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Ain't I A Woman? newspapers, June 1970-July 1971

1970-09-25 "Ain't I a Woman?" Page 7

however comic-strip far out, for a revolutionary man -- somehow related to the same Supermale reasoning that permits the first statement on Women’s Liberation and male chauvinism that came out of the Black Panther Party to be made by a man, talkin’ a whole lot ‘bout how the Sisters should speak up for themselves. Such ignorance and arrogance ill befits a revolutionary.
   We know how racism is worked deep into the unconscious by our System -- the same way sexism is, as it appears in the very name of The Young Lords. What are you if you’re a “macho woman” -- a female Lord? Or, god forbid, a Young Lady? Change it, change it to The Young Gentry, if you must, or never assume that the name itself is innocent of pain, of oppression.
   Theory and practice and the light years between them. “Do it!” says Jerry Rubin in Rat’s last issue -- but he doesn’t, or every Rat reader would have known the pictured face next to his article as well as they know his own much-photographed face: it was Nancy Kurshan, the power behind the clown.
   Goodbye to the New Nation and Earth People’s Park, for that matter, conceived by men, announced by men, led by men  --doomed before its birth by the rotting seeds of male supremacy which are to be transplanted in fresh soil. Was it my brother who listed human beings among the objects which would be easily available after the Revolution: “Free grass, free food, free women, free acid, free clothes, etc.”? Was it my brother who wrote, “Fuck your women till they can’t stand up” and said that groupies were liberated chicks ‘cause they dug a tit-shake instead of a handshake? The epitome of female exclusionism -- “men will make the Revolution and their chicks.” Not my brother, no. Not my revolution. Not one breath of my support for the new counter-left Christ -- John Sinclair. Just one less to worry about for ten years. I do not choose my enemy for my brother.
   Goodbye, goodbye. The hell with the simplistic notion that automatic freedom for women -- or non-white peoples --will come about ZAP! with the advent of a

ALL

socialist revolution. Bullshit. Two evils pre-date capitalism and have been clearly able to survive and post-date socialism: sexism and racism. Women were the first property when the Primary Contradiction occurred: when one half of the human species decided to subjugate the other half, because it was “different”, alien, the Other. From there it was an easy step to extend the Other to someone of different skin shade, different height or weight or language -- or strength to resist. Goodbye to those simple-minded optimistic dreams of socialist equality all our good socialist brothers want us to believe. How liberal a politics that is! How much further we will have to go to create those profound changes that would give birth to a genderless society. Profound, Sister. Beyond what is male or female. Beyond standards we all adhere to now without daring to examine them as male-created, male-dominated, male-fucked-up, and in male self-interest. Beyond all known standards, especially those easily articulated revolutionary ones we all rhetorically invoke. Beyond, to a species with a new name, that would not dare define itself as Man.
   I once said, “I’m a revolutionary, not just a woman,” and knew my own lie even as I said the words. The pity of that statement’s eagerness to be acceptable to those who revolutionary zeal no one would question, i.e., any male supremacist in the counterleft. But to become a true revolutionary one must first become one of the oppressed (not organize or educate or manipulate them, but become one of them) or realize that you are one of them already. No woman wants that. Because that realization is humiliating, it hurts. It hurts to understand that at Woodstock or Altamont a woman could be declared uptight or a poor sport if she didn’t want to be raped. It hurts to learn that the Sister still in male-Left captivity are putting down the crazy feminists to make themselves look okay and unthreatening to our mutual oppressors. It hurts to be pawns in those games. It hurts to try and change each day of your life right now -- not in talk, not “in your head,” and not only conveniently “out there” in the Third World (half of which is women) or the black and brown communities (half of which are women) but in your own home, kitchen, bed. No getting away, no matter how else you are press, from the primary oppression of being female in a patriarchal world. It hurts to hear that the Sisters in the Gay Liberation Front, too, have to struggle continually against the male chauvinism of their gay brothers. It hurts that Jane Alpert was cheered when rapping about imperialism, racism, the Third World, and All Those Safe Topics but hissed and booed by a Movement crowd of men who wanted none of it when she began to talk about Women’s Liberation. The backlash is upon us.
   They tell us the alternative is to hang in there and “struggle”, to confront male domination in the counterleft, to fight beside or behind or beneath our brothers -- to show ‘em we’re just as tough, just as revolushunerry, just as whatever-image-they-now-want-of-us-as-once-they-wanted-us-to-be-feminine-and-keep-the-home-fire-burning. They will bestow titular leadership on our grateful shoulders, whether it’s being a token woman on the Movement Speakers Bureau Advisory Board, or being a Conspiracy groupie or one of the “respectable” chain-swinging at Motor City Nine. Sisters all, with only one real alternative: to seize our own power into our own hands, all women, separate and together, and make the Revolution the way it must be made -- no priorities this time, no suffering group told to wait until after.
   It is the job of revolutionary feminists to build an ever stronger independent Women’s Liberation Movement, so that the Sisters in counterleft captivity will have somewhere to turn, to use their power and rage and beauty and coolness in

