TH E UU9DER F E B R U A R Y /M A R C H 1971 $1.25 ! THE LADDER, published by Lesbians and directed to ALL women seeking full human dignity, had its beginning in 1956. It was then the only Lesbian VOLUME 15 No. 4 and 5 publication in the U.S. It is now the only women’s magazine openly supporting FEBRUARY/MARCH 1971 THE Lesbians, a forceful minority within the women’s liberation movement.

Initially THE LADDER’S goal was limited to achieving the rights accorded LADDER heterosexual women, that is, full second-class citizenship. In the 1950’s women THE LADDER STAFF as a whole were as yet unaware of their oppression. The Lesbian knew. And sbe wondered silently when her sisters would realize that they too share many of the Editor ...... GeneDamon Lesbian’s handicaps, those that pertained to being a woman. Director of Prom otion ...... Rita Laporte Production E d i t o r ...... Hope Thompson THE l a d d e r ’s purpose today is to raise all women to full human status, with Circulation Manager ...... Ann P. Buck all of the rights and responsibilities this entails; to include ALL women, whether Production Assistants ...... Lyn Collins, Kim Stabinski, Lesbian or heterosexual. Gladys Irma, King Kelly, Ann Brady, Robin and Dana Jordan OCCUPATIONS have no sex and must be opened to all qualified persons Secretary to the Editor...... Tracy Wright for the benefit of all. February/March, 1971 CONTENTS: < LIFE STYLES must be as numerous as human beings require for their On the Line — Editorial by Gene Damon ...... 4 personal happiness and fulfillment. Lifestyles for W'omen: A Comparative .Analysis by Nila Bowman McCormick ...... 6 ABILITY, AMBITION, TALENT - Caution to the Winds, Short Story THESE ARE HUMAN QUALITIES. by Gabrielle Civian Bertrand ...... 14 Illustration by Kate McColl Head andTai\, A Fable by Wilda Chase ...... 19 Illustration by Lynne THE LADDER, though written, edited, and circulated by volunteer labor, journeys in Art by Jean Louise ...... 20 cannot survive without money. ITe Lesbians are perhaps more anxious than Book Reviews by Hope Thompson...... 22 other women to make our views known. We wish we could blanket the country A D o cu m en t...... 25 and the world with free copies. But stern reality tells us that, more important Bright Particular Star, A Review by Lennox S tro n g ...... 29 even than mass distribution, is the need to keep alive the only real Lesbian Penelope Pitstop Isn’t Enough! by Marion Meade ...... 52 magazine in the world. Therefore THE LADDER will no longer be sold at Seven Poems by Cheri Abot ...... 34 newsstands. We will survive only if there are enough o f you sufficiently Lesbiana by Gene Damon ...... 36 concerned with the rights and the liberation of ALL women to spend $7.50 a Cross C u rre n ts...... 39 year to subscribe. (Sample copies are always available at $1.25.) Readers R espond...... 46 f ADVERTISING RATES COVER: “Surried Soul”Photo by June M. Smith

Half Page ...... J45 Back C over...... $100 Cartoons: “Equal Opportunity,’’ Idea by Jeri Leigh, Drawing by Candi Quarter P a g e ...... $25 Page ...... $ 80 McGonagle “ . . . and God Created . . . ” by Lynne Repeated Advertisements at Reduced Rates “Sally Bananas” by C. Barsotti. Published bi-monthly at Box 5025, Washington Station, Reno, Nevada, 89503. (ORGANIZATIONS OR GROUPS wishing to order bulk quantities o f THE All rights reserved. No part o f this periodical may be reproduced without the LADDER may do so at the rate o f 10 copies for $8.00, written consent o f THE LADDER. Oía Tk@ Urn EDITORIAL BY GENE DAMON At least once each month someone women to type manuscripts for us. This can writes to me to say, in effect, “1 was sure at be done by mail as it is done now by those least dozens of people were doing this for many women who a.s.sist us. Women, being you, so I never bothered to offer”. This poor by virtue of their oppression in the usu^y from a woman who has sent a working world, are often very busy, and far clipping or two and been thanked for it, loo busy to give much time. Therefore, we and asked to continue helping in thLs area need more of you to help spread the load of SECRETARY . . . just one of the many areas where we labor more equitably among our volunteers. need, must have your help. We also need money to survive. If each As a matter of fact there are no areas of you will bring us only ONE other new where we do not need more help. We need suWriber you will help us immeasurably in $8gX)0 to $10.000 writers constantly . . . women writing our struggle to continue publishing. THE about and for women, in fiction, poetry, LADDER is the only magazine in the depending upon experience non-fiction, every area. We need artists able country dealing with Lesbians honestly and to draw an illustration on request from a with all women interested in obtaining full description of the material to be used. Wc human status in the world. If it ceases to need cartoonists and cartoon ideas. We need exist, you will all be the poorer for its clippings from all over the country con­ going. The anonymous “they” that get the Here’s your chance to live in sunny Fort cerned with Lesbian rights and women’s blame when anything goes wrong arc only rights. those who do not help when they can. And Lauderdale and become associated with a THF, LADDER is in a growing period. you can, all of you, in some way large or The quality of material in thus magazine small. We need you to help us help all of first-line, fast-growing publishing company. cannot be maintained, let alone improved you. without your talents and energies. We need Please d o . Truly exceptional opportunity for the right person. THE LESBIAN Please send in - depth resume, including IN LITERATURE phone number, to: a bibliography By Gene Damon and Lee Stuart DEPT. 505 AN ALPHABETICAL LISTING BY AUTHOR OF ALL KNOWN BOOKS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. IN THE GENERAL FIELD OF ALLIED PUBLICATIONS, INC. LITERATURE. CONCERNED WITH LESBIANISM. OR HAVING P.O. Box 23505 LESBIAN CHARACTERS. Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33307 T H E L A D D E R P.O. Box 5025. Washington Station. Reno. Nevada 89503 $2 plus 25c handling charge. Also have one editorial position open. Salary depends upon qualifications. SALLY BANANAS Illustrated by C. Barsotti' All inquiries guaranteed to be kept strictly confidential.

©1970, Newsday, Inc. Reprinted by Permission.

