THE PROGRESSIVE WOMAN'S QUARTERLY

WINTER 1995 • $3.95 • CANADA $4.5O

[ GIRLS GIRLS, I

nfessions THE BODY POLITIC HILLARY CLINTON & child THE FEMINIST MYSTIQUE olester

7Ut<70 78532 -yC-"10"""*"*-*^, Politics + Scholarship =

Winner of the Illinois-National Women's Studies 1994 Winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award From Outrage to Action Association Book Award Local people The Politics of Grass-Roots Dissent Politics and scholarship The Struggle for Civil Rights Laura Ft. Woliver Feminist Academic Journals in Mississippi "A pioneering investigation of local, ad hoc interest and the Production of Knowledge John Dittmer groups that are launched by a blatant injustice— Patrice McDermott "A gripping portrait of largely forgotten civil rights Explores the impressive defensive capabilities against An in-depth look at contemporary feminist debates workers who forged racial change in the face of change of established social groups and portrays the 1 and their forums. violence and murder.... It also redefines the roles complex consequences of 'sputtering interest for attitudes (such as ), for action, Feminist activists have tried to bridge the gap between of Martin Luther King, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson as national leaders who were forced to act and for future policy." - Murray Edelman, author of the political interests of the grassroots feminist The Symbolic Uses of Politics movement and the institutional demands of schol- by the unswerving determination of local people." arly inquiry by creating feminist academic journals. - William Ferris, New York Times Book Review Illus. $36.95; Paper, $16.95 Patrice McDermott provides an in-depth study of the A volume in the series Blades in the New World, edited by August operations of three major American university-based Meier and John H. Bracey journals and includes a discussion of a number of Illus. $29.95 other journals, both alternative and mainstream. $36.95; Paper, $13.95 Politics for People Finding a Responsible Public Voice David Mathews "Perhaps, a reader can conclude, by realizing how much political power we can and do wield in our own backyards, we may lose some of our despon- Outstanding Boat; Award o/ the Gustovus Myers Center dency and a lot of our dependency upon our elec- f

available at your local bookstore or call toll-free BOO/545-4703 • UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS -1325 South Oak. street • Champaign, 1L 61820 page 21

COLUMNS 1 CONFESSIONS OF A HOFFMAN FRONT LINES Sii ( :IAL SECTION: 2 CHILD MOLESTER THE BODY POLITIC 3 13 Heroism: By Anonymous BREAST Theory and Practice WIN SOME/LOSE INTENTIONS SOME BUSTING MISTER TALKING FEMINIST 6 34 r SHORT EYES Teaching doctors D 17 to handle with care Confronting FEEDBACK 42 Pedophiles posing By Jeannette Biirz the Antis as "sexual liberals" in Pensacola By NATURAL By Mary Lou Greenberg BOOK REVIEWS CHILDBIRTH 51 THE BIG CHILL 36 RAPPING 21 From option 9 CUTTING SOME The freeze on to orthodoxy Hillary Clinton SLACK sex discrimination awards By Nicole Bokat & the 60 By Marlcnc C. Piturro Feminist Mystique TAKE A SEAT, BOYS! OTI DIALOGUE GIRLZ CHESLER A modest proposal CAN SEPARATE for helping men IN THE HOOD BE EQUAL 11 Is the right to kill adjust to 24 IN WOMEN'S By Stephanie Brail HEALTH? in self-defense modern plumbing 38 reserved for men? By Nanette Gartrell THE UGLY DUCHESS Dr. Eileen M. Hoffman 28 nukes the case tor a She was contrary to type women's health specialty By Edith Pearlman ON THE COVER ONE BY ONE UNFURLING Photo-illustration 31 A MAESTRAPEACE Living alone and loving it 45 by Kathleen Fay By Bryna Taubman A monumental mural in San Francisco By Diana Scott

contentO N THE ISSUES • WINTER 1995 •VOLUME IV NUMBERs ONE FRONT LIMES JSSUES VOL. IV • NO. 1 WINTER 1995

Publisher/ Editor in Chief Editor RONIUI SANDROFF ROninil SANDROFF Executive Editors JULIA KAGAN JOHN STOLTEMBERC Fear, Fortitude Editor at Large Special Projects Advisors ANNE MOLLECEN SMITH and the FBI JOY SILVER Book Review Editor NINA MEHTA

Assistant Editors KAREN AISENBERC Ik s the daughter of two labor organizers, SUZANNE LEVINE Contributing Editors / ^L my early childhood education included how to spot FBI agents JILL BENDERLY ^~^k ("no one else in this neighborhood keeps their shoes shined") and CHARLOTTE BUNCH £ ^k how to answer their questions ("look dumb and slam the VINIE BURROWS IRENE DAVALL -^^- -J^- door"). So it was no problem for me to identify the stiff-jawed man in a brown suit who sat outside publisher Merle Hoffman's office. What FLO KENNEDY FRED PELKA was unnerving was to realize that I was glad to see him; this time the FBI had ELAYNE RAPPINC come to guard, rather than harass us. In fact, the bureau showed up only HELEN M. STUMMER because Merle had spent days calling the government and talking tough to the CAROL WHEELER media to demand protection for her clinic after the murder of Dr. John Bayard Art Director JOY TOLTZIS MAKON Britton in Pensacola, Florida (see "Heroism:Theory and Practice"). Advertising and Sales Director Our daylong editorial meeting had been hastily moved from Manhattan to CAROLYN HANDEL Queens, so that Merle could remain visible at the helm of Choices Women's Circulation/Business Consultant Medical Center amid frequent calls from 911 that yet another bomb or death ANNE S. KEATINC threat had been received. For the editors, it meant personal exposure to the tension and danger that the doctors, staff, and patients face day by day at that ON THE ISSUES The Progressive Woman's clinic and those around the country. Quarterly: a feminist, humanist magazine of critical Yes, it was scary. I couldn't just slam the door in the face of this experience. It thinking, dedicated to fostering collective responsibility was a baptism of fire for our new art director, Joy Toltzis Makon, and our new for positive social change. ON THE ISSUES The Progressive Woman's Quarterly book-review editor, Nina Mehta. And yes, it was disruptive. Again and again, (ISSN 0895-6014) is published quarterly as an Merle was forced to leave the editorial discussions she loves in order to deal informational and educational service of CHOICES Women's Medical Center, Inc.,97-77 Queens with security issues and media interviews. ("Are you afraid?" one interviewer Boulevard, Flushing, NY 11374-3317. asked. "I'm angry!" was her poised and inspiring reply.) Unsolicited Manuscripts: AU material will be read But I must admit, the meeting was also exhilarating and had a galvanizing by the editors. For return, enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope with proper postage. Articles should effect on this issue, pushing us to dig for some new insights into women's not be more than 2,0110 words. All editing decisions are uneasy relationship with law and law enforcement in this country. at the discretion of the editors. Feminist cartoons are also acceptable under the same provisions. ON THE , whose role has now been expanded to co-executive editor, ISSUES does not accept fiction or poetry. went many extra miles to bring in "Busting Mister Short Eyes," the wrenching Advertising accepted at the discretion of the and finally triumphant story of activist Nikki Craft's crusade to put a child publisher. Acceptance does not imply endorsements. Publisher's Note: The opinions expressed by rapist behind bars. Phyllis Chesler ("The Dead Man Is Not on Trial") pored contributors and by those we interview are not over trial transcripts to detail the injustice and lack of mercy shown to women necessarily those of the editors. ON THE ISSUES The who kill in self-defense. Magazine pro and veteran feminist Julia Kagan only Progressive Woman's Quarterly is a forum where women may have their voices heard without censure heard about that meeting—but it didn't stop her from joining the reinforce- or censorship. ments and accepting the post of co-executive editor. Subscription Information: 1 year $14.95; 2 years It's exciting for women to discard socially-conditioned pretenses of self- $24.95; 3 years $34.95. Institutional rate: Add $10 first year, $5 each additional year. Add $4 per year for doubt and timidity and find we can focus and refocus on the work at hand in Canadian orders; $7 per year foreign (surface mail) or the face of cowardly anonymous threateners who would love to permanently $20 per year foreign (air mail). Send to ON THE ISSUES The Progressive Woman's Quarterly, P.O. Box 3000, dismantle feminist efforts. The FBI may show a friendlier face at the moment, Dept. OTI, Denvillc, NJ 07834. Second-Class Postage but history has shown us that Big Brother will not save us. Paid at Flushing, NY and additional mailing office. At ON THE ISSUES we have only ourselves and our readers to rely on. Fortu- Postmaster: Send address changes to ON THE ISSUES The Progressive Woman's Quarterly, nately, that's plenty! • P.O. Box 3000, Dept. OTI, DenviUe, NJ 07834.

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 behind me as I drew my bow to strike. Unlimit- MERLE HOFFMAN ed by gender, I was Richard III and Henry V, ON THE ISSUES defending their crowns in battle, and even a samurai warrior meditating and philosophizing his way to victory. The combination of focused energy, height- ened drama and danger, and an extraordinary sense of mission excited me. It wasn't conquest I was after; I was moved by an empathic connec- Heroism: tion with the vulnerable and oppressed. I chal- lenged a great evil power. I was forced to protect and defend my land, my people, or my princi- ples. Of course, however great the odds against Theory me, I always triumphed. And like Wonder Woman with her magic weapons, I always remained physically untouched and forever and Practice invincible. Oddly enough, my dreams have not died, nor have I outgrown my need for them. Quite the contrary. They have formed a psychological y nature, I am a romantic and background that has subtly merged with my political and personal landscape. have had warrior fantasies since As president of Choices, one of the largest and oldest feminist medical centers in the country my early adolescence. Surrounding that performs abortions, my warrior fantasies have taken on a definitely realistic tone. There are posi- myself with images of heroic tions and staff to defend, and women to protect against invasions from both the anti-abortionists battles, I enjoyed the luxury of and their own unwanted pregnancies. And lately, the risks have become so real that my life some- believing that reality came in black and whiter— times feels like one of those Shakespearean plays good or evil. I was Elizabeth I on her white performed in modern dress, with shotguns horse at Tilbury, rousing her troops to fight the instead of swords and T-shirts instead of tunics. encroaching Spanish Armada with the words, "I On July 29, 1994, in Pensacola, Florida, the know I have the body of a weak and feeble "Reverend" Paul Hill, described by The Washing- woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a ton Post as an anti-abortion "crusader," pumped king, and of a king of England, too." I stormed three shotgun blasts into the head of Dr. John the ramparts as Joan of Arc, played by Ingrid Bayard Britton, killing both him and his clinic Bergman on her white horse, sword high, shout- escort James Barrett and wounding Barrett's wife ing, "Now is the time. This is the hour." I rode June. I had witnessed Paul Hill's "crusading" in with Amazon women, hair flowing wildly Pensacola during the memorial service for Dr. David Gunn, who was killed by Michael Griffin in March 1993. Hill was the lone picketer—con- taminating the service with a sign reading "Exe- cute Murderer Abortionists." The threats following Dr. Gunn's murder had pushed me into buying my first shotgun, a 20- gauge, pump-action Mossberg—an action, reported in the under the column head "Make Her Day." Explaining that the gun was bought for protection in my coun- try house, I said, "If you're looking for violence, it's the anti-choice people who harass and hunt people down."The image of me challenging the antis to "draw" was more prophetic than comi- cal, and in the days to come I would think deeply about the nature of the cause I would die, kill, or be killed for. "Now is the time. Within two days after Dr. Britton's death, This is the hour." Choices received three bomb threats and a phone Ingrid Bergman in call saying, "I have a gun and will be hunting your doctors next week." Although Choices had Joan of Arc, 1948

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 received many bomb threats over its 23 Although Choices has a group of loyal serious strategic mistake to view the years of operation, and I receive death clinic escorts who are on duty every murders of the two doctors as acts of threats on a continual basis (particularly Saturday morning to counteract the individual madness. The evidence can around Easter, Christmas, and Mother's amis' harassment of patients, they are a be extracted from both the statements Day), this time it felt different. The meager substitute for 12-gauge shot- of anti-abortionists about what to count now totaled two dead doctors guns. I had no armed throng of sup- expect in the way of more killings and and one, Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, porters defending my gates in the days the intellectual climate that has been, I Kansas, wounded. (Tiller now drives to after Dr. Britton's death. What I did do believe, deliberately created to under- work in an armored car and bulletproof is reinforce, with armed guards, inter- mine support for freedom of choice— vest.) Frantically, my mother kept call- nal-security procedures honed after even among its strongest proponents. ing from Florida asking me why I years of dealing with bomb threats and Consider the words of Don Tresh- insisted on going into the clinic. I potential invasions from Operation man, director of Rescue America, who explained to her I was not living a nor- Rescue.Then I found out about Henry was quoted in on mal life and that the situation demand- Felisone and Tony Piso. July 30 saying that Dr. Britton's killing ed courage and engagement, not These two residents "may be the start of a new civil war." retreat. had signed Paul Hill's infamous peti- He continued, "Up to now, the killings I knew that 1 was a lighting rod and tion describing the "use of lethal force have been on one side, with 30 million a high profile target. This time, I in the killing of Dr. David Gunn as jus- dead babies and hundreds of dead and thought, they may really kill me or my tifiable, provided it was carried out for maimed mothers. On the other side, staff. 1 felt a combination of anxiety the purpose of defending the lives of there are two dead doctors. Maybe the and intense energy; I was in battle and unborn children." And they lived with- balance is going to start to shift." I was in character. in a 10-block radius of Choices. The first time I heard the Civil War Choices has a 115-person staff, The danger was clear and present. analogy used to describe the abortion including seven doctors, and almost Federal protection had been ordered struggle was in 1983 when I debated 1,000 patients a week. Understandably, for other clinics under siege around the Nellie Gray, an anti-abortion leader our staff was upset and anxious. The country, and my staff needed visible who helped coordinate the yearly Jan- doctors discussed wearing bulletproof signs of support. I called the New York uary 22 Right-to-Life march on Wash- vests, but stopped when they recalled State Attorney General, demanding ington. During a break in our taping, that Dr. Bntton was wearing one when protection. Two days later, Washington she told me, "You know, this is just like he was blasted in the head. "Perhaps I acted and two federal marshals were the Lincoln-Douglas debates on slav- should come to work in a full suit of posted in front of Choices on a 24- ery," casting herself as Abraham Lin- armor," one doctor joked nervously. We hour basis. "These people are terrorists coln. Of course, she did not seem to both decided that Sir Lancelot walking and should be picked up for just mak- consider bearing a child against one's along Queens Boulevard would attract ing threats," I told the New York Post on will as a special form of slavery. Given too much attention. August 2. that there has been an "open season" The ironic part was that Dr. Britton's The FBI agents who were investigat- on providers for years, positioning the murder took place only two months ing the threats to Choices were new to abortion struggle as a civil war—or any after the Federal Access to Clinic the intricacies of the FACE bill and type of war—is basically optimistic. Entrances (FACE) bill, making it a fed- were unsure about jurisdictional issues. The guns are all on one side, and eral crime to block access to an abor- I found myself Glenda Jackson, women, regardless of which tion clinic or to use force or threats in the strange as Elizabeth I, in Mary, side they may fall on, are most against a clinic's patients, had been position of having Queen of Scots, 1972 often the casualties. signed into law by President Clinton. to coordinate rep- For years, anti-abortion violence and resentatives of the harassment against clinic patients and civil rights and staff were not taken seriously by the criminal divisions law enforcement community. of the FBI with he real battle Since 1977, almost 200 clinics have my local police is for America's been bombed—and that doesn't include precinct to begin 347 unlawful clinic entries, 178 death an investigation of hearts and threats, 568 acts of vandalism, and 35 Felisone and Piso burglaries. Protecting clinics and their on criminal con- minds, and it has spiracy charges. staffs and patients had obviously not been underway been a high priority. We had turned into It wasn't until sitting ducks. Women had been putting after Britton's for some time. their lives on the line for years—and murder, the second doctor to die in 19 Years of anti-choice rhetoric by both often losing them—in the struggle for months, that government officials seri- political and religious leaders position- abortion rights. Yet it was only after Dr. ously began to consider and investigate Gunn (a man) had been killed in the ing abortionists as murderers and abor- the possibility of an organized national tion clinics as "abortoriums" has creat- battle that the law-enforcement estab- anti-abortion conspiracy to kill ed an environment of "moral" lishment became involved. providers. Although seemingly realistic entitlement. True believers conclude and psychologically comforting, it is a But where were my troops? that killing doctors is working for

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 TALKING FEMINIST Confronting the Antis

in Pensacola By Mary Lou Qreenberg Anti-abortion leader and former Burt's kescue America organization, and Burt set Ku Klux Klan member John Burt up a defense fund for him. and two of his associates called a The day of Burt's press conference we appeared press conference on the steps of the at the courthouse first, holding a large banner that Pensacola courthouse two days read "No Fear! No Silence! Defend Abortion after the July 29 murders of Dr. Providers by Any Means Necessary!" No sooner John Bayard Britton and [ames had Burt begun to read a statement than chants of Barrett.The press conference didn't "John Burt and the KKK/Use the same tactics to go down as planned. get their way!" drowned him out. Members of Refuse & Resist! I was standing near a Pensacola woman who had from Atlanta, Minneapolis, New come to see what Burt was up to. She had had an Orleans, and New York City and abortion herself and was furious at what he had the San Francisco area's Bay Area done through the years and how he was trying to < Coalition tor Our Reproductive present himself now. "I'd like to shut him up," she Courageously Rights (BACORR) flew to Pen- told me. "Do it," I encouraged her, and she began continuing to speak sacola the day after the murders. shouting, "murderer, murderer!" out: June Barrett Both organizations have been on Burt and his cronies, visibly shaken at all this the front lines of clinic defense for many years and opposition, began to leave, but the activist crew fol- are founding members of the new national Fight- lowed him down the street, chanting "murderer" back Network of militant abortion-rights activists. right in his face and shaking their fists at him. The Burt has a long history of vicious attacks against action was prominently covered in the local media, Pensacola's clinics and ongoing harassment of clinic with one station reporting that Burt had been "run staff and women seeking abortions. He purchased a out of town." small strip of land around The Ladies Center on Later, I learned that this was the first time anyone which he erected scaffolding. He and his crew had directly confronted Burt. Pensacola is not the stand on the scaffolding and yell over the clinic's only city where extreme reactionary violence has fence at the arriving staff and clients. He also was been directed at abortion providers. But a combi- leading a demonstration outside the Pensacola nation of circumstances, including a concentration Medical Services Clinic when Dr. David Gunn was of backward bible-belt fundamentalists and a histo- shot outside the back entrance on March 10, 1993. ry of KKK activity, has made it a particularly sharp Gunn's killer. Michael Griffin, was a member of battleground. The city's abor- (continued on page >0)

Christ and their own salvation. The 24, 1994) that it would not trouble his that O'Connor had deflected a bullet fetuses are "innocent" and must be conscience if he learned that someone to himself rather than disarming his protected at all costs against the barbar- had actually killed an abortion doctor: anti-choice rhetoric was in character. ian hordes who so casually annihilate "You're comparing the lives of morally He was not condemning violence per them. In this situation, these anti-abor- guilty persons against the lives of mani- se, merely asking for a change of tion "crusaders" are slashing and burn- festly innocent persons." venue! ing their way to God's City on the A few days after the murder of Dr. Meanwhile, what we get from the Hill, killing the infidels in their path. Britton, Cardinal O'Connor of New media is the kind of sports mentality God's word is the theory. Killing doc- York, who had recently appeared on that views everything in neatly compet- tors, bombing clinics, and harassing the front page of the New York Post itive categories: Right to Life 2, Pro- women is the practice. threatening to go to jail in an act of Choice 0. Cable channel New York 1, Holding the "moral" white banner civil disobedience if abortion was for example, wanted me to "debate" in defense of "innocent human life" as included in a national health-care two right-to-lifers on the "issue" of a positive value in comparison with the package, issued a passionate statement whether or not murdering doctors was "pro-death" forces who allow women to The New York Times on August 6. "If "justifiable homicide." I declined, telling the right to control their own bodies anyone has an urge to kill an abortion- them that this was like asking the SS has created an environment in which ist, let him kill me instead. That's about guards at Auschwitz to debate the people like the Rev. David C. Trosch as clearly as I can renounce such mad- inmates on the "issue" of the efficacy of say to The New York Times (on August ness," the cardinal proclaimed. The fact (continued on page 49)

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 Listening to Trees

BY ARLENE RAVEN Nancy Azara's wall assemblages and freestanding sculptures of the past 25 years are made mostly of the trunks and limbs of trees.

The artist, following Drudish forebears occupied by the hallowed nature of the arboreal, finds her spirit with the magicians, sorcerers, and soothsayers of old, in the oldest of perennial passions— for radix, sapling, pod, and hull.

Azara's catholic childhood conjured meditations on the Saints and their Father which, contrarily, brought her to the Goddess and her Progeny.

In function and placement, the walls of the freestanding Spirit House shelter a carved floor of nascent spirals you can walk around. Inside, three pearlescent panels are engraved with signs of the honeycomb. These vivid aural surroundings call up the golden spiral beneath the shell of the shrouded diety.

NANCV AZARA EXHIBITIONS: November 17-January 7, E.M. Donahue Gallery, New York City; November 15-December 3, A.I.R Gallery, New York City; January 22-March 19, Tweed Museum of Art in Duluth, Minnesota.

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 CRAFTY SOLUTIONS She used to be on welfare. foreign distributors—becoming one can start producing such Now, after just two weeks train- Camden's largest employer. items as baskets, dolls or quilt- ing, she earns $12,000 a year In 1987, the group formed a ed goods. Quickly learned skills by painting wooden buttons non-profit, parallel organization allow members to generate that will be sold to companies to train low- and middle-income income almost immediately, such as Ralph Lauren and Esprit. area residents to work within the and give Watermark the work She belongs to The Watermark craft industry. "Some of these force to produce the quantities Association of Artisans, a mem- women didn't graduate from needed by major customers. ber-owned crafts collective in high school, and all of a sudden All work is done at home, so Camden, North Carolina, which they're selling things to the women can adjust their work has pumped 9 million dollars Smithsonian catalog, making schedules to family obligations. into the local rural economy money and teaching others to The collective also offers social over the past 12 years. do the same thing," McKecuen counseling services to women Formed in 1978 as a loosely- explains. The two-week training in need, and operates a loan knit group of artisans, Water- program has served over 14,000 fund. These services haven't mark has evolved into a dynam- Americans in the past six years, limited Watermark's growth it here ic wholesaling force composed and its comprehensive intern- (sales have increased 1370% of 740 members. Under the ship program has taught visitors since 1980), but they do inhibit from Canada, Ireland, Hungary, leadership of Carolyn McKe- profit. "We're not here so the ON THE ISSUES published cuen, manager since 1981, the Somalia, Tanzania, Ecuador, and members can make a huge this powerful image by collective has aggressively mar- Peru the business and manage- profit at the end of the year," artist and breast-cancer keted their crafts through an ment skills needed to start coop- asserts McKecuen, "but so that survivor Matuschka on the array of innovative channels- erative home-based industries in they can make enough during cover of our Winter 1992 retail stores, design houses, cat- their regions. the year to pay the bills." issue. Reader response was alogs, trade shows, cable TV, With a few days of training, —SUZANNE LEVINE so positive that we used that cover in subscription sales efforts. Since imitation is the sincerest Cheers for a California Court form of flattery, we were In the Irvine California Unified School District, you used to need a 2.5 grade-point average to stay on pleased when The New the cheerleading squad, but only a 2.0 to stay on the football team. When Melissa Fontes was thrown York Times Magazine later off the cheer squad for letting her grades slip, she sued. A district court first ruled against her on the ran the same image. But it grounds that cheerleading was "extracurricular" as opposed to "athletic." But this past July, an appel- was disturbing to read late court threw the school a hardball. "The distinction between cheerleading and interscholastic ath- that the editors of Working letics flunks the rational basis test," Justice David Sills noted in his decision. "Aficionados would no Woman magazine, who doubt assert that their own sport entails occult mysteries worthy of a Ph.D. thesis...nevertheless... had planned to run the cheerleading is not so much less intellectually challenging than football or basketball that the latter same cover this fall, were two can be said to be 'academic' while cheerleading is not." —HARRIET BAROVICK forced to pull it at the last minute because publishing execs were afraid it would Paglia be a "downer." Yes, of roll call criticism with sound- breast cancer is a downer. on Paglia bites on Faludi, Gilbert, Cubar, But celebrating the body beautiful after a In the spot usually reserved for a Millett, Morgan, Sontag, mastectomy is not! bibliography, Camille Paglia's Steinem, Wolf, and others. new collection of essays, Vamps Make no mistake: Paglia's & Tramps, offers up a 50-page combative, scratch-and-sniff the traditional paean to mani- annotated "Media Chronicle." romp through her media fest scholarship with one that Here, as in her first collection, appearances is a bibliography. frankly acknowledges manifest Sex, Art, and American Culture Traditionally (and usefully), bib- destiny: publicity. It's her slant (1992), Paglia records her liographies document an on academe's "publish or per- media battles with "establish- author's breadth of book-learn- ish" credo. Paglia may be an ment feminists," her brazen ing, present source material to opportunistic naysayer, a per- invective against campus speech eager readers, and line up the formance intellectual, and a codes and academic careerism, intellectual forbears who may podium star, but her Nexus-list- and her hit parade of controver- pro and con. She points out or may not have been knocked ing-cum-bibliography makes sial lectures. She repeats her cameo roles she's had in news down along the way. They pro- amply clear she knows how to throwaway one-liners and sassy stories about other celebrities. vide context and a terse history register on the sound sytem we observations. She excerpts gen- And—no small feat—she estab- of the ideas at play. So it's no call public debate, -NINA MEHTA erously from articles about her, lishes her supremacy in the art surprise that Paglia has replaced

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 HOW TO TELL IF YOUR NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR IS THE NEXT

Plenty of us have asked the time-honored question: how exactly does one become a sociopath? If you'd asked us a few years ago we would have said confidently "many roads can lead to sociopathology." Now we're not so sure. At least three of the country's most well-known menaces have followed disturbingly similar paths, -CAROL VINZANT BaVid KrOTCffh Fsatfdall Terrt/ Charles Manson

1. Did the potential self described evangelist; high school self described evangelist; high school self described evangelist; high school sociopath suffer inauspi- drop-out; early life of crime: drop-out; early life of ^^^^^ drop-out; early life of crime: cious beginnings? shot fake Messiah crime: burglaries /& ^k burglaries

2. Alternative career tailed rock musician turned preacher; wrote: 1 » 1 failed rock musician turned preacher; wrote: failed rock musician \ ambitions? "Mad Man in Waco;" serenaded wives turned preacher 1 "Garbage Dump;" serenaded wives \ -v

3. Fashion sense? out-of-date clothes; unruly hair, out-of-date clothes; ^H yW out-of-date clothes: unruly hair; wire glasses /^^^^X unruly hair; wire glasses ^~~Z-^ wire glasses .^^^

4. Does he have a claimed to be Messiah, /wp^ J L ' i came back from roadtnp, locked self in filed court motion as ^k Uk Messiah complex? backed down; / *" W ] room, said he was Messiah—days later "Charles Manson fl said only messenger I ~_- ^f 1 changed mind; said only messenger a.k.a. Jesus Christ" K

'/ 5. Is he a real bastard? born out of wedlock ^ ^w conceived out of wedlock; born out of wedlock: ^KM^^ ' to single mom ^^^^^ parents later married father unknown ^-^— ' -esh at age 14 Maneon

6. Hobbies? followers have fondness of followers have fondness of followers have fondness of weaponry, arson weaponry, arson weaponry, arson

7. Defining moment? found God in Texas on failed roadtnp found God in Texas; found God in California: to California branch office in California had follower nicknamed Tex DISPATCH FROM CAIRO |udging by American press cov- were never informed that the ized during the procedure. family and fiscal policies, the erage, the main focus of Sep- implants were experimental, Other women spoke out against francophone-majority province tember's U.N. Population and what the possible side effects the current testing of anti-fertili- is now attempting to maintain Development Conference in might be, and that they would ty vaccines that induce tempo- its cultural identity and eco- Cairo was abortion. But those be held hostage to the clinical rary (and sometimes perma- nomic strength. Not surprising- like myself who attended trials. Since development nent) infertility by a single ly, the availability of family learned that another "choice" money is often linked to popu- injection or pill. Concern was planning services and informa- issue is more pressing to lation control programs, gov- voiced about the medical effects tion about birth control in Que- women in developing coun- ernments are reluctant to stren- of an anti-fertility vaccine, espe- bec are on the decrease. tries. At one particularly impas- uously regulate big business cially with HIV and women, These women showed that sioned session at the 10-day pharmaceutical companies. since this method of contracep- the technologies seen as gate- Non-Governmental Organiza- A woman from Zimbabwe, tion alters the normal function- ways to reproductive freedom tions (NCO) Forum, women the African country often cited ing of the immune system. by well-heeled Western feminists from around the world present- as having the most successful Other forms of government are being used to restrict ed evidence of coercive and family-planning program, told control are more subtle but women's reproductive decision- deceptive governmental, med- about how she was sterilized equally harmful in encouraging making power in non-Western ical, and research practices in because of a physical disability women to further the state's nations. -VALERIE KOSCELNIK family planning. at the age of 24—without her population interests. A delegate One group presented video consent and without being from Quebec, Canada, ex- Koscelnik is coordinator of the CHOICE Hotline, a Philadelphia- testimonies by women in India informed. For 10 years, she con- plained how the Quebequois tinued to take oral contracep- based telephone service that pro- who were forced to continue provincial government offers vides information and counseling tives, thinking she was fertile. A using a trial version of Norplant financial incentives to women about reproductive health and AIDS. even though it caused them to woman from Bangalore, India who have children: CAN $500 She was able to participate in the suffer years of continuous bleed- noted that many women were for the first child, $1,000 for U.N. conference through a grant from the Diana Foundation, a non- ing, miscarriages, and other reluctant to have abortions the second, and a whopping because they feared being steril- profit group supported by the pub- health problems. The women $8,000 for the third. Linking lisher of ON THE ISSUES.

