RINGING UP KIDS-REPORT, A WOMAN’S LIFE DALE SPENDER - WOMAN OF IDEAS ALIX DOBKIN - LOVING LESBIANS UZZLE POLITICAL CONTROVERSIAL UNCOMPROMISING BROADSHEET ♦C*0*N^T*E^N*T ♦ S ♦ MAY ISSUE 158 1988 FEATURES 17 Love Women or Die Interview with Alix Dobkin Pat Rosier 21 Is There Sex After Childbirth? Post-natal libido Reprint 24 Dale Spender - Woman of Ideas The woman and her work Alison Jones 28 The Rape of Tibet Genocide in Asia Dianne Cadwallader 34 Bringing Up the Kids A report and a woman’s story Pat Rosier!Anonymous 38 Policing Pornography Not the way to go All a nah Ryan REGULARS 2 Herspective 3 Letters and Fronting Up 5 Broadcast Judge Sinclair Your Prejudice is Showing 0 The Modern Witch­ hunt 0 Women's Health Survey 0 Wanted - Women. Women, Women 0 Poverty is Global 0 Unbalanced Banking 0 Women in Eritrea 8 In Brief 33 What’s New 36 On The Shelf 47 The Gripes of Roth 48 Classified 40 ARTS Mary Kay, review and interview 0 Barbara Kruger, review and interview THE PROBLEM OF PORNOGRAPHY 32 BROADSHEET BROADSHEET is published by Broadsheet Magazine Ltd, P O Box 56-147, Dominion Rd, Auckland. Registered Office: 228 Dominion Rd, Auckland. Editorial, Office and Bookshop phone (09) 608535 Advertising and Art department (09) 607162 y mother used to buy Broadsheet feminism, as a woman of Indian descent when I was a child, and I remember bom in Aotearoa, will differ from the femi­ M nisms of Maori women, and from the femi­ BROADSHEET COLLECTIVE Sharon Alston, looking through it avidly, cutting up ar­ Jan Cowan, Edith Gorringe, Tanya Hopman, ticles and pictures to use in school projects. nisms of Pakeha women. Caro! Jillsun, Claire-Louise McCurdy, We lived in a South Auckland suburb To me feminism is an ideology that has Pat Rosier, Lisa Sabbage, Shirley Tamihana, and like most of the other women on our its roots in a woman and her experience, an Athina Tsoulis. street, my mother had four children by the ideology that continues to gather strength time she was 25. Like them, she stayed at and be informed by that experience. Editorial and policy decisions are made by the home in an unpaid, demanding job while Young women who see feminism as an collective. Main areas of responsibility are: her husband worked in a paid job. anachronism have taken for granted the Bookshop, Lisa Sabbage; Design and Buying Broadsheet was a luxury, like gains that women working for social change Layout, Sharon Alston; Editorial, Pat when we were allowed fish and chips for have won for them. They’ve been blinkered Rosier; Finances, subscriptions, Carol by the media, by the politicians, and the Jillsun; Resource Collection, tea. A luxury like talking guiltily about her Claire-Louise McCurdy; grievances with some of the friends she capitalists,the very same estates of power Advertising and Promotion, shared coffee with before the kids got home who construct and perpetuate an image of Tanya Hopman. from school, as if they were conspiring to feminists as butch, embittered women un­ commit the great crime of the century. able to get a man. But even more insidious Those cups of coffee and discussions, is the message they broadcast to women Cover Painting by Claudia Pond Eyley. which says, “you’ve got equality, you can Design: Sharon Alston grumbles and gripes, kept my mother sane and probably still keep women who face vote, you can work, you can go to univer­ similar forms of isolation, as close to sanity sity, you can buy our products, what more These women helped around Broadsheet as possible. Sharing cups of coffee and do you want? There is no more.” this month: Barbara Mundt, Diane Bush. food, talking and listening, is still a valu­ The truth is that there is a lot more, but it Kirsty Fathers, Sue Freeman, Linda Ceato, is disconcerting to admit it, disconcerting to Diane Calder. able tool women use to make connections with each other. discover that yes, your life has been limited Yet it took my mother a long time before without your knowledge. Betty Friedan Printed by Rodney and Waitemata Times, she admitted she had “feminist” ideas, and talked about this in The Feminine Mystique Mill Lane, Warkworth. Electronic Pagination by very few of those friends she had then when, after surveying housewives in Amer­ Laser Type & Design Studio. Typeset bromides by ica during the sixties, the majority of whom Times Laserset. Photoprints by Monoset, would ever have used the word, and proba­ separations by Star Graphics. bly still cringe at it now. were middle-class, educated, with all the In those days, she says she was an in­ things they’d always dreamed of, a home, stinctive or intuitive feminist, without facts husband and children, she found them to be Publication date:l May 1988. and figures, or theoretical knowledge to ar­ desperately unhappy. Nearly all those ticulate her gut