JL find it profitable to fix their attentions children . . .” If this fact is the Gallup poll briefly upon our psychic perversions, ratlier nominee’s most significant (“staggering”) than upon our more genital aberrations. accomplislimenl then prolific motherhood Life Styles for Women: There is a lot more to Lesbianism than an must be an achievement the Gallup poll, unusual taste in coital companionship; there hence American Opinion, usually endorses A Comparative Analysis is the Sapphic mind. Urihomogeneous as we in its popular female figures. If the press are, in ourselves can still be detected a and otlier news media may be held responsi­ By Nila Bowman McCormick I denominator, a constant, and in that con­ ble for public opinion, then we notice that stant - a treasonous social threat. the press hardly overlooks the reproductive “working-class” woman in the room, 1 was The best demonstrations of the .Sapphic traits in Mrs. Kennedy’s personality when “Because only if you understand just how it praising her. The New York Times Magazine is in this awful, aseptic citadel o f female the oidy woman who had taken the after­ mentality might be observed in our reac­ noon off from work to go to the doctor’s. tions to accepted role models. (In the goes on to say that ”... a reporter with a sexuality, primal and complacent, will you mathematical mind calculated that Ethel know why the girl in 42 is so important to Therefore, perhaps that was why 1 was less incident above, my particularized reaction patient than the others. It occurred to me to Ethel Kennedy.) 1 find no evidence to was pregnant 43 percent of her married life me,“ to doubt that the husbands of these women suggest that we as children or as adolescents ...” I also have a mathematical mind and 1 figured out that if the information .sup­ When I was new to this city, I found - busy executives, possibly lawyers, stock­ watched less television or attended fewer brokers and so forth — ever have to wait as media exhibitions of heterosexuality. There plied by the pregnant woman sitting be.side myself in need of medical attention, having me in the gynecologist-obstetrician’s office injured myself in a gymnasium. Knowing long, when they need to have their own is nothing to suggest we are not equally genitals seen to. They’d at least be raising children of the mixed-media response. But, were true, Ethel must have had at least two few people in town, I asked a woman with vagina] inspections per month for nine whom 1 worked if she could recommend a hell at the front desk and demanding to see how strangely we reacted in most cases, the management or some such thing. They long before puberty, to popular and public months per eleven pregnancies, without good doctor, and slie came up with what taking into account that the pelvic vistas proved to be a Park Avenue gynecologist. 1 wouldn’t just sit there. But their wives, of female figures. What short eircuit in condi­ afforded by celebrated pregnancies must be can imagine no situation so constructed as course, had no business whatever in the tioning can be held responsible when an somewhat more extensive than those dis­ to make a Lesbian quite so incongruously ill world. eight-year-old female child switches off Miss played by an ordinary woman’s; and, at the at case as a wait in a gynecologist-obstetri­ 1 struck up a commiserating eonversation America and switches on the Roller Derby Kennedy echelon, beyond my lurid ability cian’s office. Not that the waiting room was concerning the length of tlic wait with an girls? Wherever did we learn to prefer to conceptualize. Rut, at the regular rate, decorated to be anything but thickly and adjacent sufferer. She was in an advanced dashing women to mincing ones? If we gracdously “Father Knows Best” disarming. state of pregnancy and appeared to have often had such disparate choices as the one eleven pregnancies works out to about I9B But 1 was not, mixed-media changeling that been waiting long before 1 had arrived. In between the Miss America contest and the pelvic examinations. Therefore, the admired 1 am, responsive to the room’s contrived ad ^io n to confirming my suspicions that roller derby, one could say that Lesbianism and respected Mrs. Robert F. Kennedy has, appeal The mellow lighting of the ante­ m y '^ n i was yet several hours away, she might be a matter of choosing unwisely on at least 198 occasions, been in the rooms failed to obscure the true klieg-light volunteered to initiate me in some standard among or, at leasl between role model somewhat ungainly (but I suppose, highly nature of the interior. In spite of the pregnancy procedures, informing me that in alternatives. But rarely are women pre- feminine) position of being in ah . . . discomfiting surroundings of the waiting the first months of her pregnancy, she had •sented with variety in the matter. Rather, “stirrups” as I believe they are so cutely room, the spectacle of that herd of preg­ to come in for a cervical examination every we arc inundated on all channels with the called. Noteworthily enough, Ethel’s five nant heterosexuals in their natural habitat two weeks and during the last few months same scarcely undifferentiated image. One Caesareans failed to stultify tiiis unique was not without its anthropological amuse­ she had had her pelvic check once a week — has to look hard to find a roller derby or an form of self-expression. Perhaps it is not ments. Most interestingly, for example, 1 a frequency normal for upper-middle in­ old Katherine Hepburn movie. Many of us Mrs. Kennedy’s mind 1 should endeavor to noted that masses of Mr. Kenneth hair and come pregnancies, 1 gathered. On each of went through life imitating no one we had comprehend. I am certain the Men’s Divi­ all the perfumed forces of frantically-fash- these occasions she is accustomed to wait ever heard of. sion of the 1969 Gallup poll managed to elect someone not principally known for his ionable civilization could not quite manage for her turn on the examining table a stud activity. to rout the essence of placidity from the minimum of four hours. All of this she PART II: MOST POPULAR AND atmosphere. Also, in the interest of science related in a breathy voice full of reverence BEST-ALL-AROUND I was curious to observe that pregnant for that great man, our gynecologist, just A; MOST PREGNANT ’69 B; MOST PIOUS ‘69 heterosexuals are given only picture books then 1 saw a color photo of Ethel Kennedy Since that visit to the gynecologist- It is a democratic (if not discriminating) to read, even though this particular grinning up at me from the Ladies Home obstetrician’s office, I have had a morbid American trait to appreciate all nouns and .sampling had been largely educated in Journal. The caption read, “ According to a need to comprehend Mrs. Robert F. (Ethel) adjectives prefixed by “most,” “best” and Seven Sisters institutions. However, most of recent Gallup poll, Americans r^ard her as Kennedy’s mind and to endeavor to under­ “first.” Along with her marathon pregnan­ these ladies did not engage even in this the country’s most admired woman.” When stand why anyone should happen to so cy, Mrs. Robert Kennedy’s high rate of trivial occupation. Rather, they stared idly my turn came I had walked out on hetero­ convulsively reject the 1969 Gallup poll’s church attendance probably helped earn her and vacantly (ever patiently) into their false sexuality one more time. most acclaimed role model; and, further, to top position on the 1969 Gallup poll, if not eyelaslies, which I presumed to be the loci (Let me not be accused of suggesting understand and attempt to enumerate the in the hereafter. However, not only are Mrs. of transcendental pregnant inner being. that 1 do not believe in prompt medical qualifications contributing to that august Kennedy’s pious exertions (rosary every Taken together, the eyes and grins of the attention. Rather, 1 have made it my policy position in the American public esteem. night, mass every morning) prodigal in women surrounding me in tliat waiting since that day to patronize only female According to the November 30, 1969, New quantity, they are also American in quality; room were symptomatic of microcephalus. physicians. 1 also make it a general point to York Times Magazine, “Perhaps the single i.e., childlike and simple. “ . . . what her And finally, the creatures were (the horror allow as few dollars as I possibly can to find most staggering fact about Ethel Kennedy, friends really find amazing about Ethel’s of it) all dressed up (for some uncanny their way into male hands.) a trim size eight (The Ladies Home Journal Catholicism is that she. is the only person rea-son) for a meat inspection. Perhaps those persons devoted to the adores her for this), is that she has 11 they know who still believes, really believes, It was getting late. Since 1 was the only correction of female homosexuality might in God and an afterlife as literally as they “ Veteran New Frontiersmen remember much esteem. Americans prefer men of imagining themselves as having some brighl- action and Ethel in her way is a woman of did until they reached the age of 10.” with mixed amusement and embarrassment ly-busy errands. Ethel is the apotheosis of action. “Ethel’s version of heaven comes complete that she was the champion asker of gauche jet-age, gadgety, scurrying, housewifery. So with pearly gates, fleecy white clouds, and a questions at the Hickory Hill seminars “But evenings at Hickory Hill are hardly she is marketed; so she is bought. “Ethel troop of angels and archangels decked out where Bobby brouglit his people together occasions for quiet conversation. ‘After Skakel Kennedy has been idle for hardly a in wings, halos and flowing robes,” a friend with leading intellectuals.” dinner, you never just sit around and talk, minute in her life . . . The only time she says. The New York Times Magazine also “ . . . Ethel has also had the reputation because she’s not comfortable in that type rested, she rested from exhaustion.” “It is quotes Ethel as having remarked, on a of being an intellectual lightweight, a repu­ of situation,’ says a friend. There is always painful for her to sit still for any length of sunny day, after a long rainy period, “lip tation that dates back to the early sixties an activity of some sort - charades, time, her hands idle, her thoughts closing in there in heaven, Bobby must have told God when Robert Kennedy invited leading games ...” on her, then her pert features droop ...” that He had to do better." 1 wonder how- scholars out to his house to meet with New The New York Times Magazine adds, Americans like their women to look pert. If acceptable such childlike religious trust Frontiersmen. At these so-called Hickory “ ‘Ethel is always determined that when one can keep busy enough, one can keep would be in a man. Would one, even if one Hill seminars, Ethel .sometimes asked ques­ you are in her company that you have a too busy to think. were a hide-bound pacifist, not tremble for tions that seemed downright -silly to the good time . . . She likes to have a good the national sceurity if a male leader sug­ others in attendance, including Bobby, who time and she has when everyone else does. F: FAVORITE CHEERLEADER ’69 gested a troop of archangels had been sent was often heard to say, ‘Can it, Ethel!’ ” Her idea of a good time isn’t talking, it’s The final important factor in Mrs. RoK down to sub for the ABM? Would one feel Perhaps in a less barbaric age than our doing something — sailing, playing tennis, ert Kennedy's nomination to tlie Gallup quite secure with a male leader who suggest­ own, wives will be selected with a peer playing a game or a practical joke . . . I poll, aside from her being a great mother, ed to his constituents that they pray to the relationship in mind. Perhaps in a golden prefer after-dinner conversation to Ethel’s Christain, anti-intellectual, and athlete, is good angels at Consolidated Edison to put age of the future, one would (at least) feel after-dinner charades, word-games, and mu­ her strict observance of her supportive role out more clean energy? But what might squeamish about the implications of a sical chairs.’ ” as Robert Kennedy’s wife. Her discipleship, seem a potentially despotic affliction in a relationship, wherein the wife’s cute re­ Later on, the New York Times reassures the like of which has not been seen since male leader is charming in a lady, as long as marks have to be shushed when company us that while Ethel encourages adults to run the Twelve, involves an uncritical adoption ladies are not in a position to concern comes to visit and talk grown-up talk. Or, about the dinner table, she keeps “ . . .the of the complete set of her husband’s ideas, themselves with matters of vital national perhaps Ethel is a model of the future; nagging (‘Eat your broccoli’) to a minimum principles, beliefs. One can then see the interest: e.g., .Martha Mitchell. Men have Industry has long since discovered that the and ...” encourages “intelligent conversa advantages of an empty-headed wife; a their theology, women have religion; wom­ lower the intelligence quotient, the greater tion” at her children’s meals. woman whose mind is uncluttered with her en have the church, not the pulpit; faith, the ability to perform routine or dull tasks. own ideology has room for all her hus­ not reason; intuition, not proof; supersti­ Wives would appear to be similarly selected. E: GOOD SPORT ’69 band’s intellectual furniture. The New York tion, not science. Mrs. Kennedy’s religion is .Among Mrs. Kennedy’s political convictions Ethel’s activity-mindedness goes mud. Times Magazine and Time both have glow­ a.s simple in its practice as it is simplistic in are those that (1) “ . . . people who have further than being just a bustling hostess. In ing words for this .sort of personality; trail. its theology. Etlicl has nearly succeeded in been psychoanalyzed are unfit for public line with the rest of her All-American “These are the principles by which Ethel making the Church of Rome palatable to service ...” and (2) “. . . that her leitmotif, Ethel is Athletic. According to believes Bobby Uved. They are the principles folksy Protestants, reared along backwoods brother-in-law Sargent Shriver’s Peace Corps Time, “More than any other Kennedy. she intends to carry forward.” puritan lines, who have alw-ays deeply sus­ was ‘terrific’ but ‘shouldn’t go around the Ethel has always been obsessed with ath­ “Ethel’s special triumph has been to pected that the Catholic faith bore traces of world handing out those things,’ i.e., con­ letics.” (If Ethel has a following among maintain normalcy. She has simply carried .Art, Culture, Civilization, and other em­ traceptives.” Again, an intellectual incapa­ Lesbians, it will be because of this trait. on, as best she could, the kind of existence blems of fleshly idolatry. Americans of the city that would be inexcu.sable in a male However, Ethel’s athleticism can be ac­ that Bobby would have pursued had he puritan persuasion were happy to learn Mrs. leader is only charming featherheadedness cepted as not too masculine a trait in a lived.” Robert Kennedy was as unhypnotized by in his wife. But then, too, Mrs. Kennedy country which values its athletes more than “She has turned up at gatherings to raise the lavish liturgical production numbers of would have difficulty reconciling an adult its intellectuals. Her sportiness carries on an money for Cesar Chavez’s grape-strikers the Roman faith as they. “ . . . she is intellectual capacity with her childlike American tradition of femininity vestigial (whose cause her husband sup­ afraid of sounding pretentious; she dislikes faith. now in Tampax ads, where pioneer daugh­ ported) ...” high flown statements and pompous people, Mrs. Kennedy’s noiv-intellectuahsm ex­ ters like Ethel run around as Ethel did (The New York Times Magazine rather one reason the late Cardinal Spellman was tends to cultural matters as well, where her “Last summer, nearly six months into her nastily adds that ”... the annual florist no great favorite of hers.” Ethel did not tastes lack again any sign of Vatican omatc- pregnancy,. . . ” when she was bounding bill at Hickory Hill could comfortably terrorize Americans with pomp and circum­ ness. “ . . . she’s a cultural square who “around the tennis court at Hyannis- support several grape-strikers’ families for a stance; .she was never quite the fag hag cheerfully admits that she perfers books port,. . . ”) year. ” This remark might provide paren- Jackie was. with happy endings to books Uke On the Ethel’s athletics and her generalized thetieal insigjit into the precise nature of Beach, show tunes to classical music, and busy-ness serve to establish an aura of the Kennedy family political ideology. The C: CUTEST BRAIN’69 Walt Disney flicks to naughty Swedish non-passivity, to build a mistaken impres­ florist bill reinforces suspicions that the The childlike nature of Mrs. Kennedy’s films.” sion of useful and important comings, Kennedy’s are not innovators of a New religious faith begins to glimpse the powers goings and doings; to produce an Eleanor Left, or even of an Old Socialism, but of the 1969 Gallup poll’s most admired D: BUSIEST HOSTESS ’69 Roosevelt ambiance, with nothing more rather preservers of the old tradition of female intelligence. .A Time magazine cover Before 1 unjustly accuse American Opin­ profound than after-dinner agitation and noblesse oblige — “radical chic” as we refer story and the previously quoted New York ion (as manifested in the Gallup poll) of fidgeting at sports. American women are a to it nowadays.) Times Magazine study corroborate each having a bias for silly females, 1 must admit bit too rugged to take as their model a On the whole, Mrs. Kennedy’s wifely other in their descriptions of Ethel’s intel­ that this is not a country where intellectuals geisha ideology or a torpid European mys­ duties would appear to be similar in charac­ lectual precociousness. — even male ones — have ever been held in tique. American women are too fond of ter to those of a faithful family retainer and extending through the carpenter’s ag­ and refinement - indeed, of exacting con- who keeps all the master’s personal effects John Birch Society, if not the CIA. A gressive daughter, and the un-timid house­ noisseurship - the feminine ability to di.s- polished and in good order, should he revolutionary era is no time for subtle keeper who became his wife, and the tinguish among dirty dLslies left by Republi­ return. Vicarious identity to the point of dialectic. But, alas and regretfully, my independent woman who was Ruby Pearl. can, Democratic, revolutionary and reac­ utter self-effacement, while usually consid­ tirade is a bit more complex than Get-the.- Manson’s girls, intellectually superior to all tionary parties, or, for that matter, the ered a neurosis in most human beings, is Pigs-graffiti-syntax can express and I beg the women that George Spahn had known, ability to select the appropriate penis, desirable in butlers and wives. Reversing the you to follow a Uttle longer. My point: Pat were also more domestic: they liked to evenings. pronouns, would we not think a man and Ethel fairly explain why 1 have always cook, to clean, to sew, to make love to Criticism, without offering remedial pn>- something of a nonentity if he said he tended to be apolitical. After listening to Manson or to whomever he designated.” posals, has little value. I intend to offer one. always votes Republican because his wife Dick’s and to Bobby’s varied discourses and The Manson girls are what radical young To be fair, 1 have searched outside Lesbian does? examining their varied contributions to the men mean when they say they “dig emanci­ circles. I have discovered one true heretic. edification of mankind, I looked closely at pated chicks.” By “liberated” they mean a There is at least one living alternative to PART 111: the candidates’ wives and figured out from geisha who sleeps around and doesn’t mind Ethel Kennedy. THE REPUBLICAN ALTERNATE there just how “prone” my position in the if the accomodations are mountain-guerilla “ I am Myra Breckinridge, whom no man LIFESTYLE movement (as Stokely Carmichael puts it) poor. The great difference between this will ever possess.” But whom do 1 annoy my Uberal-esque was going to be. However vast the differ­ generation of “emancipated chicks” and Time’s November 28, 1969, cover article friends and pick on dear Ethel? Isn’t Mrs, ences in their husbands, the most significant their mothers is that the previous genera­ astutely observed that the parallels between Richard M. Nixon a paragon of insipid difference that I can detect in Pat and Ethel tion bottle-fed their babies, while this one is Vidal’s heroine and Raquel Welch are not femininity"? Was she not “ . . is that Ethel is somewhat more incUned to more apt to breast-feed in public. To my incidental. Outstanding Homemaker of the Year wear a mini-skirt. Other than that “diver­ mind, the past generation of women was “I am the New Woman whose astonish­ (1953), Mother of the Year (1955), and sity,” as far as 1 could see, both women aliead. ing history is a poignant amalgam of vulgar Nation’s Ideal Housewife (1957)” ? FirsL function with equal effectiveness as sort of dreams and knife-sharp realities.” poor Pat was quite adequately discussed by “groupies” for their husbands. PART IV: “Few spectacles arc more terrifying tlian As usual, all this babbling about “alter­ .Judith Viorst, a feminist who wrote the CRUCIAL SIMILARITIES IN CHARLIE the New Woman, bearing the twin torches nate lifestyles” becomes a travesty when superb September 13, 1970, New York MANSON’S AND PRESIDENT .NIXON’S of Desire to Succeed and Disdain for Mere Times Magazine cover .story on Mrs. Nixon. applied to women. When one evaluates WET DREAMS Man.” slaves there are only two measures that one Second, Pat Nixon is never used by the If you are not yet convinced of similari­ Raquel did not always resemble the can apply: (1) alwolute faithfulness and media to make the precise kind of insult ties between the (1) liberal-Democratic, (2) invincible Myra. At one time she was adherence to the master’s wishes, and (2) that Ethel makes. Mrs. Nixon is, after all, a Conservative-Republican, and (3) psyche­ perfectly capable of reciting the feminine corporate Republican wife and is not recom- purcha.se price (determined by health, at­ delic-radical feminine lifestyles, 1 ask you to party line, and, like Ethel, of having “an m e n d e d to us as the natural mate of tractiveness, skills, etc.). By these standards, compare closely the following quotations: absolute dedication to the duties of wife Ethel and Pat are both “good niggers.” “liberal” man. Whereas Ethel is just the sort X. “Obviously, they adored him. They and mother.” Pageant describes pre-rebel- of woman McCall’s seizes upon to stuff There is only one lifestyle among slaves. By made his clothes, sat at his feet while he lion Raquel being interviewed by a local down our consciousness, when they make slave standards, there are, for that matter, ate, made love to him whenever he wished, newspaper several years ago “ . . .a t her an effort to locate a Famous Fulfilled no significant “lifestyle” variations or ideol­ did whatever he asked.” sewing machine, making a .set of yellow Housewife who is not dreadfully dull.