THAT

their own behalf for once, on their own terms, on their own issues, in their own style -- whatever that may be. Not for us in Women’s Liberation to hassle them and confront them the way their men do, nor to blame them -- or ourselves -- for what any of us are: an oppressed people, but a people raising our consciousness toward something that is the other side of anger, something bright and smooth and cool, like action unlike anything yet contemplated or carried out. It is for us to survive (something the white male radical has the luxury of never really worrying about, what with all his options), to talk, to plan, to be patient, to welcome new fugitives from the counterfeit Left with no arrogance but only humility and delight to plan, to push -- to strike.
   There is something every woman wears around her neck on a thin chain of fear -- an amulet of madness. For each of us, there exists somewhere a moment of insult so intense that she will reach up and rip the amulet off, even if the chain tears at the flesh of her neck. And the last protection from the seeing the truth will be gone. Do you think, tugging furtively every day at the chain and going nicely insane as I am, that I can be concerned with the puerile squabbles of a counterfeit Left that laughs at my pain? Do you think such a concern is noticeable when set alongside the suffering of more than half the human species for the past 5,000 years -- due to a women of the other half? No, no, no, goodbye to all that.
   Women are Something Else. This time, we’re going to kick out all the jams, and the boys would just have to hustle to keep up, or else drop out and openly join the power structure of which they are already the illegitimate sons. Any man who claims he is serious about wanting to divest himself of cock privilege should trip on this: all male leadership out of the Left is the only way; and it’s going to happen, whether through men stepping down or through women seizing the helm. It’s up to the “brothers” -- after all, sexism is their concern, not ours; we’re too busy getting ourselves together to have to deal with their bigotry. So they’ll have to make up their own minds as to whether they will be divested of just cock privilege or -- what the hell, why not say it? -- divested of cocks. How deep the fear of that loss must be, that it can be suppressed only by the building of empires and the waging of genocidal wars!
   Goodbye, goodbye forever, counterfeit Left, counterleft, male-dominated crack-glass-mirror reflection of the Amerikan Nightmare. Women are the real Left. We are rising, powerful in our unclean bodies; bright glowing mad in our inferior brains; wild hair flying, wild eyes staring, wild voices keening; undaunted by blood we who hemorrhage every twenty-eight days; laughing at our own beauty we who have lost our sense of humor; mourning for all each precious one of us might have been in this one living time-place had she not been born a woman; stuffing fingers into our mouths to stop the screams of fear and hate and pity for men we have loved and love still; tears in our eyes and bitterness in our mouths for children we couldn’t have, or couldn’t not have, or didn’t want, or didn’t want yet, or wanted and had in this place and this time of horror. We are rising with a fury older and potentially greater than any force in history, and this time we will be free or no one will survive. Power to all the people or to none. All the way down, this time.

