DIY History | Transcribe | Campus Culture | Ain't I A Woman? newspapers, June 1970-July 1971

Transcribe
Translate

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

1971-04-30 "Ain't I a Woman?" Page 2

CAROL TRACY TRUDY LINDA DALE PAT JEANIE VICKIE ANNE

Who WE ArE:

   We are a collective of nine women who put out AIAW. What the paper is and how it changes is a reflection of what the nine of us are, collectively and individually, how we change and what is affecting us. We never had any set, easily verbalized purpose for the paper nor did we have any particular audience in mind. We are all in the women's movement so, in a sense, we write a movement paper because we write about ourselves and our concerns. We feel that communication is important to the women's movement at all levels. 
   We realize that much of what we write is not introductory material to recruit new women, but we question the concept that everything should be an introduction for women not yet active in the movement. We write from where we are. None of us are newly active and our concerns and struggles change and progress with out involvement. We think it is important to write about and analyze our struggles at the place we are now; to communicate this to all women who read AIAW, as well as making things clearer to ourselves.
   Our life styles affect what each of us brings to the group. Three of us live with men, four of us are members of the first women's living collective in Iowa City and we meet and have our office in that collective. Obviously, we are affected greatly by the living collective and their problems. The rest of us live with women. Most of us are gay.
   By the time we put out our first issue there was already a Gay Women's Cell in Iowa City and some members of AIAW belonged to it, so when we began our paper we were already dealing with lesbianism. No one had to "come out" within the paper collective. The struggle of dealing with that part of our lives in our collective of some straight, some gay, some confused, some celibate, etc. has really been important to all of us.
   Economic class backgrounds and our present economic situations greatly affect how we work together and what we write about. Some of us have steady jobs, some of us have more time to work on the paper because we haven't been working. Some of us cannot find jobs and don't have money, some of us are afraid of losing our jobs. The tensions of the present economic situation in this country are hitting most of us pretty hard. Some of us have some advantages, education, middle class backgrounds, money--most of us do not. 
   What we do collectively to put out the paper is time consuming and fairly disciplined. We meet at least twice a week, often late into the night. We all attend the meetings. Missing one is a big deal and means you are angry, freaked out, sick or some thing like that. We all show up to put the paper together the week before it comes out, generally three or four nights of work. The shit work has not been very collective, mostly falling on one member or two at times, and this has been difficult for us to deal with, causing some resentment. We talk a lot among ourselves about 

[hand drawings of faces]

subjects we deal with in the paper and about other things important to us. For some of us - most of us - AIAW collective is our priority, our project, support, and consciousness-raising group.
   We get an enormous amount of mail and are strongly affected by reading other papers and articles that women not publishing a paper probably don't see. It is exciting to get a good, new paper or publication and we want to share those with other women. When crises happen elsewhere--as when It Ain't Me Babe (paper published in Berkeley) stopped -- it affects us.
   But we are also influenced by what is happening here. All of us are a part of a loosely organized women's community. We have parties often, we gather at the living collective. Often the struggles we have are internal ones -- ones that go on within either or collective or within that women's community. We are constantly dealing with the problems of gay women, personal relationships, women living together, etc. Our community is of prime importance to most of us. It is less clear just how we are affected by Iowa City or how we as women affect it. 
  Iowa City is a university town surrounded by farmland. The population of Iowa City is 50,000. 20,000 of those are students. We are not crowded together, or hassled in the same way as those living in urban areas. Nor are there as many non-women's "Movement" activities or groups to relate to. The nine of us are strong separatists and none of us relate much to other struggles in this town although there aren't many anyway.
   It has been isolating to be a collective whose work isn't something that other women have to relate to in terms of support. We occasionally request that articles be written, we request that people subscribe or buy issues but we don't need steady volunteers like a daycare group needs or women to show up in large numbers for a public action. We often decide how to relate to other women's projects or groups as a collective and more often than not we don't relate heavily because of the time and energy putting out the paper takes or because we are critical of the project. We are pretty dedicated to self-critism and ideological struggle. We rarely respond to events or projects with unquestioned enthusiasm. We analyze, criticize, and debate what is being done, how and why.