8 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 COLUMNIST one could be, and still end up on a common stage at a common moment in history. Where McCor- vey is poor and uneducated—she now works as a domestic—Clinton is a product of white suburbia and the finest colleges and universities in the land. Where McCorvey made all the wrong moves in her personal life, finding herself, often as not, caught in chaotic, even dangerous messes, Clinton's life path has been almost magically on target; if ELAYNE RAPPING one's goal has been (and Clinton's surely was) to reach the limits of worldly success and status possi- ble for a woman in a "post-feminist" age. She mar- ried well and stayed that way through thick and The Hillary thin, even taking her husband's name to ensure his political success. She used her Yale law degree to make oodles of money and powerful friends and Thing contacts in the most prestigious corporate law firm in Arkansas, the better to supplement her husband's meager (by middle-class standards, if not those of a domestic worker) government salary. She learned n a review of the autobiography of to dress, coif, and comport herself to fit the chang- ing fashions of the day, and her rising income and Norma McCorvey—the Jane Roe station in life (again, increasingly beyond the dreams or means of domestic workers). She even of Roe v. Wade—in a recent issue of gave up, early on, her feisty "I'm not some little woman standing by her man" persona in favor of Tiie New York Times Book Review, cookie recipes, public tears at Fourth of July fire- works displays, and public baby cuddlings, all of novelist Susan Cheever bemoaned which contributed to her rise to power and influ- ence in national politics, and prominent spot on the feminist community's misfortune at having so the current roster of "feminist heroines." And it faulty a heroine for so important a historic role. all paid off, it seems. For here she is, one of the What were McCorvey s failings in Cheever s view? most powerful, influential, famous, and even One could only assume that her status as a work- glamorous (to be featured in a Vogue photo ing-class lesbian with a rather rough and tumble— spread, adorned in the highest of high couture, is but all too common—background of odd jobs, surely as glamorous as it gets for corporate attor- neys) women in the world. hard knocks, and unfortunate encounters with questionable men rendered her unacceptable as a And more power to her, as the very fitting "feminist role model." She wasn't even a self-pro- phrase would have it. Why shouldn't a smart, claimed feminist at the time. She was simply some- tough, ambitious woman be sitting in the White one who needed an abortion and was willing to House, making policy, lecturing Congress, heading go to court, to the Supreme up a national task force on one of the most crucial Court if necessary, to demand issues of our day, and—best of all—making an the right to have one. awful lot of men, from the Hill on down to the It seemed pretty heroic to gutter, very nervous and cranky about it all? And me, especially in light of why shouldn't she also—as People magazine and McCorvey's less privileged Linda Bloodworth-Thomason assure us she status. But I'm clearly no does—maintain the kind of egalitarian marriage so judge of what a feminist role many women aspire to, in which both partners— model is supposed to be these even the one who's male and the president of the days. I don't even get "the for heaven's sake—respect, support, Hillary thing." To most peo- and nurture each other in perfect balance while ple—and after reading Cheev- also sharing in the (apparently) equally successful er's review I suspect she is one rearing of an amazingly (given the circumstances of them—it is Hillary Clinton of her life) normal, well-balanced, even athletic teenage daughter. Who wouldn't be impressed? who seems most clearly to Who, as a feminist, wouldn't feel pride and hope in embody the qualities required so exemplary an image of the "Yes You Can Have to bear the mantle of feminist It All" New Woman? virtue and honor in the public eye these days. And there is no So why am I increasingly uncomfortable, even Norma McCorvey played a key role doubt about it; Clinton is as irritated, at the very mention of Hillary Clinton on the historical stage. different from McCorvey as these days? Why does the sight of that tight jaw

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 (which I used to admire as forceful and unraveling of this particular American less act to achieve, the progressive (not to serious); everchanging blond hairdo Dream. And the lesson for feminists has say feminist) vision of a better world she (which I used to enjoy keeping track of); been a hard one: It's still a man's world has apparently twisted herself into per- and poised, articulate presence (which I and if you are going to play by its rules sonal and moral knots to get a shot at. used to take pride in); tend more and in its big leagues, you are—still—going Health, welfare, crime—the Clinton more to set my teeth on edge and make to have to conform to The Man's often administration has gradually descended my mouth curl down in disappointment demeaning standards and values. Worse to a level of compromise and backsliding and distaste? Why, when once I so wel- yet, even if you're willing to accept those in all three areas to the point where no comed the coming of Hillary to the rules, constraints, and humiliations, you good, and much possible harm may well Hill, do I now find myself, more and are not likely to achieve what you set come to women because of them. more, wishing she would just go away out to achieve anyway. Reproductive freedom is now "nego- and give us a chance to regroup and Early on, came the womanizing busi- tiable" in the health bill. Donna Shalala rethink the whole "female role model" ness which, I thought, she handled is sounding like Dan Quayle on the problem? For it is a problem, and the admirably. After all, this is the real world issue of single mothers, family values, coming of Hillary, far from solving it, has and it was time for America to grow up and welfare "tough love"; and the pris- only, in my view, complicated, confused, and face the sexual facts of life about ons are already expanding to accommo- and muddied it for a generation of sec- love and long marriages. Ward and June date the growing numbers of desperate ond wave feminists who once thought are dead after all (were dead even when women who, in these dire times, are we knew what we wanted. alive, actually) and a good relationship is finding themselves on the wrong side of In fact, if the rise of Hillary Clinton worth tinkering with and building the law as prison sentences expand and teaches us anything as feminists, it may upon, since no one is perfect. Well and legal rights and public defense rosters well be that we were foolish to ever buy good. But the stories and humiliations shrink. But the pale male powers that be, into the media image, so popular in the just kept coming and—having put all it seems, were not satisfied even with 1970s and 1980s (think Danielle Steele, her personal and professional eggs in these rather major bows and scrapes in Clair Huxtable, Working Girl, and Vir- the White House basket rather than at their ideological direction. They wanted ginia Slims) of the Woman Who Has It least keeping her professional indepen- still more in the way of image revision- All—high-powered career; successful, dence— sne was forced ism. And Hillary, yet again, seems to be supportive hubby; cute, well-adjusted complying. With health care reform all kids; great house, car, and expense to keep that stiff upper but dead, welfare reform a nightmare to account. Way too many women have be awaited with trepidation, and pro- been knocking themselves out trying to lip to the point of grams to keep women out of jail a vague live up to that image, and beating them- 1960s memory, Hillary has recently selves up, in one way or another, for fail- major paralysis, as the retreated even further from her early ing to achieve it, in the last two decades. whole world watched political promise. Suddenly, she is far But Hillary it seemed had gotten it right from the front lines of battle and planted at last and could, we perhaps hoped, pro- and sniggered. Jackie Kennedy safely and sedately in the reception lines vide some guidelines for the rest of us and Eleanor Roosevelt were at least and tea parties which she, only two years on just how it could be accomplished. spared that kind of public shame. ago, held in such disdain. Even Barbara But what we've seen, as we've studied But I still would have given her the Bush, with her recently published, sur- her style and technique, is more and benefit of the doubt and accepted (for prisingly feisty, memoir is more political- more troubling in what it reveals about her, not me) the personal hypocrisies ly relevant these days. But at least she the compromises and indignities of a life and compromises, the embarrassingly gets to keep the title, the address, the lived in the confines of that media-con- phony media makeovers of style, person- Donna Karan originals, the summers—a structed image. Personally, professionally, ality, even biographical anecdotes (I like few more anyway—at the Cape. It's not politically, and even morally, the life cho- cookies, babies, haute couture, and a bad life, but it's a far cry from what sen by Hillary Clinton (and she surely Fourth of July fireworks as well as the she—we thought—was ultimately after. had many choices) has proven to be less next person, after all), even her often And all for the sake of a dumb media noble, less fulfilling, and less useful as a sordid financialan d moral wheelings and image of "having it all." If she had only way of getting things done in the dealings in Arkansas and in the White read Anita Shreve s wonderfully heart- world—for women or anyone else; most House (misplacing capital gains records? breaking Women Together, Women Alone, depressingly, perhaps less fun, than the forgetting about $20,000 loans and about the last twenty years in the lives of Visa and Virginia Slims ads, the Lear's orders to move files from offices?) if the thousands of women who "graduat- and Working Woman covers, would have indeed she had managed to transform ed" from the consciousness-raising had us believe. For in tying herself so the hokey, anachronistic role of First movement of the late 1960s and early tightly to the model of the "partnership Lady into a real force for progressive 1970s and went on to learn the hard marriage" as a functional unit for social change. way that the world was far from ready to achieving all things great and small— But just the opposite has happened. accommodate itself to the many love, sex, success, good works, and chil- The more she has tied herself to the dren—in a society still wracked with demands and dreams of second wave policies and agendas of her waffling hus- gender bias and oppression and far from feminists. Naomi Wolf, Katie Roiphe, band and his corporate male cadres of ready to change much, she has ironically and Christina Hoff Sommers to the advice and support, the less she has been set herself up to be a case study in the contrary, most of us have not found it so able to even speak forcefully for, much (continued on page 59)

10 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 COLUMNIST na, and constantly threatened to kill both her and her family (as in Stamen's case).The evidence of a man's previous crimes against female human beings is presumed too "prejudicial;" the "rules of evidence" won't allow it. We need to rewrite the rules. Sheila Ryan DeLuca's case has haunted me for years, not because her case is unique (unfortu- nately, it is not), but because I knew women PHYLLIS CHESLER who'd known her. Sheila had already served 10 years of her 20-years-to-life sentence for murder when, for the first time, I was told that she was willing to talk to the press and to enlist support The Dead Man for a clemency campaign. In July, I went up to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westch- ester County, New York to speak to her. Is Not on Trial" Sheila had a soft, not a tough, demeanor. She's a "good girl": middle class, law-abiding, a former nun, a retired police officer, an athlete. She seemed utterly sincere, almost naive. No guile t's almost as if people expect men here. No fantasies of salvation through media coverage either. She was friendly, warm, mature, to rape, beat, and murder women grave, filled with unspoken sorrow. And shame and terror, still. and children. No one's surprised Newspaper accounts of her trial identified Sheila as a "Black Widow Killer," not as a former •when they do, and society tends nun or police officer. (Her abductor and rapist, Robert Bissett, was described as a "fireman.") not to punish them too harshly, if She was portrayed by Bronx district attorneys Mario Merola and Anthony J. Schepis as being at all. But we don't expect women to kill, not on a "partying spree," luring the younger Bissett even in self-defense, and when they do, watch into having sex with her, and then killing him. out! The judicial system reacts as if Western civi- "She got what she wanted," Schepis sneered at lization's gonna totter and crumble if even one the trial. "What did Bissett want with a 42-year- member of the so-called superior/inferior sex old, heavyset blonde woman when he's got his gets away with killing one violent man in self- girlfriend? What does she want with a 28-year- defense. old good looking fireman?" She was portrayed as If you're a woman who has killed a white man if she was a murderous man, someone who in self-defense—whether you're a police officer, might routinely kill members of the opposite sex like Sheila Ryan DeLuca, or a severely battered after having sex with them because they're all wife, like Jayne Stamen—chances are, your story "evil temptresses, dirty whores." won't be believed. The jury probably won't be On April 18,1984, the jury found Sheila guilty permitted to hear about the of second degree murder and Judge Lawrence dead man's history of vio- Tonnetti sentenced her to 20 years to life. It was lence toward you, or toward a complete shock to Sheila, who had been free other women and children. on bail for two years; her attorney had assured As lawyers and judges love her there was not enough evidence to convict to say: "The dead man is not her. After the trial, she was immediately removed on trial, he's not here to to Rikers Island where she thinks "I must have defend himself, we can't prej- had a nervous breakdown." udice the jury against him." On August 4, 1994, Judge Robert J. Ward So the jury remains in the overturned her conviction; as we go to press, dark, even if the murdered Sheila is out of jail, but the district attorney has man previously kidnapped appealed Judge Ward's decision. Sheila is not yet a and attempted to rape a free woman, but for her to even get this far teenage girl or killed a man required a campaign for freedom that lasted 12 (Larry Quigley) in a brawl (as years and required at least eight "keys" to click in DeLuca's case); even if he open her jail cell. Perhaps analyzing what it took repeatedly, and docu- to open that door will inspire more feminists to mentably, beat her, placed get involved in a campaign to free Jayne Stamen and other women in prison for killing in self- A 20-year-to-life sentence shocked loaded weapons to her head, defense. What did it take to free Sheila? Sheila Ryan DeLuca. shoved shotguns up her vagi-

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 11 A FAIR-MINDED for her and promising to return. ager told his clerk to phone the room APPEALS JUDGE Enter, Robert Bissett, Robert Bar- and order the group to leave. Many women who have been kid- rett, and Eugene Murphy: three very "This is your fault," Bissett told napped, raped, threatened, and terror- loud, aggressive, and drunken men in Sheila. "Now, you're dead. I'm gonna ized find themselves absolutely unable their late 20s. They tried to pick up fuck you and then I'm gonna kill you." to speak about what happened to Sheila and Karyn, but when rebuffed, Bissett ditched his friends, forced Sheila them. However, Sheila heroically over- they turned nasty and called them to drive him to his black Ford van, and came her silence and was ready to tes- "dykes." (Sheila actually was a closeted then to an abandoned area. In the van, tify about how and why she had shot lesbian, married to a man who "knew "for what seemed like an eternity," said Robert Bissett to death. all.") Hours later, after Karyn had been Sheila, Bissett raped her, both orally But Sheila's lawyer, John Patten, did gone a long time, Sheila decided to and vaginally. "Then all of a sudden, he what most criminal attorneys do. He look for her. She walked out of the bar was dead weight on top of me." Bissett refused to put his client on the stand, and into a nightmare. had passed out. Sheila managed to slip or to call her husband, who, by then, "I went to my car and I put the key out of the van and escape. was dying of cancer, or to call any of in," Sheila told me."From behind or "I started talking to myself, saying, Sheila's many and prestigious character from somewhere, Bissett comes and 'You're alive, just forget this ever hap- witnesses. grabs me, pushes me into the car, and pened—block it out. Put it behind Maybe Patten was inexperienced. Or says 'We're going to have some fun. you—it's over; you're alive.'" She tele- overconfident. Or both. Patten did We're all going to have a party.' His phoned her husband to pick her up, send Sheila to see Flora Colao, an two friends are with him. I start to but mistakenly gave him the wrong expert witness in rape trauma syn- struggle with him in the car, and one address and ended up getting home by drome. But Patten's decision not to of his friends shows me a knife. He herself. "I wasn't keen on talking about allow Sheila to testify meant that he'd said, 'Look here, just do as we say or it. I guess I felt disgusted and disgust- laid no foundation for Colao's expert we'll cut you. We'll kill you if you ing. I just felt dirty." She thought she testimony; and so the judge did not don't cooperate.'They kept calling me could handle what happened without allow it. 'bitch' and 'cunt' and 'whore.'" telling anyone about it. Sheila had expected to testify. She The three men were drunk, snorting It wasn't until hours later, when she was "shocked" when the "defense rest- cocaine, and smoking what appeared to found she couldn't stop showering, or ed." Perhaps Sheila was so used to tak- be angel dust. "Bissett was completely shaking, or crying, that she told her ing orders, that she thought she had to out of control, high to the point of husband Peter that she'd been raped. do whatever Patten told her to do. He aggressive, hyperactive, wired," said Peter insisted that they report the knew best. However, according to Sheila. "I just followed orders: drive rape (which they did, although the dis- Judge Ward, even if a lawyer advises a left, drive right." trict attorney never pursued the client not to take the stand, the client They terrorized Sheila by talking charge). But first, Peter wanted to drive still has the right to do so—and must, about the women they said they'd had over to the crime location so they in fact, be informed of that right. Pat- sex with—then killed. They asked could describe it correctly. Trembling ten's failure to do so constituted Sheila if she'd ever had sex with three in fear, Sheila stuck her off-duty "incompetent counsel." So did his fail- men at once, told her they would "cut revolver in her belt. Amazingly, the van ure to vigorously pursue an "extreme me to make me big enough." They said was still there. More ominously, so was emotional disturbance" defense, an if they killed her, it would be just Bissett—who knocked Peter down omission that seems incredible when another "piece of ass wiped out." ("He went flying out of sight."), and you consider Sheila's story—the story Sheila was paralyzed with fear. She then, cursing and threatening ("You're the jury never got to hear. had been a victim of childhood sexual dead now") lunged at Sheila. "I told On the night of September 21, 1982 abuse. She was a police officer, but him to stop. He grabs my arm, and and the following morning, Sheila was back then, when only two percent of starts pulling me back into the van. It out celebrating her birthday and her the force were women, female officers was as if I was being vacuumed back Softball team's victory. She had just did not draw frontline duty. They han- in. I shot him and I shot him and I retired after 15 years on the police dled kids; they were matrons. They shot him," Sheila told me. Bissett was force. Her usual shift was from mid- didn't have male partners and they dead. night to 8 a.m., so it was not unusual weren't trained to fight like men Self-defense. Extreme emotional dis- for her to be out late. In a sense, Sheila against violent men. turbance. These are the two defenses was always "on duty." When her hus- She was forced to drive to that the jury never got to hear, noted band, Peter DeLuca, a newly retired Park Motel, where the men drank Judge Ward, when he overturned police captain, began to feel sick, she more beer and watched a pornograph- Sheila's conviction on the basis of drove him home. (He insisted she ic movie. Fearing gang rape, she mirac- "incompetent counsel." But what did it return to the party, as she was "the ulously talked Bissett into sending his take to get the judge to even review guest of honor.") Sheila was also keep- friends outside. In so doing, she her case? ing a careful, protective eye on a friend, became psychologically complicit in Karyn Travelina, a schoolteacher, who'd her own rape: another level of shame. A MALE RELATIVE had too much to drink and who peri- Outside, his friends yelled, kicked in odically left the after-hours club to WITH A LAW DEGREE the window, cracked the door, and Judge Ward might never have had the make phone calls, asking Sheila to wait demanded their turn. The motel man- (continued an page 56)

12 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 COVER STORY Confessions EDITOR'S NOTE: The author of this of a true account led an apparently respectable life for over 20 years while secretly exposing himself to and fondling young girls. ON THE ISSUES Child solicited this article to increase awareness of how some men get away with—and rationalize— Molester pedophilic behavior. With the understanding that "I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours" is not unusual for five-year-old children. the author no longer engages in these Playing "doctor" is looked upon as a natural part of growing up. But I never grew criminal activities, we promised up. I still wanted to play "doctor" with children when I was an to shield his identity. adult. As a result there are hun- dreds of girls and young women who had to see, hear, and feel I turned 18 in 1962, and what they never should have new opportunities for my had to. Most were strangers, voyeurism began to unfold. but some were relatives. And Now I could go into the smoke there are even wider circles shops and look at Sunshine of indirect victims—my former and Health along with Playboy wife, our children, my sisters and Nugget. Years before the and their families—anyone who [words "kiddie porn" were in ever trusted me. the vocabulary of most people, During my youth I was always ! realized that the younger the "a good boy—never any trouble." girls in the pictures, the more I obeyed the rules. I attended church. looked. I waited until I was 18 to smoke, until Next came the hours in smelly the- the legal age of 21 to drink. The Good Guy aters looking at old movies of burlesque mask was easy to wear. shows, then the first color movies about I don't know whether my fascination with some clown with X-ray glasses. Topless bars nudity was any more than normal for a teen. appeared soon after I turned 21, and mas- Occasionally a friend would get hold of a sage parlors in the early 70s, when I was nudie magazine with black-and-white pictures in the service. and liberal use of an airbrush. My only prey I made the transition from voyeur to then were my sisters, who soon learned to exhibitionist in the military. I went to a put a washcloth over the keyhole when they gym where boys and girls took karate or judo took a bath. a couple evenings a week. The door to the

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995.. L3 if) I

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Ah- to 10) to know it was "naughty." ha, I thought, they liked it. That was the In department stores I tried leaving the beginning of a rationalization I would use curtain slightly to one side while trying on for the next 20 years. And that was how I pants, always making sure that the exposure separated myself in my mind from bad guys was passive, both to continue the self-lie who hung around schools, jumped out of bush- and to lessen the chance of arrest. es, and enjoyed frightening and hurting When I made obscene calls, I often gave children. the girl a chance to hang up first by cheer- When I first read about the myth of rape fully asking: "Hi—do you have time for a (the belief of many rapists that women "like friendly neighborhood obscene phone call?" it" and "want it"), I remember thinking to If she didn't stay on the line and go along, myself, How can those jerks believe such a I would call another. thing? Of course women don't like it! I was too blind, callous, and stupid to recognize y the time my own children were old my own big lie—that I was a "nice" guy, the enough to go to playgrounds, I used girls were my "partners," and I didn't want them as a cover. I would wear cutoff to hurt them. shorts but no underwear. As Good The gym setup ended when I was assigned Dad, I would laugh with my kids and to a different base, but the new town had a Bgive them a push on the swing or the merry- couple of good smoke shops with well go-round. Meanwhile I sought places to sit stocked, you-must-be-18-to - enter sections. so that other girls could have a look. There I first discovered magazines with While committing these crimes, I also names like Nudist Angels and Little Nudists, wallowed in what I call my gray world—seek- which had pictures of girls photographed in ing nude bars, nude beaches, and adult book- nudist parks. stores with their explicit, 25-cents-per- In one early nudist publication I read a view video loops. In the early days of video first-person story by a man who wrote of booths, there would be the occasional hand- driving around with his windows down and his written sign: "14-Year-01d Girl Shows How." pants unzipped. Seeing a tender prospect, he I gravitated toward those. I also looked for would get her to come to his car window by books that featured teenaged girls or asking for directions to the library or gro- younger who were always fascinated by sex, cery store. I tried the technique and it thereby reinforcing my rationalization. worked. Although my gray world was not criminal I had the same feeling of invulnerabili- activity on my part per se, it certainly ty that is often ascribed to teenage dri added to the deadening of my soul and pro- vers. And even when the police arrested me, vided the momentum for my activity that was it was not enough of a reality check to keep criminal. I do not mean to imply that I me from offending again, and soon. myself am a victim or that I couldn't help Good-bye, military career. Hello, bail myself. I fully accept all responsibility man, attorney, commanding officer, psychia- for all my crimes; yet was trist #1, judge, psychiatrist #2. Good Guy clearly a major influence on me. I"had been found out. Time for a new mask. Any addiction calls for bigger hits, and | As Changed Guy. I satisfied the court by I began going beyond passive exposure to £ keeping all my appointments with a thera- blatant abuse. Fortunately my daughter was fpist. After a year I was allowed to plead not a temptation for me. My love for her and t not guilty and my record was expunged. I protective instinct as a father were strong ^worked as a laborer, eventually found a real enough to spare her. But I exposed myself to ,|job, married a girl I met in church, bought and fondled the genitals and clothed breasts I.a house in the suburbs, and had three beau- of two young nieces and exposed myself to ftiful children. two other extended-family members. I With that facade in place, I continued After one such incident, I began therapy

