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

1971-04-30 "Ain't I a Woman?" Page 11

   PAM: Drug addicts are really intelligent people, they really are. They haven't read all about life in books, they've experienced it. And when a drug addict comes out of their nod, and starts facing reality, where it's really at, then society has to watch out. Because once they get their heads together, nothing can really beat them. 
   The psychiatrist loves to give you medication, because then you can walk around and not know what's happening. We'd rather not sleep, cause we want to know what's happening. We found out. It was hard, it was a real struggle there, and you have to be strong. But when you get out in the streets, that's where you really face the struggle.

   MARSHA: The clothes. They give you short-sleeve cotton dresses to wear all-year-round. Sometimes they don't heat the building. You'll be freezing, and all you got is that little fucking cotton dress.

    PAM: See, the physical things they do to you, you can take. We can wear cotton dresses in the winter. But the things they do to your head, some sisters just can't take it. You know a lot of sisters come in fucked up from Jump Street. I know I was, and some of them sit down and think, 'Well, I'm just going to do my time and get out of here.' If everybody thought 'Well, let me do my time and get out of here,' then nothing's going to be changed. And that is why the matrons hated us, because we believed in change. They're so brainwashed that they can't believe in anything else except what the United States taught them.
   There's another so-called problem they say they have. The sisters don't have it, but the matrons do. Homosexuality seems to be a big problem to them, a problem to what we call Front Street, the 'higher ups.' They don't want any 'Lesbians' on their Farm, they say.
   We don't relate to homosexuality either. Because when you love somebody, you love them. You don't have to call it 'homosexuality,' you don't have to call it 'the gay life,' or 'bull dagger' or any of those terms the pigs use. Love is just love, whether it's a sister or a brother, it doesn't matter.
   The staff members up there, their minds are really fucked up about it. One day, there was a little announcement made in the dining room. 'After you eat, if you want to sit here you have to sit at three tables, where the matrons can see you.' We knew why they wanted to watch us, because they're thinking, 'A couple of sisters are going to be getting down in the dining room.'
   We confronted the head supervisor of the hall. She says, 'Well, you know, you girls do things in the bathroom.' I really wish she would have said it to me, because I would have told her, 'Yeah, I shit, and I piss in the bathroom.'
   Some sisters really do have problem with so-called homosexuality because they are brainwashed, and it's not their fault. They think: 'If I'm going to hook up with one of the sisters, well I'm going to be the fucking boss. You sit here and I'll sit there.' See, we don't believe in that -- that makes it ugly. The matrons like that -- when they see two sisters really hooked up with one having to play the man role, one having to play the woman role. 
   We're trying to get away from those roles anyway. A lot of sisters want to play the man role because they've been fucked around by men for so long. Now it's their turn, they want to fuck someone around. 
   So now we've told you some things about Niantic, just a little bit of what happens down there, and there's a lot that really has to be done. It's going to take sisters like Ericka, it's going to take sisters like us, to do it. It's really a fucking drag that sisters have to go to a prison to get it together.
   Today we went to Ericka's trial. When I saw her, it was just unbelieveable. I couldn't believe it was her. You really have to meet her. A lot of people are afraid of her. They put her on a pedastal, they make her an idol. She really hates it. Because Ericka is just Ericka.
   She had a big smile on her face. Walked in just as strong as she is, you know. When we saw her Marsha and I started crying. And she said, 'Wipe away the tears. Be strong.' So I wiped away the tears. We were leaving the courtroom because there was no session today, one of the jurors was sick. She yelled 'I love you,' and we said, 'Well, we love you too Ericka.'
   And the pig that was so-called escorting us out of the courtroom said, 'Hurry up, clear the courtroom.' We said, 'Yeah, we'll clear it. We love you, Ericka.' and walked out. 
*   *   *
Write to Ericka, c/o Catherine Roraback, 265 Church St., New Haven, Connecticut 06511.

Thoughts to keep in mind as we find out more about ourselves....