(Much ogical differences between Ethel and Pat Y. “(site would) then go back home curtains for her home.” She “ . . . was to the chagrin of the ladies’ magazines, and Manson’s chicks (Satan’s Slaves, as they and call her friends to say how brilliantly asked what she thouglit of babies. ‘1 think whenever they locate a model of dutiful are sometimes called). Are the Manson girls Bobby had performed . . . For Ethel, says they are best of all,’ she replied with a femininity, she is too bland to be market­ less fecund, less faithful, worse cooks or Eunice Shriver, ‘Bobby was everything: the motherly smile. ‘1 like that domestic bit. able.) It is Ethel, not Pat, who is what housekeepers than Pat or Ethel? True, their best sailor, the best skier — a hero who That’s what 1 was meant to do. I don’t pa.s.«es (in Ladies’ Home Journal parlance) purchase price, as for all chicks of even could easily climb Mount Everest if he think a professional career will bring any for a free spirit. Ethel’s rattling kineticism dubious “radical” association, is negligible. wanted to. ’ ” girl happiness. She’ll always be frus­ pa.sses for liberabsm and liberation, just as (When applied to men, the word “radical” X. “They arc waiting, these empty- trated. ’ ” Then, “Raquel the housewife Pat’s quiescence is mistaken for conserva­ means Marxist of revolutionary; but, when eyed waifs with the cracked-doll faces, for interspersed domestic chores with dramatics tive politics. As Marshall McLuhan likes to appbed to women, it means free or cheap.) Charlie Manson to come back and run his classes at San Diego State College, and so point out, politics in this year of visual The Manson girls are not the “house nig­ macabre little kingdom and make things grew restive,” (There is nothing to equal the gers” Ethel and Pat are. But, didn’t Char­ communication is more a matter of dress here the way they used to be.” corrupting effects of an education.) And, lie's lawyers highly praise their cooking than of ideas. And as 1 write, Mrs. William Y. “It means sticking with a way of shortly after that, Raquel divorced her scavenged garbage which they “ . . . turn F. Buckley has just caused much consterna­ life. In Ethel’s mind her stewardship of the husband, took to “dumping” (to use Pag­ tion by appearing on the front page of the into ^lads, soups, and stew — described by eant’s verb) her children in day care centers one of the defense lawyers as ‘delicious, clamorous household symbolizes her stew­ “ Village Voice” as an ersatz American ardship of a legacy from Bobby.” (Steward, and became rich and infamou.s. and I’m not kidding. ’ ” Didn’t the blind Indian. Conservatives are charging defec­ syn. servant) tion; and liberaLs, co-option. owner of the “Manson” ranch, George Z. “ ‘Last night was one of the few PART V: Sadly, such is the simple-mindedness of Spahn, praise the girls’ dutiful submissive­ evenings I’ve had to myself. So I took down A FEMALE GAUGUIN IS A SOCIAL our polarized and revolutionary times that ness: “ . . . (he was) fascinated by Man- all Dick’s suits and pressed every one. Of DISEASE if I complain about anyone however vague­ son’s girls. They would do anything that course, I didn’t have to. But when I don’t Time and Pageant’s writers seem hardly ly associated with what Mr. Agnew tidily Manson asked, anything, and their submis­ have work to do, I just think up some new to approve. 1 wonder what their ethical bunches together for us as “liberal-radi­ siveness was in ^arp contrast to all the women that Spahn had ever known, begin­ project. ’ ” position is on the French painter Paul cals,” it will be electrically assumed that I It is truly a mark of feminine subtlety Gauguin, who left his wife and children for am therefore a hide-bound member of the ning with his stem mother in Pennsylvania // plied). 1 could not believe that when some­ gay Tahiti, Polynesian mistresses and des­ being something of a tease, Raquel would vants free her to be with her children, not tiny. 1 believe Gauguin is now generally appear to be exhibiting the “bitch” trait of body has loved so much as we did, that one to escape them. ” can do that ...” Contrast too, Ethel’s considered an avant-garde hero, called getting very well paid for putting out very In October 1963, Raquel again parked “Steppenwolf” or “Goldmund,” “Easy Rid­ little. Not a quality men much admire or previously mentioned strict adherence to her youngsters with the paternal grand­ er,” or intrepid, swashbuckling rebel. A encourage. But, of course, Raquel has been her husband’s principles, her vicarious bask­ mother and headed for Hollywood.” woman who does very much swashbuckling married twice and divorced, which situa­ ing in bis spotlight to this statement made “Every day (Raquel) rose at 6 a.m., or easy-riding we refer to as “whore” and tion, I suppose, does not compare favorably by Raquel’s first husband: “We both had dropped her children at a day care center “unnatural mother.” Desertion of wife and with Ethel’s; “those things” — i.e., contra­ strong personalities and we both wanted and set off on her unappointed rounds of child is genius; desertion of husband and ceptives, crypto-virginity. According to Ar­ careers. For me it was either leave or photographers.” child, bitchery. thur Schlesinger Jr., “Matters such as birth a.ssume a subordinate role.” Also, contrast “ It is also generally agreed that a bitch is control, homosexuality, drugs and divorce tlie castrating effects of Raquel's very ap­ PART VI: SLOPPY FA.MILY PLANNING: aggressive and therefore unfeminine (ahem). (ah, there we are again, in with the heroin pearance to men to the nurturing effect of A RADICALIZING EXPERIENCE She may be sexy in which case she becomes addicts) shocked her in 1959. In 1969 she is Ethel. “ . . . she sought to blind men with Although I have agreed to avoid the use ^ a bitch goddess, a special case which will perfectly willing to accept them as part of her beauty, determinedly unmanning them of esoteric or privileged information, 1 must not concern us here. But she is never a ‘true the way life is, without reducing her own in the way that King Kong was reduced to a lapse long enough to supply a po.s.sible * woman. ’ ” high standards.” 1 think it wonderful that a mere simian whimper by beauteous Fay explanation for Raquel’s .self-serving treat­ Perhaps movie stars have not the re­ woman who may have had as many as 198 Wray ...” (emphasis supplied). Raquel ment of her offspring. For example, the deemable social value of painters, but “be gynecological examinations finds homosex­ Tejada Welch bears no resemblance to frail, circumstances of Raquel’s two pregnancies all you can be” and, for a girl without a uality shocking and below standard. Ob­ delicate Fay Wray from any angle. “Eunice might throw some light on tlic matter. It scenity is relative, I suppose. college degree, Raquel has not done badly. Shriver writes . . . ‘He met Ethel, and all seems that Raquel had to drop out of In discussing Ethel and Raquel as role the love and appreciation for which she college in the first year to be “hustled off models, it is not my intention to contradict B: PATHOLOGICAL AMBITION VERSUS seemed to have an infinite capacity came to the altar.” This after a three-month wait anything the popular press, or the mixed- THE SUPPORTIVE ROLE pouring down on him. How he to sec if her first husband, her high school media (those social lawmakers) have said A second point of comparison might be blossomed.’ ” (emphasis supplied). While sweetheart, was going to marry her. Her that: “Ethel had no interest in center stage. about them. 1 am not trying to present you Ethel helps her spouse grow to his “maxi­ second child was not exactly, according to with mitigating, obscure or esoteric new She didn’t want to write a book, or study mum human potential,” Raquel has an Pageant’s gossip, a miracle of planned par­ evidence in their behalf. .Nor is it my law, or teach school. All she ever wanted awesome tendency to outgrow hers. Ac­ enthood either. She had just taken her concern to dispute “public knowledge” or to be was Bob’s wife and the mother of his cording to Raquel’s first husband and *. . . first modest step into professional to discover the “ real” woman behind the children.” ; while Raquel “ . . .in real life victim, “It’s inevitable that she will outgrow show business as the ‘weather girl’ on image in either case. 1 suspect there is a is a carefully prefabricated commodity, a Patrick.” (Raquel's second husband) 1 station KFMB-TV . . . ‘It was unfortunate conspiracy to sell us the image, not the paradigm of the hard-driving, self-nude wonder what the authors of Pageant maga­ that she got pregnant again right away,’ ” woman. The “Ethel” image is simply one of New Woman who just happened to choose zine would suggest as a remedy? Self- the mother-in-law is quoted as saying. While a good woman; the “Raquel” image, on the acting as a career.” Less favorable remarks inflicted mental retardation, perhaps? the press expects us to commend widowed other hand, is that of a bad woman. Raquel about Raquel refer to her as “pathologically Clearly, the best wives are those who know Ethel for raising eleven children alone with is a dark heroine, a bitch goddess, a femme ambitious,” “carnivorous,” “savage-pur­ when to curtail their intellectual enlighten­ nine servants and an income of $500,000 fatale, a slave mistress often photographed posed predator,” “spotlight hog.” But I was ment. Aecording to Time, unlike Ethel, per year, we are expected to condemn with a whip, or as a space woman holding a particularly interested in Raquel’s confes­ “Raquel is unquestionably bright.” Raquel for “dumping” her two children at a laser gun to a spaceman’s crotch, or as a sion: “ I’ll admit I’m extremely strong- day-care center, while her first husband was barbarian. .4s Time puts it, “Raquel is raw, minded. I don’t know any other way to C: CHILD-CARING PRACTICES in the service; and later, after her divorce, unconquerable antediluvian woman . . . be.” I wonder; why does strong will in a Raquel and Ethel are as diverse in their when her first husband Ohe children’s Raquel rarely plays an ordinary human woman require the verb “admit”? Why child-caring practices as they are in their father) “ . . . was ju.st out of the service and being, much less an authentic romantic should Miss Welch instinctively understand marital approaches. having a hard time getting .started,” and object.” 1 have rarely read or heard any- she is expected to be otherwise? Why does “Eight children are at Hickory Hill with therefore could not manage to contribute thirrg nice about Raquel Welch, yet 1 like she sense she ought to dissemble? Why is a her now. She sits down to every meal with to their support. However casual, day-care her; I have never heard or read anything man’s boast a woman’s admission? I find them, says the rosary and reads the Bible mother that slie was, Raquel did manage to nasty about Ethel Kennedy, yet I dislike the self-preserving necessity suggested by with them every night” support and feed her children on her her. considering the withholding of such “con­ “ Until two years ago, even the fact that irregular and meager income and without fessions” particularly unfortunate in this she had two growing children was kept a excuses. Later, after she had achieved some A: SILICONE SHEENA VERSUS SEXUAL Esalen Era of forced frankness and crude closely guarded secret . . . The kids . . . success, she sued her husband for failure to PURITY IN MOTHER OF 11 consciousness. were forbidden, according to intimates, support and won. This, according to Pag­ The most obvious physical contrast be­ Perhaps ambition is an admission be­ even to identify Raquel as their mother.” eant, was the topping qualification of a tween the Raquel and the Ethel images is cause heterosexual superstition associates ‘Many rich women have practically ab­ thoroughgoing bitch. sexuality. According to Time, “Raquel has ambition in a woman with faithless and dicated their roles as mothers. In numerous However, I will leave the final analysis a reputation for having climbed to the top castrating tendencies. Ethel is a deity of wealthy precincts, Nanny eats in the nurs­ of female role models to the press: without using her sex off the set.” (“Whom “togetherness,” while Raquel is a deserter. ery with the children . . . It is Ethel, not a “. . . Ethel Kermedy was tlie best-liked no man will ever possess . . . ”?) And According to the New York Times, “Ethel servant, who queues up on book-buying of the Kennedy women. Family friend.s, as Time refers to her as “Raquel the sex was as famous for her constancy as Mary’s lines at school. . , ‘She has always enjoyed well as members of the prcs.s usually find goddess who has bared neither entire breast lamb.” While Pageant says of Raquel, “She giving her youngest child its midmoming or Senator Edward Kennedy’s wife, Joan, the nor buttock to the public eye.” Besides had cut me o ff completely (emphasis sup­ noontime feeding and bath . . . Her ser­ sweetest and least demanding lady in the BIBLIOGRAPHY family, but a little dull; Jackie, they say, is Mr. Glasgow, if she doesn’t . . . I’m driving whole concern has been with our daugliter’s snooty; Mother Rose too distant; and the back right now. I’ll be right over.” welfare. And she’s never shown a robust Kennedy sisters, Patricia Lawford, Eunice Hayward, Jocelyn, “Women’s Wing,” THE •f t t LADDER, Vol. 14, No. 7 and 8 (April/ . . . that is, never led us to believe . . . I Shriver and Jean Smith, too aggressive and The rain, a curtain that wouldn’t part, was mean . , .” May 1970), p. 9. masculine. In their judgment, Ethel is in the way as she drove. But she was not “What Mrs. Glasgow means,” said Mr. friendly, outgoing, thoughtful, generous, Joreen, “The Bitch Manifesto,” NOTES heeding it or the road signs. She was FROM THE SECOND YEAR: WOM­ Glasgow, “is that Stacey has been rather ‘not hifalutin’ even if she is a millionaire.’ ” trapped in the car where she thought over aloof when it comes to matters of the heart. So much for alternate lifestyles in wom­ AN’S LIBERATION (1970), p. 5. and over o f her first meeting with the Sheehan, Susan, “The Lady of Hickory She hasn’t been seeing any young men since en. So much for our freedom of choice. Glasgows not three hours ago: the debutante ball.” HiU,” THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGA­ The sitting room they’d met in was ZINE (November 30, 1969), p. 30. “Is that so?” Karen said. She tried not expansive and plush. It boasted a great to smile at this flair for a righteous indig­ Sloan, Bill, “Raquel Welch: Our Latest formal fireplace with the typically severe nation that had drawn them in to these fNila Bowman McCormick writes that Love Goddess.” PAGEANT, Vol. 25, portrait above it. There were books banked outdated terms. No. 12 (June 1970), p. 54. she is six feet tall and mettacing in along one wall. The picture window over­ The malevolent wind swept around the appearance. Having seen her, the editor Tálese, Gay, “Charlie Manson’s Home on looked the sound and, though the sky house. denies that she is menacing in appear­ the Range,” ESQUIRE, Vol. LXXIIl, looked threatening, the view was impres­ "We’ve been after her to find a beau and ance. Bom in 1946 in a small southern No. 3, (March 1970), p. 101. sive. fall in love,” Mrs. Glasgow said. city, celebrated as the town’s only Viorst, Judith, “Pat Nixon Is the Ultimate The Glasgows were standing each at one Mr. Glasgow said, “We’ve been worrying “nigger lover” and “book reader, ” Nila Good Sport,” THE NEW YORK TIMES end of the fimplace, a study in up-tight ourselves .sick that she’d get mixed up in was pretty lonely until junior high MAGAZINE (September 13, 1970), p. composure. M>s. Gla.sgow stood in the some of these demonstrations they’re school, where she found a friend and 25. familiar shape of well-fed middle-aged having around the country. But I didn’t feel first love, in the same person. Went “The Kennedy of Hickory Hill,” TIME, women. She wore a huge bosom low under it would come to this!” “up north” to a large uniticrjify where Vol. 93, No. 17 (April 25, 1%9), p. 46. which a tough-boned, obviously custom “Didn’t feel,” Karen said. she had an undistinguished academic “Myra/Raquel: The Predator of Holly­ made, corset pulled in the rest of her. The “ Beg pardon?” Glasgow said. career, but managed to be on discipli­ wood,” TIME, Vol. 94, No. 22 (Novem­ result was a supercilious carriage. Mr. “What happened?” Karen said. nary probation almost her entire time ber 28,1969), p. 85. Glasgow stood putting his fingers through a She let her eyes grow innocent-large; at school. After graduation in J968, “Waiting for Charlie,” LIFE, Vol. 69, No. 8 head of black and white hair that had and keeping her lips together, stretched she moved to New York City, where (August 21, 1970), p. 40. receded to a place above his cars so that he them a little like puckering for a kis.s. A she now lives and works. Having found Vidal, Gore, MYRA BRECKINRIDGE. had to start his nervous fingers at the top of look of prissy innocence. “the great love o f my life, ” she says .New York: Little, Brown and Company, his head to find hair. He had a bronze open “Well,” Mrs. GIa.sgow walked to the 1968. she has settled down.) outdoor face. Louis Fourteen couch and sat down with a “We appreciate your coming,” Mr, studied ease, “last night when she came Glasgow said. home I knew immediately she was, well, csLvitioii to th e -w incis “ Yes,” said Mrs. Glasgow perfunctorily. having a . . . an emotional experience the By Gabrielle Vivian Bertrand “I had no choice,” Karen said. “Your likes of which she’s never before had;” she “Gone? Where?” chauffeur insisted you wanted to see me. added in a half whisper, “to say the least.” Karen felt cold sweat walk over her like Illustrated by Kate McColl What is it? Where’s Stacey?” “ Yes?” Karen said. ghosts. “We don’t understand any of it,” Mrs. .Mr. Glasgow seemed irritated by the “She’s taken the boat, her skiff,” Glasgow said. “She’s upstairs. She’s been short prod. Glasgow said, his voice a buzzing shape of making strange remarks. We want you to “What Mrs. Glasgow is .saying,” he said, words through llie phone. answer some questions for us.” doing it for her, “is that our daughter, when “ But she can’t do that. The storm,” “Strange remarks,” Karen said, putting questioned further about the roommate, Karen said inanely. hand to mouth to conceal an emphatic named you.” “My boatman saw her go,” Glasgow swallow. “ And what has all this to do with “ME?” .said. “ I told him he must have been me?” Karen pointed to herself with both mistaken. To go out on the sound now is She wished ^ e had not put it this way. hands, not knowing what el.se to do with suicide. There’ve been small craft warnings “She says she’s in love with her room­ them. all morning.” mate, Well you can imagine,” Mrs. Glasgow “Good Christ, what’s the matter with “But look at the sky!” Karen .said as said, “how we felt. She’s been rooming with her?” Panic evoked this witness. though forcing a retraction. you for the past two semesters.” “Then there is no credence to that “We figured she must’ve crossed the “One,” Karen said. story?” sound right after you left here, and gone to “At first we thought there was some “Credence?” the club from there,” Glasgow said. “ So we kind of a switch; that you had moved out called. Nobody’s seen her at the club. Then Karen swallowed. The room was warm. to accommodate a boy friend of hers. Isn’t “None whatsoever,” .she said. “Why, we thought of you. Perhaps .she went back that what the colleges sanction these days?” to the sorority; that Wilson, my boatman, we’ve been very good good friend.s” (she “Please tell me what Stacey has been meant to say very very not good good) was simply m istaken. He drinks. telling you,” Karen said. Perhaps . . .” “Stacey and I, b u t. . . She’s been working “Well, as I say, at first we thought there “ No,” Karen .said, “she hasn’t been here. awfully hard. Perhaps . . .” was some young man. 1 . . . we . . . our “No,” Mrs. Glasgow said. “Our daughter 14 you saying these crazy things?” impressionable. In view of the .said. seems perfectly normal.” She hesitated, Stacey’s smile dissolved on her face. circumstances ...” A clap of Blunder shook Bie house “That is to say, sane. I mean her health has “Well, because it’s true,” she said. “You “You want me to move.” immediately after which the rain fell as never been better. 