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 15 with a psychologist who specialized in abnor- fondling her. I naively assumed she had told mal sexual behavior. At that point I felt everything already; in fact her memories of both vulnerable and fortunate. Only a few my touching her genitals had been blocked. people knew of my problem, my wife seemed My victims now lay all about. My wife willing to stay with me, and I had a genuine felt that I had married her under false pre- desire to quit the criminal activity. tenses and had used her as a sign of legiti- Insofar as the therapy addressed my macy. We divorced. My direct victims have criminal activity, it was excellent. There suffered the most, but there are so many was emphasis on recognition of indirect victims and so many ways ing errors, rationalization, and have been hurt: misplaced minimalization. Aversion therapy guilt, dollars for therapy, was of some help. What was most strains on relationships, lack effective for me was emphasis of sleep, sadness, fear. on victim impact—learning to As for me, hitting rock understand that even those bottom was the ultimate real- girls who seemed to go along ity check. If someone needs with it would feel dirty, to cross a 100-foot canyon to wonder why this was happening escape a bear, the difference to them, and feel as if they between a 105-foot ladder and were to blame. a 95-foot ladder is not 10 feet; it is the difference y criminal activity between life and death. In the went down to almost same way, the distance between zero, with an occasion- total surrender and almost-total al slip. I told one par surrender is between life and ticular niece I was death. Mtherapy and promised not to touch her Being free from my gray world has again. She seemed anxious to believe me. I meant all the difference for me. I am now 50 had asked her not to tell years earlier, and have lived without pornography and all when I first began exposing myself to her. its trappings for two years. I have lived Now I got her hopes up and I asked her again without criminal activity for eight years. not to tell anyone what I had done—thereby For this I can thank many people who placing on her the additional burden of have loved me without condoning what I have being responsible for my family's staying done. Two men in particular have my grati- together. tude. One of them is my accountability About four years later, I broke my check. I periodically look him in the eye promise. At a family gathering, I touched and tell him I am still free. The other man her shoulders in the same way I had done in is the cousin who told me of a 12-step pro- the past when I used a "back rub" as a cover gram for people with sexual addictions, a for fondling her breasts. Memories were program based on the principles of Alco- triggered (but not all of them, I was to holics Anonymous. learn later). Hope was shattered. The night- No light from heaven has shone down and mare was back. She told. hit a reset button on my psyche. The tempta- My sisters were horrified and wanted me tions are there, and I must keep up my guard out of their lives. My wife stayed with me for the rest of my life. for the sake of our children, including a If anyone would pray for me, let it be newborn baby. that I will have skin thick enough to with- Throughout all of this, I prayed to be stand what comes my way and yet thin enough freed from my pedophilia. The stumbling to care for the pain of those around me. block was my unwillingness to let go of my My prayer for my victims is that they gray world—the world of commercial sex and will be healed; that they will direct all nude beaches. I recall telling God that I blame toward me and nowhere else; that they would surrender that desire to him someday, will be protected from all men like me; and but not yet. Then I winked and gave him per- finally, that God will use the trial that I mission to work on me in that regard. have put them through to make them all the Rock bottom came years later when my more sensitive to the hurts of others so niece was in therapy and remembered my that they can be loving, caring people. •

i (. ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 Busting Mister Short Eyes "This is one of the most terrible times for so by state and federal agents. It was an outrageous insult to sexual minorities in years, and we must form me to be told what to wear by the government in a society links with one another to overcome the common where corporations exploit 'women in topless bars, pornog- enemy of religious prejudice and oppression. raphy, and advertising and we are denied control of our own It does none of us any good for lesbians and bodies. gay men and bisexuals and nudists and Because of my civil disobedience for shirt-free rights, I pedophiles and pornographers and sado- was offered a part-time job by Lee Baxandall, president of masochist people to point fingers at each The Naturist Society, Inc. (TNS), the second-largest organi- zation representing nudists in the United States. During my other and say the other person is immoral. five years working for the company, I also lived at TNS None of us are free until we are all free." headquarters with Baxandall. There I became privy to let- —Convicted child rapist Joseph Wanner, ters, news articles, police reports, and private conversations alias "Robert Bandonis" about men in the movement who, like Wanner, were look- ing for sex with children—not exactly the naturist party line n May 29, 1992, Joseph Robert Wanner, 39 years about "wholesome body acceptance." old—substitute elementary school teacher; pro- My own anti-pornography activism also put me on the feminist member of a university women's action trail of naturist pedophiles. I traveled across the Midwest, committee; naturist; and articulate defender of doing civil disobedience in a year-and-a-half-long action abortion, animal, atheist, and Native American called National Rampage Against Penthouse in the mid-80s. Orights—was arrested at his home in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. In Iowa the president of an American Civil Liberties Union The 70-page search warrant and affidavit—reported to be chapter approached me after my slide presentation and the longest and most detailed in the history of Berks Coun- offered me three large boxes of pornography that he claimed ty—charged Wanner with 14 counts of rape, 14 counts of had been found in a trash can in the city park. He advised statutory rape, 12 counts of involuntary deviate sexual inter- me to rip it up or burn it, whatever I desired. It was the course, 3 counts of corruption of minors, 19 counts of sexu- most explicit, most extensive collection of child pornogra- al abuse of children for the production and manufacturing phy I had ever seen. of child pornography, 144 counts of child sex abuse for pos- The next week, as I went through all the boxes, I first felt session of child pornography, 17 counts of indecent assault, 6 sickened and defeated, then enraged. Amidst urination and counts of aggravated indecent assault, and 1 count of volun- bondage magazines using children in every way imaginable tary deviate sexual (with a cat). were copies of nudist publications like Nudist Moppets, Little The affidavit also cited an anonymous person who told Nudes, and a publication called Brats. On one page was a the police about Wanner in the first place. That confidential photograph of two children in the swimming pool at Tan informant was me. Oaks nudist camp; on the next, a man wearing a black ski mask was raping an Asian child. I recognized the signature Undercover Among Nudists photographic styles of several well-known naturist photog- raphers. The collection even included a copy of The World In the early 1980's I was arrested myself numerous times— Guide to Nude Beaches, a book put out by my employer and in Santa Cruz, Rochester, Oshkosh, and Cape Cod—for edited by Baxandall. refusing to put my shirt on at the beach when ordered to do b y N i k k i Craft

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 17 But nothing prepared me for what I learned, firsthand, and the leadership was doing nothing substantial to stop during nude events. At one Naturist Society gathering I them. In 1986 I put together a slide show of pornographic attended at Elysium Fields in Southern California, a mother images produced by nudist/naturist publishers—most of it was terrified after a very weird man (he was, I met him) reproduced from the stash given to me in Iowa—to confront stalked her little girl. He followed the family for two days. the lie repeated by nudists and naturist leaders that "nudity He even asked the parents where they lived and if their child has nothing to do with sex," and their denial that the move- was allowed to play out in the front yard. Though Baxandall ment was rife with sexual predators. I took this slide show to was present when the mother complained to the camp several naturist events and was astounded and deeply dis- owner, the man was allowed to run for a Naturist Society turbed at how uninterested the movement was, how little leadership position several years later. At another TNS event members did, how many excuses they made—and what in Los Gatos, California, in 1983, a girlfriend of my lawyer's danger children were in because of it. daughter told me she was molested by a man in the sauna. I finally came to understand that naturism is a paradise for My lawyer, his daughter, her friend, and I confronted the sexual predators—a safer place for child molesters than for man for over an hour. The camp owner asked the man to children. The cultlike zealotry of nudists; the large percent- leave but declined to call the police. age of swingers and sexual liberals; the respect for anonymity Then in 1984 at a TNS gathering in Arizona, I observed a and secrecy; the complacency, complicity, and liberalism of group of men throwing money into the swimming pool for nudist/naturist editors—all work in pedophiles' favor. almost the whole day, for children to dive in after. Later that afternoon, I learned from a very dejected child that one man Getting the Goods on the Bad had lured them to the parking lot with promises of more Joe Wanner had been a member of The Naturist Society money and then masturbated in front of them. I reported since 1987, a prolific naturist writer, an activist for VOCAL that man to the camp management; he was also asked to (Victims of Child Abuse Laws), a member of the Pedophile leave, but again the police were not called. Information Exchange (PIE), and a member of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) since its wo months later, at a TNS gathering at Sunny inception in 1979.1 first heard of him in July 1985, when he Rest Lodge naturist resort in Pennsylvania, Paul wrote a letter attacking me for my anti-pornography work. I J. Zimmer, founder of an anti-circumcision had been going into stores across the country and ripping group called the Newborn Rights Society, was up Penthouse magazines to protest the racist, sadistic Asian caught in the act of fondling an eleven-year-old bondage photos printed in the December 1984 issue. Wan- Tboy. Zimmer was baby-sitting the boy and had brought him ner compared my mutilation of Penthouse to Nazi book- to the camp without the mother's knowledge. This time burnings in Germany. His letter had been submitted to The police were called. Also suspected of sexually abusing that Event (now Naturally), a national publication that advocates boy were James Joseph O'Boyle and Robert J. Schumann. clothing-optional recreation. Although the letter was never While waiting for the police to arrive at the remote loca- published, Bern Loibl, the editor, sent me a copy. tion, Baxandall and the camp managers questioned all three In April 1986 Loibl also became concerned about Wanner. men—and I vehemently confronted them—for several In a memo to TNS president Lee Baxandall, editor of hours inside the camp headquarters. Clothed With the Sun (now N Magazine) and at the time still It turned out that Zimmer had been abusing the boy sex- my employer, Loibl asked: "Do you know anything about a ually and psychologically for years. He was charged with Joe Wanner? He has been writing a number of letters, I sus- "involuntary deviate sexual intercourse," "indecent assault," pect under the name of Ms. Kriebel, all relating to chil- '"sexual abuse of children," and "corruption of minors" and dren... I'm sensing an obsession." Loibl attached the letter later pled guilty to endangering the welfare of a child. But written by "Ms. Kriebel," and also noted a reference she that time O'Boyle and Schumann, who had been convicted made to VOCAL, a child abusers' lobby group. Sounding in 1976 on a child molestation charge, both got away. exactly like another liberal defender of the "right" to sexual- The very day before Schumann arrived at the Sunny Rest ize children, "Kriebel" wrote that she had acquired a camera gathering, he was arrested for sexually abusing another child recently but was concerned because just a few miles away and released from custody. Those charges were later dis- from where she lived a man had been arrested and charged missed, but in 1986 he pled guilty to "endangering [another] with "sexual abuse of children" just for "taking nude pho- child" and served nearly two years in prison. (Schumann tographs of a young boy. I would like to know how photog- now faces a 1993 charge of sexually abusing a child who was raphers can avoid these terribly ageist child-abuse laws. It eight). O'Boyle, a highway patrolman, was indicted in June seems that as the anti-pornography, anti-sex, anti-nudity reli- 1986 on more than 90 counts of child rape and sodomy gious fanatics gain control of society, they destroy many of after assaulting 13 boys over a five-year period in the course the freedoms we Naturalists [sic] have enjoyed for decades." of investigating child-abuse cases. He is currently serving a Late one night as I compared this letter to Wanner's 1985 10- to 20-year term in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. letter attacking me, I recognized "Ms. Kriebel's" signature as I began to wonder if everyone came in contact with so his. I then reread all the back issues of The Event and found many pedophiles. I asked several people, and concluded I another obviously pro-pedophilia letter—typical of many was encountering a disproportionate number of sexual published in the naturist/nudist press—from Wanner/"Ms. predators because I worked for The Naturist Society. As I Kriebel" in fall 1985: "I think that by having many more •was to learn the hard 'way, nude events all over the country photos of young people of all ages (toddlers, pre-teens, were being used by pedophiles to network with one another teens) this will help to show that nudism is the healthy, fami- and to meet, photograph, and gain sexual access to children, ly-oriented, non-erotic way of life it's always intended to be.

18 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 "When Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he replied, Because that's where the money is. Well, if you're looking for nude children it would be logical to go to places like a nudist camp or beach where nude children are going to be." -Patrolman Robert Gately, Warmer's arresting officer "

Fingered by the author, pedophile Joseph Wanner shields his face on the way to his arraignment In a letter to a naturist magazine he once railed against nudists who objected to being photographed. The picture of children is from a naturist magazine.

Could you have more photos of children?" article by "Robert Bandonis" with photographs "Bandonis" Up to that time, Wanner might have been on my shit list had taken at Sandy Hook Nude Beach. One was of a young just for his unpublished letter attacking me, but the night I boy playing on his hands and knees, nude, with his genitals made the "Kriebel" connection was when I scrawled his exposed, building a sand castle—apparently unaware that he name on a manila folder and stuck it in my file drawer con- was being photographed and that the photo would be pub- taining a growing number of convicted and suspected sexual lished in a national magazine. A man on the beach threat- predators operating within the naturist movement. ened to toss "Bandonis's" camera. A woman also got mad at In February 1989,1 talked to criminal investigators at the him for asking if he could take a picture of her. According to Kutztown, Pennsylvania, police department. I passed on the "Bandonis," "[It] made me feel like I should have taken her letters and articles by Wanner that documented he was using picture without bothering to ask first." aliases and obviously obsessed with children. It all began to It doesn't take very many sexual predators to ruin a kid's make a case that Wanner was a sexual predator of some kind. day at the nude beach—or, for that matter, her or his life. In Kutztown police immediately opened an investigation. fact, lots of nude people don't like having voyeurs and sleazy Simultaneously I had begun accumulating a file on one scum cruising for photo opportunities to add to their mas- "Robert Bandonis" (sometimes "Rev. Robert Bandonis"), turbation collections. But when "Bandonis" recounted his whose articles and letters from Pennsylvania were appearing, predicament to a sympathetic lawyer who specializes in the regularly in The Event. He too articulated a familiar sexual rights of sexual minorities, "[The lawyer] told me I did predator's rationale. In spring 1990, for instance, Loibl ran an nothing wrong. He said that as long as I was on public prop-

ONTHE ISSUES WINTER 1995 erty, I have the right to take photographs of anyone or any- State Correctional Institution at Rockview. thing. .. I'm considering taking protection along in the form In June 1993, according to a local newspaper, Wanner was of a baseball bat next time I visit the beach... Anyone who slugged in the eye by a twenty-year-old. In prisons, men like attacks naturist photographers is breaking the law, and we Wanner are often contemptuously referred to as "short eyes" have the right to defend ourselves and our property. Since it by fellow inmates who—unlike a lot of liberals—don't have has been traditional to include young people in nudist activ- much tolerance for pedophiles. ities, we must also fight the insanity of child-pornography laws. Nude children are not obscene!" Tenacious on the Case Long after I had turned my "Bandonis" file over to police, It took me years to obtain enough information to get clear I learned from investigator Robert Gately that "Robert about how the liberal community had deserted survivors of Bandonis" was yet another of Warmer's aliases, with a post sexual abuse, how sexual liberals' interests conflicted with the office box only miles away inTrexlertown. true liberation of women and children, and how the naturist agenda clashed with the feminist one. That's when I became The Innocents and the Guilty- disillusioned and stopped working with the national naturist Three years after my tip set off an investigation, the Kutz- movement. Until they recognize and acknowledge the town police entered Winner's house. They couldn't believe child-abuse problem they have in their ranks, stop covering what they found. It took them four days, around the clock, up for pedophiles and publishing their propaganda—until to search the debris—stacked floor to ceiling—containing they identify abusers to their general membership and vast amounts of pornography and file-size boxes packed aggressively turn abusive men over to the police—I will with nudist child pornography including Nudist Angels, Lolli work actively against them, just as I work against pornogra- Pops, and Little Nudists; six Polaroids of a baby boy; two sex- phers and other sexual predators. ually explicit photographs of a nude boy at a beach believed Pedophiles use naturist magazines as coffee-table porn the to be Sandy Hook; and over a hundred black-and-white way heterosexual men use Playboy. Sexualized photos are photographs showing nude children involved in sadism, used to promote sales of naturist publications, even though masturbation, fellatio, and vaginal penetration by objects. objectification negates the very concept of healthy body Wanner also had boxes full of homemade pornographic acceptance. The innocence of smiling children along with videos. One documents his repeated rapes of a mentally the sexual availability of women are used to promote natur- impaired thirteen-year-old girl he had hired ostensibly as a ism to the general public, even though the movement is "housekeeper." The girl was described by Gately in the arrest made up primarily of adult men. The sexual and commercial warrant as "so mentally deficient that such person is incapable interests of naturist publishers and photographers often of consent." According to newspaper accounts she was forced make them allies—philosophically and legally—with child to have sex with Wanner one to three times a week. She said abusers, pedophiles, and pornographers. With the help of a she did so because she was "afraid of him." Her eleven-year- good friend, I finally figured out it was these guys who old sister, whom Wanner was also charged with sexually abus- belonged in jail—not me, and I stopped focusing so much ing, told police Wanner had them look at pornography on on civil disobedience. My protests, which began in 1981 five occasions. Another video documents Wanner masturbat- with me removing my shirt, led to my refusal in 1987 to ing and involved in sexual activity with cats. remove my clothes atTNS clothing-optional events. As early as 1983, there had been an abuse report filed A year later I was fired. Baxandall put his reasons for firing against Wanner, though he was not convicted, for molesting me in writing: my continued work against TNS (which two prepubescent children—one who had cerebral palsy— went on the last year I was employed), my tenacious radical while working for an agency that provided child care. In feminist politics, and my refusal to recruit more women into May 1990, at an Allentown clinic where Wanner went for naturism. kidney dialysis, police were called after a nurse complained Lately I spend more time at my computer than at any that Wanner and another man—anti-circumcision advocate nude beach. Word of my work is getting out, and now peo- Paul Zimmer—had in their possession nude photos of male ple send me leads and reports. Today my files include over 50 infants and toddlers. When police arrived at the scene they men who operate or who have operated within the found the photographs, NAMBLA materials, and a copy of nudist/naturist movement, and who have been convicted on The Event. There was also a claim by a boy in 1990 that child pornography, molestation, and/or rape charges. Wanner had attempted to lure him away from a swimming Among them are members of nudist and naturist organiza- pool, though no charges were ever filed. Like other tions, photographers, nudist camp owners, nude-beach orga- pedophiles, Joe Wanner had been sexually exploiting chil- nizers, and other leaders in the movement. There are many dren a long time before he was apprehended. more who are suspected. Several of these men, in addition to It was one of the happiest days of my life when Robert Wanner, have been arrested because of my networking with Gately—the Kutztown cop who dedicated himself to the local law enforcement and/or postal inspectors in their areas. undercover work—took Wanner off the street. On January I expect that others will be arrested in the next few years. • 8, 1994, Wanner, in a plea bargain, pled guilty to five counts of "sexual abuse of children," three counts of "involuntary Mfefei Craft is publisher and editor of'the ICONoclast, a newslet- deviate sexual intercourse," two counts of "sexual abuse of ter that exposes connections between the nudist/naturist movement children for filming sex acts," and one count of "indecent and the exploitation of children and women. To support Craft's assault." At his sentencing he expressed no empathy for his work or for subscription information, write to her c/o N.O.P.E. victims, and no remorse for the harm he had caused others. (Naturists and Nudists Opposing Pornographic Exploitation), P.O. Wanner was ordered incarcerated for 10 to 30 years at the Box 2085, Rancho Cordova, CA 95741-2085.

20 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 The Big Chill

Legal secretary Rena Weeks was astonished when a jury awarded her $7.1 million dol- Corporate lars for being forced to endure the gropings of Martin Greenstein, a partner at the world's largest law firm, Chicago-based Baker & McKenzie. Weeks and her lawyer had war chest sought only $3.5 million. But several jurors, assessing the firm's net profit of $65 mil- lion, felt that ten percent of the company's capital was a fitting penalty. puts the freeze The high jury award made national headlines in September 1994. But there's likely to be much less publicity later on when the appeals judge, inevitably, cuts the award on sex down to something that won't make much of a difference to the company's bottom line discrimination and leaves Weeks feeling cheated. In 1991, for example, Texaco got a wake-up call about sex discrimination from a awards. jury that awarded Janella Martin, a credit supervisor, $5.3 million in lost wages and $15 BY MARLENE C. PITURRO

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 21 million in punitive damages. that a woman with an active Martin, who handled over and ongoing family life can- $2.5 billion of barge and not be a productive scientist." refinery-related transactions But advances won through every year for Texaco, was the courts are now being verbally promised a promo- threatened. Women who win tion to manager if she lawsuits against employers moved from Houston to Los who discriminated and Angeles. But after relocating, harassed them are finding that she saw a male outsider pro- the battle doesn't always end moted instead. When she with a big bang and cash in sued for sex discrimination, hand. Corporate heavy- Martin claims she was weights such as Ford Motor threatened by a manager Company, AT&T, Pfizer, Tex- who said: "When you're aco, and Exxon have caught walking down an alley one on to what lawsuits cost them night, you'll get a tap on the shoulder and you'll have an monetarily and in bad publicity, and have banded together to accident."The jury foreman, Rod Hoard, explained the high clip plaintiffs' wings. Forming a coalition called the Civil Jus- punitive damages: "We wanted to set an example against tice Reform Group, these Fortune 100 firms are dedicated to Texaco, and if we gave one million dollars, it would be like stopping plaintiffs now. Under the guise of tort reform one dollar to them." But two years after the highly publi- ("tort" is the term for a lawsuit in which an injured person cized award, Judge Ronald Cappai threw out the verdict on tries to recover money for economic damages or non-eco- appeal, saying Martin's damages should be limited to nomic damages such as pain and suffering), they have suc- $150,000. "An inflamed jury allowed their passions to get ceeded at capping punitive damages at $300,000 in federal the better of them," Cappai intoned. A higher court upheld courts. Now they are waging and winning state-by-state Cappai, so Martin and Texaco will face off in a second trial. campaigns. All but a handful of states—Colorado, Oklahoma, Martin is among a small band of discrimination fighters Nebraska, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana—cap or whose hard-fought and well-publicized court victories have bar punitive damages. Take away punitive damages and the helped make the workplace more equitable for women possibility of a substantial settlement evaporates, not only for employees. Over the last few decades, lawsuits have forced plaintiffs but for the few attorneys specializing in employment companies to make fundamental changes. In the insurance practice law not already on corporate payrolls or retainer. industry, women can now escape the secretarial ghetto and become sales agents because in 1979, Muriel Kreshevsky his well-financed effort to stop anti-dis- spearheaded a $200 million victory on behalf of 900 secre- crimination lawsuits began with a war taries denied advancement opportunities by State Farm chest based on initial corporate contri- Insurance. Some women can now become firefighters butions of up to $100,000 that were fun- because in the early 80s Brenda Berkman sued to be the neled into research and lobbying. For first female fire fighter in the New York City Fire Depart- instance,Texaco sponsored a study by the ment, a force of 10,000. Companies need to be careful about Washington Legal Foundation showing making women the "last hired and first fired," even in reces- that punitive damages awards against sionary times, because 48-year-old Bernice Stanfill of Del- businesses in five large states went from $1.1 million in 1968- Mar, California, proved breach of contract and sex discrimi- T1971 to $343 million in 1988-1991. The study did not sepa- nation against her employer. Science Applications rate out product liability suits, which generate the biggest International Corporation (SAIC), and won a jury award of awards. Anita Larsen, a Texaco spokesperson says that "law- $3.1 million. suits suck the lifeblood out of a corporation's bottom line." And shaping career paths to fit the needs of women with The pressure to curb big awards has made it increasingly children received a boost recently when Cynthia Fisher, an unlikely that a woman who has been discriminated against assistant biology professor, successfully suedVassar College for or harassed at work will prove her case and be compensated. paying her less then peers and failing to grant her tenure Jerry Leaphart, an attorney practicing in Ridgefield, Conn, because she took eight years off to raise her kids before her after 17 years in a Fortune 100 company, spells out what Vassar employment. Federal Judge Constance Baker Motley corporate tort reform efforts signal: "The pendulum is ruled for Fisher: "The persistent fixation of the Biology swinging away from employees seeking reasonable redress Department's senior faculty on a married woman's pre-Vassar under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its amendments pro- family choices reflects the acceptance of a stereotype and bias: hibiting discrimination on the basis of overt characteristics

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 including age, race, and gen- tally, physically, and financial- der." Leaphart describes the n this ly. She says: "The fear and many obstacles large corpo- stress levels of employees rations now throw in a corporation-financed today is sickening. My way plaintiff's path: having new to fight discrimination was a hires waive the right to sue shell game, lawsuit but too many others in employment contracts; are afraid they will lose the watering down affirmative pittance that the company action plans in company the jury giveth gives them at termination. handbooks by describing There are many women them as "a guide and sugges- and the hurting and suffering, and if tive but not binding"; retain- there is no way for them to ing all the lawyers and win a large dollar award, cor- expert witnesses specializing judge taketh away. porations will get away with in employment practice in everything they can." the location where a trial Discrimination gets easier will take place; petitioning the Securities Exchange Com- in hard times, and federally-protected Equal Employment mission to remove non-economic issues such as discrimina- Opportunity rights may get smashed on the rocky shoals of tion from a company's annual filing; "swarming," and other corporate downsizing, recession, and burnout. Who will be delaying tactics such as excessive discovery time which add brave and resourceful enough to go to the toothless Equal years to a case; and "scorched earth" tactics involving litiga- Employment Opportunity Commission or to hire an attor- tion to the plaintiff's last breath. ney when the unemployed look at them with envy? But Abby Liebman, an attorney from the California Women's long range, companies that continue to permit discrimina- Law Center, sounds the alarm for what corporate pushes for tion and harassment may be shooting themselves in the tort reform may mean. "You need an award significant foot. Workforce 2000, a study by the Hudson Institute for enough that very large companies will pay attention. Some- the U.S. Department of Labor, estimates that 85 percent of times smaller damage awards are looked on as fines, and the the 26 million net new American workers in this decade companies will just keep discriminating." will be women, members of minority groups, and/or Without timely resolution of lawsuits, workplace discrimi- immigrants. Companies that refuse to share power and nation claims its victims slowly and deliberately, particularly money with those considered "inferior" may soon find when the employer will stop at nothing to silence an themselves with a mediocre work force and unable to com- employee turned plaintiff/traitor. The result can be years of pete with forward-looking companies that can choose and intense frustration for the plaintiff. In 1988 Charles Koster promote from the more vast and diversified pool of talent- watched his daughter's mental and physical health deterio- ed people. rate during a protracted case against the Necessity can bring about a quantum change of mindset. bank that employed her. When presiding Judge Richard Maybe Gary Brouse, director of equality programs at the Daronco set aside the jury's $2.5 million verdict for Koster's Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility, a Manhat- daughter, the father shot and killed Daronco, then himself. tan-based consulting and investment organization, is the her- How many women will be willing to risk the years of ald of transformation. In a "Mr. Smith Goes to Exxon" sce- frustration involved in a lawsuit when they realize that nario, Brouse suggests that discrimination will be abolished judges are likely to turn large jury awards into pennies? when "the CEO has a change of heart and realizes that dis- Sixty-year-old Catherine Malarkey, an executive secretary, crimination is unconscionable. He will then make it clear was derailed from the fast track after pointing out in a that discrimination will not be tolerated." Brouse says that memo to Texaco higher-ups that executives were discrimi- executives at large companies such as Con Edison, Hoechst, nating against veteran women workers because of their and A&P have already made such about-faces for enlight- desire to have young secretaries. She fought—and won—a ened self-interest. 14_year battle with the firm, but the result was only a Fighting efforts to take the teeth out of jury awards allows $130,000 award plus legal fees. Texaco has been enjoined victims of harassment and discrimination their constitution- from retaliating against her, but Malarkey finds herself ally-guaranteed day in court. And high monetary awards threatened again by a poor performance review and is forced force corporations to realize that gender bias can be unprof- to ponder the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to itable, as well as unconscionable. • drag Texaco to court again. Watching a recent round of 2,500 layoffs at Texaco, Marlene C.Piturw is a free-lance business journalist. She Hues in Malarkey sees many of the outcasts close to the edge men- Hastings-on-Hitdson, New York.

