be sense of inner secrets and hidden shame. "Movement politics on the national searing anxiety, of the inability to be a shut out by that difference from a social No amount of adult 'acceptance' or scale" clearly is, as Warner observes, publicly gay man or woman except as a institution that they understand as funda- progress in civil rights is likely to eliminate "now dominated by a small group of caricature of one gender or another." mental to a good life in a good society. this experience of queerness for many national organizations ...media celebri- Marriage would allow gay men and les- Denial of choice is also central to the children and adolescents." Although for ties ...[and] big money." But he offers lit- bians to assume their proper manly and vision of marriage many of these people Warner such pain leads not to the tle middle ground between this disem- womanly roles, Sullivan implies, because are arguing for. While there is some talk redemption of homosexuality in mar- bodied national media-public and an marriage would give them proper access about the changes that marriage has riage, but to an identification with all urban counter-public. to the public realm. undergone over the centuries (by Graff potential victims of sexual shaming, I still One of the key paradoxes of life in the Warner sees the conclusion to this and Eskridge), and the changes that hear distinct echoes of Sullivan lamenting USA today is that lesbians, gays and conflation of coming out and marriage as same-sex couples might make to the "those early wounds." And the shamed institution (by Eskridge and lawyer Nan queer child is still a boy. Warner's world is Hunter), its most vocal advocates want divided into "women and gay people," as gay marriage became marriage stands at he explains (in a gesture apparently the center of a system of legitimation intended as inclusive) that "Women and Feminist Theory and delegitimation, reward and punish- gay people have been especially vulnera- ment. They are eager to enroll their peers ble to the shaming effects of isolation." From Margin to Center in such a system. Gay male sexuality must Because so many of the gay marriage be restrained, whether because it shocks advocates emphasize that the function of children and straight people (Bawer), marriage will be to control gay male sex- Second Edition produces AIDS (Rotello), produces uality, Warner is able to argue plausibly unhappy gay men (Signorile), or simply that sex-or willingness to be identified By bell hooks for the greater social good (Rauch). with/by sex-is the faultline of contem- "That marriage would provide status to porary le~bian/gay/~ueerpolitics. But those who married and implicitly penal- sex is only one of the factors at issue. ISBN 0-89608-61 3-5, $16 Avoiloble Moy 2000 ize those who did not ....[i s] a key point," Sexual practices, even sexual identifica- writes Rotello in The Nation. Or, as tions, don't make a politics. That is surely In this attractive South End Press Classics edition featuring a new Jonathan Rauch insists in The New the lesson of gay conservatism. Indeed, preface, hooks maintains that mainstream feminism's reliance on Republic, "If marriage is to work it cannot the Warner's focus On sex white, middle-class, and professional spokeswomen obscures the be merely a 'lifestyle option.' It must be reinforces the very narrowing of the centrality of women of color and poor women in the movement privileged .... It is not enough ...for gay political field that he complains of. people to say we want the right to marry. The new gay and lesbian constituency for women's liberation. A sweeping examination of the core issues If we do not use it, shame on us." being constructed through the marriage of sexual politics, Feminist Theoyargues that contemporary How are gay men-or those of us les- debates is a wholly white, conventionally feminists must acknowledge the full complexity and diversity of bians not already wedded to the altar-to gendered as well as sexually circumspect women's experience. be led to marriage? Through the strategic crowd--each feminine woman already application of pain and shame. The pain joined to another equally feminine "One of the foremost black intellectuals in America today" and shame that first appear in this discus- woman, each masculine man eager to -Pubhshers WeeWy sion as evidence of the gay boy child's plight his troth to an equally manly fellow. need for marriage soon become evidence It is dominated by adult males separated as children from the loving families-and of his lack of choice in his sexual desires, ' O~SPQ~ABLEI- -4 and so his right to marriage. Finally, pain by implication the welcoming world- Disposable Domestics and shame will be the tools used to around them only by their different sexu- Immigrant Women Workers -- T J ensure his, and our, marriage. As Graff al desire. There are very few women. No- Y cheerily proposes in a letter to The Nation, one is poor. Or unashamed. Or miserable in the Global Economy "same-sex marriage may well return soci- for reasons other than their sex. And ILb ety's political fissure to one between people of color appear only as host com- monogamous and promiscuous rather munities-as in Warner's proclamation than homo and het, a division far more that "the queer ethos is currently thriving By Grace Chang historically familiar." in urban scenes... in drag cultures, among GRACE CHANT, Just as we apparently did not have a black and Latino cultures, in club scenes W0-89608617-8, $18 choice about being gay and will not be and the arts." Avoiloble June 2000 offered a choice about marrying, so we I I will not be offered a choice about gen- one of this would be anything Illegal. Unamerican. Disposable. In a nation with an unprec- der. In the brave new world made possi- other than business as usual- edented history of immigration, the prevailing image of those ble by gay marriage, as Andrew Sullivan N plus shame and pain-if the who cross our borders in search of equal opportunity-in