FREE OUR SISTERS! FREE OURSELVES!

by Robin Morgan
Reprinted from RAT

A Woman?
25 September, 1970    7

Saving...

however comic-strip far out, for a revolutionary man -- somehow related to the same Supermale reasoning that permits the first statement on Women’s Liberation and male chauvinism that came out of the Black Panther Party to be made by a man, talkin’ a whole lot ‘bout how the Sisters should speak up for themselves. Such ignorance and arrogance ill befits a revolutionary. We know how racism is worked deep into the unconscious by our System -- the same way sexism is, as it appears in the very name of The Young Lords. What are you if you’re a “macho woman” -- a female Lord? Or, god forbid, a Young Lady? Change it, change it to The Young Gentry, if you must, or never assume that the name itself is innocent of pain, of oppression. Theory and practice and the light years between them. “Do it!” says Jerry Rubin in Rat’s last issue -- but he doesn’t, or every Rat reader would have known the pictured face next to his article as well as they know his own much-photographed face: it was Nancy Kurshan, the power behind the clown. Goodbye to the New Nation and Earth People’s Park, for that matter, conceived by men, announced by men, led by men --doomed before its birth by the rotting seeds of male supremacy which are to be transplanted in fresh soil. Was it my brother who listed human beings among the objects which would be easily available after the Revolution: “Free grass, free food, free women, free acid, free clothes, etc.”? Was it my brother who wrote, “Fuck your women till they can’t stand up” and said that groupies were liberated chicks ‘cause they dug a tit-shake instead of a handshake? The epitome of female exclusionism -- “men will make the Revolution and their chicks.” Not my brother, no. Not my revolution. Not one breath of my support for the new counter-left Christ -- John Sinclair. Just one less to worry about for ten years. I do not choose my enemy for my brother. Goodbye, goodbye. The hell with the simplistic notion that automatic freedom for women -- or non-white peoples --will come about ZAP! with the advent of a ALL socialist revolution. Bullshit. Two evils pre-date capitalism and have been clearly able to survive and post-date socialism: sexism and racism. Women were the first property when the Primary Contradiction occurred: when one half of the human species decided to subjugate the other half, because it was “different”, alien, the Other. From there it was an easy step to extend the Other to someone of different skin shade, different height or weight or language -- or strength to resist. Goodbye to those simple-minded optimistic dreams of socialist equality all our good socialist brothers want us to believe. How liberal a politics that is! How much further we will have to go to create those profound changes that would give birth to a genderless society. Profound, Sister. Beyond what is male or female. Beyond standards we all adhere to now without daring to examine them as male-created, male-dominated, male-fucked-up, and in male self-interest. Beyond all known standards, especially those easily articulated revolutionary ones we all rhetorically invoke. Beyond, to a species with a new name, that would not dare define itself as Man. I once said, “I’m a revolutionary, not just a woman,” and knew my own lie even as I said the words. The pity of that statement’s eagerness to be acceptable to those who revolutionary zeal no one would question, i.e., any male supremacist in the counterleft. But to become a true revolutionary one must first become one of the oppressed (not organize or educate or manipulate them, but become one of them) or realize that you are one of them already. No woman wants that. Because that realization is humiliating, it hurts. It hurts to understand that at Woodstock or Altamont a woman could be declared uptight or a poor sport if she didn’t want to be raped. It hurts to learn that the Sister still in male-Left captivity are putting down the crazy feminists to make themselves look okay and unthreatening to our mutual oppressors. It hurts to be pawns in those games. It hurts to try and change each day of your life right now -- not in talk, not “in your head,” and not only conveniently “out there” in the Third World (half of which is women) or the black and brown communities (half of which are women) but in your own home, kitchen, bed. No getting away, no matter how else you are press, from the primary oppression of being female in a patriarchal world. It hurts to hear that the Sisters in the Gay Liberation Front, too, have to struggle continually against the male chauvinism of their gay brothers. It hurts that Jane Alpert was cheered when rapping about imperialism, racism, the Third