1 haven’t seen her look know yourself it’s true, Karen. And because “Yes. Yes, I do. As long as she’s feeling Biough the whole sky were backing up. Mrs. more radiant.” there’s so much fake and hate and kill in these . . . this childish attachment for Glasgow rushed to close the window by the Mr. Glasgow said, “ Has she ever . . .? the world. And if 1 can’t tell my own you.” highly polished concert grand piano. Have you noticed . . .? Did she . . people the best thing that’s ever happened “No, Mr. Glasgow,” Karen said, incom­ “You’re probably right,” Karen said. “Stacey, dear,” Karen said, “you’ve to me, who else? Who else cares enough? misunderstood. How could I have been .so prehensibly to incomprehensible questions. She did not recognize her own voice and Who the hell else wants to see me happy?” It made her feel easier in tlie presence of dense? not seen it?” felt almost pity for the Glasgows who “Look, Stace, you misunderstood,” these polished, well-heeled, worldy,wise listened so seriously to someone she herself (Dear Christ help me.) She turned to the Karen’s legs felt boneless now. Glasgows. people who knew absolutely nothing about did not acknowledge. And in this voice she “You have it all wrong, darling.” “Can you forgive me for not seeing this love or their daughter and not-necessarily in insisted they were right. If this got out, She envi.sioned her mother taldng to bed that order. Karen didn’t know what her mother would sooner? 1 can understand how you must again just as she had done until Karen’s feel. I know how my own moBier would “Then why for the love of God does she do; and she knew it would ruin any chance brother promised never to see the Cohen make those ridiculous statements?” for a career in education. She got up to go feel.” girl one more time. How the hell would The words felt raw in her mouth, and “Ridiculous statements, ” Karen said the when Mrs. Glasgow asked if Karen minded Mother sustain this? words out loud and skidded, leaving the staying till she called Stacey down for a looking into Stacey’s eyes was almost more “We’re . . . you and rtre . . . we’re real than she could bear. highway for a moment. She managed to brief confrontation. Karen thought she had good friends. Buddies. I had no idea “I just know how my owti mother regain it. The rain was still coming down in no choice and she said she did not mind at you . . .” a sheet. Karen felt shrouded in it. Debili­ all. would feel,” she repeated, trying to make Silence again and another clap of those words sensible to Stacey. tated. “Oh, please, let Stace be there when I Stacey’s appearance brought her breath thunder. get there. She couldn't have been foolish up short. The girl’s hair, straight brown “How can you?” Stacey said, “if you “And Wednesday night?” Stacey said. enough to take a boat out in this weather! haven’t talked with her, and gotten the shoulder-length, framed a face so un­ Very deliberately the Glasgows turned Good Christ, what got into her? When you battery of questions 1 got la.st night. I tried utterably ingenuous it looked new-born- their gaze on Karen like a fan of klieg lights. got an itch to rap, you don’t rap with Cod naked. Karen did not hear her own words, like hell to provide the answers. But have She could not have felt more exposed. and His Wife!’’She sobbed once and caught “Hello, Stace,” when she said them. you? How can you know anything, Karen? “Wednesday night?” she repeated. “ You herself, remembering having asked: “Karen,” Stacey said, “whatever are you If we lie, fake it, wc give them nothing — mean when I praised you to the skies for doing here? 1 was going to invite you for nothing to love. Look at us. Just look! We “Just what has she said about me, Mr. doing that brilliant paper in English lit? and the weekend. Figured we could all have a peek out at each other from our little cells, Gla.sgow?” I kissed you? But I had no idea you’d “Fool things. When she said she was in talk together, a dialogue it’s called.” scared to death of letting anyone see all of Mrs Glasgow said, “We sent for her, misconstrued such an innocent gesture or us. The whole thing. Father,” she turned to love with her roommate, our first thought that you’d inflate it to such proportions!” was the new liberalism in the schools today. Stacey.” Glasgow, “you think you’re talking to me,” “We wanted some explanation of the “Karen,” Stacey said and it sounded as she pointed to herself wiBi a fist, “hut You know. W'e assumed, 1 guess, that a boy though the word had been dragged tlirough state you’re in,” Mr. Glasgow said. “What’s you’re talking to someliody else, somebody had moved in with her. But the more she a very bloody war on its way up. causing i t ” you’ve made up in your mind.” talked the more it became apparent there She turned to the Glasgows. “What’ve you told them,” Stacey said, “Goddamn. Sounds like the Women’s was something not quite proper about the “Mother, Father, Karen’s scared to turning to Karen, and laughing, “ air pol­ Lib thing,” Gla.sgow said. “ ‘You’re not whole goddamn thing.” death of you. What the hell. Show her what lution? Did you know that such love as ours looking at me, a person, you’re looking at “Proper,” Karen said. liberated people you really arc. Let her “Beg pardon?” Glasgow said. is an obscenity? and vile?” me, a woman; something to kick around.’ know you love me too. Mother, please. Isn’t that what you’re saying?” “Just when did you get the notion she “Stace,” Karen said, “ you . . .” Father.” was talking about me for heaven's sake?” “That we are sick in the head? Don’t “Unwholesome,” Mrs. Glasgow gasped. To the expanding silence, she said, “Tell “Unwholesome,” Stacey said to her, “is Karen said. worry, Karen, I don’t buy that theory; so, her you understand.” “When she came right out last night and unless we can do better than the Paris peace what we’re being when we aren’t doing “Understand.'” Glasgow said. “How do what’s natural.” .said it was you. When we lauded and talks. I’m splitting. Father wants me to see you expect us to understand?” rejected it on the grounds that she loved her a head shrinker. I say no, it isn’t necessary. Mrs. Glasgow snorted: a tragic attempt “But I’m giving you the chance. at laughter. friend perhap.s, but wasn’t in love, she But from what he implies, anybody who Father.” became very indignant; said you had kissed, doesn’t see a shrink is crazy. Mother and “And accept our daughter as a homo­ “ Natural to uj, 1 mean,” -Stacey said, were . . . were lovers for godsake.” Father’ve both had their sessions, you see. sexual?” Glasgow said. pointing to herself with converged fingers. Karen fumbled with her Hawaiian beads. Mother said this morning if I leave with you “ Father! please don’t say that,” Mrs. “To us as individuals.” “1 have often kissed her on the cheek or I’m cut off without a sou. Voila! so we have Glasgow said. “That’s for hairdressers and “That’s low-life hippie talk,” Glasgow embraced her when she’s done extra well on to lake a job. Ain’t that a bitch?” interior decorators. How can a daughter of said. “Doing your own thing, isn't that an a.ssignment or .something. I’m a very Karen stood there not knowing what to ours . . .” what they call it? like freaking out on demonstrative person.” say or how to say what must be said in the “Your hairdresser’s not one,” Stacey acid?” Karen remembered the clouds were rol­ presence of the Glasgows who waited. The said. “Oh come on. Father. A swinger like ling in quickly, covering the sun so that the silence was so intense Karen thought if she “But she’s a woman,” Mrs. Glasgow you playing gentlemen and ladies all of a room darkened and Mr. Glasgow turned on spoke her words would curdle and come .said. sudden. Since when?” the Tiffany lamp. like vomit. A clap of thunder relieved the “Or maybe she is,” Stacey said. “ I know where the hell I stand, young “We’re in for a storm,” he said to no pressure and she said; “Oh, what do I mean?” Mrs. Glasgow woman! That’s more than 1 can say for one and, “obviously our daughter is very “Stace, what’s come over you? Why are 16 you. boatman. Claims he saw Stacey set out. I HEAD and TAIL “You’re right,’’ Stacey said. “And a told him he must be wrong, he was seeing By WILDA CHASE little while ago 1 thought 1 knew where / things.” Once upon a time there were two young stood.” He spoke as though the man had left the girls who lived in each other’s reflection. It was the look in Stacey’s eyes, before premises. They laughed together and played together the girl turned to leave the house, that “But 1 can’t help it,” said the man and roamed the high hills together hand in Karen would never forget. helplessly. “1 was down to the boat shed. I hand. By and by their love ripened into Ignoring the speed limit, Karen pushed seen her. She’s took off with her skiff, desire and they knew that they would reap the car over seventy to get back to that storm or no storm. ” the harvest of their love in each other’s house. Could it be the last she would ever Karen felt faint. arms. No sooner did they make this discov­ see o f Stace? She knew she had to get hold “I hit your tree,” she said. “My car ery than a bitter controversy arose between o f herself in order to get to the Glasgows in won’t move. She must be on her way home. them, the first one in their lives. Who, they one piece. She held the wheel as though it Maybe the only person who saw her gave contended, would be the “man” and who drove her, recalling Glasgow’s futile plea for her a lift into town. Maybe she’s on her way the “woman”. They argued up one wall and Stace to get back into the house; home by now.” down the other about who would be “plus” “Stacey, come back. We must talk this The storm was growing and Glasgow and who “minus”, who “positive” and who out!” said, “ You needn’t worry about getting “negative”, who “agressive” and who “pas­ “Let her go. Father,” Mrs. Glasgow had back. I’ll call down to the garage when sive”, who “dor; inant” and who “submis­ said. you’re ready; get my driver to take you sive”, who “butch” and who “femme”, for and many a head, each seeking an opposite­ “But it’s started to raia” back. And I’ll have my mechanic get to they were sure that love, whatever else it is, ness that would anger patience and strain “ I’d better get on,” Karen said. “I’m so vour car as soon as this blows over.” is a polarized set-up; mom and dad is, credulity, and each locked in a loneliness .sorry about all this. I’ll move out, of course, “Oh, stop!” husband and wife is, male and female is, that was day by day gnawing her soul to and look for a room, perhaps in the dorm Karen bolted outside. Through the rain and,'anyway, the Wisdom of the Ancients is shreds. By and by both Head and Tail on campus. I feel sure Stacey is just she scanned the sound futilely for a sign on not something you can shake a stick at. decided that they had adopted the wrong overworked. .A private room of her own, the horizon, and turned to the Glasgows Finally one day one of them tossed a coin “role” in the beginning and Head became a less interruptions for one thing, a cutting who stood rigid at the door. into the air sayi ig, “Heads 1 win, tails you tail and Tail became a head and each back on work ought to get her on the right “You did this!” Karen said. “You did lose”, and heads won. Ever after, one of continued to seek her opposite with grow­ track. In a month she’ll realize how mis­ this to her!” She had been looking up at them was known as Head and the other one ing desperation. Relentless Time carved taken .she’s been.” them from the bottom step. They suddenly as Tail. furrows in their cheeks and the frost of "Thai’s a goddamn understatement,” appeared vulnerable and pathetic standing Now, Head and Tail did not live happily winter came to settle in their hair. The Mr. Gla.sgow said, and tried to laugh. side by side just inside the portico out of ever after, for now they were no longer side memory of their early love returned to r t t the storm. “Oh. No. I’m as much to blame. by side but opposite each other, like oppo­ mock their emptiness and sear their hearts Karen was coming back into the great Didn’t I program my thinking for you? And sing armies in the field, and separating them with regrets. Each longed for the other with circular drive she remembered from this you . . . you wanted to believe me so was an invisible wall as impenetrable as ten a longing that defied the grave and, with a morning when the chauffeur had brought much.” solid feet of iron. Head became sullen and hope arising out of despair, each went off in her here for the first time. Now, making the “Who are you to judge us,” Mrs, Tail cried a lot and each blamed the other search of the other. Death overtook them turn., .she hit the maple tree. She tried to Glasgow said, working the rings on her for the emptiness of their lives. Whenever both on the way and one was buried in the back up away from it but the car stalled. fingers. “You lead our daughter into this Tail had one of her crying spells Head East and the other in the West but, it is She bolted out of the car into the rain pathetic attachment, you are responsible would flee the house and roam empty- said, their spirits walk to this day as a where her sobs came easy. And when she for her sudden insane rush for an outing in hearted over the high grassy hills where reminder of the tragedy of two people who eonfronled tlie Glasgows again the rain on her boat on a day like today and you have they had spent so many happy hours could not believe in same-sex love. And on her face mocked her tears so no one knew the impudence to attack us. ” together. Why couldn’t Tail understand her a stormy night, when the wind is high, if Ihe difference. “ He giveth. He taketh away,” Karen said anymore, she wondered. Tail, left alone you incline your ear against the window “Has she come back yet?” Karen into the vrind; then she turned a little and with her private grief, wondered how Head, pane you can hear their mournful cries as shouted above the gale. shouted over it, “You think you’re God? who had always been so tender, could have they roam the hills of night still searching “No.” You failed her and I failed her, and the become so heartless. Each withdrew into for each other. Mr. Glasgow’s luxurious tan had faded. three of us, Mrs. Glasgow, are guilty. herself and took comfort in the only thing “Have you called the country club BACK ISSUES OF Together. Stace is the only honest one of she had left, her “role”. THE LADDER again?” Karen said. the bunch of us.” The day came when Head and Tail ARE AVAILABLE “Yes. They haven’t seen her. I called the Glasgow nodded, and the frown stayed decided thay they had failed together be­ Prior to October/November 1968, THE Coast Guard. They’ve sent out a patrol.” cause they were too much alike. Perhaps, LAD D ER was Issued monthly for the most on his face. He said, “But. Goddamn.” part; we now Issue six magazines a year. “But she eouldn’t’ve taken a boat out in they decided, each could find what she was THE LADDER year begins with the Octo­ this!” Karen said. seeking in somebody else. Head went East ber/November issue each year. Mrs. Glasgow was working the rings on looking for someone more tail-like than Where available, copies of each Issue in her fingers. She said nothing. A small man Tail, someone more opposite, and Tail went Volumes 13 and following cost $1.25. Individual Issues before that time are $1.00 with a huge mustache on a badly pitted face West looking for someone more head-like per magazine. stood off away from the trio. Glasgow than Head, someone more opposite. Years EVERY MAGAZINE IS NEW turned to him. passed and Head went through many and UNTIL YOU'VE READ IT! “This is Wilson,” he said to no one, “my A young woman in a sunlit room re­ The second major set of body signals clines upon a sofa and, propping her head involves hand gesture and placement. To with a pillow, begins to turn the pages of an begin with, all f o u r hands are open, that J ourneij? in r~\rtA, By Jean Louise illustrated periodical. She is clothed in a is, receptive and extremely lax, almost checkedhousedress ai '.dherhair, which is long forgotten. This is especially true of the dark Henry Schnakenberg — "Conversation” and untied, falls gently about her shoulders. haired woman whose r i^ t forefinger ex­ A second woman, slightly older than the tends outward in the classic gesture made first and more formally dressed, enters the famous by Michaelangelo’s Creation o f Man room from somewhere out of sight She in which Adam extends his hand to receive approaches the couch and partly leans, life from his creator. In the same way, her partly reclines along its arm and back. The left hand does not support but only touches younger woman, who has now shifted her cheek as it had become suspended position slightly, ll.Ts her eyes from the absentmindedly in the middle of some magazine which remains open on her lap. contemplation, in this case, the contem­ Both women meet each other's gaze but do plation of her friend. Even the younger not speak. woman’s left hand, which also seems forgot­ It is this precise moment that Henry ten, has drifted loosely to the fold at the Schnakenberg selectively steals from time center of the magazine in her lap. Thus, the by transferring it onto a painting of oil on two women before us, though com­ canvas. It is this moment, when the gaze of municating with their bodies, are, at this one person acknowledges the gaze of exact moment, unaware of themselves as another, that conveniation, also the title of physical beings and appear to be devoting the painting, actually begins. It is a moment their entire attention to the relationship in our daily lives that happens so quickly that exists between them. we often miss its beauty. But in a work of Finally, it is important to note that the art, as in slow motion or stop action women are addressing each other full face photography, time can be fragmented so and that their I bodies are open and not that a single instant may be expanded into protected. It would be very possible for the an hour or more, depending upon how long woman above to lean down and kiss the the viewer needs to understand the young one on the mouth without a second’s moment. awkwardness. Such an embrace would not The question posed and answered by only be very possible but in this viewer’s Comerntion is one that seeks to involve mind, very likely indeed, if the painting the viewer with the subtleties of human were in fact the frame of a film, and the dialogue. The first statement the artist gives action could continue. us is that conversition is not dependent upon speech but mme primarily upon gesture. Although science has only recently HENRY SCHNAKENBERG, bom 1892, presented its studies into the subject now New Brighton, Staten Island, New York, termed “ body language”, artists have been studied with Kenneth Hayes Miller and observing this phenomenon for thousands painted many different subjects including of years and using it in figure painting and portraits, figures, still lifes and landscapes. sculpture to express a wide range of However his paintings of women never lapse emotions and intentions. into faceless creatures but consistently The most obvious body message dis­ portray the lady’s individual character with tinguished in the painting is an overall neither the idealization nor icaricature feeling of relaxation on the part of the found in so many other figure painters. Mr. figures. In the presence of another being, Schnakenberg is represented in the follow­ the act of remaining prone places one in a ing mgjor collections: Addison Gallery of distinctly vulnerable position both physical­ American Art, Andover, Mass.; Metro­ ly and psychologically and also removes any politan Museum of Art, N.Y., N.Y.; pretense of formality. Therefore, the fact Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, N.J.; that Schnakenberg has placed his figures in Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Pennsylvania this position indicates to the viewer that the Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia and friendship is one of great opeimess and the Whitney Museum of Atnerican Art, trust. N.Y., N.Y.