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 f I had known I would ever be a 35-year-old woman, I would have never gotten tattooed," Marianne Diaz-Parton says, laughing. "I mean, how stu- pid, all over my hands!" Faint blue marks bruise the knuckles of Diaz-Parton, the director of prevention programs at the Los Angeles Community Youth Gang Services Project. Despite her age and her job description, Diaz-Parton is still offi- cially a gang member. "I've never been jumped out of my gang, I don't plan to, I don't want to," she says. "I don't feel being a gang member erated person. I didn't like the fact that the is the problem; I think the activity is the prob- guys held control of those gangs." lem." So, instead of joining a gang, she formed one Diaz-Parton works from a large, ancient of her own. In one year her all-female gang, office in what used to be the Los Angeles Jail. named Carnalas grew to 60 members. The girls Dressed in brown jeans and a yellow V-neck T- did a lot of hanging out together, typical of the shirt, with her long hair loose and gold chains bored, restless teens of the neighborhood. sparkling on her neck, she doesn't look like a Soon Los Compadres, a boys gang in the typical director in a social-service agency. She area, recruited them. "A lot of my home girls tells of a recent argument she had with her felt that it was a bad move to merge because supervisor, who wanted the gang workers to then the guys were going to control us," Diaz- dress more "professionally." No way, she told Parton says. But there was interest in both him. Dressing up would be a great way to tell gangs in finding boyfriends and girlfriends, and the gang members that the workers were after several "businesslike" meetings the gangs "above" them. "I don't want to be an merged into the new Los Compadres. authority figure, but to relate to the Diaz-Parton, who had never gotten into kids." serious trouble before becoming a gang mem- "You have to understand their ber, soon rose to be the #2 position in Los JMarianne world to know what's important to Compadres, a feat for a female. People looked them," says Diaz-Parton. Gang up to her. "My home girls and home boys did Diaz-Parton members want to be recognized. what I asked." She felt on top of the world. They are needy. They are often The anger she had for the people who did- knows abused, alcoholics, or lonely, the mis- n't "accept" her, she now used against them. "I fits who don't fit in, the leftover became pretty important in our schools about kids. While society rejects them, because people would fear for their life," she their gang accepts them, no matter says. "I didn't feel powerless. I was very in con- L.A. gangs what problems they have. "If people trol. What more can you control than some- think that gang members are there one's life?" is not in the because they're just assholes, that's But there was a price. A gang member's ridiculous," she insists in a low- "word" is everything and her pride must be textbooks. toned, emotionless voice. "There's a upheld. The boys in Los Compadres had more reason behind every gang member enemies and skirmishes than Carnalas had, and that's out there." the girls had to adopt the boys' gripes. They By were now part of a more dangerous game A Gang of Her Own where the losers often ended up dead. Game Stephanie At 14, Diaz-Parton was an A student over, no replay. from a two-parent family in As a top dog in her gang, Diaz-Parton soon rail Hawthorne, a Los Angeles suburb. became a wanted woman, and rival gang But she wasn't happy. She was the members sought her out to challenge, threat- only Mexican girl in her all-Anglo en, and shoot at. neighborhood, and she had been harassed for The crisis came when one of Diaz-Parton's years by other kids because of it. She was over- girlfriends was marrying a member of a rival weight. And worse, she "liked girls" but didn't gang. Diaz-Parton was allowed to attend the know what to do about it. wedding, on the condition that she didn't She considered joining a gang, but "I wasn't bring weapons or any of her own gang mem- happy with what I saw," she says. "They were bers. As the wedding reception progressed, the all male-dominated gangs, and I'm a very lib- groom got drunk.

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 25 "He started 'disrespecting' the gang I was from, insulting it comes to the problems of inner city girls. me and my home girls, insulting my home boys who Teenagers today can choose not to join a gang, but they weren't even there, and basically made an ass out of himself," can't choose not to be affected by gang life. Diaz-Parton explains. Then the groom made his near-fatal The pressures of economic problems, immigration, and mistake: He hit her in the face with a gun. racism made the streets combustible, and the harsh violence "I can't say it really hurt that much, other than my pride," and ruthlessness of today's gangs confounds those Americans she says. "But to allow that to go by without something hap- who grew up in gentler times. Today's gangs are a far cry pening would have ruined me—period—as far as gangs from the Sharks and Jets of West Side Story, who now seem were concerned." almost quaint and innocent, in spite of the tragedy that So after the reception, the young gang member drove over marred the romance of the ill-fated lovers, Tony and Maria. to the newlywed's home. First she went to the bedroom The fists, sticks, and knives of 1950s gangs have been window and told her friend, who had a one-year-old child, replaced by guns, and death is commonplace. to grab the baby and jump in the closet. The friend did so, Julia and Paula, 14-year-old ninth graders at Manual Arts without any questions. "She knew her husband was out of High School in South Central Los Angeles, spent a year in a line," Diaz-Parton says. "That's the code of the neighbor- Youth at Risk program designed to help young people stay hood: You make a mistake; you're going to pay for it." out of gangs. They live on the edge, surrounded by gangs but Diaz-Parton then walked to the front of the house and trying to avoid them because "they're dumb." "We see all knocked on the door. The groom opened it. "I really don't our friends getting shot and stuff," Julia says. "Being a gang think I was going to shoot him until he started laughing." member... that's just risking your life," Paula chimes in. She did what she "had to do" and shot him. One of his Young as they are, Julia and Paula have noticed an increase friends started running away and she shot him too. in female violence in the past five years. "I guess they see the guys do it and stuff," explains Paula, A New Life who wears huge dark blue "gangster" jeans with frayed ends. At 18, Diaz-Parton entered jail and spent almost three years Julia's silver braces gleam on white teeth as she chatters in prison on two counts of attempted murder and conspiracy nervously in spurts, with a Mexican accent, rolling up a to commit murder. When her time was served, she could magazine in her hands. Her older brother and sister have have gone back to her gang and been a VIP once again. Her both been involved in gangs. "I don't feel safe in this neigh- friends had saved a place for her, and even found her a home. borhood," Julia says. "They shot my house and I don't like A practical person, Diaz-Parton always had "her own it." This week, Julia is scheduled to have a fight with a girl mind." Her decision to never enter jail again was less a who stared at her sister the wrong way. "My sister, when she change of heart than a rebellion against the authority she fights, she goes crazy," she says. encountered there. She had no plans •when she was released, "Teenage gangs are a reflection of a teenage culture," but her probation officer told her she had to get a real job. notes Moore. "In the 1950s, females were not as aggressive." Three months after she got out of prison, a deputy sheriff They were less inclined to actively start a fight. Instead, they who knew her when she was young "put his ass on the line were often "protected" by older male gang members. "The for me" and got her a job as a gang worker. It turned out to whole ideology of protection and chivalry was going on be just what she needed. She got paid well. She got a car and with the guys," she explains. "Females were not to be put in a walkie-talkie. She could still be a powerful figure in the jeopardy." neighborhood. She was now on a different path, and that Today, about a quarter of the youth arrested in the United was cool. States each year are girls. While gang girls tend to be arrested "It made me feel just as important as I felt when I was in for "status" crimes such as running away or school delin- the gang," Diaz-Parton says of her new job. She seems even quency, as opposed to violent crimes (committed by boys, prouder now that she's risen to director. gang and non-gang, nine times for every female-committed violent crime), many studies are showing that girls are Escalating Female Violence becoming more violent. A 1992 Search Institute study of 6th "Girl gangs" have been around for decades, but they have to 12th graders in towns and cities smaller than 50,000 not been well understood. "Historically, girl-gang members found that 45 percent of young women engaged in violent have been viewed merely as sexual conveniences," says Joan behavior at least once. The FBI reports that during the Moore, author of Going Down to the Barrio, a study of Chi- 1980s, girls' arrest rates for violent crimes increased faster cano gangs. Girl gangs were traditionally "auxiliaries" of than boys' at 16.5 percent for girls and 4.5 percent for boys. men's gangs, and one study done in the 1970s found that Between 1985 and 1989, girls' arrest rates for murder and fully independent girl gangs constituted less than 10 percent non-negligent manslaughter increased 18.9 percent; for of all gangs. Instead of running their own gangs, girls were aggravated assault, 35.9 percent. considered sexual property of the boys, with a few tomboys Interestingly enough, during the period of 1968-1977, who broke the rules. female violence also soared to new heights, which gives While it's hard to separate the stereotype from the reality some researchers hope that this new female "crime wave" is (most researchers in the 50s were male, who interviewed just a passing phase. Some feel it is also the reason the media male social workers who targeted male gang members), the is so interested in female gang members at the moment. stereotypes of girls as sex toys stuck. As Meda Chesney-Lind, a professor and researcher at the "I beg your pardon; I was a toy to nobody," Diaz-Parton University of Hawaii, Manoa, writes in her paper, "Girls, exclaims, saying that cops still like to think of girls that way. Gangs, and Violence: Anatomy of a Backlash": "Those who The police attitude seems endemic of a larger myopia when tout both crime waves (now and 20 years ago) utilize a

26 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 crude form of to explain the trends ics, learn sewing, or help with charities as a way to prevent observed and, in the process, contribute to the 'backlash' delinquency. Programs haven't improved much. A national against the women's movement." study done in 1991 on the state-of-the-art violence-pre- Trends notwithstanding, many researchers feel that girls vention programs found that only three programs out of the join gangs for protection, or to learn skills to help them 51 respondents were for females. Of the three, one served escape abuse. About 12 percent of all adolescent girls, 15 potential perpetrators of violence; the other two served sur- percent of college women, and 20 percent of all adult vivors of violence. Even when programs include females, females have experienced sexual abuse and assault. For girl- their special needs are overlooked. Many gang members are gang members, the incidence appears to be even higher. pregnant or already mothers, yet basic necessities, such as "Almost a third of girls in gangs admitted to the inter- day care, are overlooked in many youth programs. viewers that they had been sexually tampered with at "Policy-makers are concerned about male adolescent home," Moore says of a study she worked on, adding that violence because, frankly, they're afraid of being attacked," this statistic doesn't even include abuse which girls might Wolf explains. A tall young black male is seen as much get from their male peers. more threatening in white society than a 15-year-old Lati- "I would suggest that the majority of girls who are com- na carrying her 10-month-old child. mitting acts of individual violence have in some way been Many programs also seem to be languishing in a huge victimized or abused," says Wolfe. (Many male perpetrators cultural gap. "They're real sorry," Julia says about the Youth of violence, such as child abusers, have also been victimized at Risk program. She and Paula joined as a way to get out as children, studies show.) of going to class, but after a while the program got boring. Gangs may be places of refuge for these girls. Chesney- They couldn't relate to the mentors at first (many of whom Lind likens girl gangs to the "consciousness-raising groups" were white) because they lived far away and couldn't speak of the 1970s. Yet many girls jump from one bad situation to Spanish. "But we started to understand that they were there another, as the increasing violence out on the streets is not for us," says Julia. "All those days we were crying, crying, much safer than violence at home. crying, about the problems that we had, the hurt... you want people to listen to you." Street-Wise Feminism The culture gap is why the Community Youth Gang Ser- Are girl-only gangs a feminist statement? "To some extent vices Project hires gang members to counsel gang members there are ways in which these women are bonding with and why Diaz-Parton is particularly suited to her job. Once each other," Leslie R. Wolfe, president of the Center for Diaz-Parton got into a position of "power" at the Project, Women Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., explains. she started a girl's Softball league. A breakthrough occurred "They are building little sisterhoods." when, after the male gang members started drinking and "They're going through their women's movement too, goofing off during the games, the girls finally told them to finally." Diaz-Parton notes. "They're starting not to accept quit it or leave. To their surprise, the boys behaved them- the male attitude toward them anymore." selves. It gave the girls a great sense of self-esteem and per- While Diaz-Parton has many regrets about her gang life, sonal empowerment. she most especially regrets that her girl gang joined the boy "They don't know that there's power in numbers," Diaz- gang. The girls found that the boys often involved them in Parton explains. "They don't know that there's a way to get petty squabbles with other gangs with whom the girls had what you want without violence; they don't know how to previously had no problems. "A lot of my home girls today register to vote." feel that joining Los Compadres was what actually Diaz-Parton feels that if kids could learn how to deal with destroyed the gang in the end; that we could have kept things pro-actively, they wouldn't resort to violence. "It's going and took care of ourselves." really hard to convince kids not to react in a violent way As one young girl-gang member said to Diaz-Parton when violence is the only thing rewarded in this society." about the boys: "If they want to party, that's cool, but they Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that don't run us." most kids in gangs are just that: kids. Still, only a few girl gangs have the guts to go it alone. Despite many sensationalized media accounts, most gangs They feel more secure having the guys there and are having are just a group of kids who like to drink and party, not a a hard time being independent. "It's always scary to break sophisticated crime syndicate. Most gang members are just out of a mold," says Diaz-Parton. "If the girls knew exactly "followers" who need the purpose, structure, and authority how the home boys talked about them when they weren't of the gang—structure that seems to missing otherwise. For there, they might have a different attitude." abused girls, in particular, the gang brings some normalcy to their lives, says Moore. A Dearth of Programs for Girls "Other than the violence, I don't think there's a lot of Unfortunately, the growth of gang violence among inner difference, between a gang and a sorority or fraternity," city girls has not yet resulted in adequate services. Diaz- Diaz-Parton says. "I think it all depends on where you fall Parton complains that services for kids are continually cut economically. Everybody has a need to be a part of some- and programs for girls are even harder to come by. She has thing, and the gangs are the most available and the most become the girls' advocate at the project, where only three glamorous thing happening right now." • out of about 50 gang workers are female. Most of the pro- grams and sports, from football to baseball, are for boys. Stephanie Brail is a free-lance writer who teaches Internet seminars In the 1950s, social workers often tried to get girl-gang with the Los Angeles Internet Group. Her email address is members to attend "charm" clinics in etiquette and cosmet- [email protected]. du. edu.

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 27 In Alice in Wonderland, the Duchess' face is not described; the artist John Tenniel takes the responsibility of rendering her. I understood his drawings to be eyewitness, on-the- scene sketches, just as I understood Alice's adventures to be Th true accounts. In these drawings, the Duchess looks cranky on her first appearance, smug on her second. She is short of nose and long of lip, wide of jaw and small of eye. Her girth is draped in a loose garment that drags on the ground. A comfortable sort of sandal peeps out below. It's the costume Ugly of a derelict, topped by a lunatic hat. But she didn't look unattractive, at least not to my young eyes. The Duchess looked—though I was astute enough not to mention it—a little like my great aunt Elsa. Duchess And compared to the Alice of the drawings, that starched child whose Mary- Janed feet stood stiffly in third position, and to the mannerly Alice of the prose, the Duchess was refreshingly discourteous. "You don't know much," she snapped at Alice when they first met. The Duchess was everything a woman wasn't supposed to be: disputatious, unmaternal, indifferent to the squalor of her kitchen, incapable of controlling her cook. On her second and last appearance, she lobbed dis- sociated aphorisms at poor bewildered Alice. It seemed as if both the chronicler and the illus- trator wanted me to dislike the Duchess. I resented the manipulation. I liked the lady. Decades later, I encountered the Duchess' predecessor. "The Ugly Duchess" hangs in the National Gallery in London. She was painted by the Flemish artist Quentin Massys in the 16th century. This earlier Duchess is fiercer than Tenniel's. You can see how the illustrator of Alice softened his subject. In Massys' work, the brow is a high hairless dome; Tenniel brings the headdress down almost to the eyes, kindly The Ugly Duchess haunts concealing the baldness. The upper lip of the me. She has haunted me since She was everything Massys Duchess is as long as a primate's—this our first encounter, when I a woman Tenniel allowed. But in the Massys painting, was seven. I was sitting with the Duchess' ears stick out like a gremlin's, her my parents on a train bound wasn't supposed neck is leathery and lined, and her flaccid for New York reading Alice in breasts are puffed up unconvincingly by a stiff Wonderland. The Duchess—a to be. cylinder of a dress. Tenniel omits these features, character in the book—was opting for a broader distortion more suitable also sitting, on a stool in her By Edith Pearlman for children. His Duchess is a mess, but not kitchen. She was in a very upsetting, whereas Massys' old lady is a fright- bad mood, holding a howling baby who would soon turn ening study of gussied-up old age—the romantic headdress into a pig—a bit of Lewis Carroll whimsy that disturbed me jammed onto the ancient forehead, the ringed fingers spoiled then and disturbs me now. A few chapters later, the Duchess by dirty nails, the heartbreakingly expectant smile on a showed up at a croquet game. She was aggressively friendly skimpy mouth. to Alice. The Duchess is "very ugly," Alice thought. Old dear! I thought, ogling the Duchess. There was still a When I looked up from the book, it was late afternoon. resemblance to Aunt Elsa. I walked out of the gallery, won- The train was crawling past an industrial Connecticut city dering if there would someday be a resemblance to me. But which, reddened by the sunset, looked complicated and I was off to meet a man for lunch and stopped thinking interesting. I learned later it was considered a blighted city, about the Duchess. At least for the afternoon. an urban disgrace. But it didn't seem ugly to me. I didn't forget her face though. And I didn't forget her The Duchess didn't seem ugly either. appellation: ugly. Is there any word a woman dreads more?

The fatigued grimace, in two versions of the Ugly Duchess: John Tenniel's drawing for Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (above) and a portrait attributed to Quentin Massys, A Grotesque Old Woman, c. 1500 (right).

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 THE OXFORD COMPANION TO WOMEN'S Cruel and silly are, by comparison, WRITING IN THE UNITED STATES compliments. "I would gladly give half Edited by CATHY N. DAVIDSON and the wit with which I am credited for LINDA WAGNER-MARTIN half the beauty you possess," wrote Madame de Stael to Madame "An indispensable research tool for Americanists and feminist Recamier. "I am so plain," sighed Jane scholars" —Elaine Showalter. "First-rate as a reference text and is Eyre. "A used-up article," Harriet a book to browse, incredibly well informed and readable at the Beecher Stowe wrote of herself, same time"—Jane Tompkins. "Comprehensive, well-written, and "never much to look at." And after a invaluable... how did I live without it?"—Rita Mae Brown. "A new arrangement of her hair, George veritable pifiata of scholarly treats...not only authoritative and up Eliot complained: "Uglier than ever." to date, but full of surprising bonuses in the form of compact mini-essays on everything from Backlash to Ranting, from The Massys Ugly Duchess, hanging Grandmothers to Rape"—. "We have here the around my mind, began to symbolize indispensable guide to the history, accomplishments, themes and women's worries about their looks, theories of women's writings in the United States, from colonial especially their worries when no beginnings to the present. Every entry is a goldmine of insight longer young and nubile. She began to and information"—Annette Kolodny. $45.00, 928 pp represent the fruitless effort to beautify and the mockery it invites. I began to wonder whether anyone in 16th-cen- WOMEN IN THE CLASSICAL WORLD tury Flanders had responded to the ELAINE FANTHAM, HELENE PEET FOLEY, NATALIE simper of this willful old flirt. BOYMEL KAMPEN, SARAH B. POMEROY, and I discovered that the Ugly Duchess H.A. SHAPIRO never lived in Flanders. She never lived "Spanning a thousand years of ancient history, this path-breaking in any country other than the imagina- study of women in classical antiquity sets a new and long-awaited tion. She had no physical existence. standard in the field for its range and breadth of vision, its skillful She wasn't even invented by Quentin blend of texts and artistic monuments of every sort, and its Massys. She was created by Leonardo remarkably intelligent presentation and commentary. The expert da Vinci in a drawing that purportedly collaborators have shaped a volume that is informed throughout was an anonymous study of the by the latest scholarship of women in Greece and Rome but grotesque. Grotesque!—worse even makes its rich and fascinating array of material accessible to any than ugly. Then came the Massys paint- and all readers. A monumental and enduring achievement" ing, then an engraving by the Bohemi- —Froma I. Zeitlin, Charles Ewing Professor of Greek Language an etcher Wenceslaus Hollar, and finally and Literature, Princeton University. "An exciting and invaluable the drawings ofJoh n Tenniel. synthesis of visual and literary materials, a triumph, in sum, of However unreal, my Duchess had a scholarship and analysis"—Booklist. $35.00, 430 pp. significant career as an artist's model, as painter copied drawing and GODDESS engraver copied painting. I still see her Myths of the Female Divine around. I see the determination in the DAVID LEEMING and JAKE PAGE Massys portrait on game old ladies "Based on thorough scholarship and written with enviable elan, who shrug off the granny uniforms this book retells the myths of the ancient worship of female pro- society would have them wear, and go creativity with clarity and passion"—Paul Bohannan. This gaudy instead. I see the fatigued gri- enchanting and powerful collection brings together 75 tales, leg- mace of the Duchess in the Tenniel ends, and folk beliefs, in a unique biography of the Goddess, from kitchen on harried women on buses prehistory to the present. $22.00, 240 pp. and trains, who hold squalling chil- dren on their laps. And the overeager grin that the Duchess gave Alice at the THE OXFORD BOOK OF MODERN WOMEN'S croquet game shows up on unglam- STORIES orous women at parties who refuse to Edited by PATRICIA CRAIG be ignored, talk a little too much, and, if left standing alone, look not angry Here is a sweeping anthology of women's writing in the 20th or surprised, but only a bit underap- century, featuring stories by over forty contributors, including preciated. Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather, Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, Mary McCarthy, Muriel Spark, Flannery But then we Duchesses straighten O'Connor, Cynthia Ozick, Margaret Atwood, Fay Weldon, our backs, check our nails, remember Alice Munro, and Amy Tan. $25.00, 610 pp. to smile, and soldier on. •

Edith Pearlman, a short story writer and At better bookstores. To charge, 1-800-451-7556 (M-F, 9-5 EST) essayist, has received two O. Henry prizes, II X I II I! II UNIVERSITY PRESS two PEN awards, and two citations from Best American Short Stories.

30 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 Better to live alone; with afoot there id no companionship.' The Pali Canon (sacred scriptures of Theravada Buddhists), c. 500-250 B.C.

Americans are marrying less, that a newly single status divorcing more, and forming reduces invitations from mar- households of one at a great ried friends, but most eventually rate. Yet it's pairs and families find new connections with who dominate the popular and those also on their own. political culture, keeping the The United States is the first huge population of live-alones ONE society rich enough to produce off the screen of our national enough housing and income to vision. "Politicians talk inces- enable so many people to live santly about families and 'family by themselves. The decision by values,'" notes a black woman, so many people to live alone 42, who lives alone. "Aren't I a has profound implications for citizen, too?" BY the nation as a whole. Single More than 24 million Ameri- people may need more health cans—one out of four adults— services if they are hospitalized live alone. Over 15 million of for even a minor problem. And them are women (who com- as the population ages, it's prob- prise 75% of all people over 45 ably true that singles will who live alone). Individuals ONE require a group home situation move in and out of the single earlier than couples living population as couples are Single by choice and chance together, especially if they are formed and broken, as children hit with a chronic illness. are born, grow up, and move By Bryna Taubman And the future is not that far out, and as mates die. But the percentage of single American off. Although in the movies singles living on their own are households keeps increasing. usually pictured as twenty something, in real life most of them Negative stereotypes of the person living alone persist, are 35-plus. They are the ones earning enough money to especially where women are concerned: the elderly widow, afford the solitary life. Younger singles usually share with divorcee, or empty-nesting single mom, pining away in a parents, lovers, or friends. large, echoing house or a tiny, cramped apartment. But the This mostly middle-aged and middle-class group is a new truth is—while some people want to change their status, phenomenon, and it is everywhere. In 1993, one-third of all growing numbers are choosing to stay single. first-time home buyers were single, according to a study done by Chicago Title and Trust. Singles bought homes in Living Alone and Loving It the suburbs, condos in urban centers, and vacation houses in "I have no intention of being part of a couple again," says resort areas. Nancy Elder, a management consultant in the Midwest. Her Although the popular culture doesn't seem to notice these feelings are echoed around the country, by men and women statistics much, business is beginning to recognize a market. who have tried the traditional route and found it didn't Think of soups for one and single-serving frozen foods. work for them. Much of the growth of health clubs can be attributed to the "I like living alone. I like not living with someone I don't single person's need for a place to go after work that doesn't want to be living with an incredible amount," agrees Helen include drinking. So can the growing number of coffee bars. Weingarten who lives in a college town in Michigan. And the popularity of salad bars suggests a population that Actually, everyone contacted for this article claimed they can't use up a head of lettuce before it turns brown. were the wrong person to talk to; they were much too busy to fit the loneliness stereotype. Can't Get No Respect "When I get to go home alone early, it's like a gift that I Yet, with the exception of some beer and fast-food ads, sin- give myself. I get in bed, watch television, pig out, catch up gle adults are left out of the national image. Vacations are on all the papers and magazines I haven't read...That's my advertised for couples or families. Financial planning assumes gift for the evening," says Barbara Bode, who administers a a pair at least. Car-buying decisions are a family affair. The non-profit organization in Washington, D.C. "family values" debates suggest an assumed amorality from Like many singles, Bode has a full social calendar unaffect- anyone not living with blood relatives. ed by her lack of a permanent partner. Many women report When singles are portrayed in movies or TV, it is always

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 31 with the assumption they will end as half of a pair. In real to do with couples, including gay and lesbian couples. Pairs life, many people who reached middle age alone are choos- have more cachet than a single anything," says Jeff Mortimer, ing to stay that way. In this age of AIDS, some have opted an editor at the University of Michigan who claims to own for celibacy. Some have found interests beyond the social a button reading: "Stop me before I marry again." scene. Others continue to search for romance, but insist it "The deck is stacked against the single person, especially will never again be a live-in relationship. the single middle-aged person, not just legally and not just Lily Rivlin, a New York filmmaker, has started a support economically, but culturally," Mortimer finds. "The message group for women who are not only single, but also childless. that comes across is that living alone can't possibly be some- "If you don't have children, you don't count in our society," thing that a person can freely choose, or enjoy." she argues. Rivlin and others believe the male-dominated cul- ture is threatened by women who don't fit the standard mold. I Really Vant to Be Alone "They don't know how to deal with us, so we're just dis- Many of those who live alone identified with a retired counted," she says, pointing out that most men really don't woman who asked advice columnist Dear Abby for a polite- want an equal partner. Rivlin would like to see singles, par- ly worded refusal for holiday invitations. Friends, neighbors, ticularly women, organize as a political pressure group. That and former co-workers insisted she spend Christmas, way the women would feel better about themselves and the Thanksgiving, and other holidays with their relatives. She power structure would have to acknowledge their existence. preferred to eat alone in a restaurant or practice cooking a "All the icons and archetypes we're presented with have gourmet dish for herself to "pretending to have a good time

.52 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 in a house full of strangers." 70 cents for every dollar a man made. Retirement plans for Another recalled how liberated she felt couples may include two pensions and two government when she decided to forego a fish dinner with others checks, but the retired single makes do with one of each, attending a meeting in San Francisco. Instead, she took her- often calculated on a lower base pay. The Older Women's self to a Greek restaurant on a Saturday night and had a League's study shows that minority women are even more wonderful time on her own. likely than whites to be alone and poor as they age. Privately, as the number of people living alone has mush- A study by The Employee Benefit Research Institute in roomed, attitudes have changed. Fifty years ago, Garbo 1993 had even more alarming predictions for women on renounced Hollywood and shocked the world with her their own. Three-fourths of the elderly poor are women. desire for solitude. Today, Half of the women over 65 almost everyone has an aunt, are widows. (One happy rea- uncle, sibling, or parent who PERSONS LIVING ALONE BY ACE AND SEX: 1993, 197O son for more older women: lives alone, lessening the According to several studies, (PERCENT OF TOTAL POPULATION) believability of stories about men who live alone die at an age 1993 197O weird loners. women men women imen earlier age than those living "There are a million kind 15 to 24 3 4 1 2 with a wife or caregiver, but of places you can go as a sin- 25 to 34 7 11 3 4 women who live alone sur- gle person," insists Helen vive longer than their con- Weingarten. In larger cities, 35 to 44 6 10 3 4 nubial sisters.) the choice is even more 45 to 54 11 7 5 Single mothers and dis- readily accepted, although 55 to 64 18 10 17 7 placed homemakers (women some women have com- whose primary occupation plained about the problems 65 to 74 32 13 32 11 had been caring for a family of social events associated 75 and over 52 20 37 19 and who failed to find full- with work. One woman '1970 is shown for the population 14 years and older. time employment after a who hates to ask male Source US Census Bureau. "Marital Status and Living Arrangements: March 1993." divorce or death), are four friends to be her escort times more likely to be liv- reported that when she shows up alone at such functions, "I ing below the poverty line during their working years. There have been the absolutely only single person there." have been no published studies of how childless singles do in the general economy. All Is Not Rosy Many singles are aware of the problematic future and are Even though many of these middle-aged singles live alone considering some kind of communal arrangement with by choice, there are problems. Almost everyone mentions the friends. In Ann Arbor, Michigan a group of single women annoyance of everyone assuming that they are part of a pair. are thinking about building a house together—each person As one woman who lives in a town without public trans- would have a separate apartment, with a shared communal portation pointed out, even taking her car in for repairs can living room and kitchen. In Washington, D.C., a group of be a hassle. It's assumed there is a partner to provide trans- friends are talking about buying themselves a retirement portation until the car is ready. And, she wondered, how can home in Costa Rica. In New York City, a group of single one person hang a curtain rod across a six-foot window? women writers discuss buying a weekly newspaper in New One person does not live half as cheaply as two. Real England. estate taxes are the same no matter how many people live in Still, those are individual solutions to a national problem. a house. So are maintenance costs. And car repair bills. One As more and more singles move into retirement and the pos- person may use a bit less electricity or gas than two, but a sibility of serious illness, the country will have to take notice woman on her own may have to hire help to do chores and of them. Perhaps they will begin funding their own political- make repairs. Of the 7.6 million single homeowners 65 and action committees and send lobbyists to Congress. Or the over, six million (79%) are women. single members of Congress will establish a Singles Caucus. Jeff Mortimer cites disadvantages singles face in taxes, At the very least, there should be a concerted effort to get insurance, and even getting a loan. He also remembered los- the national planning for health insurance, retirement, home ing a job to a married man who was much less qualified for care, and other problems to reflect more directly the reality the position than he was. of the American population. Not everyone has live-in care- Vacation planning is often mentioned by singles as evi- givers. Not everyone can expect family members to be avail- dence of their invisibility. One woman decided against a able for long-term home nursing. Not everyone spends their cruise when she learned how much more it would cost for a final years in the warm embrace of a long marriage and lov- single cabin. Hotels also charge more for one person. And ing family. Not everyone has relatives nearby for holiday vis- its or even basic shopping. Millions of people will be relying most packages assume travelers are part of a pair. In larger on "the kindness of strangers" during the years when they cities, the demand has produced some travel agencies that are least able to fend for themselves. • specialize in trips for people on their own. Financial Shock at Retirement Journalist Bryna Taubman first explored the subject of the singles Women who have worked all their lives often have their population in a series for the New York Post in 1969. She is co- own pension, social security, and IRAs. But they have author of How to Fall in Love and Land on Your Feet, due out earned their share in an economy that paid women less than in Spring by St. Martin's Press.

