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

1971-03-12 "Ain't I a Woman?" Page 5

dialogue

In Iowa City there is a Women's Liberation Front and everyone knows it, and most everyone knows we have an office and a phone. So what happens is that women call or write the office for a speaker to come and tell them what Women's Liberation is. The only message that I've perceived anyone getting from this practice is that Women's Liberation is an organization that we belong to and they do not. That it is something you pay dues to and attend meetings of, and that women who don't have enough time to attend the meetings aren't in it. 
On just one such speaking trip to S.E. Jr. High in Iowa City, I met some women teachers whose bridge group had evolved into a consciousness raising group. I returned several times to speak to other classes and each time stayed longer in the teacher's lounge talking with those teachers. Even after we became friends, they would refer to me and the collective I live in as Women's Liberation -- never conceiving of their rap group as such. 
But Women's Liberation isn't a national organization with chapters and dues and membership cards. Women's Liberation is where you find it. Wherever women have realized or accepted and are struggling to attain the loose set of goals or demands that would meet the minimal needs of all women. Women organizing day care; gay women getting together to talk about and do something about their oppression; women organizing around their particular job: secretaries, teachers, high school women, housewives, waitresses, etc; women doing consciousness raising about their lives, their privileges, their racism and homosexism. 
The media is a great deal to blame for creating a stereotype of a "liberated woman" that sets these women apart from other women. The image of a liberated women is of a bra-less,well-endowed, middle class, naive looking woman, shouting obscenities as she snips the long hair of every woman she meets whether they want a hair cut or not. This is an intimidating picture, but I do not intimidate women in this way. It is, if I do, a much deeper intimidation than snipping hair -- it is the challenge of my lifestyle -- unmarried and gay. Recently a married friend of mine came to our collective for dinner and after having a little wine admitted to being very apprehensive about how we would accept her -- because she was married. I accept her and love her completely, but that was not the acceptance she wanted. She wanted acceptance of her marriage and her husband as an exceptional male. That I would not accept something that I saw causing her pain was intimidating. That I can do nothing about. I would like to make her life more comfortable, but there is only one way to make a married woman's life liveable. 
   There maybe another way in which women who are overtly in Women's LIberation intimidate other women. That is by acting to correct things that other women realize are wrong, but are doing nothing about. This too is a necessary challenge. The liberation of all women will not occur by women merely realizing their oppression. Power is never given ; it is taken away. 

[hand drawing]

I know what you mean, the exclusiveness of WL organizations or at least exclusiveness in the terms of those women who feel excluded -- not a part, for whatever reasons - from the organizations in their towns. I don't know what the reason really is for this sort of in-out thing between women who all have been raising their consciousness about being women. I think women not in local organizations ( and maybe some of us that are) sometimes see the organization as having very set ideas, a very tight ideology. Maybe we always think that about any group we're not a part of. The groups we are in we more accurately see as composed of people who grow and change.
The stereotype of the "liberated women" I would call more of a myth. The silliness of having to be liberated to join a fight for liberation. And the sadness of a new standard to live up to - of women being embarrassed or defensive with other women about problems in their lives that come from the gut of being female in this world. 
It's so easy to say we are all women and WL is where you find it but things don't seem to happen that way. We are all so divided from each other not even considering political lines, but by our views of everything being molded by the situations we are in. The acceptance your married friend wanted was an affirmation of her life situation perhaps and none of us seem to be able to view ourselves outside the confines of our lives. Being gay in this society has to cause some pain (understated) and relating to people at all can be painful for that matter. However gay women want that situation they live in affirmed as good - accepted. Since we find our minds and identities so molded by the lives we must live to have chunks of our lives despised can be such a tremendous self-denial. I hope you realize I am not arguing right or wrong - we both agree marriage ain't such a hot deal but part of its