Henry Schnakenberg, **Conversation." Oil on canva». SOV« x 36. 1930. Collection Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

A t that “Life-style variety means mamed and far more “heterosexual” women who are what is masculine, such as leadership and unmarried, with young children, with older heterosexual in practice only. self-assertion, and too many women buy children, with husbands wdio are teachers, this. An article by the Redstockings Col­ By HOPE THOMPSON SISTERHO()D has something for every­ businessmen, researchers, or artists”, in any one. Some of it is of the very best some of lective, “How Women Are Kept Apart,” is Three recent anthologies, edited and case any of you got your hopes up. it is infuriating, all of it is interesting. It very good too, though a bit naive in written by women, cover the whole range There are articles in SISTERHOOD that attempts to cover everything that active fancying that all successful, urunarried of topics women are concerned about as make a mockery of Dr. Rossi’s “most women today are thinking. It does not women lead half lives. “I will no longer women. Some of the topics are: employ­ intimate human relations.” 1 epjoyed quite succeed for it puts most of its judge my sisters by male sexual standards ment, professional women, education, wel­ “Barbarous Rituals,” an amusing yet telling emphasis on the young and the “radical.” . . . Ordy when women have the choice — fare women, women and the law, aging series of statements about growing up Perhaps this is why many of the contribu­ the choice to be celibate, the choice to women, the media, female sexuality, birth female. “Having an intense crush on tors are not what I would call feminist, Le., choose their sex partners (male or female) control, prostitution. Lesbianism, self- another girl or on a woman teacher and women who view Üie women’s revolution as . . . will women be sexually free.” A defense, high school women, domestics, learning that that’s unspeakable.” “Going fundamental. Robin Morgan puts it well in hard-hitting article is, “Man As An Obsolete child care, abortion, consciousness raising, on a cross-country trip in a Volkswagen her introduction, the best part of the book Life Form,” by Betsy Warrior. Perhaps the ideology, and glimpses into the future. Yes, during which the Loop or the Coil becomes in my opinion: best article is “Abortion Law Repeal (sort Lesbianism is included - just a little. I do dislodged and begins to tear at your flesh.” “We know that two evils clearly pre­ of); A Warning to Women” by Lucinda not know whether to be overjoyed at such “The Dynamics of Marriage and Mother­ date corporate capitalism, and have Cisler. It has implications beyond abortion tremendous progress or angry that the hood” by Beverly Jones is a powerful post-dated socialist revolutions: texam itself. To settle for half measures doled out Lesbian is so utteriy overlooked by all but article about the misery that heterosexual and racism — so we know that a by men could mean putting women back to four or five out of some 80 contributors. marriage can be. “They [women] must male-dominated socialist revolution, in sleep as happened after the vote was won These anthologies are: VOICES OF THE reject romanticism.” How sad! Gene economic and even cultural terms, 50 years ago. In another essay Susan NEW FEMEVISM edited by Mary Lou Damon, in “The Least of These,” describes were it to occur tomorrow, would be Browruniller comes down hard on Move­ Thompson ($5.95, 246 pp). Beacon Press, the terrible pli^Jit of the Lesbian in our no revolution, but only another coup ment men. “If man and wife in a suburban Boston, 1970; WOMEN’S LIBERATION- society, but who can say who has it worse, d’etat among men.” “More and more, split-level was a symbol of all that was BLUEPRINT FOR THE FUTURE com­ the Lesbian or the heterosexual woman? I begin to think of a worldwide wrong with plastic, bourgeons America, piled by Sookie Stamblcr (95c, 283 pp), Gene Damon also points out the re­ Women’s Revolution as the only hope -•‘man and chick’ in a Lower East Side Ace Books, N.Y., 1970; and SISTERHOOD luctance of Lesbians to shoulder their share for life on the planet” tenement flat was hardly the new order IS POWERFUL edited by Robin Morgan, in the women’s movement, even in the Other “non-feminists”, as I would call they had dreamed of.” Ill mention only one more article, “An Random House, N.Y., 1970. This last is in Lesbian movement; that they live “alone them, are those who see THE SYSTEM as Argument for Black W'omen’s Liberation as both hardcover ($8.95) and paperback together in ‘egoism a deux’ . . . We seldom the enemy. They are still entangled in male a Revolutionary Force”, by Maryanne ■ $2.45, 602 pp), the best buy figuring words march, seldom picket, but frequently do ideologies and in serving the males pro­ per petmy and the best of the three in tun away . . . to our shame, I might add." moting them. Marge Piercy has an excellent Weathers. It is good except for that stub­ born blindness that afflicts so many hetero­ content, if you can afford only one. There She explains that researchers find so few article on this theme, ‘The Grand Coolie is some overlapping among the three anthol­ Lesbians (always grossly underestimating Damn.” She knows whereof she speaks for sexual women, particularly minority ogies, but less than one would expect. our number) because they accept the male “As I said, 1 have been a house nigger in the women. “We [black women] sre dearly the VOICES is the most conservative meaning, definition of Lesbianism as a purely sexual Movement.” And Robin Morgan says early most oppressed'and degraded minority in among other things, that Lesbians are not phenomenoiL Thus the millions of women in her introduction, “In my case. . . when the world, let alone the country.” (Italics mentioned. It has excellent articles by who love each other in a Lesbian matmer I first began work on this book, I con­ mine.) It is not at aU clear. What about the Martha Griffiths, Congresswoman from but who do not express their love sexuaRy sidered myself a radical woman who regard­ one million or so black Lesbians in this Michigan, and Shirley Chisholm, Congress- (or who would never admit to any re­ ed the Women’s Liberation Movement as an country who, unfortunately, are not heard woman from New York. If I am less than searcher that they do), are thought to be important ‘wing’ of the Left; as a tool, from in the.se anthologies? Is a white happy with VOICES it is because I find sexless. (Most women share this myth of periiaps, for organizing as-yet apolitical Lesbian worse off than a black heterosexual myself resenting more and more the con­ the “sexless” old maid.) women into what has been loosely called woman? Impossible to say. But let us not spiracy of silence against Lesbians on the Martha Shelley has the other excellent the ‘Movement’ - which I now refer to as get caught in a contest as to who is the part of women who call themselves Lesbian article in SISTERHOOD, excellent the male-dominated counterfeit Left.” worst off. feminists. For example. Dr. Alice Rossi despite the ambiguous statement: “the re­ 1 do not wish to slight WOMEN’S SISTERHOOD has a number of extras: says, “. . . our most intimate human re­ wards of child raising are denied her [the LIBERATION, for it too has much food for a section of historical documents including lation is the heterosexual one of marriage.” Lesbian].” Ms. Shelley does not explain thought. An article of particular interest to NOW’S Bill of Rights, Principles of New She tells us that “the hard core of activists” that this is due to society’s super-oppression LADDER readers is “Consciousness- York Radical Women, Redstockings -Mani­ were and are the “ unattached” women, but of Lesbians and not to any inherent in­ Raising” by June Arnold. When the dis­ festo (excellent), WITCH’S hexes, and the these include only exwives, nonwives, child­ capacity. Lesbians are as able to have cussion tim ed to sex, after many meetings, leaflet presented to the Marriage License Bureau of NYC; Verbal Karate — short and less wives, etc., not Lesbians, married or children as any women — it is surprising one of them said, “The only one who gains single. Doris L. Pullen has a good article in how many heterosexuals overlook this. Ms. from the taboo on lesbianism is the man — pointed statements such as ‘The Public Health Service shows men lose more days VOICES, “The Educational Establishment; Shelley has another provocative article in it’s his way of protecting his possession.” from work each year than do women — Wasted Women.” She cites the liberal out­ WOMEN’S LIBERATION, “Lesbianism and This, from a group of 10 women, aU over including days lost for pregtumey and child­ look of Hampshire College, which opened the Women’s Liberation Movement” I was 35, all mothers. Susan Brownmiller has an birth,” and “ Genius has no sex” — Madame last fall, and their policy that “Hampshire puzzled to read that “There are many excellent piece on “The Enemy Within.” de Staël; and a fine bibliography which ends should hire women faculty who have a lesbians . . . who are lesbian in sexual She points out the harm women’s fear of with a “Drop Dead List.” Also included in variety of life styles.” Ms. Pullen explains practice only.” Perhaps, but there are far. leadership can cause, that men have defined 22 the Appendix are Notes on Sister Contribu­ stone finds most “hunan” is our capacity language is thus far more developed and tors, a feature lacking in WOMEN’S LIBER­ for sex. And the Oedipjs Complex, suffered contains a multitude of words that have no ATION. VOICES has a comprehensive by every little boy, is the villain. (Ms. A T io a u m i counterpart in any earth languages. For bibliography, a condensation from Firestone follows Freud right down the line example, there is a paucity of cntotional WOMEN: A BIBLIOGRAPHY by Lucinda here.) [The folloicing manuscript came to THE words in English, an otherwise highly de­ Cisler, available from her at 102 W. 80th The male infant wants to have sexual LADDER offices in a plain brown sealed veloped language. Emotion pertains to mind St., New York City 10024, for 30c. relations with he mother, but this is taboo. envelope without a return address and matter and you people arc very close to the t Î t The repression of this noble desire is what postmarked January 1, 1971. The blurred beginning of mind development, having had .Abolish the family, which will abolish causes all our troubles: sex as power, male and faint postmark told us only that it had so little time — some one million years at chauvinism, male inab lity to love, exploi­ the Oedipus Complex and all other forms of been mailed from somewhere within the most. sexual repression; give full adult rights to tation, etc., etc. Destroy the biological United States. Ed.] No, we have a different purpo.se in women and children of all ages; and “hu­ family and presumably any adult women in leaving behind this manuscript After much manity (will] revert to its natural poly­ the baby boy’s life wUl welcome his sexual We people from Mars — eight of us — discussion we agreed that it could do no morphous perverse sexuality . . . The fully advances. Thus he suffers no rejection and have been among you earthlings for the past harm and might even help you to find your sexuate mind . . . [will] become univer­ will grow up to become a man we can all six months verifying observations taken way through the turmoil your planet is now sal.” (p 236). THE DIALECTIC OF SEX by love — sexually, of course. from our home planet, as well as acquiring experiencing and thus reducing to some Shulamith Firestone, William Morrow and Ms. Firestone thinks she knows all about heretofore unsuspected data. Our stay on extent the inevitable suffering in .store for Company, Inc., .N.Y. 1970, reads like boys, black men, homosexuals, and the earth has been most fruitful and almost so many of you. We must admit that we NOTES BY AN ANGRY ADOLESCENT. It elderly. And, 1 might add, Lesbians. 1 do without incident except for one serious found a great deal to laugh at on earth. But, is difficult to review because it is so not pretend to any special knowledge about failure in our plans. This was our inability do not misunderstand. Not only have we a self-contradictory. (Schools are to be abol­ the first four groups, but I am as well to take on earth substance so that you far more developed sense of humor — an ished, but they reenter the picture in the informed about Lesbians as anyone. If Ms. earthlings could see, hear, and touch us. We extremely important ingredient of mind last chapter as ‘centers of learning.’) Ms. Firestone can be so hopelessly ignorant spent many years (earth years, that is — we matter, but we have likewise a far more Firestone would like to lead a 20th Century about Lesbianism, 1 su.tpect all the rest of have calculated time in your units) in developed sense of compas.sion and a pro­ Children’s Crusade — she admires the man­ her “ knowledge.” Homosexuality is perfecting a method of transforming our found sense of the meaning of suffering for ner in which children were raised (or not) in “seriously crippling [toj that individual’s own Martian bo Tes into an earthlike proto­ the growth of mind matter. In view of this the Middle .Ages — and would abolish sexual relatioiiships, or even his total plasm We could not carry this out on Mars, some of us questioned the wisdom of any parents. It is evident that she has read some psyche . . . Female homosexuality, though for no earthlike life will survive there, but attempt to alleviate human suffering. Might grownup books and listened to grownup it too has its sources in unsuccetsful re­ we had thought we could accomplish this not this be a disservice to you in the long conversation, but the meaning of what she pression . . . is eonsiderably more compli­ once we landed on earth. From information run? However, research into our own has absorbed comes out filtered through a cated.” (p 64, italics mine.) However, Ms. gathered about earth matter we expect to distant past taught us that our forel)ears child’s precocious mind, all confusion and Firestone’s own subsequent discussion of be able to overcome this difficulty on our went through a great deal of purely des­ illogic. Ms. Firestone seems not to believe in the horrors of heterosexuality could lead next visit (We will not at this time go into tructive suffering and it is this unproductive the art of thinking. Her low estimate of the one to conclude that all human beings are the complexities of the differences between suffering we would like to spare you. truly human gift for rational thought may naturally Lesbian or homosexual. She the physics of living earth matter and that Our first plan was to distribute be due to her erroneous notion that “ma­ comes to no such conclusion. Most of the of living Mars matter. It is enough for you thousands of copies of this manuscript to chines may soon equal or surpass man in book takes a “respectable” anti-Lesbian and to know that mind matter is the same your universities, libraries, and publishers. original thinking.” (p 228). What Ms. Fire- anti-homosexual stance which hardly throughout the universe.) What a job that would have been! As it was meshes with her hoped for regression to We Martians, of course, consist of a we became weak with laughter trying to infantile polymorphous perverse sexuality great deal more mind matter than you operate one of your typewriters. The prob­ S a u A L and a lifetime of undisciplirted and earthlings. This is not surprising for we are a lems we had pushing down the keys were OfiPoRTUAlfTY promiscuous sexual behavior. “A healthy far older people and have long since passed “out of this universe,” as your expression transexuality” [sic] will be the norm. through the stage of evolution in which you goes. And we had to be careful that no one ef^PL9yM £M T Like so many young women today, Ms. now find yourselves. One of the purposes of saw us at the typewriter. Any of you who Firestone fancies herself a radical feminist. I our visit to you was to try to clarify our observed the keys apparently moving by will grant her her radicalism (though not on own dim and distant past We are most themselves would be bound to suffer the basis of the “bloody struggle” she interested in the evolution of mind for we mentally and, if foolish enough to report it, anticipates - I find bloody struggles hope­ have long known that mind is the oidy truly would be locked up immediately by your lessly conservative), but 1 fail to see that she real substance in the universe. Our earth extremely primitive psychologists. is a feminist. Her th o u ^ t is old-fashioned studies will help us chart the development On second thought we realized that male (Marx and Freud) and her goal is to of mind out of physical matter and, hope­ blanketing the country with our manuscript get out from under parental oppression. Her fully, point to techniques for its further would be dangerous. The consternation book is generally depressing in its anti­ development . . . But these problems of produced would lead to an incredible human tone. Mother love, for example, “is ours are not what we mean to tell you amount of human folly: Kangaroo Congre.s- no more than shared oppression.” (p 81). about in this communication. Your sional investigations, panicky psychiatric The interest in the book, if there is any, is language is totally inadequate for explaining mumbo-jumbo, cries of “Conspiracy,” as a case study of one intelligent young to you the kinds of problems we Martians “Communism,” “Subversion.” No, that WHAT MINORITY GROUP DID YOU would never do. The que.stion then was, to SAY THAT WAS . . . woman intensely preoccupied with sex who are currently engaged in solving. As you I_____E...S...B...I...A...N...? knows no way out. know, language grows as ideas grow. Our whom should we address ourselves? Who And it is primarily your females who suffer. ness to the exclusion of their humanity, what you call the two sexes. These bodily would even dare publish our words? We differences of ours no longer have anything Your males, arrested at the primitive level settled finally on THE LADDER as being hence the concentration of mind matter around their genitals which so puzzled us. to do with reproduction (assuming they of genital sexuality, have little or no notion the most radical and courageous publication ever did and our new earth evidence seems of what love means. Their genitality causes and the one whose readers would be most Females, on the other hand, by virtue of what is to us an astoundingly evil and to vindicate those scholars who favor this excesses of aggression and an insatiable likely to understand what we have to say. theory), but they have a great deal to do need for power. It is all to the good Let us mention here a few simple vicious oppression, a monumental injustice beyond anything we had imagined possible, with love, the most potent of mind forces. therefore that male mental matter shows a axioms about mind power. No correct The totally unforeseen discovery we will decrease for it threatens to destroy your action is possible until correct thoughts or are unable to use and express the vast amounts of mind matter they possess. The take back to Mars is what you people call planet. ideas are in existence. Incorrect ideas may heterosexuality, a phenomenon at once Only your Lesbians know the meaning die before causing action, thus harming no increase of individual mind matter we had noted in our observations from Mars is due hilarious and tragic. Nothing struck us as of true love, that mature human dedication one, or they may lead to tragedy. Correct entirely to the recent freeing of mind more absurd on earth than one male and to another that transcends animal lust and ideas always lead to correet action, though one female living together, pretending love. raises sexual expression to total emotional hundreds of years may elapse between the matter among females — what you call the women’s liberation movement. (Male mind We read much of your literature, fiction flowering and integrates sexuahty into a birth of the idea and the first actions based matter has shown a slight decrease during and non-fiction, and compared it with our perfect union of two human beings pro­ thereon. A right idea in only one mind has direct readings of your minds. We were at a foundly in love. We do not mean to imply very little power, but it never dies. It is not the past 30 to 40 years.) These two recent discoveries of ours, the existence of two loss to understand such a vast contradiction that all Lesbians find this transcending love until the idea exists in a critical mass of — such love is difficult of attainment at types of humans and the marked increase of between conscious thought and behavior mind that it spills over into action. (We and the real state of your mind matter. (We free and available mind matter among your best. What is so sad to us is that many of have not completed our calculations on must say we were immensely relieved to your “heterosexual” women are capable of women, prompted us to visit your planet in what this critical mass is in the case of you find many of you quite free of such mind such loving were they not so heavily 1970, rather than 2000 as originally humans. That depends upon the total constricting repression — your Lesbians and molded from birth into the conviction that planned. amount of mind matter on earth, on its homosexuals.) A careful and objective they must love a man. We have found the We should explain to you a little about quality, and on its availability. By avail­ examination of your inner minds reveals human being, especially the female, to be a our methods of research. W'e on Mars have ability we mean the extent to which a that none of you is capaUe of heterosexual fantastically malleable creature, so much so for the most part outgrown the need for person’s mind matter is free to motivate love. (You will appreciate now why we that the vast majority of your women still language as a means of communication, that person.) decided to mail this manuscript to THE cling desperately to the myth of hetero­ though we all learn our one language. We So much for our introduction. W'e will LADDER only.) We know how difficult it sexual love. communicate directly, mind to mind. This entrust this manuscript to your hopelessly will be to explain this to you. Perhaps we The signs of this are everywhere. The bungling postal system and follow its fate does not, as you might think, destroy our are being premature and overly optimistic “heterosexual” woman’s fear of Lesbianism mental privacy, a value we greatly cherish. from Mars. We do this, by the way, by and no one will take us serioudy but, if so, is evidence that some of you may be able to We can close off all or any part of our tracing your mind matter through what you no harm has been done. But let us try to understand. Why so much fear if hetero­ minds at will and pick up any thoughts left might call “mind telescopes.” These explain. sexuality is natural? There is no such to be picked up when and if we wish. We elaborate instruments measure the mind- After our astonishment at so much corresponding fear among Lesbians, who had no trouble whatsoever picking up the .stuff of eartli and, by means of rather heterosexual living and our investigation of live invisibly among you and wonder how contents of your minds since none of you recent improvements, we are able to follow the inner mind of many of these so-called you can stand the heterosexual life. Your has as yet evolved the ability to close off the course of particular minds. We will heterosexuals, we asked ourselves how it is proliferation of (heterosexual) marriage your thoughts, whether conscious or un­ know, therefore, whether our manuscript is that this kind of life style is so pervasive manuals is another fact pointing to the printed in THE L.ADDER by following the conscious, from those able to read them. great difficulty you have in living up to the Our main research was accomplished in this and so desperately propagated in all your thoughts of those of you who labor to media and, in fact, sincerely believed to be heterosexual myth. The roster of your publish it. manner — mind reading. We also applied heterosexual difficulties, frigidity, im­ ourselves to deciphering your language, God’s intention. We soon realized that your Beginning about 150 years ago, before potence, etc., came as no surprise to us. English, and teaching ourselves to read it difficulties are very real and that we some of us on tliis expedition were bom Simple impregnation is not your problem, for we were interested in whether there Martians must have gone through a similar (our life span averages 400 years), we tragedy for we have ancient records telling as your population explosion attests. No, noticed an increase in the total amount of were discrepancies between your stated or your problem is in trying to integrate the written ideas and your itmer, unconscious of terrible times and our near extinction. earthly mind matter due not only to popu­ purely procreative sex act into the expre.s- ideas. We were, most unexpectedly and to We have never been able to pinpoint the lation increase but also to an increase in sion of a love that cannot be. An amusing our amazement, astonished to find immense cause of those awful times that extended, individual mind. W'ith our newer and highly and recent trend is the unisex one. By discrepancies. You hardly know your own we estimate, over at least 1000 years. Your sophisticated instruments for the measure­ attempting to dress, look, and act more minds at all! difficulty is in having to accommodate to ment of the individual’s mental com­ alike, women and men are hoping uncon­ Some of our scholars have posited a sexual reproduction, a part of your animal position, new data led us to speculate that sciously to achieve a pathetic sort of kind of primitive sexual reproduction heritage, and a growing need to love and be there might be two sorts of earthlings. pseudo-homosexuality, while preserving llie similar to yours in our ancestors of millions loved by one particular person. Roughly half the individuals on which we myth of heterosexuality. The current fad of years ago. (Our present way of repro­ Your greatest lyric love poet was a could get relatively clear readings seemed to for bisexual behavior among women is duction is entirely mental and voluntary, Lesbian, Sappho. Yet still today you insti­ have their mind matter concentrated at the another such attempt to escape hetero­ has nothing to do with lust or sexual tutionalize heterosexual living, thus hope­ crotch; the other half had most of theirs sexual bondage. activity, and is inexplicable to the human lessly confusing lust and reproduction with imprisoned within the skull. Now, of love. You attempt to express your highest Some of you realize the bankruptcy of course, we know the answer. Human beings mind.) Part of the evidence for such specu­ lation is that we modern Martians are emotions in a relationship between female marriage and the nuclear family, but are divided into females and males. Males and male that leads you into tragic lives. imagine that some sort of group marriage arc frightfully preoccupied with their male­ divided into two distinct physical types, still involving both sexes will be an improve­ by some women. Convinced that ment. You cannot get away from the Lesbianism is “unnatural” and “wrong,” defeat, we cannot say. So much depends Africa, or the most oppressed women of all ingrained notion that women must live with they repudiate altogether their capacity for upon the women’s movement so recently — Arab women, will take up the fight for a men and have non-procreative sex with a loving relationship or that there is any begun once again. The American woman saner and better earth. If males prove to be them. Much of your current psychology — meaning to the word, love, other than lust has great courage. If she fails, it will be as vicious and cruel as they seem to us, il mere pseudo-science — holds fast to the These women have perceived that hetero­ because she shares the American weakness may be necessary drastically to reduce their erroneous idea that everything is learned, sexual love is a fraud, but they are still for “instant” everything and a reluctance to number for a period of time by refusing to that past cultural and genetic influences trapped in the heterosexual myth. think and to study and to acknowledge the breed them. (You will soon learn how to do count for nothing, that there is no human Many an older woman, having managed complexity of human beings and the tech­ this by sperm selection and