particu- envisions it, most conservative of the would-be repre- lar women of color of childbearing- age-is- that of a drain on sentatives of this new gay and lesbian society Chang proves that the women who perform the least The future for gay men and constituency (Bawer, Sullivan and com- desirable jobs-nannies, domestic workers, janitors, farmworkers, women is one in which our gender, pany) had not so successfully taken their male or female, is neither abolished show public. Their embrace of shame and factaryworkers-are most crucial to our economy and society nor caricatured, but reclaimed. It is and pain is surely one source of that one in whtch being a man will mainstream success. But they have also "Critical both for understanding the plight of immigrant women always and everywhere be different been so successful, in part, because the workers and for designing strategies for change." from being a woman but will be gay marriage debate has allowed them -Mimi Abramovitz compatible in every respect with simultaneously to capitalize on and con- loving another man, just as being a tain a broadet; interest in "the public" Available at independent bookstores. woman d always and everywhere among lesbians, gays and queers. Distributed through Consortium. be different from being a man but There are two different versions of To order, call 800-533-8478 or e-mail [email protected]. will be compatible in every respect "the public" in Warner's analysis. The Please fax desk, exam, and review copy requests to 61 7-547-1333. Find us on the web at www.lbbs.org/sep/sep.htm. with loving another woman. first, a media-based and -defined public, (Love Undetectable, p. 153) is where the new lesbian and gay con-

The Women's Review of Books / Vol. XVII, No. 8 / May 2000 13 "IJmga_!I do!' But what this pattern actu- riage as a goal. In Queer Farnib Values, ally sounds like is "I do" therefore "I'm Lehr challenges- the assumptions about gayn-that is, definitively, publicly gay. "family" underlying much of the debate. But marriage is hardly the ideal insti- Most of the women advocating same- lesson tution through which to pursue public sex marriage, like Nan Hunter, are com- Geography recognition, public space, space in the mitted to changing marriage rather than Jane Hol~Kg public realm. Marriage is a public decla- lesbians, gays or queers. Significant15 ration of a couple's withdrawal from the those women who are debating same- i Women and the City: Gender, Power, and Space in Boston, world. Except of course that it was not sex marriage- speak- to smaller audiences j historically the couple that withdrew than their male peers-in alternative 1870-1940 by Sarah Deutsch. New York: Oxford University from the world but the wife, whose sub- papers, academic journals or university sequent symbolic if not actual confine- press books, rather than in the major Press, 2000, 402 pp., $35.00 hardcover. ment to the privacy of the home both media or from the lists of mainstream testified to and materially supported the publishers. public stability and social integration- In this context Vermont's recent the civilization-of her husband. decision to institute a form of "civil man's place" is more than a "working girl" and small entrepreneur, (Rather as all those loving lesbian cou- union" for same-sex couples looks like a dot on a map. In the literature and finally to the factory worker, the ples nesting just off-stage demonstrate plausible compromise-a public state- of gender, it is a symbol, a con- union organizer and the suffragst. The the potential for civilization of otherwise w ment, plus legal protections, but without struct, an emblem. If the everyday mean- histories of supporting or allying organi- errant gay men.) history. And yet, as ing of place or space lies in the world of zations and institutions like the Women's Whose sexuality has historically been editorialized on March 18, the day after architecture and planning, the literature of Educational and Industrial Union and controlled by marriage? Can we forget the crucial vote was taken, gender has little to do with geography. Denison House are well integrated if how recent, even in the United States, "Vermonters ...are leading the way Place or places are personal metaphors, a sometimes too detailed. were the bitter struggles for a married toward a society that values stable gay "moral geography" or sign of character Deutsch's special gift lies in her por- woman's right to her own body, to her relationships." Or, as the message was rather than an earthly location. traits. Women and the Gig brings to life the children, to own property, to make legal conveyed more succinctly just a day Some feminists have seen place as a everyday words of her characters, both decisions, and to a divorce? These are later, "backers proclaimed it a significant symbol of liberation and self-determina- the unsung and the chronicled, with zest. still rights being battled over in much of step toward equal rights for all commit- tion (Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's She is skilled at penetrating class differ- the world. ted couples." Homosexuals are not OI~);others, as a locus of suffocation ences, exchanges and attitudes. The afflu- As the gay marriage debate demon- being offered full citizenship here. and entombment (Charlotte Perkins ent matron persuades herself that she is strates, even when wedding is merely Rather, "gay" is being buried beneath Gilman's The Yellolv Walbaper). Either providing "moral guardianship" for her under discussion, women end up sec- the weight- of "stable" and "relation- way, the metaphorical view has dominat- women servants by keeping them off the ond-class citizens, as subjects and as par- ship." And if you-gas lesbian, queer, ed, while women's role in inventing and streets in the safety of her house; these ticipants. Urvashi Vaid in 17irttlal or straight-don't happen to want a being invented by the physical world is servants do the "all-too-dust-catching, Equulig, Barbara Smith in the