horror (I think) is the difficulty for some of getting out of it (and the impossibility for others). Anyway, it's pretty depressing that the affirmation of one life style seems to deny the other. But that seems to be how it goes and I can't begin to think in terms of whether that's good or bad, just that I feel really bad that it is so difficult to relate to women living very differently from ourselves. For probably many complex reasons which I can't get together when I relate to some married women (something which I was once) they feel put down or feel I'm putting them down or vice versa. Well it's all pretty painful and I don't know how we all can come together on some kind of common ground to fight for common goals and/or if this means that women living lives outside that common ground will be left alone, isolated, pained. 
I agree, my married friend wanted acceptance of her life situation as does everyone, but who was it that she wanted the approval from? It wasn't societal approval she was after for she already has that -- as the gay woman does not. She wanted acceptance of Women's LIberation, a movement which openly states that the institution of marriage is oppressive to women and should be abolished. She wanted resolution of the conflict within her: that here were women whom she liked and respected saying something she had just begun to perceive as true about her marriage, but that what we were saying and what she was perceiving was too painful and disruptive to face. What she wanted was an understanding of all the forces controling her and respect from us that she was facing and dealing with as much as she could as quickly as she could. 
You and I have come from opposite ends o meet at the middle of this question. You were married and have since attained gay consciousness. I have been gay for a long time and because of that and the way our society is structured, never until this year had any close friends that were married. You have seen the reaction of married women to your departure from them; I have seen the reaction of my married friends of my coming nearer to them. The polarity of our experience colors the way we see the relationship between gay and married women. 
I have often heard you say that since you moved into the living collective some married women in Women's lIberation have related to you differently, that you have trouble relating to these women because of a hostility you feel from them. that they envy and resent you for being out of a situation they themselves would like to be free of. So I can see how you feel the two life styles irrevocably cutoff from each other. 
I, on the other hand, for the first time in my life have friends that are married, and ironically, it was Women's Liberation which brought us into proximity. My friendships have progressed into closeness and I've learned of the daily pain of being married. It is so different from when I first got into Women's Liberation and decided very objectively that I should raise my consciousness about marriage so I could explain the end to the institution of marriage demand when I spoke. Now we are so close that I see the sorrow around her eyes and feel her pain in my own stomach.
It was very important to me as a gay woman to hear women talking honestly about marriage and sex with men -- it allowed me to see the psychiatrist's promises in the light of reality.
My perception is that my married friends are coming to an understanding of what it is like to love a woman and I now comprehend the forces acting upon a woman in marriage making it so difficult or impossible for her to change her situation.
I know you will say. "Then why did you write in the last issue of AIAW in your reaction to Woman identified Woman, that married women are hypocrites if they are in Women's Liberation and not gay or at least dealing with it ?" And as I expressed to you and the married women in AIAW, I am so sorry I used the word hypocrite lightly. I was being simplistic and talking in absolutes. I should have gone deeper into my thoughts and expressed the compassion I feel for the contradictions married women who are in Women's Liberation must feel. 
I  guess I do feel the two life styles irrevocably cut off from each other. I don't want that to be in the case, you know. And you may be right that seeing things that way comes from my experiences which have not been good and you see things differently cause your experiences at least recently have been. Still it seems we focus on one life style or the other and haven't been able to deal with the totality of women's experience. Ironic that this dialogue is between the two of us who, coming from different experiences, still landed in the same place. I realize even working separately women with different life styles and perspectives can be both considered women's liberation, but I can't see any group coming up with the right answers. The answers we need that can speak to the totality of the female experience must be some kind of fusing. It is that that I am doubtful about or perhaps just impatient . 