[hand drawn faces]

    Many of us individually have put in lots of time on other things like volunteering at the daycare center, but we don't have the time to become heavily involved in the meetings or planning of those projects. It is very hard to achieve group cohesiveness. We have been able to do this and others, seeing that, are generally terrified. Dealing with one of us is really dealing with one plus eight.
   Within our own female community we are seen as heavies, diciplined, etc. In a way, we are fairly isolated because of the political opinions we hold (anti-capitalist and separatist) and this has really affected the paper. We have reprinted things that we think are important and we know would never be reprinted in "movement papers" or in many women's papers that are aimed primarily at women not already involved in the movement. Most of the things we have reprinted we think are really important to read and re-read. Many say what we would say, so rather than duplicate we have run some things published elsewhere to make our point. 
   Still, we write most of what is in our paper and publishing every three weeks makes time scarce for most of us. We know sometimes that what we write does not really explain itself -- like what experiences have prompted us to write what we're writing. We are explaining who we are because of criticisms we have received from readers, our own doubts about the worth of what we are doing, perhaps a desire to justify ourselves, perhaps to sort out for our own benefit the reason behind what we do, what our paper is.
   We generally look at AIAW as a whole from the first issue we put out till the present and all that entails: changes in our opinions, scope of subjects dealt with, etc. We know that our perspective of what we do is not always the same as our readers who read one issue at a time and have no why of knowing everything in our heads, what's really affecting us, etc. We know that our paper is not an end in itself, that things change and we all grow.
   Right now putting out the paper is a struggle. Sustaining a project that entails so much time and work, including so much shit work, is wearing on all of us. We are all tired from a busy year, and many of us are going through real hard times: financially, with our living situations, or our personal relationships.
   We've seen other papers split apart by tensions that seem no greater than those we live with. We've seen few papers sustained that are doing what we are trying to do: to report our own internal struggles and thoughts. We have not been open for any woman to come and work on the paper and thereby become involved in the women's movement. Too many one-time-only papers add up to the same burst of enthusiasm and never grow to anything else. We have all done speaking, "organizing" and worked on other projects -- but for us the newspaper has been a special kind of space.

PAGE 2   VOL 1 NO 1      Ain't I

Saving...