artificial insemi­ nature (or, as we would say, no mind to get throu^ 25 to 50 years of marriage nological structures now threatening to nation.) This will give you women a chance nature) other than an accumulation of undivorced, believes she loves her husband strangle them. Or she may allow herself to clean up your planet and to reintroduce conditioning. Yet these same psychologists because she has at least achieved friendship once again to be sidetracked into other males gradually while teaching them to live pompously proclaim the “naturalness” of with the male who once caused her so much issues, hypnotized by the rhetoric of male more humanely. .A Sisterhood of Woman is hctercoscxual life, and this despite allowing heartache. And he no longer bothers her so political ideologies. now forming that puts all myths of tlie for a Lesbian or homosexual phase during often with his lusting needs. A kind of To us the long range view is encouraging Brotherhood of Man to shame. How long it adolescence. Actually, these psychologists friendship with or without sex is thought to indeed. If the United States fades into a will take this great Sisterhood to rise to its are not altogether wrong. Heterosexual be­ be the meaning of love. This is a “good” fascist period, women now living under responsibilities depends in large part on tiie havior is not only learned, but is as marriage. It is, in fact, the best that can be such governments (e.g. China, Cuba, and tenacity of the myth of heterosexual love. viciously enforced as the laws of any expected. Friendship is very possible be­ Russia), or the millions of black women in totalitarian dictatorship. What is not tween a woman and a man but it seldom learned, because it is so natural, is Lesbian happens because each is conditioned to the love, for such love springs from the irmer- heterosexual-patriarchal institution. BRIGHT PARTICULAR STAR By JOSEPH LEACH most, truest part of mind matter. This is Men are busy finding new ways to bind ^ why it is impossible to eradicate. To sustain women to them By granting women more REVIEWED BY LENNOX STRONG the myth of heterosexual love, all social sexual “freedom” they fool them into an Nineteenth ’Century America produced began playing male roles. Mr. Leach com­ institutions must ceaselessly teach and illusion of a freedom of mind. Grateful for three stars of the stage - Edwin Forrest ments: “ By the end of her Albany sojourn, reward it This explains why there are so this male “gift”, women are trying as hard (don’t be ashamed not to have heard of upstate New Yorkers knew Charlotte few truly radical feminists, so few who can now to eonform to male sexuality as they him), Edwin Booth, who is, poor man, Cushman as an able young actress especially see that heterosexual living is imposed by tried to be asexual in the Victorian era. The primarily remembered because of his adept in ‘breeches parts,’ so skilled in male men upon women to uphold patriarchy. At “In” thing is to be promiscuous and to brother John W'ilkes Booth, and the impersonation that no one ^riously ob­ your stage of evolution your males are still separate sexual activity from all deeper BRIGHT PARTICULAR STAR, Charlotte jected to a woman’s daring, in Victorian driven by their animal urge to impregnate, feelings of love. The latest male gimmick in Cushman, 1816-1876. America, to change her skirts for the i.e., to masturbate in vaginas. this campaign is to twist the (to them) Joseph Leach’s book, subtitled THE revealing costumes and aggressive demeanor If this were all, women could have startling finding that women have a greater LIFE AND TIMES OF CHARLOTTE of men.” managed things. But male aggressiveness capacity for orgasm than do men into the CUSHMAN, from Yale University Press, demanded more, much more. Ever since a non sequitur that therefore women have a 1970, must stand as the final word on her. She became famous for Hamlet before woman discovered the function of coitus, greater need for orgasm. Of course women Final, that is, until some woman does it her death and was playing it, alas, long after men have schemed to own “their” children have a greater capacity for orgasm for their better; and, for reasons that will be clear, it anyone, male OR female, has any right to and the bearers of “their” children. Over sexuality partakes of much more mind might be good if someday one does. do so; since if the “too too solid flesh” isn’t milicnia males have built up elaborate matter than does that of the male. His is Daughter of a Boston merchant whose solid, the audience will giggle at that line. myths and institutions to safeguard and seldom more than a physiological sensation. trusting ways and lack of business sense Cushman means “cross bearer” and it augment their power and are now partially We wonder how long your men can hood­ brought the family to ruin, Charlotte went was an apt name, for she carried the burden trapped in their own greed. Most of them wink your women. Some are beginning to on the stage after an abortive singing career. of her inept and troublesome family for are .still true believers in their own hetero­ ask why it is that only the female has an The kindest thing that happened to her much of her young life. sexual myth, but they have shrewdly pro­ organ solely for sexual expression, that the during her early years was her being Back in New York City in 1837, vided themselves with some outlets: their penis is awkward at best for even purely damned by the music critics — for where Charlotte was cast as Meg in GUY all male gatherings and their strong friend­ sexual (non-loving) relief. We hope to fin í her hoarse and loud tones were unsuited for MANNERING — a terrible shriveled crone. ships with other men. In this sense men on our next virit, that women have begun singing, they were marvelous for the acting The role was and is an ugly one, but by far come closer to their true (homosexual) to probe their own sexuaUty without ref­ styles of the day: DRAMA, with real blood. the most important, and it was perfect for nature than do women. And shrewdly too erence to the tons of garbage males have Like most women whose strength causes Charlotte who became famous for her men have seen to it that their women are written about them them to live in history, Charlotte was soon performance. For three years Charlotte kept apart from each other for, should Some of you may wonder why we spent faced with a family to support, shouldering widened her repertoire, which was to women come to know each other, their so much time in the United States. Even the burdens left to her by her father. become enormous and very popular, for she greater amount of mental (loving) matter before we left Mars it was dear that this By the age of twenty, Charlotte had played the same roles over and over would lead them into each other’s arms and country is farthest into the civil unrest that gone on the stage, faced and won her New throughout her life, in a career dotted with spell tile end of the heterosexual myth, that precedes a new era in human progress. York debut and b^un to establish a name “final retirements” and new engagements. essential underpinning of patriarchy. Whether your country will be able to fight — no mean accomplishment as a woman so From 1838 on, her sister Susan (before, one A current example of the oppressive its way through to the raised consciousness young. A fire in a theatre sent her from of her many burdens) became a blessing in strength of this myth is the denial of love beyond or whether it will go down in New York City to a year perfecting her disguise, when Charlotte encouraged her in trade in Albany. Early in her career she an acting career that later lead to Susan’s playing Juliet to Charlotte’s Romeo. ment was not successful. Professionally, this In 1839, one of Charlotte’s most was to be Charlotte’s last “failure” in any became Charlotte’s lover, and, in a more colony of the times, to say nothing of the popular roles was first played: the ragged, sense. She had reaciied the top of her uncoutli Nancy in Dickens’ OLIVER publicly open relationship than one might reactions of the local populace and the profession in her own country. She had imagine possible at' that time, Charlotte TftlST. To learn the role, Charlotte dis­ government become as famous as she could without declared them to be married. Geraldine appeared from home and went to live in the Matilda was plainly jealous and very passing the test of acting in London. In Jewsbury made Charlotte the prototype of notorious “Five Points” section. In a miser­ unhappy about the other young women in 1844, leaving Rosalie behind, she went to her heroine in the novel, THE HALF able den called the “Mother Hennessey,” the household, which soon included other London. Her diary during this time (when SISTERS. It was a strongly feminist novel, she lived for several days, watehing the first parted from Rosalie) ought to be sculptors, Emma Stebbins and Emma Crow. declaring that women did not have to marry The latter was married off conveniently to prostitutes and bums. In a saloon she published. men if they did not wish to do so, with a befriended an old woman who became Charlotte, however sad on the ocean Charlotte’s adopted son, Ned (the natural sentence that must ring hollowly on ears child of Charlotte’s younger sister, Susan), violently ill. Charlotte took her home and crossing, was to find herself a social lion in today: “We are touching on better days cared for her till she died. The old woman London, and the center of such an adoring but Emma Stebbins was to stay with when women will have a genuine normal Charlotte till the end of Charlotte’s life and left her few clothes to Charlotte. When the crowd that it is not surpri.sing that, with the life of their own to lead.” play opened, there was Charlotte — like was to be among the saccharine and glossing passing of time, another woman interested Charlotte returned to America in late Dickens’ own — larger than life, wearing the biographers of her fortunes. It is in this her. During her successful season on the 1849, toured successfully for over three garments of the dead woman. area, the last third of the book, that Jo.seph London stage, where she made herself an years to acclaim in her native land. Her From 1840 to 1842, Charlotte was in Leach gets hopelessly confused. He is ap­ international celebrit), the young English success in London assured her position in Philadelphia, where she entered a distinctly parently unable to tell (though why I poet, Eliza Cook, showered her with love her own country. But touring and playing different phase of her life: the polishing cannot say) that Matilda Hays’ running off poetry (much of it still unpublished). Eliza many roles is even now a hideous life. What that was possibly the only thing her acting (in some way connected with Harriel was the first among her friends to affect it must have been in those times is beyond had lacked. It was also her “training” in Hosmer) was more because Matilda was mannish dress. The constant companionship our comprehension. Charlotte was getting social respectability, in a day and age where angry at Charlotte over Emma Stebbins of Eliza was discussed enough to reach tired of it, longing to retire. In late 1851, acting was on a par with street sweeping, or than any fault of Harriet. Some proof of Rosalie Sully’s ears in Philadelphia. Today while playing in Boston, Chariotte was worse. this is that as long as Charlotte was in that wouldn’t seem su prising, but for that watched eagerly from the audience by a Rome, despite the age difference between It was in Philadelphia, at 24, that type of news to travel that far in those days 20-year old girl who came each afternoon Charlotte became friends with Fanny them, Harriel and Charlotte rode together indicates an inordinate amount of busy­ from Watertown. The girl was Harriet daily, astride, to the never-ending horror of Kemble, the niece of Sarah Siddon.s. These body activity. Joseph Leach does not Hosmer, who was to become the most English actresses were very famous. Fanny, the matrons of Rome. explain, but he calls the rumors “ cruel distinguished woman sculptor of her time. Witli the unrest caused by the Civil War, her career cut short by an unwise marriage, reports.” (We haven’t space here to go into the life of Charlotte and Emma Stebbins relumed to was lonely, both for the stage and for In 1845 Charlotte left London for a Harriet Hosmer and this book is not in­ human company. They became good the United States. She spent the last ten tour in the “provinces,” repeating over and tended to do so, but her life is fascinating friends. Fanny’s wealthy and socially prom­ years of her life in semi-retirement, giving over her standard roles with complete and if you have not read about her you may her last performance in 1874 and dying, inent husband was a help to Charlotte as success. Audiences and critics abke adored wish to do so.) Harriet was brought back- well, since his position automatically raised attended by Emma and, at the very last, by Charlotte. In Manchester she formed a good stage to meet Charlotte, who liked her at Fanny’s .status. It was through Fanny, most her adopted son Ned and his wife, Emma friendship with Geraldine Jewsbury whose once. They formed a life-long friendship, a Crow. likely, that Charlotte met the first love of novel ZOE had recently shocked England. real buddy relationship that lasted through her life. Except for his failure to understand the An outspoken feminist, she was met with some rather odd circumstances, as we will nuances of the Roman household of Thomas Sully was then the supreme the usual reactions to women who advocate see. Charlotte Cu.shman, Joseph Leach ha-s done portrait artist in America. He often painted women’s rights. Having now determined to retire from a marvelous job and this book is highly Fanny Kemble and it is safe to assume that During the next two years, Charlotte the stage, Charlotte convinced Dr. Hosmer recommended. Despite the length of this she was re.sponsiblc for Charlotte’s going to continually appeared in Ireland, Scotland review, I have only touched oit'its contents. his studio. More than the portrait kept her and England, adding triumphs to her name to let his “motherless daughter” Harriet accompany her and Matilda to Rome. In This belongs on the collector’s shelves, one returning, for Rosalie Kemble Sully, one of wherever she went and widening her social Washington, D.C., they were joined by Sara of the better biographies of a w'oman who Thomas’s daughters, was to become the circle to include the literary, political and Jane Clarke, who wrote under the lived her life fully in defiance of the first young woman Charlotte would artistic talents of the time. However, two pseudonym “Grace Greenwood,” and this conventions of the day. publicly call “beloved.” things were troubbng her: the death of party of four, characterized as “Jolly Joseph Leach quite frankly says that Rosabe Sully at 25, and a growing un­ Female Bachelors” went to Rome. Charlotte’s diary was “one never intended happiness between Charlotte and her sister, Charlotte was to come back to the stage for publication” and that it charts the Susan, who still was playing Juliet to many times - each time grandly retiring for progress of what he calls “the profound Charlotte s Romeo. Fate or otherwise, the final time, as many an actor had done attachment.” Shortly after this, Charlotte, while touring in the provinces once again in before and will do again. But from her first who had always lived with some of her 1849, the 28-year old Matilda Hays asked trip to Rome, for the rest of her hie, her family depending upon her for support in Charlotte to take her on as a pupil. real attention was centered in her family her home, moved herself into separate Charlotte saw in Matilda a potential to take life. It was to become a very unusud quarters where Rosalie would visit her Susan’s place in the role of Juliet. family, Harriet Hosmer, though a close freely and privately. But Matilda was destined to play very friend, was restrained by the household. During this time Charlotte acted as few times on the stage, occupying instead a She wore men’s clothing exclusively and manager of her own theatre, but the experi- more important role in Charlotte’s life. She rode unescorted through the streets of Rome to the total horror of the “artistic” Penelope Pitstop Isn’t Enough! Gordon, a teacher, and his wife Susan, a females; little boys in the fdmed .sequences i 910 by the New York Timet housewife. lead the way while the girls submissively By MARION MEADE Company. Reprinted by permission. From the start, there was no question follow; and even a dum-dum like Big Bird Amid the more or less unanimous portrayed as helpless, passive, or simply as that Gordon wore, as they say, the pants recognizes that he’s lucky to have l>een hurrahs for “Sesame Street,” there has complete idiots. Nell Fenwick, Dudley Do- and Susan the apron. According to the bom male. crept in, almost unnoticed, a rather unique Right’s girlfriend, is probably the most show’s producers, this was a deliberate Other children’s programs put down objection; the program is deplorably male- simple-minded of the bunch. When Nell decision — to show black children a model women .somewhat more subtly but the ■oriented and its images of women tend to isn’t being molested by fetishist Snidely of a strong black male which is absent in so insidious message comes across just the be insultingly stereotyped. Such criticism, I Whiplash (“his favorite pastime is tying many slum families. Unfortunately, all this same: girls are second best. “Captain believe, is more than justified. “Sesame women to railroad tracks”), she wanders rationalization illustrates is that sexism, Kangaroo” is a bastion of male supremacy Street” does uphold the old sexist stereo­ about in a catatonic daze or sobs weakly. unlike racism, is still very much in fashion. where a female is rarely seen. “Misterogers’ types, but what has not been mentioned is And you can’t really blame her because Apparently it was inconceivable that Neighborhood” of Make Believe, ruled by that the rest of the television fare for kids is there’s not the slightest doubt that Dudley children might benefit from seeing strong the patriarchal King Friday, preserves the bad or worse. prefers the company of his horse. Nell only mother and father models. Or that the male more repulsive tenets of chivalry. .As for The fact is that all programing for exists to be saved. Being saved gives her her needn’t be upgraded at the expense of the “Romper Room,” when picture books arc preschool children amounts to a thorough cue to gaze adorin^y at Dudley and simper, female. read aloud the main character is always a brainwashing which indoctrinates small girls “Oh, Dudley, you’re swell.” Well on into the season, however, it was boy; live animals appearing on the program into accepting second-class status and After a self-effacing cartoon girlfriend decided that Susan should get a job. But on invariably have male names. assures little boys that some day they will finally catches her man, she can look “Sesame Street” a woman’s place, when not If program content were not deslnictive lake their predestined places in “a man’s forward to spending the rest of her life as a in the kitchen, turns out to be in a enough, sex channeling is reinforced by world.” Mrs. Flintstone, the cliche American wife low-paid, sexually-segregated field like commercials which peddle dolls to girls and The only word for the feminine image who’s sweetly manipulating on the surface nursing. What’s more, the manner in which moon rockets to boys. One toy, Mr. Magnet on children’s television is crummy. Most but a castrating bitch underneath. Actually, Susan’s new job is announced to the viewers Man, is a face which can be tran.sformcd offensive in their treatment of women are Wilma Flintstone occupies little air time, indicates how uneasy such an cqualilarian into a variety of characters by adding the cartoons, the biggest group of programs mostly because a wife’s place is in the cave concept as a working wife makes the magnetized features. I’hc female face is for kids. In an average week there are 50 and Fred Flintstone’s bumbling adventures creators of “Sesame Street.” The program named . . . .Miss Magnet Woman? Not a hours of cartoons, a third of them on take place away from home with his pal opens with Gordon holding a newspaper: a chance. She’s .Mrs. Magnet Mommy. Saturday morning. Only one - “The Perils Barney. Those times when Fred does front page banner headline, the sort usually On the cereal and vitamin commercials, of Penelope Pitstop” - stars a woman. manage to get home to eat and sleep, he reserved for declarations of war, announces: power and eneigy arc stressed. But the Penelope, a professional racing car driver, seems to take his wife’s nagging with “NURSE SHORTAGE CRITICAL.” mnning, jumping, yelling kids are nearly talks in a cloying Southern accent and unbelievable good grace. Nevertheless, on It having been established that only a always boys. Don’t girls need energy too? powders her nose a lot; still, there’s no one program when Mrs. Flintstone hints she national calamity could pry Su.sari away Certainly not in kiddie televisionland, question but that she is resourceful and wouldn’t mind getting a job, Fred quickly from home, we see her approaching Gordon where the females arc helpless physical gutsy, and has a sense of humor. She comes squelches that outrageous idea in the best to discuss the matter. Except that there’s weaklings who must rely on men to protect aiToss as an intelligent human being, some­ machismo style: “ No wife of mine is going no discussion and, considering that two them. thing which can’t be said about any other to work.” adults are involved, their conversation is When you consider that the mums of woman in the cartoon line-up. Granted, there may be disagreement quite remarkable. Like a 5-year-old asking America habitually use television as a baby­ Otherwise, a woman who dares to be over the exact roles men and women should her daddy for a special favor, Susan wrings sitter, then the implications of such early independent is equated with evil and firmly {day in today’s society. But even if most her hands, stammers, and scratches her arm sex role conditioning become disturbing. put in her place. “H.R. Pufnstuf’ features a women were content with domesticity as a anxiously: “After all. I’m a trained nurse (Since “Sesame Street,” even those mothers grotesque, snaggle-toothed hag named career and backseat status as a condition of and I just think they could use my services once cool to the practice have bi^in tVilchipoo who happens to be aggressive life, it would still be unwise to present this and I was wondering about, how you felt propping up infants under a year to benefit and fairiy talented. But her attempts to do stereotype to preschool children. If all about it, what you thought about it?” something worthwhile - in one episode she blacks were satisfied to be servants, would Gordon’s feelings couldn’t be more obvious­ CHANGING YOUR ADDRESS? writes and acts in a movie, in another she television dare portray every black charac­ ly negative but he agrees to consider the If you are planning to move, runs for mayor - demonstrate the un­ proposition: “All right. Let me think about ter as a Stepin Fetchit? Yet children’s please let us know six weeks before pleasant consequences facing a woman who television exercises exactly this type of it a second.” steps out of line. Besides the image of the discrimination when it discourages little Finally he grants a most uncnthusiastic changing your address. Please send entire cast banding together to crush her girls from achievement outside the areas of permission by saying sourly, “If it bugs you your old address and your new power-mad aspirations there is the distinct that much. I’ll tell you what. Try it and sec housework and child-rearing. address, clearly marked. You MUST impression that only an ugly witch would Such attitudes are pushed, not only by how it works out.” After she leaves he think of doing these weird things. insipid cartoons like “The Flintstones,” but actually has the nerve to remark, con­ include BOTH your old and your t t t ^ o by the highly acclaimed “Sesame descendingly, “Well, .she’s happy now.” new zip codes. REMEMBER, third Most cartoons don’t bother to And another generation of littles girls has Street” when it deals with social relation­ class mail is not forwardable. Send aeknowledge the existence of a second sex, ships. Along with the numbers one to ten, just had an opportunity to see how women and those that do use female characters “Sesame Street” does a fine job of teach­ demean themselves to get what they want. to CIRCULATION DEPART­ limit them to the ego-supporting roles of ing preschoolers the ABC’s of male chau- In most segments of “Sesame Street” MENT, P.O. Box 5025, Washington girlfriend or mother. In most cases they are vini.sm. Just look at the leading characters: sex discriminination is right up front. The boy Muppets regularly lord it over the few Station, Reno, Nevada 89503. from educational TV.) What happens is that thermore, I don’t think any child should be A P R IL before a child learns to talk, she is already ANGER automatically tracked into any one life slot. (for kejka) aware of the limited role she’s expected to Yet, as far as girls arc concerned, these very play and her competitive drive is well on its minimal requirements are not being met by in this movement of anger in this full room way to being smashed. By the time she is 6, those who produce television for children. moves through you she will have logged in an incredible 9,000 Women’s perceptions of themselves are i feel the force of rmrning beauty hours before the box and have mastered her beginning to change, however. One can doom dark and delightful and beauty Freudian catechism to perfection: anatomy hope that television’s medieval definitions lying under a lover's roses moves out of you is destiny. of womanhood will become increasingly like the heart's grave into t t t less acceptable and, finally, positively laugh­ come open the space around you It seems reasonable to encourage all able. In the meantime, mothers, keep your in at a spring window where i feel myself children, regardless of sex, to become inde­ daughters away from “Sesame Street.” pendent, responsible human beings. Fur­ come open suspended float old ghosts where the moyement goes smelling of freshness into me and of young memories and moving LET LACED WINDOWS through me comes the force Po e tri by cherj abot pardon my strange dance a force let laced windows and ageless ladles for i am afflicted i call with fear remerrfcer with rainbow sight and in fear cannot help love conjugates like household green: my night eyes my calling: tendrils come open love in to see spring and doom cheri abot is a graduate in English Litera­ fingertips the same flowing color cheri abot ture from San Francisco State College, fearless in a black and white time Her poetry has appeared in several maga­ to feel for new form MOON IN PISCES zines including AVALANCE, VECTOR, for the flow cheri abot HYPERION, as well as in MANROOT of another's bones in one's body NO. 3. moon we love under moves into water signs cheri abot MY EYE LIGHTS INWARD tonight we will hear it my eye lights inward lapping against a daily going growth hollow walls shows up shadows this is a season WAITING FULL MOON IN SCORPIO in of starthistles and bloodstones levels of layers sharp silver now, love i keep my eyes open a stuff scarlet flowers now indeed the time has come for the surface rain-like falling arms we hold each other with of silk and fur onto me bloom red the decision was made days ago i keep my eyes open leaf-like growing but one silver symbol binds and still i for the smell out of me harder than bones pick out pears at the corner market of honey and nuts and earth-making stuff will ring as if nothing had happ>ened but more folding into like hanging chain tonight the feeding spirit over highways holding us apart what does it mean i keep my eyes open (i came into life tonight all the fury of debate for the sound as earth’s child as one wash of waves if i find peace of sobbing veins Saturn's woman has pounded our two pulses in the selection of ripe pears? girl so our bodies' rivers a whole rtwon to mouth against hag will remember the rhythm if a round pear and i am only eyes my roots flow from this is a season fits well in the round of my hand hungry that sphere of starthistles and bloodstones this must be why we wait in the forest die into sharp silver though the time has come of your blood that sphere) scarlet flowers