essays col- coupled life, don't happen to have found more ignored than documented. high-maintenance maintaining" while (as lected in The Truth That Nez~erHurts, and the coupled life you want, or don't hap- In Women und the Citj~,historian Sarah statistics show) they are in greater danger most recently Michael Bronski, have all pen to require, if coupled, the stability a Deutsch continues this tradition. from the man of the house than the in the past decade argued, like Warner, state can confer? What happened to Women's role is "encoded in space" and strangers in the "dangerous streets." No against the mainstreaming of lesbian and equal rights for all? defined symbolically, not as four walls change here. gay politics. Bronski shares Warner's Being coupled does not make me and a front door or actual itinerary focus on sex and consequently discusses more socially valuable than my single Despite this overplayed metaphor, eutsch combines colorful indi- gay marriage. But neither Vaid nor Smith friends and relations, nor more deserv- Deutsch has done a nimble job of encap- vidual portraits with scenes focus on sex or marriage at all. ing of financial breaks, health insurance, sulating women's status and role from D where working women, union hfost of the who do write legal protections. I still don't want to get after the Civil War to the Second World activists and suffragists interact and agi- about same-sex marriage, from Paula married. And I don't want my capacity to VC'ar in Boston. Her book is lively and tate. In one dramatic episode, striking Ettelbrick at the end of the eighties to care for those close to me further under- informative, a well-researched contribu- factory workers take to the streets, Claudia Card in the mid-nineties to mined because, when I could, I chose tion to the social, political and gender joined in short order by 5000 prostitutes I'alerie Lehr most recently, reject mar- not to register with the state. -5 history of the city and its inhabitants. infuriated by the Boston police force's Deutsch threads her way through the series of brothel raids, and reinforced in seventy-year social tapestry of women's turn by a crew of South End madams. lives in the city. She knits together dis- Organizing a "Landladies Union" to parate lives, from the boardinghouse promote licensing brothels and protest keeper or "taileress" struggling to sur- the police raids, these influential vive in socialist Robert Woods' nine- madams demonstrate in behalf of the teenth-century "City Wilderness," to thousands of girls brought "into the the elite of Beacon Hill and Back Bay streets of Boston without means of sup- thriving atop the Puritan "City Upon a port, and no provision made for their THEJULY 2000 ISSUE FEATURES ESSAYS, REVIEWS Hill." Her colorful and careful narrative support or maintenance by said offi- offers the changing panorama of cials," as they declared, "thereby spread- AND INTERVIEWS BY WOMEN JOURNALISTS, women and the city in an intricate ing diseases and destitution all over the ACTIVISTS AND POLITICIANS ON WHAT THE weave of political and social events, city by driving this class into lodging power shifts and personal exchanges houses, hotels and flats." FUTURE HOLDS IN THIS ELECTION YEAR. laced with anecdotes, mini-biographies Deutsch has written a bottom-up and analyses. book, devoted to daily, working-class life. An interview with Nation columnist Katha Pollitt Deutsch deftly describes the social Yet, for all the noblesse oblige attitude she * byplay in class and gender interactions. finds in the "middle-class and elite," she * Media analyst Elayne Rapping on why feminism is Moving from women's cloistered roles recopzes genuine feeling in these do- to their freer existence, she carries the gooders. For all the class confhcts of the disappearing from the mass media reader into the landscape of their lives. age she explores, Deutsch makes us The descriptions of the tenements appreciate the good intentions of pros- * Activist Evelyn Murphy on the future of reproductive where lodgers laid their mattresses on perous women philanthropists along rights boxes to sleep, foot to head, and with the social ironies generated when, "breathing was in short supply," are say, residents of elegant Joy Street try to * Columnist Ellen Willis on politics in the age of vivid. The corroded surroundings and be helpmates to their hardworking "sis- consumerism feud spaces that caused 21,280 deaths ters" in a city that is both reformist and BI from preventable dtseases between 1878 elitist. Though her sympathy inevitably Historian Blanche Wiesen Cook on the legacy of and 1887 become almost tactile; the lies with the hard-pressed newcomers @ * @ oppressive conditions of the sweat- and working-class women moving from Eleanor Roosevelt shops are Dickensian in their miseries. private into more public life (or "space," One feels, sees, senses the deprivations, as she would put it), Deutsch shapes * Jennifer Pozner of Fairness and Accuracy in Media asks weaknesses, strengths and struggles of a good views of both worlds. "Who speaks for women in the media?" vast collection of women. The range of Deutsch's tales is wide, Deutsch begins with "The 'Over- spanning the personal and the political- * Marie Wilson of the White House Project on what R! worked Wife,"' the homebound woman from the chaotic kosher meat market riot makes women run for office enmeshed in the domestic economies of 1902 to the tale of Emma Goldman's and confines of a house that often off-and-on lover firting with a hat trim- served as both home and income-pro- mer from Roxbury. At a deeper level, she & and much more... ducing lodging-house. She proceeds to grasps the predcament of the black the nineteenth-century woman's place in community during this seventy-year peri- the external world of "Work or Worse," od, integrating racial differences and rela- then to the urban conditions of the tions into the larger fabric of the tale.

14 The Women's Review of Books / Vol. XVII, No 8 / May 2000