33 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 I Fresh perspectives on breast exams, "natural" vs. medication-assisted childbirth, and how doctors can regain the trust of American women are part of our special women's health section.

Floii'ery view of reproduction, from "Tabulae Anatotnicae" by Casserius, Venice, 1627 Breast Intentions Enlightening medical students about the female body. BY JEANNETTE BATZ

"Basically, you'll learn how breast examinations should be done, then you'll teach and evaluate the medical students," Dr. Tuteur tells me. I nod intelligently and recross my legs, try- ing to look astute. "They used to use prostitutes for this," he adds. • • • That evening I mention the part- time job casually on the phone to my mother. "You have to let them examine you naked?" blurts my mother, who won't examine her own breast alone in the dark. "Yeah," I reply, adding lightly that they used to use prostitutes. "Why are you doing this?" she asks, bewildered. "Because it pays $22 an hour," I answered. • • * "Take off everything but your underpants, put that gown on, grab a sheet, and wait," one of the other

34 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 "clinical subjects" tells me. I make a little pile, stuffing my this. So many things we cannot tell: when we are pleased stocking into my skirt and tucking my bra under my blouse. inappropriately; when we are not pleased but wish we were; A medical student walks into the room without knocking, when we'd rather talk, and use our souls for friction. and a chorus of female voices drives him back. Door closed, In the "second position" I lean forward, arms again akim- we chuckle at the ironies of protocol. bo, an aproned mother whose kids are late for dinner. "Chin Ten minutes later the students file in, smelling nervous. up," he tells me (drawing strength from my vulnerability). The genders have been split, and my schedule has managed He cups the bottom of my right breast in his hand and to draw me to the males. The professor does a demonstra- compresses the flesh with his left hand, moving his fingers tion, then suggests that each student find a clinical subject awkwardly across the top. "Press against the chest wall," I and practice. Our role is to teach, remind, correct—and direct him, because tumors can grow there. And because 1 make them comfortable with our bodies. want to regain some power. A lanky, sweet-faced lad approaches me immediately. I When he does as I say, I feel something shift inside me. glance around, absurdly relieved to be, promlike, selected. Never again will I perch cold and clammy on the edge of a On the center examining table sits an obese woman in her metal table, clutching a tissue-paper bolero jacket closed, sixties, her long gray hair straggling over pendulous breasts. afraid to get down and walk around in case the Doctor Students line the side of the room waiting their turn, but it comes in. Never again will I do as the Doctor bids without takes a nod from the professor before one of them question. approaches her. Once upon a time, the Doctor didn't know. I feel a stabbing sympathy, then pure feminist rage. But the In the "third position" I lie down, my hips rolled away rage is tainted by aesthetic revulsion. I, too, judge her body from young Kirkpatrick, my arm over my head in a position ugly, as I have my own, cringing at my breasts' shapeless nip- that feels like sexual abandon but isn't. He makes his rings ples and downward slope. Their image crops up in National around the rosy one final time, his touch growing more sure. Geographic—not Penthouse. I wonder if the young men will "Move the nipple aside," I tell him. "There's a hollow space be disappointed, then grit my teeth.They must learn to love underneath." the flesh itself, not its form. When he checks his anatomy text, he no doubt will find a Unaware of these musings, my first medical student is structural reason. For me, it's the hollow created when men introducing himself as Student Doctor Kirkpatrick. He and babies suckle; one of the dark chasms Jung calls women's offers me an ice-cold, clammy hand, then catches himself mystery. We crave connection: Is it because we feel our own and bolts to the sink: Always wash your hand in front of the emptiness? Or because we have room for the world? patient before beginning the examination. He thinks he is finished."Wha t about the axillary nodes?" Clean and innocent, he begins, with a halting explanation, I quiz. "Oh yeah," he blurts. "I'm sorry." (Later I ask another the visual inspection. I put my hands at my waist and press clinical subject how long this innocence will last and she in, a peasant woman angry at her man. He tells me he is grins: "Through December. By January they come in looking for "orange-peeling or lesions, any abnormalities." I brusque as God.") tell him a woman's breasts are always abnormal: too saggy or pointed, too shallow or floppy. At 15, we crossed our hearts xillaries are tough: You have to support the with wire and padding while the boys jacked off across woman's arm on your own, minuet style, and glossy perfect centerfolds. convince her to relax while you locate the under- Student Doctor Kirkpatrick is in no mood for social com- arm cavity and press up into its bundle of nerves. mentary. His hands shaking, he begins the "palpation." In He doesn't want to hurt me; I tell him to go first position, my hands folded on top of my head, all I can ahead, just as I've told every man I ever loved. think is: Did I shave my underarms this morning? Has pow- And sure enough I feel invaded, turned inside der caked in the cuts and creases? He extends a cold shaking Aout. He probes and presses and finds nothing; I am still hand towards my body, forgetting the "position of function" whole, satisfied by this treeful of knowledge. Dr.Tuteur stressed in the lecture. Women are always more whole, they say; we are "ground- "Begin in the 'tail' of the breast," I tell him, wondering ed." Heavier with water, moist with the world's fluids. how medicine arrived at such a satanic description. I am Completed and self-sufficient because our power lies inside nervous too. He presses his fingers down against my skin, us. I am a thousand women—flirt, hausfrau, Venus, blue- rotating lightly. "Press harder," I tell him, drawing strength— stocking—yet I do feel placid, justified by a womb I may as women do—from his hesitation. never fill. Does the young Kirkpatrick sense this? Can I He presses, rotates, begins to circle my breast. "Wh-what's convince him? that?" "Nothing," I reassure him. "Just fibrous tissue." He's The next student introduces himself and begins the looking for lumps, hard fixed masses with poison inside, not inspection. I now realize that each will have his own attitude milk or human kindness. toward my body. The short thickly built guy thinks my body He takes my nipple between his fingers and squeezes gen- is his laboratory; the former musician, intense as Hamlet, tly, glancing up to see if he's hurt me. Instead I feel a thrill of feels his way into its rhythms. The older redhead is pleasure deep between my legs. Of course I cannot tell him intrigued—"The body is an amazing machine," he says,

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 reminding me of my first Ob/Gyn, who talked about i ogs, takes nothing for granted, overlaps its own circles, stops short wheels, and operations until I left screaming silently, hysteri- of center. cal, womb-panicked by his imposition of cold structure. I can teach them what I'm told: the steps of the exam, the Some of the students show an acolyte's reverence, a sense danger of inappropriate touch, the consummate need for of my skin as envelope, and life beating warm beneath it. courtesy and order. But how do I teach them that my body Others want a map, a compass; certitudes of definition and has a life of its own? That together, my body and I harden, diagnosis. A few stay humble, and they are my favorites. swell, fall, soften, give suck—and none of that can be decon- Because it is humility I am learning myself, in this clinical structed or controlled. Read the textbook, but never forget: act of . I ease into routine, dropping my gown The female body is as mysterious as the soul. readily for each new student, but what replaces embarrass- And as shameless. • ment is neither arrogance nor indifference. This is my body, narrow-shouldered, fair-skinned, with Jeannette Batz is an award-winning journalist who writes about full, pale-nippled breasts and arms freckled darker beside feminist and social issues for The Riverfront Times, a progressive them. Not one of these clinicians can reduce this body to weekly in St. Louis. She participated in the clinical program at certainty; what lies beneath sight is closer to spirit than flesh. Washington University School of Medicine last year, while finishing Like post-modern faith, it requires a gentle probing that her doctorate in American studies.

ure doubled from 25% in 1987. Why are we so caught up in the trend? If all things come in cycles, then our culture is immersed Natural in a growing moralism when it comes to motherhood and, as a by-product, childbirth. Having proven that we can be independent, high functioning, high earning, and aerobically fit, women are also striving, once again, to excel at mother- Childbirth: hood—beginning with our marvelous feats of endurance in the delivery room. How many other long, arduous proce- dures do people brag about surviving without the benefit of modern medicine? Has anyone ever heard of "natural open- From Option heart surgery"? How about a "natural vasectomy"? While avoiding drugs to minimize the risk to one's baby is the underlying aim of natural childbirth, conquering the process has, inadvertently, become a status symbol. Having a to Orthodoxy child, "naturally," is considered a badge of honor among some mothers; perhaps this is similar to surviving a bullet among men who've been to war. The more militant portray BY NICOLE BOKAT triumphant veterans of childbirth battles in grandiose terms, conjuring up images of Mother Teresa, Joan of Arc, or the Mighty Lioness of the Jungle. But, even for the more main- "I did it!" a beaming Elizabeth announced to our mother's stream, "natural childbirth" has become a catch phrase; one group."Chloe was born naturally''The other women clus- that appeals to the "good mother" in us. What has been lost tered around mother and baby, nodding in approval that is the message of the women's movement: Every woman Elizabeth had passed the childbirth test with flying colors. should be free to make her own choices about pregnancy Once again, a feeling of alienation crept over me. Pregnant and motherhood without being judged. with my second child, I planned on requesting anesthetics Yet, too many pregnancy books, peers, and care providers the moment my labor pain got too intense. insist that if we fail at natural childbirth, we are settling for Unlike me, many women today strive to have natural an inferior experience or, worse, exposing our infants to childbirth. Even Maria Maples "had no anesthetics," Donald potential risks. Tracy Hotchner's Pregnancy and Childbirth is Trump bragged to The New York Times. The most popular representative of a slew of guides for expectant mothers. way of achieving this goal is through Lamaze training; to The author advises women to try and avoid medication, distract the laboring mother by focusing her attention on warning that any drug might harm the baby.Yet, in the next complicated breathing techniques. According to a 1992 arti- breath she explains that maternal anxiety—a reaction to pain cle in Forbes magazine, half of the parents of the four million and fear—can adversely affect labor. Enjoying every minute babies born in 1991 went through Lamaze training. This fig- of your labor is thus the only guilt-free choice.

36 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 We seem to have regressed having people attend "improvised" mightily from the mid-nineteenth productions)? Despite our courageous century, when the anesthetic use of performances, our choices do not chloroform was discovered and always reflect what's best for mother endorsed by Queen Victoria, who and child. One woman I know roman- had nine children, despite the cler- ticized the idea of a home birth, free gy's protestation that women need- of medical intervention. An emergency ed to suffer in childbirth to atone complication—coupled with the dis- for Eve's sin. As Jessica Mitford tance to the hospital—turned her describes in her wonderful book experience into a nightmare. Sadly, she The American Way of Birth, for the is now unable to have more children. next 80 years, the fashion in child- Women who grow nostalgic about the birth—for those who could afford less intrusive, less technological envi- it—became avoidance of pain ronment of yesteryear seem to forget through anesthetics. Then, in the how often their foremothers died 1930's Grantly Dick-Read, the "naturally" in childbirth. author of Childbirth Without Fear, and later Frederick Lamaze, Woodcut on vellum, Frankfurt, c. 1580 y own reservations not- attempted to steer women away withstanding, I finally from the use of much coveted succumbed to the dictum anesthetics. Dick-Read believed that women's anxiety cre- that labor was a crucial ates the pain of childbirth. Lamaze acknowledged that the test of my maternity. Un- process was painful, but insisted that women themselves fortunately, my first son's could control the degree to which they felt that pain. Both birth turned out to be men advocated the "conditioning" of women through unnaturally brutal. During the pushing stage, he lodged breathing based on Pavlov's experiments with dogs. Once himself on my spine, refused to budge, and caused me again, women were held to ridiculous standards of perfec- unbearable distress. Treating my labor like a difficult sporting tion while simultaneously viewed as victims of their own event, my obstetrician shrugged and exited "to get a Snick- imagination and fears. Today, those who most ardently advo- ers bar" when—after three hours of pushing—I received an cate natural childbirth have merely politicized women's suf- epidural. As I was leaving the hospital, I spoke to a top fering for a new purpose: the health of the baby. In doing so, administrator who shook her head at my story. "It was much they have embraced the age-old image that true femininity more civilized in my day," she said. "They put you out, and, requires martyrdom. when you woke up, you had your baby." With my first son, my doctor assumed that my husband This second time around, I've already informed my new and I were in sync with the times; it was understood that I doctor that I harbor no fantasies of winning the delivery would attempt natural childbirth and then breast-feed our room medal of honor. Since women's childbirth experiences baby for the acceptable six months to one year period. We range from exhilarating to agonizing, we should be encour- listened to the rhetoric, felt guilty for any doubts we har- aged and supported to understand both our options and bored, and signed up for Lamaze. In the class, the nurse their limits in what is, finally, a dive into unknown waters. chided women who planned, in advance, to have epidurals. Each of us should balance the needs of our infants with our She cheerfully reassured us that we could "push our way to own mental and physical health. Planning and daydreaming victory," since we were ''made for having babies." Having should center on the baby, not the birthing event. secretly hoped for a loophole that would require my using I've flatly rejected all rhetoric that exalts the advantages of painkillers, I suddenly questioned whether or not my cow- breathing like a hyena. I'm ignoring the cheerleading tactics ardice pointed to a maternal deficit in me. of those in the medical and motherhood community who Then came the endless stories of successful drug-free make women, like me, feel inadequate because of discomfort births from friends and acquaintances. Alice allowed her and "natural" fear about childbirth. I believe that it's time for older child into the birthing room until the final hour, then, the childbirth industry to stop making women feel guilty for valiantly, gave birth in a shower! Jane rocked on all fours in not blindly embracing the latest childbirth craze. The pain of the final stages of labor. Two of my neighbors popped out childbirth needs to be depoliticized and viewed exclusively sons en route to maternity centers, then bragged about the for what it is: suffering. Finally the myth of the perfect versus births as if they were stellar achievements rather than lucky the malicious mother must come to rest, beginning in the accidents of nature. labor room. After all, our ultimate aim is to be mothers, not Along with my admiration for these audacious sisters, I heroes or symbols. What could be more natural than that? • couldn't help but wonder: What's next in this "Can you top this" atmosphere? Giving birth in the workplace? While Nicole Bokat has a doctorate in English and teaches at the New jumping out of a plane? Birthing theaters (selling tickets and School for Social Research in NewYork City.

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 Can Separate Be Equal in Women's Health? The case for creating a one-stop service for women patients.

ew ideas for improving women's health care have been in the air since the highly publicized 1990 U.S. General Accounting Office study which noted how infrequently women are includ- ed in clinical trials of new medicines. The most ambitious and comprehensive reform program aired to date is the campaign to create a medical speciality in women's health. To find out how changes in the academy might affecNt women's experiences in the doctor's office, ON THE ISSUES editor Ronni Sandroff talked to Eileen M. Hoffman, M.D., co-founder of The Women's Health Project, an organization dedicated to educating the public and professionals about women's health as a medical specialty. Dr. Hoffman, clinical assistant professor of medicine at School of Medicine, has a private practice in internal medicine in New York City, and has published numerous papers and given many presentations on this subject.

OTI: At a time when medicine is being criticized for nal pain must often visit two physicians. Each examines being overspecialized, why do you think we need a new her in part and then sends her to the other. There is no specialty in women's health? continuity of thought or continuity of care. And the social and emotional factors that can affect abdominal EILEEN HOFFMAN: Women today receive very symptoms—such as a history of incest, domestic violence fragmented medical care. When I began to treat my own —are often completely ignored. When we talk about women patients, I found that many of them had gone having a specialty, we refer to training primary care from doctor to doctor with their symptoms. They didn't providers in the comprehensive care of women, not train- receive the needed treatment because each doctor viewed ing specialists. them as a collection of the body parts relevant to a par- ticular specialty, not as a whole person. OTI: So the problem is that women's reproductive prob- Let's look at the evaluation of abdominal pain, for lems are isolated from other health issues? example. Gynecologists deal with the pelvis; internists with the abdomen. But in women's bodies, there is no EILEEN HOFFMAN: The fact that gynecology clear anatomical distinction between the abdomen and grew up as our nation's women's health specialty made the pelvis. This is one continuous cavity. The intestines sense a hundred years ago, when most women's health pass through the pelvis and can form tracts into the vagi- needs were, in fact, gynecological. Many women died na. Endometrial tissue can migrate up to the diaphragm during childbirth; for many others childbirth caused and cause pleuratic Pung] pain.Yet because medical spe- major lifetime disabilities, such as tears between the vagi- cialists divide women's health, the woman with abdomi- na and the bladder, resulting in incontinence, or prolapsed

38 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 uterus that made walking and sitting very painful. Other copoeia of cardiac active drugs. If we are going to be women's health was ravished by untreated venereal dis- using estrogen to treat heart disease, we need to train ease which caused chronic pelvic inflammatory disease. doctors to know how our ovarian hormones interact Maybe this was what the ancient Greek physician Hip- with our organ systems. pocrates was referring to with his famous aphorism: "What is woman? Disease!" OTI: There's a fear that separate will never be equal, that The result was that a surgical specialty, gynecology, dividing female from male medicine will ghettoize took over the responsibility of caring for women. And women's health and lead to even less adequate treatment. the rest of medicine was basically let off the hook about thinking about women. Except in the area of reproduc- EILEEN HOFFMAN: Women's health is aleady tion, research findings with men were assumed to be "ghettoized"—to a surgical specialty focusing only on transferable to women. Differences in pathophysiology reproductive health. Even early feminist efforts to between the sexes were considered female deviations improve women's health care did not break out of that from male norms. This kept many of the legitimate health concept. concerns of women invisible. When Our Bodies, Ourselves was originally published in Today, women are no longer leading mainly reproduc- 1969, the challenged the power rela- tive lives. In fact, reproduction may never enter the lives tions between women patients and male physicians. But it of many women. For most of us, it is just one aspect of retained the assumption that reproductive health could be our lives. We are more than just breasts and a pelvis. equated with women's health. This narrow focus did Women have hearts, bone, brains, and immune systems. nothing to challenge women's relative exclusion from the We are living equal lives to men in terms of athletics, non-reproductive aspects of medicine. education, and professional activities, but our medical and The exclusion has been almost comical. For example, it social institutions haven't yet caught up with that fact. was long known that premenopausal women were rela- tively immune from coronary artery disease. But this OTI: Won't creating a women's health specialty further information was not used to treat heart disease in "genitalize" medicine, by focusing on our differences women—although it is the number one cause of female from men? death. Instead, in the heyday of heart-attack hysteria, estrogen was given to men! EILEEN HOFFMAN: I see just the opposite. Femi- In the last four years we have seen dramatic change in nists often get nervous when women are separated out our concept of women's health. The Women's Congres- because our differences have all too frequently been held sional Caucus spurred the federal General Accounting against us. But the push for equality or gender neutrality Office to study the issue, and in 1990 it released a ground has not served women well in medicine. We need to breaking report criticizing the National Institutes of move to an appreciation of the fact that women and men Health for their failure to include women adequately in are different; to recognize these differences respectfully. clinical trials. This one statement of fact, at this particular There is no "gender neutral" human being we can time in history, raised to new levels the nation's con- study. So, in fact, up until very recently, clinical and ani- sciousness about women's health. It occurred within a mal studies basically examined men and ignored women. cultural climate ready to receive it—a climate poised to It was a simpler approach, because studies weren't inter- respond to women's demands for inclusion. This time fered with by women's menstrual cycles or pregnancies. women will not resort to alternatives outside mainstream Gender neutrality has kept women invisible. medicine. Instead they, and their male allies, intend to Today physicians prescribe drugs to women that have change the system to meet the legitimate needs of only been studied in men. We perform surgical proce- women. dures with tools designed for the larger male body. We I believe that creating a place within the hierarchy of make interpretations about normal emotional develop- medicine devoted to the comprehensive care of women ment and psychiatric illness based on studies of men. from a woman-defined perspective is the only way to We have not only a fragmented delivery system; we assure that it will not be marginalized and that every have a fragmented data base from which doctors are medical student receives training in women's health. trained. A case in point: we're now sophisticated enough to understand that the sex steroids, most notably estrogen, OTI: Do we need a specialty in men's health, too? do a whole lot more than affect reproductive function. Estrogen acts on the uterus to produce a baby, but it also EILEEN HOFFMAN: No. We're already concentrat- interacts with every single one of our organs, be it the ing most of our efforts on male medicine. heart, the bones, the skin, the immune system, or the When pediatrics was developing as a specialty, many brain—whether or not a woman ever becomes pregnant. people argued that it was unnecessary. In fact, I'd like to Yet only gynecologists study ovarian endocrinology. see a specialty in women's health modeled after pedi- Today estrogen has entered into the internists' pharma- atrics, with its emphasis on the whole child. Pediatrics has

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 39 set a precedent for taking social cBnglFinto accou and "too frequent" utilization of health services. Male when you are concerned about thPrcealth or illness aggression would become a leading psychiatric diagnosis the child. A pediatrician often looks at how a child func- and millions of dollars would be spent researching the tions in the family, in its peer group, in the schools, with causes and treatments of this life threatening and totally law enforcement, as a way of judging health or illness. preventable disorder. And pediatricians advocate on behalf of children when Many of the most crucial women's health concerns they are not functioning well in those settings. Maybe reside outside the traditional biomedical model. Poverty that's why we've done a little better job of dealing with and violence disproportionate affect women. Societal child abuse than domestic violence. concepts of sexuality, physical appearance, self-esteem, and body image produce a whole array of problems that OTI: How do you see the "social context" applying to are not recognized by the current medical system. women's health? Most physicians are unprepared to diagnose and treat emotional disorders. Yet approximately 20% of all patients EILEEN HOFFMAN: I often feel that if I didn't visiting primary care physicians suffer with well-defined take the time to really understand my women patients' mental disorders; the number rises to 40% if minor disor- backgrounds and personal histories, that I would be mis- ders are included. diagnosing and mistreating them most of the time. The Women's normal life transitions, as well as such serious health status of women is intimately connected to their emotional problems as eating disorders, chemical depen- political and economic subordination. dency, depression, anxiety, childhood sexual abuse, rape, It is when physicians focus on the whole person within domestic violence, and their sequelae, are poorly concep- the context of their life that real strides in understanding tualized within traditional medical school and postgradu- health and coping with illness occur. If medicine had ate curricula. Physicians rarely diagnose and appropriately always included women on par with men, violence treat these common problems in women leading to resid- would have long ago been identified as a problem of epi- ual and unnecessary disability. demic proportion. It would be understood as the primary etiology of disturbances we now categorize as multiple OTI: You often read that women are the main users of the personality disorder, borderline personality, eating disor- health-care system and account for many more doctor ders, substance abuse, somatization, chronic pelvic pain, and hospital visits than men. Some commentators have cited this as proof that the system serves women well. EILEEN HOFFMAN: It is curious to me that women keep coming, when the number one complaint that women have about their doctors is that they feel unheard and unseen. One reason is that women are trained to use the health-care system at an early age for menstrual prob- lems, contraception, childbirth, routine pap screenings, and so on. Another reason is that the medical environment may be one of the only places women can focus energy on themselves, instead of taking care of others. Another possible reason for women's so-called overuse of the system is that patients continue to seek satisfaction. The Commonwealth Fund's Commission on Women's Health did a survey last year which showed that 41% of women changed physicians within the last year, and that by and large the major reason was that the women felt there was poor communication. Twenty-five percent report "being talked down to" by their doctors. Another 17% said they were told their symptoms were "all in their head." The health-care system is not set up to meet women's interests and needs to make decisions contextually and collaboratively. Our personal medical decisions often have large effects on the other people in our lives. This is not fully understood in the health-care system. Many male Engraving of a birth scene, Basel, Switzerland, 1500 doctors may be interested in boiling everything down