cheri abot cheri abot cheri abot cheri abot

li sweetest possibly of all humors. LBSBIAN-A. Genocide or Liberation” expresses some For fun, and because 1 have always she is a kleptomaniac . . . we wonder WHY views so pertinent I am mildly, just mildly, By GENE DAMON really enjoyed both science fiction and the that is thrown in . . .? surprised this hasn’t been reprinted in every supernatural, 1 reread J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s There is a biography out of the very first The Women’s History Research Center liberation magazine in the country. It cer­ women’s liberationist, .Mary Wollstoneeraft, classic vampire novella, CARMILLA, just tainly should be. liienlioned in last issue’s column is re­ reissued in Paperback Library, 1970, in a called ONE WOMAN’S SITUATION, by sponsible for my finding a very lovely poem boundwith paperback along with another of Hoorah for librarians . . . one in South­ Margaret Gcoige, University of Illinois combining specific Lesbian interest and Lc Fanu’s classics. I was amazed to find ern California has been supplying notes to Press, 1970. We are writing for a review women’s liberation propaganda. “The Other that the claims (quite serious) of the liber­ me and sent me STORIES FROM THE copy and hope to review this later for you. One,” a poem by Marion Lineawcaver, ation factions that cite “ witches” as just TRANSATLANTIC REVIEW, edited by Mary Wollstoneeraft is well known, of appeared in THE ^ATION, .March 2.3, another unholy (pun Intended) way of Joseph F. McCrindle, N.Y., Holt, 1970, course, for her personal life involvements and for her masterpiece, THE VINDI­ 1970, Efforts will be made to (rack down explaining away strong-minded women in which answers a question asked cariier in CATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN other work by this poet, who is not, at least history are entirely applicable to this vener­ this column re the story by Norma Meacock. . . . and less well known, certainly, for her at the time of this writing, familiar to me. able horror story, which has long been a Lesbian novel, .VLARY, A FICTION. (For a The Michigan reader who increasingly is sub-basement Lesbian classic. In this light, It has taken this book a long time to detailed coverage see SEX VUARIANT becoming my .source of information on surely, Caimilla is no more and no less than cross the ocean. In the December-68/ pertinent .short stories found llie story January-69 issue of THE LADDER, I re­ WOMEN IN LITERATURE by Jeannette a very clever young woman determined to II. Foster.) “Changed.” by .Nonna .Vleacoek, in a col­ run off with the girl of her choice . . . not viewed Vera Brittain’s RADCLYFFE Reprints include the magnificent Sybille lection of stories from the TRAN.S- a bit more sinister than that . . . but then, HALL: A CASE OF OBSCENITY, which Bedford novel, A COMPASS ERROR, out .AILANIIC REVIEW. I have not yet run even today, Le,sbians are somehow sinister. covers the whole court proceedit^s sur­ that collection of stories down, not know­ Ah, well. rounding THE WELL OF LONELINESS from Ballantine Books, 1970. This one is more than worth the 95c tariff since it is ing the title or editor for cheeking, but I did George Revelli’s COMMANDER and this celebrated novel’s fight for exis­ the most literate Lesbian novel of 1969 go back through issues of the review and AMANDA has been issued in paperback by tence. Then freshly published in En^and, it . . . and, with the exception of Isabel found it in TRAMSATI.A.NTIC REVIEW Dell, 1970. This is a spy spoof, better than is now out over here from A.S. Barnes, Mo. 17. .Autumn, 1964. A very good look at 1970, for $5. Miller’s A PLACE FOR US, the most most of them, with a surprise and then popular. lower class English Lesbian life . . . bitter, some ending. Not for the unsophisticated, Bless Jill Johnston for kindly mention­ brittle and comic. Along the way while [leriod . , . but fun otherwise. ing THE LADDER and my bibliography in Another reprint . . . LOVEY CHILDS: looking tor this story', I noticed others by (.hildren’s books are really beginning to her October 15, 1970, VILLAGE VOICE A PHILADELPHIA STORY, by John Norma Vleacoek which would indicate her reflect the women’s liberation movement. A column, “Dance Journal,” even including O’Hara, has been issued by Bantam, 1970. interests coincide with the women’s liber­ biography of SHIRLEY CHISHOLM, by the address. This is a very major Lesbian novel but no ation movement. Included was the poignant Susan Brownmillcr, Garden City, N.Y., In 1968 Mary Ellmann’s THINKING more relevant to today’s world than any­ “What Are They .Saying?” in the Autumn Doubicday, 1970, is available for the 10 ABOUT WOMEN first came out . . . now thing else by O’Hara is . . . but for (ileasurc 1967, TRANSATLA.MTIC REVIEW, which yeare and up child. Good to see this. it has been reissued by Ilarcoiirt in its reading one of the contemporary masters, ends with the miserable married heroine That black and white still live in quality paperback line. Harvest Books fine. 1970, for S2.65. This is interesting if now slashing her tongue and soft pallet to keep separate worlds was rather forcefully Two current novelist poets whose mes­ outdated. It is especially pleasant to see her from screaming out with rage. Anyone who brouglit home to me by the fine anthology' sages reflect the state of the women’s deal Mr. Norman Mailer much the same knows the collection of stories with THE BLACK WOMAN, edited by, and in Uberation movement, arc in the boards just death blow that Kate Millett did . . . Changed in it . . . let me know, please, part written by, Toni Cade. This is a Signet now. One is Margaret Atwood, who has two wonder how the man manages to survive? .leannie Sakol’s satiric and sad paperback original dated August, 1970, books out at the same time, a novel, THE This one is good, especially for those who (iUMDROP, GUMDROP, LET DOWN costing 95 cents and as well spent a dollar EDIBLE WOMAN, and a collection of like literature, Ellrnann’s primary subject in VOUR H.A1R is out in paper from Pocket (including tax) as 1 am likely to spend for poetry, PROCEDURES FOR UNDER- Hooks, 1970. This is an up close look at the the book. GROUND. Both are from Boston, Little, some time. Contents include Toni Cade’s It is hard to remember that Pamela lifr* of an instant Twiggy . . . complete own On the Issue of Roles” which is, Brown, 1970, and both Atlantic Press with an abortion scene that will turn your Hansford J ohrison wrote the fine novel, amusingly, as relevant to tlie Lesbian as to books. THE EDIBLE WOMAN is the most head around . . . unbelievable. There is a THE SEA AND THE WEDDING, a number the black woman . . . in ways it cannot be relevant here as the narrator-heroine fights substantial l.esbian character, but she’s not of years ago, when faced with THE the overwhelming evidence that her engage­ partictJarly good advertising. to the white heterosexual woman. The HONOURS BOARD, N.Y., Scribner’s, book is packed with good material . . . a ment and upcoming marriage is an in­ Clarence Cooper’s excellent 1967 novel, 1970. This is a dreary indictment of English nice balance of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, vitation to the feast . . . and with her as HIE FAR.M, has finally made it into public (private) schools and it includes a the pig with an apple in its mouth. How the and even humor, as in ‘The Kitchen Crisis,” paperback reprint from Award Books, tragic Lesbian interlude. The woman is a heroine, Marian, fights this feeling is the which deals most effectively with the truth 1970. The Lesbian portions of this novel, crashing bore of a writer, and since we novel , . . which means it is a weak tiovel about .soul food. The long short story, •set in the hell that is a narcotics prison know she was talented once, we wonder . . . for her .solution, instead of fighting. Is ‘‘Rccna,” by Paulc Marshall (whose THE fami. are minor but not badly done. Major what has happened. Libraries will have this to starve herself. Sick enough, but a symto- CHOSEN PLACE, THE TIMELESS plot concerns the more or less attempt at . . . don’t spend money. The Lesbian matie look at the world today. The other PEOPLE was reviewed in the April/May, portion of the plot deserves some examina­ novelist. Marge Piercy, is famous as a moral redemption accomplished by the 1970, issue of THE LADDER) is a detailed low-keyed love of a black male prisoner and tion for its stereotype view. French teacher movement poet . . . and .she is a fine jioct. and explicit rendering of what happens to a prostitute from the women’s section of Elspeth Murray falls in love with Betty As a novelist I am leas convinced. Her the educated black woman in America . . Cope, a part-time matron at the school, and the farm. Ugly ugly . . . but good, and and^ it lends some credence to the “drop DANCE THE EAGLE TO SLEEP, Garden ends up, when more or less rejected, a City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1970, is very anti- seasoned with the humor of the hopeless, out” figures. Toni Cade again in “The PiU: suicide. Gratuitously we arc also informed establishment, which makes me wonder why that bastion of normalcy. Doubleday, 1970, is disappointing. This is sad since the is publishing her at all. But, then, no one woman can write very well. Her earlier graphic data, and while we understand why, this (and I hope that’s all of you) can order lakes it all very seriously . . . which may Lesbian novel, NO JOHN, NO, was also less we regret this because it will help keep the it by mail. be I'HEIR mistake. Marge Piercy’s error is than satisfying and worse, poorly written book from the women who will want it. It in using male protagonists for what is I.0VER.S AND FATHERS is also out in consists of poetry and drawings . . . and (At press time we learned that FREEœ \ essentially a female argument . . . that is, London, Anthony Blond, 1970. The first they are all unsigned . . . though a list of WOMEN’S PRESS, 2828 BEN VENUE,% an aigiiment of liberation. And she has person narrative of a woman with four or contributors is appended. No publisher, Berkeley, California 94 705, can supplyeriences women undergo at the ( hapman Catt and Nettie Rogers Shuler,^ different as Edna St. Vincent Millay’s American Indian Woman’s organization. It hands of male doctors. Admittedly, one can which first appeared in 1923, is available poetry of the 1920s . . . which celebrated is to be known as the North American do nothing about this as a child, but grown again. The LTiiversity of Washington at similar themes . . . better. But Cressida Indian Women’s A.ssociation. women can and should choo.se women .Seattle has published it in both hardback at Lindsay ha.s learned to write very very well. CHANGE IN GREAT BRITAIN’? physicians (and women lawyers, eye SlO.50 and in a quality S3.95 paperbaek. It One hopes .she someday ha.s something August 19, 1970. Carole Lord, 23, and doctors, dentists and everything else). .Soli­ is well worth owning, both for Carrie important enough to use that glorious Terry Floyd, 24, were married in a civil darity, sisters. Chapman Call’s views and for its history. talent on . . . we will all be richer. marriage ceremony on this date in Wcstcliff, WOMAN IN POST IN U.S. CRIMINAL While both Eleanor Fle.xner in her Alberto Moravia’s 1951 minor Lesbian E.SSCX. Our only source on this is an PROSECUTIONS: NEW YORK TIMES: CENTURY OK STRUGGl.E, Cambridge, novel, THE CONFORMIST, ha.s been made unreliable question and answer column seen September 16, 1970. Shirah Neiman, the Harvard University Pres.«, 19.59, and Aileen into a movie by Bernardo Bertolucci and in many pafiers on a syndicated basis. Terry first woman to do so in 20 years, was Kraditor in IDEAS OF THE WOMAN SUF­ was recently shown at the New York Film Floyd is quoted as replying to press inquiry admitted to the ranks of Ihe criminal FRAGE MOVEMENT, 1B90-1920, N.Y., Festival. Reports indicate It retained the with, “You can say we are both Lesbians prosecution section of the United .States Columbia University Press, 1965, have writ­ Lesbian portion.' but probably sensation­ but we are not prepared to say any more Attorney’s office in New York City this ten intellectually more appealing overviews, alized them out of all resemblance to the than that.” day. Shirah is a 26-year-old graduate of there Ls a rhythm and power in W'OMAN book. This novel was reprinted by .Signet WOMAN IN THE EYES OF MAN: Columbia Law School, who has been work­ SliFFRAGE AND POUTICS that bring.' first in 1954 and has been reis.sued several EVERGREEN REVIEW: September 1970. ing as a law clerk for Federal Judge Milton home Ihe real value of their early bravery in times since, so for those of you who have Julius Lester, in “W'oman — The Male Pollack. .An honor student tliroughout her a way no “removed” view ever could. W'r mussed it, it ought not to be too hard to Fantasy,” provides as hard-hitting an argu­ academic career, Ms. Neiman graduated may well be pulling at the bit today, but at locate. ment for a change of attitude on the part of cum laude from Barnard in 1 % 5 and magna least they get credit for kicking off the Lack of space and time keeps me from men in their view of women than any cum laude from Columbia Law .School in blinders. Bless them all, those brave women. bringing everything to you this issue that person has outside of the “hard core” 1968. She was also on the staff of THF2 'I'he same fine press. University of Wash­ I’d like to share. Next issue will have women’s liberation pre.ss. The article LAW REVIEW. ington, has just published a magnificent reviews of Page Smith’s DAUGHTERS OF frankly admits the fanta.sy-based view that study of Imogen Cunningham’s photo­ THE PROMISED LAND, an excellent liter­ all men have of all women, and points out B y L y n n e graphs in IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM ary little magazine RED CLAY READER 7, why it has to stop — and stop NOW. PHOTOGRAPHS, 1970. Introduetion is by which features Fiction and non-fiction of “ SHE CANNOT SKATE,” SAID Margery Mann, herself an accomplished high quality on women’s liberation in this MARK. NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS; photographer. While unde.servedly more special and final issue . . . and one of the September 3, 1970. Virginia Kidd, Depart­ famous for her sensual studies of individual most moving literary experiments 1 have ment of Speech Communication, Sacra­ (liants. Miss Cunningham is one of the very ever seen, an anthology called WOMAN TO mento State College, quotes from the few photographers doing justice to women. W'OMAN, which contains much of Lesbian following series from textbooks IN­ How conscious or unconscious this is, we interest. We can give you tliis preliminary TENDED FOR EXTENSIVE USE FOR 4 cannot say . . . but the results arc magnifi­ information: WOMAN TO W'OMAN is a $1 TO 8-YEAR OLDS THROUGHOUT cent. Even the $12.50 tarriff is hardly out publication put out on the West Coast, CALIFORNIA: of line for the rich grouping of her work presumably in San Francisco, with Free “She cannot skate,” said Mark. “She is just a girl. She gives up.” from 1901 to 1970. Women’s Press, Gay W'omen’s Liberation ...... THCU “Now you c-an skate. But just with me LOVF.RS .AND F.ATHERS, by Crcs.sida and Women’s Liberation in that area sharing CteCANCb UV l«J HCR. Lindsay, N.A., Clarkson Potter-Crown, the credits. It is wholly devoid of biblio­ to help you.” EXCELLENT SERIES: VILLAGE O u lM ___ N.Y. STATE CORRFXTIONS CODE is brought out. Mr. O’Donnell comments replied, “Yes, we should listen to God’s be every woman’s answer, it is “an alterna­ DISCRIMINATES: NEW YORK TIMES: that a disproportionate amount of attention word and try to understand what She had tive.” September 25, 1970. Many expert wit­ is paid to the “higher echelon” jobs where in mind.” THE WASHINGTON POST: October nesses, testifying before the City Com­ at best only a few of either sex will enter, VERY POOR PLAYERS: Charles 13, 1970, devoted its major editorial lo mission on Human Rights presently con­ and not enough attention to the labor field, Town, West Virginia, October 8, 1970. recommending that the equal rights amend­ ducting a scries of hearings on the status of which is male dominated and need not be. Sixteen-year-old Debra Wray is an appren­ ment be passed at once. Many other news­ women, confirmed that the State Cor­ WOMEN’S RIGHTS AMENDMENT tice jockey. She won the seventh race on papers have done this as well, even some rections Code has many harsh penalties that SHELVED: Washington, D.C., October this night, taking first place. Three male that still segregate their want ads. Reason.s, apply only to women. One example is that 1970. Every paper in the country has riders, however, claimed fouls on the track, anyone? a 16-year-oId girl can be declared a juvenile carried front page news on this specific, and she was dropped from first to fifth A DOLL’S HOUSE REVISITED: LIFE delinquent and placed in reform school for deliberate squelching of the equal rights place. Very foul, that. MAG.AZINE: October 16, 1970. Clare up lo four years for promiscuous behavior, amendment by jockeying in the Senate. Led TO SLOWLY PENETRATE SOME­ Boothe Luce, ironically described by LIFE because promiscuity in girls is considered by Sam J. Ervin, Jr., a Democrat from BODY’S CONCRETE; VILLAGE VOICE; as “a woman doing a man’s job,” has “ungovernable and unmanageable,” There North Carolina (whose hatred of women October 8, 1970. Robin Reisig’s report on written a modern adaptation of Henrik is, of course, no such provision for 16- has also been front page news in recent the New York City Commission on Human Ibsen’s classic drama, A DOLL’S HOUSE, year-old boy.s, and one wonders what adult months), an amendment was added to the Rights hearing on “Women’s Role in Con­ placing the emphasis on some a.speets of the who has ever been around both 16-ycar-old proposal which effectively shelved it. It is temporary American Society” is excellent, current women’s liberation movement. boys and girls could possibly not recognize interesting to note, though, that among the well worth looking up at your library if you LIFE format and language surrounding the the idiocy of that law. It is a common bill’s enemies are men like Edward missed it. The constant evidence of the short play arc terrible, a good example of fallacy that laws are supposedly “loaded” in Kennedy. Any woman who mistakenly demeaning status of women is slowly what women’s liberation is trying to get favor of women, but they are actually thouglit there was no specific organized “penetrating” something — maybe only a away from, but the play itself is worth weighed against them in all manner of plot to keep her a second-class citizen growing body of women. looking up and reading. Great literature it is personal behavior. Women, like cattle, arc hasn’t been reading the papers lately. We SUBDUED, AND IMPACT IS SLIGHT; not, hut another sign among signs of the property. have no friends (male) on Capitol Hill. NEW YORK TIMES; October 11, 1970. times. THE HIGHEST HONOR OF ALL: ST. ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA, October Marilyn Bender, writing about the women’s SEXISM IN THE CHILD’S WORLD: TERESA OK .AVIL.A: Vatican City, Sep­ 4, 1970. Following la.st week’s proclaiming liberation movement on Wall StreeL com­ NEW YORK TIMES; October 16, 1970. tember 27, 1970. Pope Paul VI proclaimed St. Teresa of Avila as a doctor of the ments that to do anything these women Joan Cook, reporting on a meeting of 160 St. Teresa of Avila the first woman doctor Roman Catholic Church, Pope Paul VI first ask permission of their “male sov­ authors of children’s hooks with repre­ of the Roman Catholic Church. In its 2,000 today proclaimed St. Catherine of Siena as ereigns” and that to be caught as a sentatives of a women’s liberation group year history, only 30 persons have been a doctor of the Roman Catholic Church. “feminist” (which has become a far dirtier called “ The Feminist Collective on proclaimed doctor, an honor reserved for CAPTAIN TOMMIE SUE SMITH: NEW word these days than Lesbian, not seen as a Children’s Media,” covers the many, many the greatest teachers of Catholic doctrine. YORK TIMES: October 4, 1970. 35- threat) is tantamount to no more job examples the women were able to produee Pope Paul, however, cast a shadow over the year-old divorcee Tommie Sue Smith sued tomorrow. The majority of the article is the of demeaning and “role-oriented” liberature proceedings by stressing Vatican opposition tlie Air Force and won. She charged blatant same depressing repeating of the statistical directed at children. The humor (horror?) to women becoming priests or church discrimination over the ruling that women status of the primary clerical female in reading reports like this is the substi­ leaders. Thousands of persons attended the in the ranks may not have custody of minor workers on Wall Street; like white collar tution of racial slurs for each sex .slur. There formal ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica. children. The Air Force statement in re­ women everywhere, gophers, gophers (go is little question that minds are being WOMEN UNDER THE MICROSCOPE: scinding the order commented on the for this, go for that, and then wash my warped — all female minds. TEMPLE UNIVERSITY UP: September 28, “recent emphasis on women’s rights.” desk.) ANOTHER WOMAN VS. AIR FORCE; 1970. I'emplc University has another male. Captain Smith may NOW take her 8- WOMEN - lOOTH ANNIVERSARY: DENVER POST; October 19, 1970. Dr, Leonard Swidler, professor of religion, year-old son with her when she is trans­ UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, October Captain Su.san R. Struck, with V/i years’ teaching a course on “Women in Religious ferred to the Philippines. Captain Smith is 11, 1970. In honor of 100 years of women service, intending to make the .Air Force a Theory and Practice.” This is the first one of only seven women judge advocates attending the University of Michigan, career, is pregnant and faces discharge. She course on women in the university outside in the Air Force. Representative Martha Griffiths, Catherine is fighting this, claiming that since she will of the school of medicine, where, no doubt, RIGHTS OF WOMEN IN CATHOLIC East of the U.S. Department of Labor, be giving the child up for adoption her babie.s and birthing was the emphasis. CHURCH SOUGHT: New Orieans: October Professor Jo-Ann Gardner, Professor pregnancy should not affect her service MILITARY CO-EDS: AP: October 7, 1970. The professional organization of Marlene Dixon and Robin Morgan, editor of career. 1970. Two women have enrolled at Wa.sl>- Roman Catholic canon lawyers charged SISTERHOOD IS POWERFIJI, the THE MEDICAL SEXISTS; NEWS­ ington State University in the Air Force today that current church practices discrim­ women’s liberation anthology, were WEEK; October 19, 1970. The “Medicine” Reserve Officers Training Corps. They are inate against women, against their “dignity scheduled to speak. Rohin gave up a section of this i.s.sue deals with the enor­ -said to take part equally in the same and inalienable rights.” The issue was portion of her time to an unscheduled mous prejudices against women in medicine activities as the male cadets. brought up by the group’s oidy female group of women from the university’s and how damaging this is to the entire WOMEN IN THE WORK FORCE: The member, Clara Maria Henning, the church’s women’s liberation organization. Another country in view of our need for more than Connecticut Labor Department Monthly only female canon lawyer. During debate unscheduled speaker was Nadine Miller, 50,000 more doctors right now. The same Bulletin for October 1970 has a good article on the rights of women in the church, a who said that her Lesbianism was the result statistics we’ve seen often in recent months (male authored, however) on the ,37% of priest expressed oppasition to the group’s of a very real political choice. “1 will give are repeated. Only 9% of U.S. physicians the labor force in this country that is resolution on women’s rights and quoted my life to this movement, but 1 will not are women, while two out of three doctors female. U.sual obvious conclusions: we gel a the Biblical injunction that women should stmggle for anything with men,” she added. in Russia and one out of four in Great Britain are women. lousy deal everywhere. One very good point be subservient to men. Miss Henning She also said that while Lesbianism may not WOMEN VETERANS FILE SUIT FOR setts, October 25, 1970. The undergraduate ALLOWANCES DENIED ON SEX BASIS: executive board of the HARVARD LA.M- to raise the .status of women in her country. teen leaders - most 15-16 years old - find THE SEATTLE TIMES: October 23, 1970. POO.N, a distinguished chauvinist publi­ LISTENING TO THE VERY YOUNG; only 75 percent favor adopting the hus­ Three women have filed stiit, claiming that cation, decided that women could not be Many cities, October and November 1970. band’s name in marriage; 60 percent favor if their husbands were classified as wives considered for staff positions until 1972 Many clippings came in about young girls in men and women sharing housework; only their benefits would be between S20 and because the constitution of the magazine lugli schools around the country filing 20 percent believing male identity having S30 more per month. Sexism in reverse. forbids iL and two consecutive executive various suits against their schools for dis­ priority over female, and 74 percent were MEN’S LIBERATION: NEW YORK boards must approve any change in the crimination in fields of athletics or edu­ aware of discrimination against women in IIMES: October 23, 1970. Determined not constitution. cation. A good sample case is that of employment. That’s not enormou.s. but to be left liehind, a number of small men’s NO WOMEN PILOTS IN BRITAIN, AT 16-year-old Phyllis Graver, a junior at what an improvement over just a few years liberalion group.s have sprung up. We have LEAST NOT IN THE BIG BIRDS. Jamaica High School in New York City who ago. referred in Ihi.s column to one or two LONDON TIMES: October 25, 1970. Two is suing to obtain the right to play tennis on WE’RE ALL UNCONSCIOUS Olliers. Now there is a new one in New major English airlines rejected Ihe qualified the school’s team. Only boys arc allowed to SEXISTS: PSYCHOLOGY TODAY; York City called Men’s Liberation, Inc., application of Delphin Gray-Fisk for pilot belong to the tennis team at this time. November 1970. Drs. Sandra and Daryl ilevoted to liberating men from feeling they training for the larger planes, such as a 707 Phyllis has played since age nine and is fully Bern, writers of this article, present a clear have to prove their masculinity 24 hours a or VCIO. Both BE A and BOAC turned qualified to compete on the team. She plans and easily understood analysis of the day. down the application. Wouldn’t it be nice if to go on to college and is hoping for a ridiculous condition of women from the LUTHERANS VOTE TO ORDAIN no women would fly on either line until tennis scholarship. Phyllis’ suit is filed with beginning of time. They point out, however WOME.N: San Antonio, October 24, 1970. they changed their minds? the City Commission on Human Rights. sadly, that now women arc as respon.sible The 2.0 milhoti member American Luther­ WOMEN’.S STUDIES: NEWSWEEK: A HAVEN FOR MALE HOMO- for this .state of affairs as men; the constant an Church voted on this dale in San October 26, 1970. The “Education” section SEXUALS: ALPINE COUNTY, CALIFOR­ repetitive training of “society” which boils •Vnlonio to ordain women as ministers. This of this issue discu.sses the small but growing NIA: October and November 1970. Unless lown very often to what children Icam was the seventh major American denomi­ number of .schools now offering courses on you,live on another planet (in which ca.se trom their mothers FIRST, is an unbroken nation to do so. Just one week ago Ihe women’s studies. An absence of texts suit­ you won’t see this, either), you have al­ chain dooming each .succeeding generation House of Deputies in the Episcopal Church able for use in these new programs is ready read about the Los Angcle.s-bassd to the status quo. These doctors are mar­ defeated a move to permit the ordination of crippling some of them (remember when Gay Liberation Front which intends to ried, and admit that when they married women to the priesthood and the the publishers began the mad scramble for move enough voters into Alpine County to they didn’t realize the political condition of episcopacy. black history books?). Profe.s.sor Barbette turn it into a gay-controlled county. So far marriage and didn’t take steps to retain It is believed this move by the .American Blackington of American University in none of the publicity that has come to the Sandra’s maiden name. This seems to lie the Lutheran Church will move this group Washington .said that “Women’s studies are attention of 'THE L.ADDER indicates that best fcmale/male joint view on the situation clo.scr to the “Lutheran Church in still in the Neanderthal stage.” this involves Lesbians at all, except the in print. They begin their article with three America’’ and away from the Lutheran BPW JOB POOL: ITHACA JOURNAL; mention of the inclusion of a woman, June basic quotations from THE BIBLE, THE Church-Missouri Synod, where the leader October 27, 1970. Out of 3,000 possible Herrie, in the Gay Scouting Party on MORNING PRAYER OF THE recently commented that Eve, being made White House appointments, 250 have gone November 27th. Fifty GLF members plan ORTHODOX JEW, and THE KORAN, as of a rib and all that, was a “lower order’’ to women .so far. BPW' (National Federation to return to Markleevillc in Alpine County follow respectively: than Adam of Business and Professional Women’s on December 18th for the community town “For a man . . . is the image and glory LIONEL TIGER GROWLS AGAIN: Clubs) is keeping score and maintains a meeting. Various fanatics coast to coast of God: but the woman is the glory of the NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: October complete job pool of experts available in all have come out vowing to stop the planned man. For the man is not of the woman; but 23, 1970. In this article, “Male Dominance? fields from archilects to zoologists in their take-over of the sparsely settled California the woman of the man. Neither was the Yes. Alas,’’ Mr. Tiger pretends to find male efforts to get as many women into active county, but as far as we can determine, the man created for the woman; but the woman dominance unfortunate, and with this sup­ government as possible. planned move is entirely legal and ought, in for the man.” (I Cor. 11:7-9) posedly sympathetic premise he writes a OUT AND IN AGAIN - NORA SIMON principle, to be easily accumpli.shed IF the “Blessed art Thou, oh Lord our God, p o d deal of poppycock about why nature VS. THE WACS: Plainfield, New Jersey, participants are willing to pul Ihe necessary King of the Universe, that I was not born a intends us to remain dominated by men, COURIER-NEWS: October 28, 1970. Miss work into the projecL gentile. Ble.s.sed art Thou, oh Lord our God, however much proof they have provided to Nora .Simon has been permitted to re-enlist CAMPUS FOCUS - MANY SOURCES King of the Univer.se, that I was not born a us that they are incapable of running the in the WACS after beingdischargedfor being — October and November 1970. Clippings slave. Blessed art Thou, oh Lord our God, world in a civilized manner. He brings up pregnant. ACLU attorneys argued that men reached us from all over the U.S. from King of llie Universe, that I was not born a the old hormones bit again which cost Dr. are not diseharged for getting women preg­ many newspapers and magazines comment­ woman.” Berman his job and reputation. It will be nant - good point. ing on the slow but growing number of “Men are superior to women on acc ount remembered that Mr. Tiger is the author of of the qualities in which God has given EVEN IN PURDAH: AP, October 29, universities and colleges that are featuring a lM)ok about a mysterious male bond, MEN courses specifically in line with women’s them preeminence.” 1970. Rumors of women’s liberation aetivi- WOMEN’S COLLEGES REST: IN GROUPS, and the success of his book tics from far off Karachi, Pakistan, where liberation. There is some question that this and career depends on everyone accepting DETROIT FREE PRESS: November .3, women still wear veils and rural wives do all age. level may be already past the age of the premise that men can rule women learning to discount roles learned. Women’s 1970. New Brunswick, New Jersey, UPl. the manual labor. An organization called Speaking at Dougla.s.s College, the women’s because hormones say tliey ought to. One the All Pakistan Women’s Association has liheration needs to start by dropping the wonders how Mr. Tiger would explain blue and pink nursery arm bands in ho.s- division of Rutgers University, Margaret Lesbians. been formed by Begum Raana l.iaquat Ali Mead borrowed a line or two from Kate Khan, widow of a prime minister of Paki­ pitaLs. WHEN WILL SOMEONE HARPOON YWCA FINDS THEM YOUNGER AND Millett and came out strongly for sexually stan. She claims that her hu-sband’s 1951 segregated schools. She said all-women col­ THE LAMPOON? Cambridge, Massachu- a.s.sassination was in part due to her efforts SMARTER: November 1970. Reports from sampling the opinions of some 4,000 female leges offer better instructors and more