a woman? March 12, 1970, page 5

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dialogue In Iowa City there is a Women's Liberation Front and everyone knows it, and most everyone knows we have an office and a phone. So what happens is that women call or write the office for a speaker to come and tell them what Women's Liberation is. The only message that I've perceived anyone getting from this practice is that Women's Liberation is an organization that we belong to and they do not. That it is something you pay dues to and attend meetings of, and that women who don't have enough time to attend the meetings aren't in it. On just one such speaking trip to S.E. Jr. High in Iowa City, I met some women teachers whose bridge group had evolved into a consciousness raising group. I returned several times to speak to other classes and each time stayed longer in the teacher's lounge talking with those teachers. Even after we became friends, they would refer to me and the collective I live in as Women's Liberation -- never conceiving of their rap group as such. But Women's Liberation isn't a national organization with chapters and dues and membership cards. Women's Liberation is where you find it. Wherever women have realized or accepted and are struggling to attain the loose set of goals or demands that would meet the minimal needs of all women. Women organizing day care; gay women getting together to talk about and do something about their oppression; women organizing around their particular job: secretaries, teachers, high school women, housewives, waitresses, etc; women doing consciousness raising about their lives, their privileges, their racism and homosexism. The media is a great deal to blame for creating a stereotype of a "liberated woman" that sets these women apart from other women. The image of a liberated women is of a bra-less,well-endowed, middle class, naive looking woman, shouting obscenities as she snips the long hair of every woman she meets whether they want a hair cut or not. This is an intimidating picture, but I do not intimidate women in this way. It is, if I do, a much deeper intimidation than snipping hair -- it is the challenge of my lifestyle -- unmarried and gay. Recently a married friend of mine came to our collective for dinner and after having a little wine admitted to being very apprehensive about how we would accept her -- because she was married. I accept her and love her completely, but that was not the acceptance she wanted. She wanted acceptance of her marriage and her husband as an exceptional male. That I would not accept something that I saw causing her pain was intimidating. That I can do nothing about. I would like to make her life more comfortable, but there is only one way to make a married woman's life liveable. There maybe another way in which women who are overtly in Women's LIberation intimidate other women. That is by acting to correct things that other women realize are wrong, but are doing nothing about. This too is a necessary challenge. The liberation of all women will not occur by women merely realizing their oppression. Power is never given ; it is taken away. [hand drawing] I know what you mean, the exclusiveness of WL organizations or at least exclusiveness in the terms of those women who feel excluded -- not a part, for whatever reasons - from the organizations in their towns. I don't know what the reason really is for this sort of in-out thing between women who all have been raising their consciousness about being women. I think women not in local organizations ( and maybe some of us that are) sometimes see the organization as having very set ideas, a very tight ideology. Maybe we always think that about any group we're not a part of. The groups we are in we more accurately see as composed of people who grow and change. The stereotype of the "liberated women" I would call more of a myth. The silliness of having to be liberated to join a fight for liberation. And the sadness of a new standard to live up to - of women being embarrassed or defensive with other women about problems in their lives that come from the gut of being female in this world. It's so easy to say we are all women and WL is where you find it but things don't seem to happen that way. We are all so divided from each other not even considering political lines, but by our views of everything being molded by the situations we are in. The acceptance your married friend wanted was an affirmation of her life situation perhaps and none of us seem to be able to view ourselves outside the confines of our lives. Being gay in this society has to cause some pain (understated) and relating to people at all can be painful for that matter. However gay women want that situation they live in affirmed as good - accepted. Since we find our minds and identities so molded by the lives we must live to have chunks of our lives despised can be such a tremendous self-denial. I hope you realize I am not arguing right or wrong - we both agree marriage ain't such a hot deal but part of its horror (I think) is the difficulty for some of getting out of it (and the impossibility for others). Anyway, it's pretty depressing that the affirmation of one life style seems to deny the other. But that seems to be how it goes and I can't begin to think in terms of whether that's good or bad, just that I feel really bad that it is so difficult to relate to women living very differently from ourselves. For probably many complex reasons which I can't get together when I relate to some married women (something which I was once) they feel put down or feel I'm putting them down or vice versa. Well it's all pretty painful and I don't know how we all can come together on some kind of common ground to fight for common goals and/or if this means that women living lives outside that common ground will be left alone, isolated, pained. I agree, my married friend wanted acceptance of her life situation as does everyone, but who was it that she wanted the approval from? It wasn't societal approval she was after for she already has that -- as the gay woman does not. She wanted acceptance of Women's LIberation, a movement which openly states that the institution of marriage is oppressive to women and should be abolished. She wanted resolution of the conflict within her: that here were women whom she liked and respected saying something she had just begun to perceive as true about her marriage, but that what we were saying and what she was perceiving was too painful and disruptive to face. What she wanted was an understanding of all the forces controling her and respect from us that she was facing and dealing with as much as she could as quickly as she could. You and I have come from opposite ends o meet at the middle of this question. You were married and have since attained gay consciousness. I have been gay for a long time and because of that and the way our society is structured, never until this year had any close friends that were married. You have seen the reaction of married women to your departure from them; I have seen the reaction of my married friends of my coming nearer to them. The polarity of our experience colors the way we see the relationship between gay and married women. I have often heard you say that since you moved into the living collective some married women in Women's lIberation have related to you differently, that you have trouble relating to these women because of a hostility you feel from them. that they envy and resent you for being out of a situation they themselves would like to be free of. So I can see how you feel the two life styles irrevocably cutoff from each other. I, on the other hand, for the first time in my life have friends that are married, and ironically, it was Women's Liberation which brought us into proximity. My friendships have progressed into closeness and I've learned of the daily pain of being married. It is so different from when I first got into Women's Liberation and decided very objectively that I should raise my consciousness about marriage so I could explain the end to the institution of marriage demand when I spoke. Now we are so close that I see the sorrow around her eyes and feel her pain in my own stomach. It was very important to me as a gay woman to hear women talking honestly about marriage and sex with men -- it allowed me to see the psychiatrist's promises in the light of reality. My perception is that my married friends are coming to an understanding of what it is like to love a woman and I now comprehend the forces acting upon a woman in marriage making it so difficult or impossible for her to change her situation. I know you will say. "Then why did you write in the last issue of AIAW in your reaction to Woman identified Woman, that married women are hypocrites if they are in Women's Liberation and not gay or at least dealing with it ?" And as I expressed to you and the married women in AIAW, I am so sorry I used the word hypocrite lightly. I was being simplistic and talking in absolutes. I should have gone deeper into my thoughts and expressed the compassion I feel for the contradictions married women who are in Women's Liberation must feel. I guess I do feel the two life styles irrevocably cut off from each other. I don't want that to be in the case, you know. And you may be right that seeing things that way comes from my experiences which have not been good and you see things differently cause your experiences at least recently have been. Still it seems we focus on one life style or the other and haven't been able to deal with the totality of women's experience. Ironic that this dialogue is between the two of us who, coming from different experiences, still landed in the same place. I realize even working separately women with different life styles and perspectives can be both considered women's liberation, but I can't see any group coming up with the right answers. The answers we need that can speak to the totality of the female experience must be some kind of fusing. It is that that I am doubtful about or perhaps just impatient . a woman? March 12, 1970, page 5