40 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 into its essence: Making a diagnosis, writing a prescription and feeling that he has completed his business. But this does not always fill women's needs. Appropriate doctor/patient com- munication is not just a nice frill. Studies have shown that high blood pressure and diabetes are better con- trolled when there is good communi- cation between doctors and patients. So reducing fragmented care by training one specialist to provide con- textual, comprehensive primary care to 52% of the population—and an even larger proportion of users of the health-care system—may help hold health costs at a reasonable level while actually increasing quality of service. And we do need to extend care to more women. According to the Com- monwealth Fund's Commission on Women's Health, 36% of uninsured and 13% of insured women do not receive Dropping the laboring woman on the bed was an ancient method of hastening needed care. Because women are more childbirth among the ancient Greeks in the time of Hippocrates. likely than men to be poor and employed part-time or not at all, they are less likely to have prefer women physicians—a kind of arbitrary discrimina- access to needed medical care than men. Within the cur- tion men have rarely experienced. But let's be clear: rent paradigm, older women, poor women, women of Women's health refers to the sex of the patient, not the color, disabled women, lesbians and bisexual women, in sex of the physician. particular, very rarely receive the level of care appropriate The need for a specialty becomes clearer when you to their needs. More than one-third of women do not seek consider nutrition. No physician questions the value of or receive Pap smears, mammograms, pelvic exams, breast good nutrition in maintaining maximum health and exams, or a complete physical. The rate is even higher for speeding recovery from medical conditions and surgical elderly women. Many women have significant risk factors treatments. However, physicians cannot specialize in for heart disease, lung cancer and osteoporosis, but no nutrition and most medical students have little or no knowledge of risk reduction. nutritional training. The same fate awaits women's health unless it becomes a specialty. Currently, students and OTI: What do you say to the charge that a women's health physicians interested in women's health must make a per- speciality is simply a marketing tool, or that it's designed sonal effort to learn about the field. to solidify the power of women physicians? So it is not until women's health is institutionalized and becomes a focus for research that substantive changes will EILEEN HOFFMAN: Many of the "women's cen- be realized. I think the only way to assure that women ters" now being developed by hospitals are, indeed, just a receive medical care on par with men is the development marketing tool. Pink curtains in the dressing rooms may of a formal interdisciplinary primary care specialty in be the only significant change. The centers are created to women's health. Training would include sex- and gender- do tests on women—bone scans, mammograms, and so specific information assuring that women's health and ill- on. Many centers do not offer comprehensive, integrated ness is examined within the context of their complex medical care. So I understand why people are wary. hormonal and social milieux. Politically, it is from the power base of a specialty in women's health that efforts to Some critics are concerned that a specialty in women's mainstream better treatment into the internist's office and health will attract predominantly female providers, which the gynecologist's office are most likely to be successful. will make it less prestigious and underpaid. It's true that women doctors are leading the efforts in women's A specialty in women's health will be an explicit health-care reform. This has led some male physicians to acknowledgement from the medical profession to women suggest that a specialty in women's health may be just a that it will no longer use men as the standard. I think it ploy by female physicians to corner the market. And should be the next demand of the feminist movement in there are some male physicians who worry about their the health arena. This is an excellent way for medicine to economic futures, now that women patients explicitly regain the trust it has lost among women patients. •

11 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 of awful fates. Sometimes feminists are the worst offenders when it comes to size acceptance issues, and it would help if Ms. Clift and the editors of ON THE ISSUES would read (better yet— publish!) some literature, so that they Feedback would understand that there is some disagreement about what causes people to be fat. "Obesity" implies that it is "I thought that nothing you caused only by compulsive overeating. could show me about Iran could greatly Some of us are sane, happy, and com- petent, and many of us have children shock me. Was I ever wrong!" whose names we remember very well. We don't belong on the "awful" list. Lizbeth Binks A REAL MINIMUM WAGE fare rolls. Included could be child care, Baltimore, MD Thank you for alerting readers to housing for the homeless, and repair of women's stake in "welfare reform." our crumbling cities. Members of Con- BLAME CAPITALISM Lynn Phillips' article, "Safety Net Per- gress, Matthew Martinez and Maxine I have read with interest the article on forms Vanishing Act," and her "Seven Waters, have introduced such a bill, women and immigration, "Needed: Step Program" (Fall 1994) were right the Job Creation and Infrastructure A Feminist Immigration Policy," on target. This program calls for a Restoration Act by Eleanor Pam $1.10 hourly increase in the minimum of 1994, HR SEND LETTERS TO THE EDITOR TO (Summer 1994) wage. That would help. But three times 4708. It asks for and was appalled that increase is needed to bring the $250 billion in ON THE ISSUES at her ignorance minimum wage up to its relative worth five years, an CHOICES WOMEN'S and nationalism. in the 1930s. amount that MEDICAL CENTER, INC. Like her, I come I agree that it is criminal to talk of would save money 97-77 Queens Boulevard from a Holocaust cutting women and children off wel- in the long run. Flushing, NY 11374-3317 family, only mine fare when the number of available jobs The billions being was not so fortu- is millions less than the number of spent to build new prisons would be nate. The Depression-era anti-immi- unemployed. The Guaranteed Annual better spent on preventing crime by grant scapegoating worked to keep Income demand is central to the creatingjobs. most of my family out of the U.S. As Phillips program or any other rational Beatrice Lumpkin she should know, the Nazis were also solution. My family was on welfare Chicago, IL anti-immigrant and the end result of all during the 1930s depression. A guaran- anti-immigrant policies are concentra- teed annual income would have spared EAT YOUR WORDS! tion camps. Haiti, for example, is one us the indignity and insult of being on In an otherwise fine article about hys- big death camp. "welfare." terectomy, ("My Uterus, Myself," Our economic problems are not The best way to reduce welfare is to Spring 1994),Elayne Clift describes her caused or aggravated by immigrants. provide real jobs. Bring back the WPA. fears as being "terrified that I would go They are caused by capitalism, the pri- Massive public works programs with crazy, forget my children's names, vate profit system, which has enriched jobs at union wages, combined with become suicidal, obese and/or dysfunc- a few people greatly, and impoverished on-the-job training, would solve many tional." Those of us who are fat must the rest of us to an even greater extent. problems beyond the reduction of wel- object to being included in such a list We do not need "a coherent plan that serves all our national interests" but rather a world view that sees all of us as Celebrate Your Sexuality. citizens of planet Earth, who have a right to seek work and personal safety Proudly. Joyously. wherever it may be, just as the multina- At Eve's Garden, an Elegant Sexuality tional corporations have a right to set up shop wherever they wish. Boutique Created by Women for Women As to the views of the reactionary and Their Partners. Federation for American Immigration Send $3.00 for our 32-page illustrated mail-order catalog Reform and of the National Review, (deduct from 1st order) recommended by sex educators, people are known by the company therapists and counselors. Visit with this ad for a free copy. they keep. No feminist can keep com- pany with these fascists. eve's#garden Lee Heller We grow pleasurable things for women 1 19 W. 57th St., Ste. 420OI, New York, NY 10019 • 212-757-8651 San Francisco, CA Open Mon. to Sat. - Noon 'till 7.00 PM • "Confidentiality Guaranteed" I recommend that Ms. Heller read my article

42 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 again. Her "world vision" has apparently me ("Sexual Apartheid in Iran," Fall OVARIAN CANCER SCARE narrowed her view and expanded her intol- 1994). Was I ever wrong! In the otherwise valuable article by erance. Thinking feminists have the right to These are people who call us deca- Beverly Zakarian ("Hidden Ovarian explore and test varying perspectives without dent and immoral—who say they will Cancer, Buried Issues," Fall 1994) there being trashed, as we were in our early histo- cleanse the world of our evil. So far as I is an ambiguity that may needlessly ry, for not falling into step with ideologues know, however, no religious leader in panic readers. Zakarian describes ascites and agendas that are not in our best inter- America (with the exception of the late as a "fluid that accumulates from the ests. Like Diogenes with his lantern, Ms. David Koresh) writes "revelations" metabolism of a rapidly growing Heller searches my words and finds, not allowing for the sodomizing of children. tumor." pain, but heresy. It would have been closer We are in more danger from the rad- In my own experience, ascites are to the mark if she had noticed an honest ical Islamic world today than at any- associated with ovarian cancer, so attempt to analyze and present alternative time since Ayatollah Khomeini was still when I had ascites I also underwent views, including her own. Eleanor Pam alive. numerous tests (blood tests, CAT scans, Even the [Roman] Catholic Church ultrasound...) that came up positive for TOYS 'R' US has had a moral lapse dealing with the ovarian cancer. But when I agreed to Ellen J. Reiner's article, "Time Warp in radical Islamic threat. In order to try a potent diuretic and the ascites dis- the Toy Store" (Fall 1994) was right on oppose any language about abortion at appeared rapidly, the blood tests came target. My partner and I are raising our the UN. Population and Development up negative for ovarian cancer. More four-year-old daughter. She loves her Conference in Cairo, the Church than a year has passed with no return dolls, dishes, and stuffed animals; she also reached out for help to all Islamic of the cancer scare. loves the Power Rangers, hot wheels, nations. Both Iran and Libya were soon I know that one experience does not trains, dinosaurs, bugs and pretend trumpeting their triumph over the Vati- disprove a statement that has been power tools. We do not gender-limit can coming to them seeking their help. carefully researched, but perhaps I am what she plays with or wears. We make Libya said that the Vatican would plead not alone in this experience. I would a point of telling her how great she their case in regards to Libya's implica- amend Zakarian's statement to read: looks no matter what she is wearing, as tion in the Pan Am flight 103 bombing, "ascites, a fluid that accumulates in the long as it is clean and matching. We which the Vatican immediately denied. body and may indicate metabolism of a roughhouse with her, as well as cuddle. Not surprisingly, Patrick Buchanan rapidly growing tumor"—or some- Many adults and other kids call her a defends the Church's blunder. thing else that would indicate the boy (although her hair is not short in Trying to end Iran's evil against its (continued on page 58) the back and she wears earrings), but women is an admirable goal, but the she quickly sets them straight. Amaz- threat here at home is just as real and 100 Acres • Pool ingly, at her new school, instead of 20 Charming Rooms just as imminent. Hot Tub • Trails Peace & Privacy other kids influencing her, she is influ- Wallington Simpson, Jr. encing them with her "gender doesn't Montebello, NY matter" ideas. A Lesbian Paradise I think a good point was made about CONTACTING some parents being afraid of "influenc- CAMP SISTER SPIRIT ing" a child to be gay. Since my partner Thank you for a superb women's mag- and I are lesbians, that fear does not azine. In the Fall 1994 issue I found the concern us. We simply want to raise a article on women's status in Iran horri- ^Highlands Inn happy, healthy child who is comfort- fying. Here in our country those brave able with herself. women in Ovett, Mississippi face the P.O.Box 118-OT Unfortunately, for many young girls same kind of mindset that creates such Bethlehem, NH 03574 and boys, most parents still buy into the existence for women not only in Iran (603) 869-3978 "girl versus boy" thing. At least some of but around the globe ("Mississippi us are working to change old attitudes Feminists Under Attack"). and eventually these old ideas may be I wish you had given us some address I no more. Thanks for an excellent arti- for sending whatever means of support cle and, as usual, a wonderfully, infor- those of us out here feel inclined to SURVIVED mative magazine. give. The women of Camp Sister Spirit 5,000 Lindsey Holzapple are creating a vital space for women— YEARS Wasco, CA we must continue to empower them with our words, our wishes, and dona- OF DANGEROUS ALLIANCES tions. Keep us informed and please tell PATRIARCHAL I pride myself on being one of the few us how to help our sister Amazons. HIERARCHIES people in this tabloid-lobotomized age Chart Agiza BLACK TYPE & YELLOW SPIRAL ON WHITE who is aware of the threat that radical El Paso, TX COTTON T-SHIRT. SIZES S,M,L.XL,XXL. TO Islamic fundamentalism represents to ORDER SEND $17 CHECK PLUS $3 S&H TO: Western civilization. Therefore, I EDITORS NOTE: Readers can write to: DECLARATIONS OF EMANCIPATION thought that nothing you could show Camp Sister Spirit, P.O. Box 12, 22 PRINCE ST. #205 NEW YORK, N.Y. 10012 (212) 691 -0999 PLEASE ALLOW 2 WEEKS me regarding Iran could greatly shock Ovett, MS 39464

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 43 New from Common Courage Press

A scholar and radical feminist, Chesler does not equivocate. —Library Journal There is both honor and grace in these strong and beautiful essays. This isn't feminism for cowards. Chesler stands up for real women in trouble, in pain, hurt by 's cruel domination. These are intellectually exciting, truly visionary essays; and they may just remind those with feeble convictions and political amnesia that the women's liberation movement is deep and wide, stubborn and brave, hates injustice, loves freedom, and ain't dead yet. Notes — Phyllis Chesler has remarkable courage: these are brave and far seeing essays, brilliantly written and conceived. A heroic piece of of an insight. — "Heroism is the only alternative," Phyllis Expert Chesler writes in this important book. But PHYLLIS despite our heroism, feminist gains are made only to be eroded in each generation. To prevent this constant whiplash, this constant LJ 11

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A bold new mural on the landmark Women's Building in San Francisco's Mission District. UNFURLING A MAESTRAPEACE Mythic and mortal female ancestors grace this San Francisco landmark. By Diana Scott On first encounter, it makes muralists who were chosen competitively to receive the you want to shout. The size, joint commission. boldness, and richly vibrant Veteran muralist Miranda Bergman, closer to 50, color send out an elating believes that, "a history of women of the world over time visual energy. Four two-story calls for monumental space.You have to speak in a loud heads representing mythic voice to be heard over the din of TV and sexist bill- female ancestors of African, Native American, Asian, and boards." European origin frame the building, gazing at each other The board of directors of the Women's Building in San from the corners. Their enormous scale (3/8 inches=l Francisco decided to commission the new mural two foot) are part of what makes the mural so impressive. years ago, to celebrate the building's upcoming 15th "I like to paint big. There's something nice about the anniversary. Founded in 1979 by the San Francisco physicality of it. You move up and down and go back... Women's Centers, the Women's Building describes itself You use all different size brushes," said muralist Meera as the only women-owned and -operated advocacy, ser- Desai, twentysomething, the youngest of the seven vice, cultural, and social action women's center in the

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 country. According to executive director Shoshana The heads of Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Rosenberg, the building provides meeting space and such Menchu (center), a Laplander (left) and an services as rape counseling, job training, and legal aid to Asian American woman (right) frame the over 1,000 women each week. It hosts aerobic and self- mural designed by seven artists: (left to defense classes, shelters dozens of nascent projects, and is right) Juana Alicia, Miranda Bergman, also home to the San Francisco National Organization Meera Desai, Yvonne Littleton, Irene Perez, for Women (NOW).This "room of our own community" Susan Kelk Cervantes and Edythe Boone. is located in a four-story landmark building in San Fran- cisco's predominantly Hispanic Mission district. tion dissipated with the painstaking demonstration that The muralists chosen—with over 100 years of com- paints could be removed. bined experience—seized the opportunity to reclaim The completed Maestrapeace, which covers two 65' by women's history with openly, powerful images from 80' window-punctuated walls of the building at 18th women's culture that patriarchal societies have long sup- Street near Valencia, illustrates the contributions of pressed. High above the doorway on the building's women throughout history from all parts of the world entrance facade, a seated nude goddess with butterfly- and the healing power of women's wisdom over time. wings sits, pregnant with girl-child. The goddess holds The roughly 12,000 square foot (including gables), color- the sun on high: below her cascade streams of water, alive saturated painting rises to heights where only a few core with fish. She's the single fantasy goddess of the piece, muralists ventured, atop seven and a half levels of scaf- created by Susan Kelk Cervantes to embody light and folding. "It's very big, it's very public, it's beautiful—a life-giving energy. "All women can learn to have control spectacular visual celebration," said Tim Drescher, mural- over their own destinies. She holds the sun [symbolizing] ist, teacher, and author of San Francisco Murals: Community that potential," says the artist. Creates Its Muse. The procreative goddess, culturally subversive in her The "San Francisco seven" muralists worked collabora- unabashedly uneroticized corporalicy, provoked an early tively for nearly a year and a half along with about fifty challenge: The San Francisco Landmarks Preservation volunteers to complete the two-part mural. They are car- Advisory Board found her out of character with the his- rying on a community-painting tradition that dates back toric building facade and threatened to block municipal to the New Deal era work of Diego Rivera and the thir- funding of the project. As repeated delays threatened the ty-odd Coit Tower muralists, four of whom were women. project's implementation (dependent on much donated Women have been leaders in this city's community-mural labor), "We called in the press," says Cervantes. Opposi- movement since the late 1960s, when mural-making

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spilled outdoors from the visually vibrant interiors of the Haight to become politicized, and enjoyed a mili- tant renaissance in the Mission district. The predominantly Latina group, Mujeres Muralistas (Women Muralists) took to the scaffolds in the early '70s demonstrating that women could become visible in their own image. (Cervantes and Alicia belonged to this group.) According to Bergman, "A strong women's movement here created a whole body of women raring to go," coupled with good art school programs in the '60s and '70s for women of color, in which key erate: the elegant Guanyin, Chinese goddess of compas- muralists enrolled. "Murals are what made art and politics sion; an African funerary mask that represents the spirit come together." of the ancestors; the Indian goddess Dakini, in warrior The image of 1993 Nobel Laureate Rigoberta stance, destroyer of divisive, egotistic ignorance. A Hopi Menchu, herself an activist for indigenous people's rainbow goddess and ancient Slavic oracle doll round rights, figures prominently in this latest, space-claiming out the feminist pantheon. vision. Menchu's head towers on a gable above the adja- Beneath Rigoberta's billowing skirt, larger-than-life cent rooftop, radiantly backlit with moonbeams which mortal women are clustered, Georgia O'Keeffe and illuminate her flower-emblazoned Guatemalan blouse Joycelyn Elders among them, as well as a Latina healer (huipil).An ornate Aztec speech glyph denoting "special and a traditional female African drummer. The shadow- speech" curls, snakelike, from her lips. In each of two, spirit of poet reaches high to inscribe the enormous outstretched hands she holds a goddess: on words "future generations." the left, bare-breasted Yemayah, the Yoruba goddess of For the sake of inclusiveness, a single figure of the New rivers and the sea, source of earliest life; and on the right, Man (modeled after muralist Edythe Boone's young son) similarly bare Coyoixauhqui, the Aztec moon goddess, is depicted next to the drummer. breaking out of dismembered captivity. Goddesses prolif- Given the pitfalls of literal inclusiveness—"It obviously

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 Among the mortals: (left to right) Joycelyn Elders, United Farm Workers organizer Jessica Govea, Maria Sabrina, Mexican healer, and (above) Lolita Lebron.

rative together and gives rhythm to the "flow lines," blank ribbons on which over 450 women's names are inscribed in gold (the sure-handed work of mas- ter calligrapher Olivia Quevedo, teacher, healer, and former nun). "There are some fairly serious omis- sions, but you can't say it all." Bergman concedes. "I wish we had a tradeswoman in there." A computer was added after an objection expressed at a major public design review, that technology had been omitted. "There are as many white women [propor- tionally to their numbers worldwide] as other ethnicities," the artist adds, noting from experience that this ques- tion invariably arises when women of color are depicted in numbers. Expressive of a more inclusive, 1990s feminism, the mural evokes a range of healing emotions, spiritual strengths, and proud actions. Below Rigoberta's left hand, Lolita Lebron, the impris- oned Puerto Rican nationalist, reaches her arms wide in freedom. To her right, a Warsaw Ghetto resister signals halt to aggression. At street level, a joy- ous lesbian dances with her disabled, red-shoed partner; a nurturant tribal grandmother bathes a toddler; a sari- clad mother suckles an infant while painting. Beneath Rigoberta's right hand, anti-apartheid activist Lillian Ngoya burns her passbook; and United Farm Workers founding organizer Jes- sica Govea invokes solidarity. The name for the mural came from wouldn't*work for artists to do two million portraits," Rigoberta Menchu's assistant, who called it a "maestra- Bergman notes—along with the problems posed by the piece." "The semantic overturning of masterpiece grew building's many windows, some clever means of symbolic on us," says Bergman. The artists liked playfully changing inclusiveness were needed. Artists devised two key ways a term traditionally applied to "white male European to incorporate suggestions culled from hundreds of art," with connotations of supremacy and submission, responses to a community survey which guided their into a bilingual assertion of women's worth and mission. work. One strategy was to incorporate hundreds of "Maestrapeace is easily one of the most significant women's names—historical, protean, and divine (includ- mural projects in the history of the city," says author ing sponsors)—on color-layered bands in gold calligra- Drescher, who has documented murals worldwide. phy. Another was to use cloth patterns (researched by Muralist Bergman thinks of it as "a standing ovation for muralists and painted predominantly by volunteers) to women's liberation; a non-negotiable demand for respect; represent many different cultures. a healing waterfall of women's love; a prayer for every- Streams of boldly patterned cloth, from Africa, Asia, body in the world; a sweet subversive dream of peace." • Latin America, India, the Pacific Islands, and Native America, represent women's traditional forms of creativi- Diana Scott writes about architecture, public art, and ecological- ty and wealth. Cloth binds both sides of the painted nar- ly-sound design.

48 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 HOFFMAN (continued from page 5) services are performed at outpatient, dess of the Hunt, protector of pregnant freestanding facilities. Risking their women and sucking animals. She holds genocide by gas inhalation. Hill had lives on an almost daily basis, doctors her bow and arrow taut, taking aim at used the media to defend his position and other health-care workers contin- unseen enemies. on the justification of murdering doc- ue to provide services in a war zone I sit alone and think of Kawana tors who perform abortions. "We're where only one side is armed. Michele Ashley from Clearwater, saying 30 million children have died. This both real and intellectual isola-~ Florida. Lacking romantic heroines, Sometimes you have to use force to tion played out most recently on the desperate and living very much in the stop people from killing innocent chil- international front at the UN. Popula- present, Ms. Ashley felt forced to use a dren," he told Nightline on December 8, tion and Development Conference in deadly weapon to defend herself 1993. Two days after Gunn's murder, Cairo. The Catholic Church, along against an invasion. Nineteen years old Hill called the Donahue show to set up with its situational fundamentalist and 20 weeks pregnant, she couldn't an appearance to announce that Dr. allies, described the provision of birth raise the funds for an expensive, sec- Gunn deserved to die. control to women who need it as "bio- ond-trimester abortion. No swords Another, maybe even more danger- logical determinism" and the promo- and daggers for Kawana. No ous casualty of the relentless onslaught tion of women's equality as "cultural metaphoric visions of Amazons in bat- on abortion and abortion providers has imperialism," while aggressively tle. No, she just picked up a pistol and been to increase a sense of ambivalence promoting their own brand of theo- shot the fetus in her uterus, causing a about abortion itself as a moral or nec- cratic imperialism. Bending to this wound that eventually killed it after essary choice. Many Laurence Olivier in pressure, Vice Presi- delivery by cesarean section. Because people who describe Richard III, 1956 dent Al Gore assured the fetus was considered developed themselves as politi- the attendees at the enough to have lived outside the cally pro-choice and conference in an womb, Ms. Ashley was charged with are committed theo- August 25 press con- manslaughter and is currently being retically to the issue, ference that "the held on $50,000 bail. often feel the need to United States has not The casualties mount. Where are my say, "I don't like abor- sought, does not seek, troops? • tion, but..." while and will not seek an political leaders follow international right to President Clinton's abortion"—underly- adage that he wants ing the U.S. govern- Progressive Thinking People abortion to be "safe, ment's belief . that legal, and rare." Shop at the Warm Store This reluctant pub- reproductive lic and political en- gagement with the freedom reality of abortion within women's is not viewed as a lives has extended to the millions of women who have abortions, and to transcendent their lovers, families, and friends as well. Having made the difficult, pro- human or civil right, found, personal choice to have their abortion, feeling relieved and grateful but merely as a local for the service, most women prefer to privilege that can be granted, lim- integrate the experience privately, ited, or denied according to national rather than cast it in political terms— customs and laws. This may have been socially conscious understandable, but dangerous. Few situational diplomatic maneuvering, become vocal supporters of the clinics but it reads as gender-specific noblesse environmental that have helped them or return to oblige. work as clinic escorts. And we need Back on the home front, Piso and cruelty free their support. If the 30 million women Felisone continue to live happily in who have had abortions since legaliza- Queens and the FBI investigation con- nature gifts tion—and their husbands, friends, tinues with no published results so far. lovers, and families—came forward to The federal marshals are down to support choice and providers, what an guarding Choices seven hours, and army that would make. 12 Wnnery Brook Road patients come and go as they have for Woodstock, New Ybrk§ Unappreciated and unrecognized, years. viewed as mavericks at best or pariahs I sit in my office surrounded by my Catt for a fret catalog; at worst by establishment institutional warrior images. A large painting of medicine, abortion providers stand Elizabeth I (the Armada portrait) hangs alone, apart and vulnerable. For histori- on the far wall and on my desk stands a A not-for-profit business of Woodstock Animal Rights Movemen cal and political reasons, most abortion statue of Diana (Artemis), Virgin God-

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 49 PENSACOLA (continuedfrom page 5) can't be allowed to go unchallenged. continued to speak out courageously At the press conference, Madsen since the murder of her husband and tion facilities have been hit hard by tried to distance herself from Paul Hill Dr. Britton. She told a local Pensacola anti-abortionists, beginning on Christ- and claimed she didn't know Hill or newspaper: "My husband died for the mas day 1984 when several were John Burt. But to her surprise, Joyner cause of a woman's right to choose," bombed and severely damaged. and others spoke out and exposed her and said that she would continue to be A press conference later that day by as having been arrested previously with a clinic escort. "I'm not going to sit the Fightback Network exposed Burt's John Burt's wife at a clinic. The press back in a corner and not do anything. connections with Britton's and Bar- conference was turned upside down as Somebody's got to stand." rett's killer. A September 1993 article reporters began asking Madsen to Many people in Pensacola and else- in the anti-abortion magazine Life comment on what Joyner had said, and where have echoed that sentiment. But Advocate entitled "Florida Pro-Lifers it received wide coverage in the Flori- to stand and do what is a big question. I.D. Gunn's Replacement," reported da press. For many doctors who do abortions in that on Friday, August 6, 1993 John Florida and elsewhere, bul- Burt, Floyd Murray, Don Gratton, and let-proof vests and body Paul Hill stalked and photographed Dr. armor are as necessary to Britton. (Murray and Gratton also jfXnclother feature of the Florida their work today as surgical appeared with Burt at his attempted scene in the wake of these instruments. Many also have press conference.) The article also doc- armed themselves for self- uments that Burt produced a threaten- murders is the increasing public defense. They are on the ing "wanted" poster of Dr. Britton front lines of this war every "making vital information about him visibility of the Ku Klux Klan in day, and the pro-choice available to the public," including his movement cannot allow home and office addresses. defense of the killers. them to stand there alone. Pro-choice forces went on the offen- On Saturday, August 20, about a dozen Calls to rely on President Clinton, sive again at another press conference. KKKers, including some Nazi skinheads, new laws, and the police, have only This one was held in Tallahassee, the marched on the Aware Woman Center succeeded in disarming and demobiliz- state capitol, on August 12 by Judy for Choice in Melbourne. This clinic has ing much of the pro-choice and Madsen and Michele Herzog, co- been the target of many anti-abortion women's movement. A few weeks founders of The True Majority. The attacks since the first Operation Rescue before the murders, the clinic director group advertises itself as "a movement training camp was held in the city in at The Ladies Center had begged the of Christian women with a pro-life January 1993. Clinic owner Patricia FBI to pick up Hill, but the govern- vision... the true majority, who believe Baird-Windle has been outspoken in her ment refused to act. The police did in the sanctity of human life, the sancti- determination to fight the antis. nothing to stop Hill the day Britton ty of motherhood, and God's ordained The KKKers were granted a permit and Barrett were killed. The clinic- design for mankind through the fami- for the demonstration and were heavily defense movement is full of examples ly..."Judy Madsen is the Madsen of the protected by local police. Operation of laws and police deployments being June 30,1994 Supreme Court decision, Rescue members, who last year pur- used, instead, against those who mili- Madsen v. Women's Health Center Inc. chased a house across from Aware tantly defend women's right to choose. which upheld the establishment of Woman as a staging ground, were out Federal agencies will certainly seize on "buffer zones" around clinics. earlier with their usual signs attacking this opening to investigate and spy on When the staff at the Feminist women but ducked inside when pro- pro-choice activists. Women's Health Center in Tallahassee testers used chants and agitation to link Immediately after the murders, some heard about plans for the press confer- them to the KKK. One unusually can- pro-choice forces called for "peace" and ence, they were outraged. Dr. Britton did "Kluker" stated: "I believe everyone "reconciliation." Others said there can was their medical director; he had has a right to be born; we'll weed be no reconciliation as long as women stepped forward to do abortions in through them later." A message on the and abortion providers are being Pensacola after Dr. Gunn's murder, in Klan hot line in September stated that harassed and assaulted outside clinics addition to carrying on his responsibil- Paul Hill is a "hero." and at their homes. Having defended ities in Tallahassee. The Feminist Many thousands of women and men clinics for many years, I share that view. Women's Health Center and the local must be mobilized to take action in Calling for "peace" in the face of these chapter of the National Organization support of the right of all women to continuing attacks is like asking women for Women (NOW) had organized a safe and accessible abortions, to con- and providers to lay their heads quietly rally at the governor's mansion August front and stop the reactionaries, and to on the chopping block. • 4 and held a wake for Dr. Britton at stand with those who are on the front the clinic a few days later. lines. James Barrett and his wife June Mary Lou Greenberg is a long-time revolu- The Health Center relies on people volunteered at the clinic after Dr. tionary activist. She helped organize the in the community for clinic defense, Gunn's murder in March 1993. It was first mass defense of abortion clinics against and it has a reputation as a place where their job to escort Dr. Britton, Dr. Operation Rescue in New York City in anti-abortionists can't get away with Gunn's replacement, from the airport 1988 and has also defended clinics in harassing women or doctors. Clinic to the clinic when he flew in each Washington, D.C., Buffalo, and Min- director Brenda Joyner feels the antis week to do abortions. June Barrett has neapolis.