feelings of injustice, the women blamed their education for expand­ ing their intellectual horizons, opening BROADSHEET annual subscription $40 sinking feeling that her work was underval­ Overseas surface $56. Overseas airmail: ued if valued at all. Her struggle to make doors for them, challenging what they had Europe $101.65, America and Asia $85.40, ends meet, feed the family, deal with ra­ been brought up to believe was their des­ Australia and South Pacific $66.60. cism against her children, are all only parts tiny. These women had suddenly found out of the day to day battle to survive that that their lives were limited, that the ideal nuclear family wasn’t enough to fulfill their Articles and illustrations remain the property of women in Aotearoa still wage today. the contributor. Permission must be sought from So what is so frightening about the own personal needs, and they didn’t want to Broadsheet and from the contributor before any words feminism and feminist? What know. It is safer to reject things which item in reprinted. stopped my mother and the other women threaten the framework you have always like her from saying, yes we are feminists operated in. But no matter how isolated or extreme a LETTERS POLICY: The Broadsheet collective and we aren’t happy with the way things may not agree with or endorse views expressed in are? Why do so many women my age (23), woman’s experience, or conversely, no letters. Nearly all the letters we are sent get pub­ see feminism as irrelevent, redundant and a matter how “normal” or privileged, there lished. Those that are not published in full are thing of the past? can be a basic commitment to women and a considered by the whole collective and edited in I think the answer lies partly in the fact recognition that as women we share an consultation with the writer. We do not publish that “feminism” and “feminist” have been oppression, whether she chooses to use that personal attacks. Letters from men are published jargon or not. only when they correct matters of fact. We particu­ perceived too often as prescriptive, rather larly welcome letters about the content of the than descriptive terms, as a rigid definition If there were no challenges to be made to magazine. Letters that are addressed to the collec­ rather than an adjective. There are many feminism it would cease being challenging, tive or to the editor are assumed to be intended for different ways of being feminist, not just it would no longer be serving any putpose. publication. Please indicate clearly if they are not. one way. There are outlines, but they are If women did not continue to shake it up and constantly being expanded, there are con­ redefine it, offering new feminisms, it tours, but they are constantly being painted would not grow, it would die. BROADSHEET is on file at the Women’s new colours. I believe that women are keeping femi­ Collection, Special Dept, Northwestern Recently I read an article which talked nism alive and well by offering each other University Library, Evanston, about feminisms. I like this because it new challenges, and as always, listening to Illinois 60201, USA. suggests something which is open and those challenges, making it stronger mutable, rather than something closed and through diversity, and by stressing time and intransigent. It recognises that to women of time again that the fight is far from over, no Registered at the GPO as a magazine. different ages, cultures, classes, sexuality, matter what the power-brokers would have ISSN 01 10-8603 and religions, perspectives of the world us believe. , . will differ, and that values and priorities will vary accordingly. It recognises that my 2 BROADSHEET MAY 1988 E ETTERS AN OPEN LETTER TO TVNZ seems male interviewers are re­ CURRENT AFFAIRS luctant to speak to women who Kia ora Clive Litt, espouse an outspoken feminist Last weekend intemationally- viewpoint and can’t handle it renowned and leading feminist when they do. None of us have writer, Dale Spender arrived in forgotten Lindsay Perigo’s par­ Aotearoa for a week of lectures ticularly unfortunate attack-inter­ and talks around the country. Not view with Allison Webber on the unnaturally her visit created huge current affairs programme Sun­ interest as women rushed to buy day a while ago. tickets for her public lectures and While we’ve learnt not to ex­ queued to get into her other talks. pect miracles, we would like tele­ She was also interviewed by vision news and current affairs to newspaper and radio media. We give women a much better deal knew television had booked her than they do at present and more for the current affairs programme, accurately reflect our enormous, Frontline, and thought this an vital and valuable contribution to ideal opportunity for women the running of this country.