World, and All Those Safe Topics but hissed and booed by a Movement crowd of men who wanted none of it when she began to talk about Women’s Liberation. The backlash is upon us. They tell us the alternative is to hang in there and “struggle”, to confront male domination in the counterleft, to fight beside or behind or beneath our brothers -- to show ‘em we’re just as tough, just as revolushunerry, just as whatever-image-they-now-want-of-us-as-once-they-wanted-us-to-be-feminine-and-keep-the-home-fire-burning. They will bestow titular leadership on our grateful shoulders, whether it’s being a token woman on the Movement Speakers Bureau Advisory Board, or being a Conspiracy groupie or one of the “respectable” chain-swinging at Motor City Nine. Sisters all, with only one real alternative: to seize our own power into our own hands, all women, separate and together, and make the Revolution the way it must be made -- no priorities this time, no suffering group told to wait until after. It is the job of revolutionary feminists to build an ever stronger independent Women’s Liberation Movement, so that the Sisters in counterleft captivity will have somewhere to turn, to use their power and rage and beauty and coolness in THAT their own behalf for once, on their own terms, on their own issues, in their own style -- whatever that may be. Not for us in Women’s Liberation to hassle them and confront them the way their men do, nor to blame them -- or ourselves -- for what any of us are: an oppressed people, but a people raising our consciousness toward something that is the other side of anger, something bright and smooth and cool, like action unlike anything yet contemplated or carried out. It is for us to survive (something the white male radical has the luxury of never really worrying about, what with all his options), to talk, to plan, to be patient, to welcome new fugitives from the counterfeit Left with no arrogance but only humility and delight to plan, to push -- to strike. There is something every woman wears around her neck on a thin chain of fear -- an amulet of madness. For each of us, there exists somewhere a moment of insult so intense that she will reach up and rip the amulet off, even if the chain tears at the flesh of her neck. And the last protection from the seeing the truth will be gone. Do you think, tugging furtively every day at the chain and going nicely insane as I am, that I can be concerned with the puerile squabbles of a counterfeit Left that laughs at my pain? Do you think such a concern is noticeable when set alongside the suffering of more than half the human species for the past 5,000 years -- due to a women of the other half? No, no, no, goodbye to all that. Women are Something Else. This time, we’re going to kick out all the jams, and the boys would just have to hustle to keep up, or else drop out and openly join the power structure of which they are already the illegitimate sons. Any man who claims he is serious about wanting to divest himself of cock privilege should trip on this: all male leadership out of the Left is the only way; and it’s going to happen, whether through men stepping down or through women seizing the helm. It’s up to the “brothers” -- after all, sexism is their concern, not ours; we’re too busy getting ourselves together to have to deal with their bigotry. So they’ll have to make up their own minds as to whether they will be divested of just cock privilege or -- what the hell, why not say it? -- divested of cocks. How deep the fear of that loss must be, that it can be suppressed only by the building of empires and the waging of genocidal wars! Goodbye, goodbye forever, counterfeit Left, counterleft, male-dominated crack-glass-mirror reflection of the Amerikan Nightmare. Women are the real Left. We are rising, powerful in our unclean bodies; bright glowing mad in our inferior brains; wild hair flying, wild eyes staring, wild voices keening; undaunted by blood we who hemorrhage every twenty-eight days; laughing at our own beauty we who have lost our sense of humor; mourning for all each precious one of us might have been in this one living time-place had she not been born a woman; stuffing fingers into our mouths to stop the screams of fear and hate and pity for men we have loved and love still; tears in our eyes and bitterness in our mouths for children we couldn’t have, or couldn’t not have, or didn’t want, or didn’t want yet, or wanted and had in this place and this time of horror. We are rising with a fury older and potentially greater than any force in history, and this time we will be free or no one will survive. Power to all the people or to none. All the way down, this time. FREE OUR SISTERS! FREE OURSELVES! by Robin Morgan Reprinted from RAT A Woman? 25 September, 1970 7