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 claims that "women do not want to look like, or act like, men," that "women do not understand other women's problems," and that "women feel independent in their bones." Chooici e Which women? These women? All women? All the time? The book fre- quently has a highly critical, conde- scending tone. Henry states that American women are "avoiding the Books responsibility to make their own equality happen," that they "do not understand the larger social and eco- included Hispanic women from Cali- nomic factors that limit their lives," THE fornia, and another was comprised of and that they "remain locked in the DEEP African-American women from New passive voice" and resist "their own York City. As a control group, ten political redemption." Moreover, "His- DIVIDE white women—also married and sin- panic women's relationships with their f gle, with and without children—who men" are "eye-popping," particularly WHY considered themselves feminists, met when the husband is a "Victorian \MER1CAN head-of-household." WllMI \ to discuss the same issues that the Id MSI other groups considered: the nature of EQUALITY Women are all-too-often berated equality, their conflicting roles as for not thinking and acting in ways SHERRVE HENRY women, and their attitudes toward the author and her colleagues think feminism and women in positions of are best for them without sufficient THE DEEP DIVIDE: WHY power. recognition of the nuances and com- AMERICAN WOMEN RESIST What Henry and her colleagues plexities in modern women's lives. EQUALITY learned is important for all of us con- American women do not simply see by Sherrye Henry cerned with equality for women. The themselves as females, but as members (Macmillan, N.Y.; $25 hardcover) focus groups clearly indicated that of racial, ethnic, and religious groups; as lovers, partners, daughters, wives, By Ruth Sidel while the role of wife is no longer as central as it once was in the self-defin- and mothers with multiple responsi- he central question in Sherrye ition of many American women, the bilities and allegiances; and as workers Henry's provocative and in- role of mother remains of great impor- ranging from upper-middle class pro- Tstructive book, The Deep Di- tance. Henry writes that "children fessionals to the working and non- vide: Why American Women Resist Equal- were so much a part of the discussion working poor—who consequently ity, stemmed from the author's that whether [women] were talking have to cope with diverse realities that unsuccessful 1990 bid for a Democra- about themselves, work, men, money, foster very different, and sometimes tic seat in the New York State Senate: values, or political agendas—'having competing, priorities. If female candidates generally endorse children' was a continuous refrain Toward the end of her book, Henry issues that would improve women's weaving through the music of their does address conflicts within the lives, why don't more women voters lives." While this sample of women did women's movement and policy deci- support them? not identify as feminists and often crit- sions made by dominant voices of sec- "In election after election," the icized feminism, having flexible choic- ond wave feminism that she feels have radio interviewer and producer ob- es—in childbearing; in moving in and alienated significant segments of fe- serves, '"the women's vote' has failed out of the work force at various stages male voters. She states that focusing to materialize for pro-female, pro- of life; in working part-time or full- on "abortion rights, lesbian rights, and time; in focusing on career, job, or choice candidates who might have the Equal Rights Amendment—ab- homemaking—was a key priority. stormed the Establishment's walls." stract concepts that separate women Consequently, in valuable segments of Working closely with political scien- from men—turned off mainstream the book that explore the political im- tist and public opinion pollster Ethel women" and, in fact, "were deliberate- plications of her research, Henry ad- Klein, Henry set out to find some an- ly intended to do so." She urges future vises candidates that they will enlarge female political candidates to empha- swers by exploring the concerns of their base of support among women if size bread-and-butter issues that affect "mainstream" women (those who do they concentrate on issues such as women's daily life and to "frame femi- not identify themselves as feminists) child care and health care that support nism to include justice for every- through a series of focus groups. Ten families, and on workplace issues. one...." The Deep Divide, despite its groups were formed around the coun- shortcomings, is essential reading for try, each including ten women of vari- However, while The Deep Divide analyzes the values, attitudes, and pri- all those—women and men alike— ous ages, occupations, and back- who hope to have an impact on grounds, whose incomes ranged from orities of mainstream women, it fre- quently does so with simplistic over- American policy-making, and who $15,000 to $90,000. Eight groups hope to encourage women to become consisted of white women, while one generalizations. For instance, Henry

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 51 Everywoman's Alma- more active players in the political Children Last and On Her Own. Her nac 1995 process. • most recent book, Battling Bias: The Struggle for Identity and Community Disabled women come on College Campuses, was published by together sharing struggles & Ruth Sidel, professor of sociology at Hunter celebrations in their fight for inclusion. College, is the author of Women and Viking in August, Special features include: • stunning full-colour cover CLAYTIE AND WASHINGTON • interviews, THE LADY: THROUGH A photographs Ann Richards, PURPLE VEIL: & artwork Gender and Memoirs of • menstrual a Southern calendar Politics in Texas • resource by Sue Tolleson- Woman by Lindy directory Rinehart and Jeanie Boggs, with Kate • section for R. Stanley (University Hatch (Harcourt addresses of Texas Press, Austin; Brace & Co., N.Y.; • discount coupons for $25 hardcover) $24.95 hardcover) women's periodicals, products & services. By Anne Mollegen Smith Includes coupon for T-shirt designed by almanac cover artist Beverly Deutsch. he Year of the Woman that elect- promising subject—the subtitle is "Ann Conies in a compact size & two formats: ed so many women to national, Richards, Gender and Politics in • sewn bound, sturdy enough to carry in statewide, and city office in Texas"—and made it not just dry. It's your hand bag or back pack T granular. • spiral bound, to lie flat or open for use 1992 has given born-again feminist at your desk or work table. political junkies like me unprecedented Fortunately, some raisins are mixed numbers of women in public life in: The book comes alive when sources Ask for the Everywoman's Almanac whose stories we can follow and learn are quoted directly and extensively. at your local bookstore. from. At last, some women in the news This starts to happen in the middle of who are not rock singers, television the book, once we get past Ma Fergu- 517 College St., #233, Toronto, ON M6G 4A2 and movie stars, or Bad Girls of the son. (Like Lurleen Wallace in 1960s Al- Moment like Tonya Harding, Marge abama, Miriam Ferguson, the first At Last, Schott, Leona Helmsley, Lorena Bob- woman governor of Texas, was elected a Magazine for bitt or even Deborah Norville (sure, in 1924 as a surrogate for her hus- Thinking Women you remember Deborah—the Today band—though unlike George Wallace, Show's antiPauley?). "Farmer Jim" Ferguson was im- And at last we can begin to read, and peached.) oJSSUES write, a lasting record of women and Campaign veterans like Richards' fi- politics: narratives and histories and nance director Jennifer Treat, fund-rais- Subscribe Today! campaign how-to's. Hardcover books, er Martha Smiley, and chief of staff only $14.95for one year meant to last. Scholarly books, not just Mary Beth Rogers talk well about campaign bios. You-can-buy-them- gender issues and the technical prob- 1-800-783-4903 at—a-bookstore books that are about lems in managing a candidate's image. Discover the women as power players rather than as Richards decided to become a slugger cutting-edge victims of the system (widows, welfare in what she called "a demolition magazine mothers, sexual harassees) or gadflies derby" primary and a brutal campaign. that brings outside it (Joan of Arc or Rep. Pat She figured her own higher negatives you fresh in- Schroeder). in approval ratings were worth it if her sights and opponent's wounds were even greater. up-to-date Of course, few pleasures are un- views on the mixed. Hurrah! we are coming of age This strategy worked for her, especially critical issues as leaders of our country; but, oh dear! because Republican Clayton Williams facing women now we have to learn what this means added some self-inflicted wounds with today. and figure out how to do it. Hurrah! stupid remarks about women and open • Women's health reports: progress there are thrilling books; but, oh dear! ignorance about local issues. The mate- and perils some aren't. rial is rich, smart, important; nonethe- • National and international news on Claytie and the Lady is one of the lat- less, I wish Doris Kearns Goodwin and the status of women ter. With the same discomfort as when Molly Ivins had written this book. Or • Spirited columns by Phyllis Chesler, I voted against Liz Holtzman in New Ann Richards herself. Merle Hoffman, Elayne Rapping York's 1992 Democratic primary for Richards' bon mots are sprinkled and others the Senate, I have to say co-authors Get excited, Get involved, Get throughout Claytie and the Lady, but Sue Tolleson-Rinehart and Jeanie R. ON THE ISSUES not densely enough for me. In quota- Stanley have taken on a deliriously bility, Ann Richards belongs on any-

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 Nine-term Congresswoman Lindy Boggs 77i« Newsletter Inspired by the " Year of the Woman"... is another feminist-come-lately, and we're glad POLITICAL W)MAN CHARTING OUR PROGRESS TOWARDS EQUALITY to have her. •Women in Congress 'Upcoming Races •Women in the Cabinet • Legislation •Women's PACs 'Media Watch And more, from a pro-choice, progressive perspective1. one's top ten. She gave us "George Lindy Boggs, a nine-term Congress- Charter Subscriptions (11 Monthly Issues) $35 Bush...born with a silver foot in his woman from Louisiana and widow of [ ] Check Enclosed [ ] BUI Me mouth." When People publisher Ann Representative Hale Boggs, can also Name Moore organized a luncheon during wear that label, and proudly. She has Address the 1992 Democratic national conven- written, with Kate Hatch, Washington tion for women candidates endorsed Through a Purple Veil: Memoirs of a City St Zip by EMILY's List, I remember Ann Southern Woman.Yes, that subtitle is a 276 Chatterton Parkway, White Plains NY 10606 Richards as the most dazzling in a clue. She did spend her early childhood Antonia Stolper &. Robert Fertik, Publishers roomful of star talkers like Carol on a vast plantation, and at first I feared Moseley Braun, Dianne Feinstein, Bar- the anecdotal book might be The Little bara Mikulski, Barbara Boxer, and Colonel Goes to Congress. But I needn't Maxine Waters. The Goddess Governor have worried. Just as Shirley Temple— WOMEN'S WILDERNESS CANOE TRIPS told how it was "20 years ago when who played the Little Colonel in the some women in the neighborhood got movies as a curly-headed moppet pret- an idea that they might could elect tily pouting and stamping her foot to River Journeys some women to office [in local Texas get her way—grew up to become the Writing Retreats races]...Men said, Organize the grass distinguished U.S. ambassador to roots, don't worry about money, get Czechoslovakia during the 1989 Velvet Wilderness Seminars grass-roots support...Well, you can put Revolution, so Marie Corinne Morri- lipstick on a hog and call it Monique, son Claiborne—who was born to be but it's still a pig. Which is what we pampered on a Mississippi River sugar learned when we tried to elect women plantation in Pointe Coupee, HAWK, I'M YOUR SISTER on the basis of heart, ability, intellect— Louisiana, in 1916 and was called P.O. Box 9109, Santa Fe, NM 87504 all the things that don't count when "Rolindy" by her baby nurse 'cause she 505-984-2268 you're running for office. Money is the took after her daddy Roland—matured mother's milk of politics." into a valuable legislator. She estab- The main point of this book is that lished the Congressional Select Com- The Elizabeth Stone House Ann Richards was electable partly be- mittee on Children, Youth and Fami- lies, provided a common-sense voice cause she started out "traditional": She Our residential programs for w n and their children includi on the House Appropriations Com- was the wife of a prominent lawyer, ac- •*A Mon1.il Hnnllh Allflrroliwfl-n sell-help, poor suppoil program "A llallorot! Wumon's Program-.™ eiiioryoncy diollor tive in behind-the-throne roles proper mittee, and was a vigorous member of "A Transitional Housing Program-a bridgo to indopondcnl living for women in politics, and raised her the Congressional Caucus on Women's Resources available include; Issues. As a superdelegate to the 1988 'Trie Road I TooK to You: stories ol Woman ana Ctaziness. Video; ailable children. All this drove her to drink for rent or purchase. Democratic Convention, she was not *tf Myths and Realities. Pamphlet available on request. and then, in recovery, to a sad divorce. •Womnn nnri Crutinnss. Oral herslorles available for S5.9S plus postage bound to any candidate, but voted with '•ii»> CIt/.ilMttH Sloi 10 Hovso HnnJItook: Slmltoiiuu /joo/jto n\ Emotional Distress But the divorce also freed her to be- Available for $29.95 plus postage. come a big-time political mover and delegates from her home district for Jesse Jackson. At the time, she was the" For Inlormaton and referral please call (017) 522-3417. shaker in her own right, as candidate The Elizabeth Stone House, P.O. Box 59. Jamajca Plain. MA 02130 for statewide office. She is a late- only white member of Congress repre- blooming feminist, and probably in senting a district that had a majority of American history she'll be, again, the black voters. brightest star in her group—this time Yes, Lindy Boggs is another feminist- in a cluster of "transitional" women come-lately, and we're glad to have her. leaders. Like Ann Richards, she was a super- S "Transitional" in this context is not woman juggling motherhood, mar- RESPONSIBLE INVESTING small potatoes. It may be the hardest riage, and political involvement. Again SINCE 1982 we have been meeting our clients1 role there is, because it's painful. There like Richards, she stepped fully into the financial goals while screening their invest- political limelight as a candidate in her ments for social issues. We'd like to put our isn't any rule book and so you're never consistent performance record and note- safe no matter what you do. On Sep- own right only after her children were worthy client service to work for you. tember 30, The Wall Street Journal re- well along and her first career, as wife, was over—in Boggs' case because, trag- // your portfolio totals S 70,000 or more pleax ported an interview with Hillary Clin- contact Trudy Campbell 802-254-2913 ton in which she describes herself as a ically, her husband died in an air crash in Alaska. She and Richards had to "transition figure," a lightning rod for PRENTISS SMITH & CO., INC. learn to handle direct, rather than de- I A N A G people's anger and anxiety during a 103 Mam Struct, Brattlcboro, Vermont 05301 time of rapid change. Ouch. rivative, power and they were seasoned

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 53 by life experiences, not feminist ideol- ogy. Yet when they were in position to make a real difference in other ._) LUNA PRESS V women's lives, they were ready. -* PO BOX 5 II.Kenmore Station* > Boston. MA 02215 USA C Lindy Boggs adds a wonderful di- tm (6171427 9646 | mension to the concept of "transition- al" women leaders. Her two daughters, who inherited a zest for politics and THE LUNAR CALENDAR: public policy from both sets of genes, Dedicated to the Goddess in Her Many Guises have fulfilled the sometimes shaky- $ 17.70 postpaid We ship gifts everywhere seeming promise that all this role- model stuff will pay off someday with women who feel entitled to achieve- UNDER MY SKIM: VOLUME ment, power, and glory. One daughter ONE OF MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY, is the nationally-respected broadcast TO 1949 journalist, Cokie Roberts. Cokie's by Doris Lessing, older sister, Barbara Boggs Sigmund, (HarperCollins, N.Y.; $25 hardcover) became the mayor of Princeton, New By Jeanne Schinto Jersey. In the 1980s, I was once on a Mother's Day television talk show with ntil she was 30, her nickname Barbara, who was wearing a black eye- was Tigger, after the character patch because of the cancer that ulti- U in Winnie the Pooh. It stuck mately took her life. She had a picture through two marriages, so she was not of her mother and grandmother to- only Tigger Tayler but Tigger Wisdom gether, and when she spoke of what and Tigger Lessing. While a Commu- she learned from these fine women, she nist Party member in the 1940s, she made it seem that the transition in just was known, preposterously, as Com- three generations from, say, Scarlett rade Tigger—"the last fitting me even O'Hara through the Little Colonel-in- less than the others," writes Doris Congress to the first woman mayor of Lessing in her autobiography, the first Princeton was the most logical pro- installment of a two-volume retro- gression in the world. And of course, I spective called Under My Skin. This like to think it is. "Tigger" personality was "expected to Book still to be written: From Gover- be brash, jokey, clumsy, and always nor's Mansion to White House by EMILY's ready to be a good sport, that is, to List. I can't wait to read that one. • laugh at herself, apologize, clown, confess inability. An extrovert. In that Anne Mollegen Smith, a co-founder of Theit was a protection for the person I re- ally was...." GODDESSEExplore 25,000 years of the shiftinSg Getting-It Gazette, the hot-pink feminist images of woman as revealed in our tipsheet launched during the 1992 Democ- Why an autobiography? Don't we recreation of the Goddess from around the world. Handmade of artstone, each ratic Convention, has also been editor-in-already have a clear idea of Lessing's one is carefully finished to resemble the chief of Redbook, Working Woman, character and moral commitments museum originals. Catalog $1 from: McCall's, and the short-lived tabloid news- from her 37 other books—more than Qrand Adventure paper, HER New York. a shelf's worth of extraordinary rich- RD6 Box 6198A, Stroudsburg, PA 18360 FOR THE YEAR OF THE WOMAN & POLITICS BOOKSHELF:

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54 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 ness and range, including The Golden tion, and who regularly mail-ordered Athene Series Notebook (1962), the early feminist boxes of books from London: her manifesto (though it was never in- mother. Though Lessing acknowledges tended as such); the semi-autobio- her mother's "genius for teaching A CLASSIC IN WOMEN'S HEALTH— graphical quintet, Children of Violence; small children," she repeatedly shows Reissued with a New Foreword and Introduction and the five volumes of futuristic her contempt for this sadly con- MEN WHO CONTROL space fiction, Canopus in Argos: strained, frustrated woman "whose life WOMEN'S HEALTH Archives'? Lessing anticipates the ques- did not permit her to use her talents." The Miseducation of tion. Her reply: "Self-defense." In This unresolved relationship may Obstetrician-Gynecologists other words, "Biographies are being offer some insight into why Lessing Diana Scully written." Now, at age 75, she wants to became socially engaged at such an "Diana Scully's intimate look at the apprentice- put forward her own record of her early age, and why she was able to ship ofob/gyns—an apprenticeship during which past. Curiously, though, she provides abandon her husband and two tod- women must often sacrifice parts of their bodies little guidance to those she says are to the doctor's training needs—will shock and in- dlers when she joined the Commu- furiate women and dismay the physicians whose trying to match up elements and nists in her early 20s. About this secrets now are revealed. (Scully's] gripping, dev- themes in her fiction with scenes from breach, she isn't too forthcoming, astating book will swell the ranks of the Women's her "real" life. Besides, she writes, "It though perhaps a more generous ac- Health Movement." —Gena Corea, Author, The Hidden Malpractice was with Landlocked [1970] that I left count will follow in volume two. [autobiographical fiction] behind." In- Nonetheless, she does say she believed 1994 / 304 pp. / Paper, $18.95 stead, she offers a recreation of her "one day [my children] would thank A CLASSIC IN — early life in "an Africa that no longer me for it." She and her fellow Com- Reissued with a New Introduction on Transgender exists." munists, after all, would eventually THE TRANSSEXUAL EMPIRE Lessing's account begins with her save the world: "There would be no The Making of the She-Male birth in 1919 to British parents living race prejudice, oppression of women, in Persia, continues through her child- exploitation of labour—no snobbish- Janice G. Raymond ness or contempt for others... Paradise, "Ostensibly, the'transexors'. .. are curing a hood and young adulthood on a farm disease... actually they engage in the... sha- in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbab- then, was on the world's agenda... [We ping and controlling of 'masculine' and femi- we), and ends in her thirtieth year, just had] the same mind-set as my parents, nine' behavior. Raymond's development and after she sells The Grass Is Singing to a who believed they represented God's documentation of this thesis is flawless. Her book is an important achievement." London publisher and departs for will, working by agency of the British Empire, for the good of the world." —Thomas Szasz, NY limes Book Review England. By relying on what she de- 1994 / 264 pp. / Paper, $17.95 scribes as "the strict use of memory," Joan Didion once characterized Lessing makes amply clear that she is Lessing as a writer "with an arrogantly SURVIVING THE no more beholden to the factual, em- bad ear for dialogue" and a "leaden DALKON SHIELD IUD pirical approach now than she was as a disregard for even the simplest girl who instinctively "knew the rhythms of language." The stylist ex- Women v. the Pharmaceutical Industry [racial] colour bar was wrong but had emplaire may well have spoken the Karen M. Hicks no facts or figures to back it up." truth—one that won't be challenged by Under My Skin. Solely "writing In 1985, the A. H. Robins Co. filed for bank- Under My Skin is less an introspective ruptcy protection from the growing number of foray into the author's youth than a well" has never been Lessing's point. lawsuits involving the Damon Shield IUD it had moving and imaginative chronicle of As a visionary, moral writer, she has manufactured in the early 1970s. dazzled readers for decades not with Thus book chronicles the development of a childhood—that lengthy "tactile and contemporary women's social protest move- sensuous subjective experience," as elegant prose and pyrotechnical lan- ment that arose in response to Robins' legal Lessing calls it. guage but by "objectifying [her] men- efforts to minimize its financial account- So how did Tigger evolve into tal battles, embodying ideas in peo- ability to the women injured by its product. "Doris Lessing"? How did the "busy ple." In this memoir, she refers to 1994 / 208 pp. / Paper, $16.95 / Cloth, $37.00 hardworking girl, ready to conform, physicists as "the adventurers of our anxious to be liked, wanting a best time," and wistfully wonders how she MAKING VIOLENCE SEXY friend," become a visionary writer? A might have fared had she become a Feminist Views on Pornography scientist.Yet she has been on an equal- partial answer may lie in the enthusi- Diana E. H. Russell, Editor ly courageous quest to understand the asms that seem to lift off the pages of world into which she was born. With This is a collection of feminist articles, in- this memoir: the "dreamy repetitive cluding testimonies by survivors of porno- the evidence of this latest book, she reading" and other intellectual excur- graphy, that together make a convincing case hasn't given up her search nor stopped for the view that pornography (as distinct sions that are as compelling and vi- taking grateful readers with her. • from erotica) causes harm to women, inclu- brant now as they must have been ding acts of violence. some 50 years ago. Reading Tales From 1993 / 320 pp. / Paper, $19.95 / Cloth, $46.00 Shakespeare, D.H. Lawrence, biogra- Jeanne Schinto is the author of a collection of stories and a novel. Her latest work, a phies, and children's classics is likened Teachers nonfiction book about life and work in the 1K4CHEPS College to "sucking toffee." What surprises in fT"\\if B^F Columbia University old textile mill city of Lawrence, Massa- this memoir is the loathing and pity mivjrec '234 AmsterdaAmsterdam AAvev - she felt for the person who presided chusetts, will be published by Knopf in New York, NY 10027 over this largely home-based educa- 1995.

55 ONTHE ISSUES WINTER 1995 CHESLER (continued from page 12) StBtemant of Ownorahlp, Monogomant and Circulation tRaqU:,.abr JS us.c 3SB5) .,.1 :,., IO wiucinoiiM |; on. i opportunity to render his precedent- On the Issue ti The Pr

Aor.nl S.ndro •f. Editor. 97-77 flu.nni Bntilavard. F luihino. NY I1374-1J17 them on her behalf.