CAROL TRACY TRUDY LINDA DALE PAT JEANIE VICKIE ANNE Who WE ArE: We are a collective of nine women who put out AIAW. What the paper is and how it changes is a reflection of what the nine of us are, collectively and individually, how we change and what is affecting us. We never had any set, easily verbalized purpose for the paper nor did we have any particular audience in mind. We are all in the women's movement so, in a sense, we write a movement paper because we write about ourselves and our concerns. We feel that communication is important to the women's movement at all levels. We realize that much of what we write is not introductory material to recruit new women, but we question the concept that everything should be an introduction for women not yet active in the movement. We write from where we are. None of us are newly active and our concerns and struggles change and progress with out involvement. We think it is important to write about and analyze our struggles at the place we are now; to communicate this to all women who read AIAW, as well as making things clearer to ourselves. Our life styles affect what each of us brings to the group. Three of us live with men, four of us are members of the first women's living collective in Iowa City and we meet and have our office in that collective. Obviously, we are affected greatly by the living collective and their problems. The rest of us live with women. Most of us are gay. By the time we put out our first issue there was already a Gay Women's Cell in Iowa City and some members of AIAW belonged to it, so when we began our paper we were already dealing with lesbianism. No one had to "come out" within the paper collective. The struggle of dealing with that part of our lives in our collective of some straight, some gay, some confused, some celibate, etc. has really been important to all of us. Economic class backgrounds and our present economic situations greatly affect how we work together and what we write about. Some of us have steady jobs, some of us have more time to work on the paper because we haven't been working. Some of us cannot find jobs and don't have money, some of us are afraid of losing our jobs. The tensions of the present economic situation in this country are hitting most of us pretty hard. Some of us have some advantages, education, middle class backgrounds, money--most of us do not. What we do collectively to put out the paper is time consuming and fairly disciplined. We meet at least twice a week, often late into the night. We all attend the meetings. Missing one is a big deal and means you are angry, freaked out, sick or some thing like that. We all show up to put the paper together the week before it comes out, generally three or four nights of work. The shit work has not been very collective, mostly falling on one member or two at times, and this has been difficult for us to deal with, causing some resentment. We talk a lot among ourselves about [hand drawings of faces] subjects we deal with in the paper and about other things important to us. For some of us - most of us - AIAW collective is our priority, our project, support, and consciousness-raising group. We get an enormous amount of mail and are strongly affected by reading other papers and articles that women not publishing a paper probably don't see. It is exciting to get a good, new paper or publication and we want to share those with other women. When crises happen elsewhere--as when It Ain't Me Babe (paper published in Berkeley) stopped -- it affects us. But we are also influenced by what is happening here. All of us are a part of a loosely organized women's community. We have parties often, we gather at the living collective. Often the struggles we have are internal ones -- ones that go on within either or collective or within that women's community. We are constantly dealing with the problems of gay women, personal relationships, women living together, etc. Our community is of prime importance to most of us. It is less clear just how we are affected by Iowa City or how we as women affect it. Iowa City is a university town surrounded by farmland. The population of Iowa City is 50,000. 20,000 of those are students. We are not crowded together, or hassled in the same way as those living in urban areas. Nor are there as many non-women's "Movement" activities or groups to relate to. The nine of us are strong separatists and none of us relate much to other struggles in this town although there aren't many anyway. It has been isolating to be a collective whose work isn't something that other women have to relate to in terms of support. We occasionally request that articles be written, we request that people subscribe or buy issues but we don't need steady volunteers like a daycare group needs or women to show up in large numbers for a public action. We often decide how to relate to other women's projects or groups as a collective and more often than not we don't relate heavily because of the time and energy putting out the paper takes or because we are critical of the project. We are pretty dedicated to self-critism and ideological struggle. We rarely respond to events or projects with unquestioned enthusiasm. We analyze, criticize, and debate what is being done, how and why. [hand drawn faces] Many of us individually have put in lots of time on other things like volunteering at the daycare center, but we don't have the time to become heavily involved in the meetings or planning of those projects. It is very hard to achieve group cohesiveness. We have been able to do this and others, seeing that, are generally terrified. Dealing with one of us is really dealing with one plus eight. Within our own female community we are seen as heavies, diciplined, etc. In a way, we are fairly isolated because of the political opinions we hold (anti-capitalist and separatist) and this has really affected the paper. We have reprinted things that we think are important and we know would never be reprinted in "movement papers" or in many women's papers that are aimed primarily at women not already involved in the movement. Most of the things we have reprinted we think are really important to read and re-read. Many say what we would say, so rather than duplicate we have run some things published elsewhere to make our point. Still, we write most of what is in our paper and publishing every three weeks makes time scarce for most of us. We know sometimes that what we write does not really explain itself -- like what experiences have prompted us to write what we're writing. We are explaining who we are because of criticisms we have received from readers, our own doubts about the worth of what we are doing, perhaps a desire to justify ourselves, perhaps to sort out for our own benefit the reason behind what we do, what our paper is. We generally look at AIAW as a whole from the first issue we put out till the present and all that entails: changes in our opinions, scope of subjects dealt with, etc. We know that our perspective of what we do is not always the same as our readers who read one issue at a time and have no why of knowing everything in our heads, what's really affecting us, etc. We know that our paper is not an end in itself, that things change and we all grow. Right now putting out the paper is a struggle. Sustaining a project that entails so much time and work, including so much shit work, is wearing on all of us. We are all tired from a busy year, and many of us are going through real hard times: financially, with our living situations, or our personal relationships. We've seen other papers split apart by tensions that seem no greater than those we live with. We've seen few papers sustained that are doing what we are trying to do: to report our own internal struggles and thoughts. We have not been open for any woman to come and work on the paper and thereby become involved in the women's movement. Too many one-time-only papers add up to the same burst of enthusiasm and never grow to anything else. We have all done speaking, "organizing" and worked on other projects -- but for us the newspaper has been a special kind of space. PAGE 2 VOL 1 NO 1 Ain't I