ìA éC chance for women to express themseh'es pantsuiL left and returned in a dress. Judge Lesbians in this area on a local news show. NO. October, November and December and participate in classes without Schmid commented, “She is a woman and Unfortunately, we had no one to report on 1970. The homophile press reports in­ inhibition. she will dress as a woman in this court.” the depth or quality of coverage, (Editor’s creasing instancc.s of the separation of male DETROrr HIGH SCHOOL HAS A DIF- Interesting in view of the fact that most Note: Local reports indicate coverage was homosexuals and Lesbians. There have FERENT DAY: DETROIT FREE PRESS: major industries and firms around the far above average.) but we did receive never been many women in male homo­ November 6, J970. Denby High School had country have okayed pantsuits for office FULL PAGE pictorial ads from a local L.A. sexual organizations. Lip service invitations a one day teach-in called VOCAL (Views of wear, and top fashion stores from coast to TV newspaper section and what was ap­ by males to come to sweep llieir floors, Contemporary American Life), featuring coast have made pantsuits mandatory wear parently the radio-TV listing page of a local serve them coffee and help them campaign members of groups from the far right to the for their clerks. newspaper showing a not-too stereotyped for public toilet sex rights have never been radical left: SDS, white panthers. Gay Testimony in the case was completed Lesbian couple in a home-like atmosphere, particularly enchanting to la;sbians. Many Liberation, Women’s Liberation, etc. More the first day, and the ease is being tried with the caption shown above, and one have tried through the years to work with than 100 girls and a few boys jammed each before the judge without a jury. As we have further, telling corrunent: “Betty and Sue men, taking for granted that they were of the sessions conducted by feminist Karen reported in past issues, the case involves the live like any other young married couple, pinned by society into the same bag (i.e., Winn. Detroit is no San Francisco, though. intended marriage of Tracy Knight to except for one thing. Sometimes they feel some social discriminations against male We note that Gay Liberation was not Marjorie Ruth Jones. Trial lawyers intend very alone.” We do not know how the ads homosexuals apply to Lesbians, as do the invited to the day-long conference but was to carry it to the Supreme Court if neces­ hit the public. Of course, Betty and Sue are large areas of law reform and job oppor­ represented when other groups, including sary, and there is little doubt that it will be. NOT alone: they’re a big minority in this tunity, though women are seldom involved Women’s Liberation, favored walking out County Clerk Hallahan said that if two country. in law vioiatiorts). On the heels of Del unles,s it was. women were allowed to many it would PANT.SUITS: COAST TO COAST, ■Martin’s “walk out” (see THE LADDER, TWELVE SCHOOLS HIT FOR ANTI­ “cause a breakdown of government and October, November and December 1970. December/January issue for “ If That’s All WOMEN BIAS: Washington, D.C., Novem­ retard the continuity of the human race.” We can only assume that this is a subject of There Is”) from all male homosexual ber 6, 1970. The Department of Welfare Imagine being that terrified of two burning interest, for clippings from coast to organizations and causes, in favor of total announced that over the past three months Lesbians. One wonders if the only reason coast came in, commenting primarily that involvement in the women’s movement, the it has imposed temporary financial sanc­ the race has continued thus far is because many busines.ses now automatically allow male homophile press responded with a tions against 12 colleges and universities for women have been forbidden to marry one women clerical and professional workers to series of articles and editorials designed to sex discrimination in hiring. The actions another. wear pantsuits. Their very practical, sensible lull women back into their olredience pos­ withholding federal contracts for 30-day ONE QUARTER OF ONE MILLION use in fields requiring fairly strenuous tures. Few arc buying the tune, particularly periods represent the first enforcement of a DOLLARS — FOR WOMEN: November 11, physical activity is obvious. Besides, when younger women. In the last few years there 1968 executive order forbidding federal 1970. In Camden, New Jersey, the Wheaton forced to admit it, women prefer pants to has been a fantastic proliferation of “gay contractors to discriminate by sex in em Glass Company was ordered to pay dresses. liberation” groups coast to coast; every ployment. Harvard and the University of $250,000 in back wages to women who SPECIAL FUNDING TO BRING major city has at least one, and the largest Michigan are among the institutions, but were cheated of their rightful pay by WOMEN INTO FIELDS WHERE THEY have many. Each group has followed a the other schools were not named. WEAL, unequal pay scales. 440 women employees HAVE BEEN EXCLUDED: October, similar pattern: men and women work in the Women’s Equity Action League, are involved, and U.S. District Court Judge November and December 1970. Qippings groups (10-15 men to each woman) in the spurred the investigation tliat led to these Mitchell H. Cohen ordered the company to from all over reach us, showing that on a beginning and then, di.sgusted and tired, steps being taken, by accu.sing some 200 pay back wages plus 6% interest to them. very limited, token basis some schools, women split off, forming Lesbian liberation institutions on grounds of discrimination in The company will appeal, of course, but colleges and universities are belatedly trying groups, often called Gay Women’s Liber­ hiring, promotion and pay - all against maybe - just maybe - the women will to make amends to women for unaccount­ ation. There ate at least five such groups in women. ultimately win. To show how seaseless this able years of degradation. Cornell Uni­ the U.S. This pattern is identical to that of UNUSUAL TRIAL IN KENTUCKY; sort of thing is, the problem began with versity is one example, where the College of women’s hberation, where the first groups Louisville, Kentucky, November 10, 1970, women being paid $2.14 per hour for work Engineering is establishing the “Burrell formed as splitoffs from male leftist groups A trial was held here today to determine if that men were paid 12.35 per hour for. Women’s Engineering Scholarships” to and male dominated civil rights organiza­ the Jefferson County Clerk in Kentucky Think what women could do to and for this bring more women into this field that is tions. can legally refu.se to issue a marriage license country if they would only DEMAND their starving for trained personnel. An unsigned We don’t know where this activity will to two women. The women gave the court rights. Think about it. article in the CORNELL CHRONICLE end nor what it will accomplish, but it’s .several reasons for wishing to marry: love, WOMEN ARE DEAD IN 1970: NEW speaks of the “essentially untapped contri­ clear that WOMEN — gay and straight, legality and financial security. According to YORK TIMES: November 12, 1970. A butions that young women can make to the everywhere — are moving out from under Stan MacDonald of the LOUISVILLE group of the larger, better-known women’s engineering profession.” True, and to every all forms of male thumbs. Con.sciousness is COURIER-JOURNAL. Jefferson County rights groups concluded that the women’s other profession as weU. rising, literally in the streets, and in the attorney Bruce Miller became confused rights issue is dead for this year — lame WOMEN IN SCIENCE, AMERICAN media: note the more cautious approach during his question about “which of the duck session of Congress. Most felt that the ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCE­ even iti the hated establishment put-down two w ' to be the ‘wife’ and who was the various substitute proposals to the original MENT OF SCIENCE, and Mina Rees. wonven’s magazines — compare it to the ‘husband’ ’’. Before the trial could get clean and simple one were stupid, though Special to THE LADDER: This group will same a few years ago to the “black” under way, Jefferson Circuit Judge Lyndon they did not phrase it quite that way. be meeting December 27, 1970 in Chicago, movement. The clenched fist .symbol in the R. Schmid evidenced his attitude toward Better luck next year - maybe, maybe not. and for the first time it has a woman as female circle: a few more each day, each the trial and women in general, by ordering BETTY AND SUE ARE MARRIED. TO president: Mina Rees. For the first time this hour. one of the couple, Tracy Knight, to leave EACH OTHER. Los Angeles, November group will also field a symposium on GAYS WIN ROLE IN FAMILY the court room and change her clothes. 16-20, 1970. KABC-TV carried a week- women in science. SERVICE: San Francisco Chronicle, Tracy, who had been wearing a beige silk lorig, twice daily short special report on LESBIANS, YES - HOMOSEXUALS, November 25, 1970. A front-page story 44 featured news of a social landmark for gay to be a homosexual, but she is at the same people. The Family .Service Agency of San time a woman, in a male dominated and Alexander, Sidney Abbott, Barbara Love women’s rights organizations is a matter of Francisco voted November 24th to appoint oriented society. This board indicated its and Kate Millctt, with Ivy Bottini acting as strategy — not fear. a Lesbian and male homosexual to its board support for the women’s struggle against moderator, (ieneral tone was positive Virginia Carabillo of directors in time for the January board oppression at its October board meeting. though lack of information seemed as prev­ President meeting. Thi.s move inercase.s the board to The acceptance of this request for a woman alent among the floor guests as the panel­ Women’s Heritage Scries, Inc. 26 members, with the two new members, as well as a man is acting upon that ists. Some of the discussion centered yet imchosen, representing San Francisco’s support” around totally irrelevant things like chang­ (Editor’s Note: Virginia Carabillo is gay community. The action was decided Clearly, this agency merits close ing the name Lesbian to something else, but the President o f the Los Angeles Chap­ upon after the board heard arguments by watching in the coming months. the panelists were all pro-Lesbian, which ter o f sNOW (National Organization Del Martin and Earl H. “Rick” Stokes, a LESBIANS TOO . . . YOU BETTER was reasonable I felt in view of the panel in Lor IVomen) and President o f this question. I think NOW has had a worse lawyer and president of the Council on BELIEVE IT! SEXOLOGY MAGAZINE; Santa Monica based firm that handles press than it deserves, even knowing that Religion and the Homosexual. .As a result, Imuarv 1971. Saul Kent in his article, the now quite famous Women’s Heri­ NOW on the east coast or NOW on the west the agency will consider the.se requests ‘*The Lesbian, What Is She Really Like?”, tage Calendarl Almanac and many coast is a different scene than some NOW already outlined by San Francisco gays: makes many of the usual errors but is other products for women including chapters. One of the panelists recom­ Two “declared” homosexuals — one considerably less damning and does bring posters, .stationery, greeting and mended that NOW Lesbians start being male, one female — should be appointed as out that there arc no reasons left for not Christmas cards, documents o f famous open about it and Kate Millett said it all gay community organizers. granting full citizenship to Lesbians in all speeches and statements on parch­ with h e r remarks on the subject. .Among There should be two “declared” homo- senses of the word. He takes a few liberties ment, etc. By the time you read this sexuiil counselors — one man and one other things, she said that women’s libera­ they may have produced a paperback with factual happenings: for example, he tion has been riding on the backs of woman. takes the wonderful and electrifying original to be entitled ON DEAF sub-rosa Lesbians for around five years and EARS: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED There .should be a forceful, public moment when Jill Bray stood up before the po.sition statement and letter of support by that Lesbians have been giving a lot of time ON AUGUST 26. SECOND BAY AREA WOMEN’S to heterosexual concerns (child care centers the agency on homosexuality. COALITION CONFERENCE in San Fran- and abortion, etc). To me it sounds a bit Having lustrd over and over again o f There should be an irrevocable and cisco, and asked women to rise who had too familiar, a lot like it was ten years ago the “reaction” to Lesbians supposedly public commitment by the agency to the ever been attracted to another woman, and in San Francisco DOB. evidenced by NOW as an organization, welfare of homosexuads. including agency got almost a full house of standees as well investment of some of its present Bay Area G.J. we felt this letter would be of as an ovation — and moves it to August New York City interest.) Cru.sade money in gay programs. 1970, though it happened in February 1 here .should be aggressive, positive 1970. He also makes the point that action by the agency to obtain additional (Editor’s Note: C.J. ’a references cover Dear Miss Damon: women’s liberation is dealing more and her association with DOB many years Dnited Crusade Funds to finance and more honestly and openly with the large expand programs outlined and to change ago when all activities were in support 1 read in one place and a friend says she numbers of Lesbians in the group.s, recogni­ o f male homosexuals,} United Crusade direction toward gay needs. zing that it is not a one-way goal; liberation read in another place that Kate .Millett is a There should l)e a two-day televised is for all — all women. Lesbian. If this Ls true and common know­ seminar on homo.sexuality in cooperation Dear Gene Damon: ledge why hasn’t THE LADDER said any­ with tile University of California Medical thing about it? Center. Readers Respond Speaking as a NOW chapter president. D.F. Del Martin was quoted in tlie article as I’m really not convinced that we’re the Ohio most “terrified” of any admitted alliance •saying that it is a misconception to think of (Editor’s Note: The “places” re­ Dear Gene: with Lesbians, NOW welcomes all women homosexuals as “single” persorxs. “Seldom spectively are CA Y, a male homo­ to membership; membership in NOW and do people realize that homosexuals Stem sexual newspaper and an earlier N. Y. Three women from the New York the experience of working side by side with from and are part of heterosexual families. DOR Ncicsletter. What, D.E. did you Chapter of NOW (National Organization for all women is an educational experience for They arc aware of and understand the expect us to say? Kate Millett is not Women) spoke to the N.Y. Chapter of DOB the prejudiced, the timid, the conservative problems of interaction within those the first prominent woman to prefer (Daughters of Bilitis) on November 5, 1970. and even for those who believe they are families, h urthermore, homosexuals form her own sex.) Audience was mixed with too many repre­ enlightened. The women’s movement Ls still intimate relation.sliips in a partnership or sentatives of other groups to allow for as in its earliest stages and we desparately need ‘marriagp’.*’ CHANGING YOUR ADDRESS? clear a discussion as was needed, but the to keep growing in numbers, so why She went on to say, “. . . their inlaws, If you are planning to move, please major point brought out was that NOW was frighten away potential members because of for the mo.st part, are unaware of their anxious to have Lesbians in the organi­ let us know six weeks before fears of associating with the unfamiliar - changing your address. Please send un-spoken, implicit status in the family. zation as long as they were “discreet”. when familiarity without the barriers of Homosexuals also relate to ‘family’ in the your old address and your new Meeting was filled with flak. Good news labels can foster understanding, affection much larger sen.se of community — both in address, clearly marked. You though, on November 24, 1970, 1 went (as and respect, while we all work for our the majority culture and in the homosexual MUST include BOTH your old and discreetly as possible) to the NOW panel common causes. Freedom of choice of life subculture.” She .said that these are the your new zip codes. REM EMBER, discussion, “Is Lesbianism a Feminist Issue” style and sexual privacy are basic NOW' relation.sliips causing so much of the “pain and sat quietly instead of rudely pointing third class mail is not forwardable. and despair” for the homosexual positions; if those became articles of na­ Send to CIRCULATION DEPART­ out that there aren’t any more relevant tional faith, we’d have won much of what Stokes was quoted as saying, “The issues around. Panelists included Vivian MENT, Pr' f - < S025. W ashing­ Lesbian not only has to fight for the right we’re all fighting for. At any rate, 1 believe ton Statioi.. ri. "I, Nevada 89503. Gornick, Dr. Barbara Sang, Dolores the differences between some of the FEMINIST BOOKSTOREr

won AW Subscriptions: regular—$6 per year Hours: 1:00—6:00, Mon. thru Sat. sustaining—.|25 per year books, buttons, bumper strips, broke—6 blue chip books pamphlets, magazine reprints,

SEND 25 CENTS FOR A SEND FOR A FREE SAMPLE COPY! EVERYWOMAN CATALOG! 1043 B W. WASHINGTON BLVD. - VENICE. CA. 90291

U PPITY W O M EN U N ITED, the Women's Free Press announces publication of Tobias' F E M A L E ST U D IES-I, syllabi, reading lists in the Social Sciences, $2.00; Howe's F E M A L E ST U D IE S-I I, syllabi, reading lists in literature and the Arts, $2.50; C O R N E L L CONFERENCE ON WOMEN, $2.50; SIXTEEN REPORTS ON THE ST A T U S OF W O M EN, $2.00. (Prices include postage) Also send stamped self-addressed envelope for 3 free lists. Reporters You Can Trust, Publications of the Women's Movement, Articles on Women's Role, Price List. KNOW, INC.,

P.O.BOX1G197 PITTSBURGH, PA. 15232 /

THE LADDER P.O. Box 5025, Washington Station, Reno, Nevada 89503.

Please send THE LADDER f o r ...... year(s) to the address below. Subscription rates: U.S. and Canada, 1 year, $7.50; alt other countries, $9.00payable in U.S. currency. N A M E......

ADDRESS ...... CITY ...... State Zip (S igned)...... ALL CHECKS MUST BE MADE PAYABLE TO THE LADDER j i