N/A MONEY MONEY MONEY ft* Km Ctmgi.1, MUKg UMII Sheila also needed enough money (at least $150,000-$200,000 to start with), to pay attorneys John Patten, Allan Dershowitz, and her current lawyers: Mark F. Pomerantz and Warren L. -'** - Feldman of Rogers & Wells, and David T. Grudberg of Jacobs, Grudberg, Belt 20.675 ,eoo Battered wife Jayne Stamen J .OiJ ,i« & Dow. Sheila joked that she was has been unable to find 10.369 ,004 "probably the only woman who ever 13,412 1 ,15! competent pro bono counsel. Z.SH .JOE paid to get into Bedford Hills," as most 15.977 .559 women get there with public Jayne called the police many times; Sussex «~~ii—....™. 845 1; ,383 3.853 ,E53 defenders. She also said that Allan but they never arrested Jerry, according JO.BJS 3] ,600 Dershowitz, who handled her first to the amicus brief filed by G. Kristian appeal, "had no interest in me" once Miccio on behalf of Sanctuary for she refused to go on network television Families, National Clearinghouse for with him. As a closeted lesbian and an the Defense of Battered Women, The ON THE ISSUES (uncounseled) rape victim, deception New York State Coalition Against was safe, exposure was dangerous. It Domestic Violence, and other groups. Subscriber would take Sheila 10 years before she'd According to Miccio, Jayne also tried Service be willing to talk to the media. to escape, many times; each time, Jerry P.O. Box 3000 tracked her down. She was desperate, Denville, NJ 07834-9838 COMPETENT COUNSEL had become an alcoholic, and was as I I Change of Address: Please allow Sheila needed lawyers who knew what crazed with terror as any long-term — three weeks. Attach label with your old they were doing and who •would not victim of torture would be. Jayne hired address and write your new address jettison her after she exhausted her three men to "break her husband's below. funds. Lawyers Pomerantz, Feldman, legs." Not to kill him. Jayne still I I New Subscriber: Fill in your name "loved" him. She only wanted him to — and address in the new address space. and Grudberg were both willing and Check term price of your subscription able to carry Sheila for more than stop torturing her. She thought that below.* seven years pro bono. perhaps, if he could feel what physical I I Renewal: Attach label if available. Most women prisoners cannot find "pain" felt like, he'd stop beating her — Check term price of your subscription good lawyers. Battered wife Jayne Sta- and her sons. By accident, and against below." men has not yet found one willing and her will, the hired men killed Jerry • One year $14.95 • Two years 124.95 able to represent her pro bono. One of instead. • Three years $34.95 her advocates, feminist Sharon Wyse, Di Luzio did put Jayne on the stand • Payment Enclosed • Bill Me who attended her trial, notes that Jayne and did present her as "extremely emo- was only able to scrape together tionally disturbed." Though Di Luzio OLD ADDRESS: $10,000 for lawyer Adrien Di Luzio—a did what Sheila's lawyer failed to do, man whose "counsel," in my view, was there are many ways to be incompetent NAME (PRINT) as "incompetent" as John Patten's, and no sure recipes for success. Accord- ADDRESS maybe more so. ing to Wyse, Di Luzio did not prepare

CITY/STATE/ZIP Essentially, Jayne was forced to Jayne to testify. Jayne had never endure what Sheila had endured received counseling as an alcoholic or a NEW ADDRESS: (including rape and gang rape)—but battered woman. On the stand, she

NAME (PRINT) for nine years at the hands of her hus- cursed, wept, and raged; what she said band Jerry, who was 17 years her was often incomprehensible or incon- CITY/STATE/ZIP senior. Jayne was almost always drunk, sistent. Di Luzio was inconsistent too. ADDRESS her eyes were almost always bruised, Sometimes he told the jury that "she • Canadian subscriptions add $4 per year; other foreign her lip split, often a leg, or one of her didn't mean to kill her husband" and add $4 (surface mail) or $20 per year Airmail. Institutional rate: Add $10 first year; $5 each additional. Payable in arms, was in a cast or a sling. Everyone other times that "she caused her hus- U.S. funds only. Mail to our Subscriber Service address who saw her saw this—but no one band's death." He told the jury that above. 435SS stopped Jerry. Stamen's thinking was "distorted;" that

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 she was "non-functioning," "psycho- witnesses (and her own lawyers, too) as logically diseased," and a "zombie." Di permanent release, Sheila was prepared an easygoing, hardworking, repentant, to "go public," in the hope that media Luzio "didn't seem to like his client, his docile, "likable," uncomplaining, heart wasn't in it," notes Wyse. "Di visibility might then lead to executive unhardened, unembittered, non-politi- clemency, or to legislative reform. Luzio actually declined the judge's cal, non-troublemaking woman. offer of a mistrial," reports David Satz, On the eve of Ward's decision, a woman whom Bozek had kept a feminist activist who also attended DOING TIME the trial. "He said there was no money apprised of Sheila's plight came for- Despite all of the above, Sheila had to for it!" ward. The woman, Dr. Eleanor Pam, spend more than 10 years in jail: had the motivation, the compassion, On March 21, 1988 Jayne Stamen penance, perhaps, for having killed a the skills, and (through her husband) was convicted and sentenced to eight white man. the right legal and political connec- to 25 years in jail. She has been in jail tions to organize a pro bono media ever since. In a sense, Jayne has been a POLITICAL MOVEMENTS campaign for Sheila. Media visibility prisoner-of-war for 16 years; that's if Sheila has also benefited from the exis- can sometimes create a climate that you include her nine-year marriage, tence—and the continued existence— may lead to executive clemency and I do. of the prisoners' rights/anti-death- {although it never helped Jean Har- penalty movement, and a continuing ris—who was freed only when Gover- WHITE MIDDLE-CLASS feminist movement which has educat- nor Cuomo thought she might die FRIENDS ed judges, lawyers, juries, and the while undergoing heart surgery). Pam Sheila Ryan DeLuca eventually found media about the nature and prevalence set to work, almost full time, a month competent attorneys and a fair-minded of and about before Ward rendered his decision, call- judge. She was a non-battered, law- the rights of convicted prisoners. Con- ing journalists, TV networks, politi- abiding, educated, middle-class woman stitutional rights alone were not cians, Hollywood producers, and femi- with a profession. She had friends who enough to free Sheila; such rights are nist activists—including myself and were similarly situated and therefore not equally or automatically applied. Kate Millett. tended to remain alive and out of jail. Such rights are, shamefully, for sale in Good Samaritans like Pam may do Sheila's friends also had certain crucial America. All things being equal, they something like this only once in a life- middle class "skills"—they were auto- often go to the highest white, male time, and then only for someone with matically "likable,'' credible, and they bidder. whom they have a personal connec- knew how to "network." Consider that in Jayne Stamen's case tion. But every woman wrongfully The loyalty of one such friend was Judge Harrington refused to hear from imprisoned needs such a skillful and crucial in keeping Sheila's spirits up. any expert about battered woman's well-connected volunteer in her Carol Bozek was a childhood friend syndrome; and he refused to consider corner. who "never gave up" on Sheila. For 10 a justification (justified homicide) Pam's skills and connections might long years, Bozek, and Toni Iovino, defense. According to Miccio, Judge have accomplished nothing had Sheila another loyal friend (who kept a room Harrington said: "Because someone sits herself not been willing to "go public." empty for Sheila and called it "Sheila's around and decides, gee, he's been Media is tricky for a prisoner. Too room") kept writing, calling, visiting, threatening me for 10 years. One of much publicity can anger wardens, and sending packages. This helped these days he's going to shoot me; that judges, and district attorneys (we're Sheila always to remember who she does not automatically invoke a justifi- talking about a woman, not about OJ. was. Bozek also kept prodding others cation defense, for the rest of their Simpson). Just the "right" amount of to visit and write, and apprising them lives... assuming that the victim was a media, in the right place, at the right of Sheila's current legal and psycholog- horrendous person, does not give any- time, might persuade the state not to ical status. one a license to kill that person." reprosecute someone like Sheila, to let Unlike Sheila, Jayne Stamen had few We need to rewrite the rules. her go on the basis of "time served." middle-class skills, and no middle-class Although feminists and the media Obtaining "justice for all" means that friends or resources. Jayne was "just" a rallied behind Jayne Stamen's campaign we must do so not only for ourselves, wife, and because she'd been battered for freedom, they've yet to succeed. for so long, she was fiercely isolated. According to Satz, media coverage may even have encouraged the judge to GOOD NETWORKING IN JAIL sentence her harshly. Because of new Another factor in Sheila s favor was her law-and-order legislation designed to ability to recover her mental health and keep those who have committed vio- to maintain an "acceptable" character lent crimes in jail with no exceptions in prison. She did not become hard, for battered women who kill, Jayne Stamen has not been allowed out on "crazy," or angry. She expressed Send $1 for our color catalog of remorse for having been forced to take work release or temporary work release. woman-identified jewelry in a human life. She was a model prison- silver, amethyst, moonstone, & gold. er, she knew she needed her guards, Sheila needed the eight separate keys clergy, and the warden, as character I've described—plus a good dollop of LIZZIE BROWN P.O. Box 389V Brimfield, Ma 01010 witnesses in court proceedings and at luck—to "click" open her jail cell. In (413) 245-9484 parole hearings. She impressed these case all of the above failed to work for a

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 57 or for those whom we know or "like-," FEEDBACK (continuedfrom page 43) believe socialists have always erred in but for the downcast, outcast, strangers thinking the women attached to in our midst; it is the noblest of quests, importance of draining the ascites from wealthy and powerful men are wealthy and best undertaken with the utmost the system before making a diagnosis. and powerful themselves. This has been humility. One must remain unencum- Jeanne Adleman proven wrong many times, but this case bered by ulterior or unexamined San Francisco, CA illuminates the fact that all systems and motives; one must have no expectation institutions of government conspire to of victory and seek no secondary OJ... oppose women! All of this is destruc- rewards. Such a quest must never It was with a sinking heart that I read tive to the fundamental ethic of sister- endanger, only inspire, all those who Andrea Peyser's article on the deaths of hood and cooperation. Because you did still remain behind bars. Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman. not love or care for Nicole or abused Media coverage (like this column, She used words that pornographers use women, you have diminished all of us, like a movie about one woman who to eroticize the suffering and death of including yourself! "gets out") isn't enough. Without legal women: "buckets of blood"; "he Natasha Barker briefs and judicial decisions, loyal sup- hacked his ravishing wife to death." It Fountain Valley, CA porters, an ongoing political analysis was steamy and tawdry. He "married and movement, "media coverage" is at blonde." I guess Nicole isn't a real per- IGNORED? best, irrelevant or illusory. son to Andrea, only blonde. I hope and The Fall 1994 Issue of ON THE ISSUES, A decade ago, the world wasn't ready pray that Nicole's family and children was my first reading of your magazine. to hear Sheila or Jayne's stories. They never see what she has written; the cal- What a great magazine. It discussed the are only two among thousands of lousness would break their hearts problems of women in Russia, Iran, women behind bars today. In a sense, again. It was not Nicole's fault that the interviews with and on black men, even they are our unsung political prison- media and tabloids have made millions toys and Roseanne.You covered it all. ers—resistance fighters who tried to of dollars from milking every drop of So, I guess you feminists agree that save their own lives in a culture that sensationalism and cruelty from her your domestics, babysitters, office preaches equal justice under the law murder. Nicole's and Ronald's death employees, home attendants, and other but practices something else entirely. were not a melodrama or a , black women who are struggling today We need to rewrite the rules. • but to them reality, terrifying, and for- on pitiful handouts from a society that ever. perpetually ignores black women who, Editor-at-large Phyllis Chester, Ph.D. is the Peyser also supports the myth that at retirement age, are taking care of author of seven books, including Women abused women are to blame for their white mothers and fathers of equal age; and Madness, Mothers on Trial and the plight. She says, "It's sexist, but one who have helped to build this country; recently published Patriarchy: Notes of an must take into account that many who nurse and feed its white children Expert Witness. women will not press charges." I could as well as their own; who can prepare answer this charge but, after everything your homes and your dinners and who, Jayne Stamen, who can be contacted that has been learned about how all when shunned by the world should at #88-G-0213, Albion Correctional systems enforce women's oppression, I even go unmentioned in your fall pub- Facility, 3595 State School Road, believe her ignorance is willful. lication. Albion, NY 14411, has asked that Peyser's self-righteous posture of Turn around. Open your eyes. Do interested readers write Governor Mario media sensationalism rings hollow you see us? We're the ones you're try- Cuomo (Executive Chamber, Capitol, when you realize she works for a ing to pretend aren't there. If you're Albany, NY, 12224) asking for clemency newspaper, the New York Post, which writing about feminism shouldn't you on her behalf. ON THE ISSUES would made millions of dollars by the include every woman? appreciate receiving copies of letters sent to exploitation of this case. Unnoticed & Unmentioned, Governor Cuomo on Stamen's behalf. Your collective board of feminist edi- A Black Woman, Queens, NY tors should know better than this. I We plead not guilty! While we don't use "Hot So- Subtle *7ee& ....cwd mate quotas, or check each issue to make sure STRAIGHT/ women of every racial, ethnic, and religious Dep't. I, P.O.B. 410, Lincolndale, NY., 10540 group are mentioned, we do strive to be 718/998-2305 Fax # 718/292-5643 inclusive in an open-hearted, non-mechani- cal way. I call your attention to some recent major articles that focused exclusively on SBN-Black on grey or white black women: "A Simple Human Right: PONTjMH THE HANP THATAttWS YOU. The History of Black Women and Abor- NOT ANOTHER tATTTOP WOMAN tion," by Loretta Ross (Spring 1994), DB-White on purple "Wliat Women Can Learn From Malcolm T. G. I. F. X," by Flo Kennedy and Irene Davall (Thank Goddess I'm Female) 100% cotton tees - S, M, L, XL, XXL, XXXL $13. Add (Summer 1993) and "Living in the Trench- $3ea. forP&H. NY residents add sales tax . We have es: A Celebration of Carol," by Helen M. TGIF-Purple on grey sweatshirts, buttons, magnets and bumperstickers. Stummer (Fall 1993). Please send for catalog. Thank you. Ronni Sandroff, Editor

58 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 RAPPING (continued from page 10)

THE WISE WOMAN easy to get even one or two of the 2441 Cordova Street goodies feminism taught us to shoot for Oakland, CA 94602 and believe we deserved—money, (510) 536-3174 power, love, happy marriage, even an occasional hot or otherwise satisfying THE WISE WOMAN, a national journal, focuses on feminist issues, Goddess lore, feminist spirituality, and Feminist Witchcraft. relationship with a nice, decent attractive Published quarterly since 1980 by Ann Forfreedom. man (should we be so oriented). Instead, Includes: women's history, news, analysis, reviews, art, photos, most of us have had to setde for and jug- poetry, cartoons by Bulbul, exclusive interviews, and original gle around a lot less in the way of just research about witch-hunts, women's heritage, and women today. desserts. In fact, most of us—especially Subscription: $15 yr./$27 for 2 yrs./ $38 for 3 yrs. (U.S. funds). Sample copy or back issue: $4 (U.S. funds). the vast majority who are neither white, A Microfilm: available in the Alternative Press Collection of University nor middle class, nor straight—have -v—' *—7 Microfilms International. Contact: UMI, University Microfilms, Inc., found ourselves with a lot more in com- 7 ' f 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346. mon with Norma McCorvey than The Wise Woman - Timely, Yel Timeless. Hillary Clinton. THE WISE WOMAN, 2441 Cordova St., Oakland, CA 94602. But having watched, studied, and assessed the First Lady's career as the first publicly anointed recipient of the Hav- ing It All and Then Some Award, I must Subscribe now to The Wise Woman, and send in a copy of this ad, and you will be sent a free gift of matriarchal significance! confess that I don't feel at all badly about that fact. Norma McCorvey, after all, that most unlikely of feminist heroines, did something truly heroic that made the world a better place for all American women. And she could write her own life story in her own words and say so, whether Susan Cheever and The New York Times like it or not. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has, it seems, mort- gaged her soul to the spin doctors and gridlock meisters for the questionable prize of living in the White House with a man whose morals and policies she is forced not only to put up with, but sup- port and defend. She could, interestingly enough, have kept her day job and still been one of the most powerful and successful attorneys in America. She even could have chosen to take another independent position in Vancouver Women's Bookstore, Vancouver, BC * Toronto Women's Bookstore, Toronto, ONT Washington (say, working for Marian • Alaska Women's Bookstore, Anchorage, AK • Lodestar Books, Birmingham, AL • Wright Edelman's Children's Defense Antigone Books, Tucson, AZ • Wild Iris Bookstore, Claremont, CA • A Different Drummer Fund) and been in a position to really Bookstore, Laguna Beach, CA • Pearls, Long Beach, CA • Sisterhood Bookstore, Los Angeles, CA fight for something worthwhile; some- • Mama Bears, Oakland, CA • Page One, Pasadena, CA • Lioness Books, Sacramento, CA thing that would help women and chil- • Old Wives' Tales, San Francisco, CA • The Book Garden, Denver, CO • Bloodroot, dren, even when her husband's agenda Bridgeport, CT • The Reader's Feast, Hartford, CT • Lammas Women's Books & More, opposed such progressive goals and poli- Washington, DC • Iris Books, Gainesville, FL • Rubyfruit Books, Tallahassee, FL • Charis Books & More, Atlanta, GA • Prairie Moon Ltd., Arlington Heights, IL • Women cies. That, to me, would have been, if not & Children First, Chicago, IL • Dreams & Swords, Indianapolis, IN • New Words heroic, certainly admirable and digni- Bookstore, Cambridge, MA • Lunaria, Northampton, MA • Womancrafts, Inc., fied—two words I have a harder and Provincetown, MA • Thirtyfirst Street Bookstore, Baltimore, MD • A Woman's harder time mustering for her these days. Prerogative, Femdale, Ml • Sweet Violets, Marquette, Ml • Amazon Bookstore, But then of course she would have had Minneapolis, MN • Full Circle, Albuquerque, NM • Judith's Room, New York, NY • My Sisters' to give up the Faustian female dream of Words Syracuse, NY • Crazy Ladies Bookstore, Cincinnati, OH • Fan The Flames, Columbus, OH Having It All in twentieth-century Amer- • Mother Kali's Books, Eugene, OR • In Other Words, Portland, OR • Book Gallery, ica, a dream Norma McCorvey never New Hope, PA • Gertrude Stein Memorial Bookshop, Pittsburgh, PA • Meristem, Memphis TN • Book Woman, Austin, TX • Inklings, Houston, TX • Textures, San Antonio, TX had the luxury of contemplating. • • Purple Moon Books, Fredericksburg, VA • A Room of One's Own, Madison, Wl

Elayne Rapping's latest book is Media- THE FEMINIST BOOKSTORE NETWORK tions: Forays into the Culture and Gen- For complete list send $1.00 and SASE to: PO Box 882554, San Francisco, CA 94188 der Wars.

ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 59 she may have even greater difficulty confining her urine to CUTTING SOME SLACK the bowl than standing males do. Unfortunately, she was NANETTE GARTRELL unavailable for comment. Luckily, she's an anomaly. To check the heartbeat of America on the subject of male urination, I surveyed a few men who stand, a few who sit. Bill, a white, 44-year-old construction worker who stands, Take a Seat, complained about using stalls when the urinals are full (in theaters, for example) because "most guys pee all over the place...they never hit the toilet...they even miss the urinal." Unlike their peers, he and his brother long ago learned to Boys! clean up after themselves, including the toilet, since their mother worked outside the home. Fred, a 41-year-old chemist, objected to my suggestion that public urinals simply be dismantled. They are, he reported, more convenient. But he acknowledged that "The he concern last spring about penises, both sev- overall issue is the lack of societal pressure on males to clean ered and saved, reminded me of my long-held up after ourselves. An emphasis on general fastidiousness belief that male urination has not kept pace would eliminate the controversy altogether and would have with 20th-century plumbing. Whereas standing a carryover impact—if you clean the toilet/floor after uri- may have been sensible in evolutionary terms nating, you are more likely to clean the sink after shaving, Tfor quick-release moments (like chasing prey across the or clean dishes after eating." Helpfully, he pointed out that plains) or for marking territory in prehistoric times, modern toilets need to be oval and elongated if men are to sit while porcelain conveniences cannot accommodate the careless- urinating, in order to allow for manual direction of the flow. ness of males who stand while urinating. Any woman who "Sitting is simply more comfortable," cheered Michael, a has lived with males knows that most do not confine their self-described "fanatically tidy gay man." He noted that it's urine to the bowl, and someone—usually a woman—ends much easier to contain the flow while seated, especially up mopping the mess. with a morning erection. "It's better all around. You don't Why do we train boys to urinate in a standing position have to clean up pubic hair that falls outside the toilet, your when, even as adults, they cannot perform the function bathroom doesn't smell, and your pants don't get wet with precision? Though some males have been taught by because it shakes off better." Meanwhile, Alex, a 22-year-old the women in their lives to clean up after themselves, Chinese-Philippino-Mexican American, switched to seden- they're a distinct minority. Most residential toilets used by tary urination several years ago for religious reasons. "One boys or men are cleaned by their mothers, female partners, of the Buddhist teachings is that women live longer because sisters, or housekeepers. they sit down to pee," he explained. "I have been sitting Something is gravely wrong with this picture. And so, for ever since I learned that. It really is more peaceful." approximately 25 years, I've nudged, Excepting the first couple examples, America has clearly cajoled, and rallied friends and rela- Helping reached a consensus: Sedentary urination is cleaner, neater, tives to teach their boys to sit while and more peaceful. Yet challenging the status quo is daunt- peeing. men ing to many men (and many parents), raising concerns I began contemplating sedentary about conformity, masculinity, and patriotism. Standing with urination when Nixon was presi- adjust to feet placed a shoulder's width apart is more soldierly, more dent. A lesbian friend was toilet aggressive, more determined. Sitting is training her two-year-old son. 20th-century more passive: The flanks are exposed. Recalling countless bespattered toi- My cousin Aaron is embarrassed let seats he had forgotten to raise, I plumbing. that an episode of urethritis 15 years suggested that life might be more ago forced him to sit to direct his pleasant all around if her child sim- stream more effectively. He taught his ply sat down, thereby confining his son to stand. Why? "Because that is output to the bowl. She marveled at —f^ J what the other kids do." But when I the novelty of the idea, but worried ffj^H asked 4-year-old Nathan about his that her child would have yet anoth- IJlfei preferred mode of urinating, he er problem "fitting in" with other I I||H informed me that he was comfortable boys—since he was already destined • II sitting or standing. "But 1 want to tell to confront homophobia at school. EM'£1& y°u •' secret," he said in a hushed A friend of mine knows a woman .^B^lli-5'.-l tone. "Sometimes when nobody is who stands—straddling and facing around I stand on the toilet and pee the John—when she pees. Apparent- into the sink." • ly, she adopted this stance as a three- year-old after her grandfather told Dr. Gartrell, editor of the recently pub- her that "the crabs" •would bite her lished book, Bringing Ethics Alive, is tushy if she sat down. With scanty associate clinical professor of psychiatry, formal evidence to go on, I suspect University of California at San Francisco.

60 ON THE ISSUES WINTER 1995 •MEN'S HEALTH ISAWOMEN'S ISSUE

The book that helps The book doctors The book that you help yourself don't want you to read started a revolution

IOO« IHM ITkBIED IH[ WOMIN'l MIIITH REVOLUTION M THE •-

M enopause MENOPftUSi 25L/TTH ANNIVERSARY INDUSTRY EDITION How the

• V Medical The Establishment . Doctor's edicine*^ Exploits M Women )& Case ©Feel Hoaithy i Against the Pill © Look Younger

j Live Longer . oncrm -iiii ihr pill Thrrull fiuro^mpiy

Unda Ojeda, Ph.D.

Menopause Million! The depth of knowledge Feminist author Medicine could be de- and thoughtful analysis Barbara Seaman was the scribed as a wellness presented in these pages first to call the pill into bible. It really gives can empower us. The question in ways that got women an overall picture questioning of newly the publics attention. of their bodies and how to 'orthodox' wisdom can The influential book keep [them] running to provide us with the tools described the little- optimum proficiency. As and resources for evalu- known studies that menstruation is the ating facile advice, linked oral contracep- beginning of a woman s whether from popular tives to blood clots, reproductive cycle. articles or from our strokes, [and] cancer.... menopause should be seen health providers. Every When Congress held as the culmination, not woman at or approaching hearings on the pill in the bitter ending. midlife must read this 1970, Seaman and other book. n activists disrupted them, — Whole Life Times demanding that women — Paula B. Doress-Worters, be allowed to speak. co-author of The New Our Bodies, — Flora Davis, author of Ourselves Moving the Mountain: available now The Women's Movement at your local bookstore in America Since 1960 or order direct from

HUNTER HOUSE INC., PUBLISHERS AND THESE BOOKS RO. BOX 2914 ALAMEDA, CA 94501-0914 8 510-865-5282 fax: 510-865-4295 ARE ON THE ISSUES toll-free: 800-266-5592 VIRGIN . MOTHER . CRONE /Myths and /Mysteries of the Triple Goddess Donna Wilshire • ISBN: 0-89281-494-2 • $19.95 paperback OFTHE Mk?*te 100 illustrations "Actress and playwright Donna Wilshire explores the full terrain of the ancient female Great Mother and Creatnx. On a fascinating par with the excellent text is the splendid trove of m VIRGIN! images and icons. " Publisher,* Weekly m Mother M "Written in delightful, exuberant verse and Filled with stunning ^CRONE j imagery, stage directions for mime and dance, and typographic play, the dramatizations leap off the page ...much food for thought, delightful word-spinning, and truly marvelous ritual drama." Parabola 1 fa • i Virqin Mother Crone is gorgeous, clear, informative, original. I was deeply impressed and moved." Olympia Dukakis m LADY OF THE BEASTS The Goddess and Her Sacred Aniinab Buffie Johnson • ISBN 0-89281-523-X • $24.95 paperback 400 color and black and white illustrations This is the classic book on the Goddess as defined by the ancient societies that worshiped her, richly illustrated with art and artifacts from prehistory to the present. WISE WOMEN OF THE DREAMTIME "Represents one of the essential aspects of the prehistoric Aboriginal Tales of the Ancestral Powers Goddess: Her oneness with the animals, from bird and fish to Collected by K. Langloh Parker • rid. by Johanna Lambert bear and lion, as preserved in art through time." ISBN 0-89281-477-2 • $12.95 paperback Marija Gimbutas, author of The Language of the Gotk)e.v "Australian writer Lambert has done a masterful job of editing "A gem of feminist research and visualization.' Barbara G. the traditional Aboriginal myths and stories collected by Katie Walker, author of The Women ',< Encyclopedia ofJ/ytlv andSecreLi Langloh Parker (1856-1940). This well-written anthology provides an interesting perspective on major life themes, as well as the ancestral powers, animal powers, magic, and healing, as perceived by traditional Aboriginal women." Library Journal The THE JOURNEY BEYOND lourney BREAST CANCER Beyond From the Personal to the Political— Taking an Active LADY Breast Role in Prevention, Diagncuui, and Your Own Healing T BEASTS Cancer Virginia M. Soffa • ISBN 0-89281-448-9 • $14.95 paperback Tut QOUOESS AND HFR _J SACKIP ANIMAIS T,,kmg,m jg Breast cancer survivor Virginia Soffa evaluates alternative Active Rolf in ; "v and conventional treatments and outlines a strategy for women to make informed choices. She investigates possible causes, including oral contraceptives, diet, and environmental fac- tors, and discusses the mammography debate. Includes selec- tions from Healing Legacies, art and writings created by women VIRGINIA M. SOKFA with breast cancer.

Order from your local bookstore, or from Inner Traditions, Box 388, Rochester, VT 05767 (800) 488-2665 Please add $3 for shipping for first book, $1 for each additional