   There are so many temptations that face us as we struggle to free ourselves. We sometimes take a leave of absence from the world--from the battleground which has hurt, tormented and sometimes deeply scarred and crippled us. In that leave-taking, we often forget one of the most basic truths that the Movement has brought out...that whatever hang-ups we have, whatever personality problems that destroy our ability to relate creatively and inhibit our growth--these are not mere idiosyncratic responses--our own private neurosis...and they just don't stem from what happened in our early childhood, in our families...all these things have real roots in the society in which we live...in its values...its institutions...its dynamics. We developed patterns of relating for very good reasons. 
   But as we find ourselves in relationships with women, we realize that we have to relate different ways. Many of us (particularly because of the vaious descriptions which appeared in different papers) expected a garden of eden as we moved from heterosexual to lesbian relationships. We thought that once we could relate to women everything would be fine. But we have learned that altho the shit in us may have been a response to the destructiveness of the world around us, we are still carrying it around with us. We bring along to our lesbian relationships many years of feelings, defenses, insecurities from that other world and it is hard to change oneself and even harder to be understanding and be sympathetic to a sister who reacts in ways which anger, displease, or hurt us.
   Many of us have felt intensely inhibited physically...have moved awkwardly all of our lives...never really felt together with our bodies...found it hard to move--to dance--to express whatever sensuality and sexuality we felt living inside of us. But, the world has taught us well, and has had many years to play with our reactions and values. We have been taught by experience and/or moved and expressed ourselves physically...for (as we have been so dutifully taught) if we did let out that fluidity...the sensuality that is in all of us--we would be responsible for whatever happened...we would have to pay the debt created as men responded to whatever was released. Remember that whatever happens is always the woman's fault.
   So all my life I went around feeling that inside me was a graceful dancer...a passionate sensual force which could never be expressed because it would be too dangerous. So from my earliest days I blotted out whatever grace I might have had and sought protection in no movement at all or in jerky awkwardness. Clodiness has enormous protective value and in my child's mind I think I sensed that safety and so I became uptight and inhibited...finally unable to move at all. At 30 I could barely move--until another woman took the time, energy and understanding to teach me to dance. I was 30 before I could let go and feel my body merge uncaringly with the music. I could not dance before because I did not know what reactions would come down on me. If a male should respond to me and I was not interested there was a sense of obligation there. After all I HAD behaved in a certain way...there were responsibilities...being called a cockteaser was a terrible insult...especially if you were even slightly 'liberated.'
    I was even afraid of being openly warm and affectionate with people. In fact, once again it was from other women that I learned to be easy with demonstrations of affection. In my past (heterosexual life) to be openly warm and loving entailed climbing into bed--always the collected obligation...gestures had commitments, obligations and meanings beyond just the immediate expression of affection. I think I learned to be warm and easy with women because there was no collection demand. Women do not have penises which when erected have to be satisfied.
   The belief that things that happen sexually are the woman's fault really does presuppose a certain view of male sexuality, presuppose the "myth" of the erected penis and its demand for explosion inside of your body...its demand for release. 
   Take a look at D.H. Lawrence, "Drawing him to her that her hanging swinging breasts touched the tip of the stirring erect phallus and caught the drop of moisture. She held him fast. 'Lie down!' he said. 'Lie down! Let me come!' He was in a hurry now." A little later in that same scene after he has come, she examines the wilted penis, "And he was helpless, as the penis in soft, slow undulations filled and surged and rose up, and grew hard standing there hard and overweening in its curious towering fashion. The woman too trembled a little as she watched. 'There! Take him then! He is thine!' said the man."
   In all of this he never does anything with her body...he never explores it with her...everything that happens is a function of his erection...and we are taught to acknowledge, accept, and in fact seek the force and demand of that erection. We are taught the legitimacy and demand of his arousal...and that we are obligated if we are at all implicated in that penis' erecting...so naturally we learned to control all sorts of things...for we never knew when we would be implicated and forced by our training to accept our obligation.
   It is not that we are cold and frigid in our responses to people. What we have to learn is that being with, loving, and sexually relating to women is an entirely different reality--a different situation and that old fears are not really relevant. Lesbian women know this...straight women don't. So many straight women get very uptight and threatened by Lesbians; they feel that they are now sexual objects for the whole human race...that the safety they had with women is gone because of Lesbianism. but stop just for a moment--that fear reveals more about the character of the heterosexual world--than anything else. And it is important for us--lesbians and non-lesbians to recognize what shaping effect that heterosexual--that male-dominated society has had on all of us We cannot explain our reactions...our relationship to ourselves and our bodies and to each other without going back and understanding that world which has shaped us.
Reprinted from Spectre c/o Women's Liberation Office
1510 SAB U. of Michigan/Ann Arbor, Mich. 48104 

a Woman?    April 30, 1971     11

Saving...

PAM: Drug addicts are really intelligent people, they really are. They haven't read all about life in books, they've experienced it. And when a drug addict comes out of their nod, and starts facing reality, where it's really at, then society has to watch out. Because once they get their heads together, nothing can really beat them. The psychiatrist loves to give you medication, because then you can walk around and not know what's happening. We'd rather not sleep, cause we want to know what's happening. We found out. It was hard, it was a real struggle there, and you have to be strong. But when you get out in the streets, that's where you really face the struggle. MARSHA: The clothes. They give you short-sleeve cotton dresses to wear all-year-round. Sometimes they don't heat the building. You'll be freezing, and all you got is that little fucking cotton dress. PAM: See, the physical things they do to you, you can take. We can wear cotton dresses in the winter. But the things they do to your head, some sisters just can't take it. You know a lot of sisters come in fucked up from Jump Street. I know I was, and some of them sit down and think, 'Well, I'm just going to do my time and get out of here.' If everybody thought 'Well, let me do my time and get out of here,' then nothing's going to be changed. And that is why the matrons hated us, because we believed in change. They're so brainwashed that they can't believe in anything else except what the United States taught them. There's another so-called problem they say they have. The sisters don't have it, but the matrons do. Homosexuality seems to be a big problem to them, a problem to what we call Front Street, the 'higher ups.' They don't want any 'Lesbians' on their Farm, they say. We don't relate to homosexuality either. Because when you love somebody, you love them. You don't have to call it 'homosexuality,' you don't have to call it 'the gay life,' or 'bull dagger' or any of those terms the pigs use. Love is just love, whether it's a sister or a brother, it doesn't matter. The staff members up there, their minds are really fucked up about it. One day, there was a little announcement made in the dining room. 'After you eat, if you want to sit here you have to sit at three tables, where the matrons can see you.' We knew why they wanted to watch us, because they're thinking, 'A couple of sisters are going to be getting down in the dining room.' We confronted the head supervisor of the hall. She says, 'Well, you know, you girls do things in the bathroom.' I really wish she would have said it to me, because I would have told her, 'Yeah, I shit, and I piss in the bathroom.' Some sisters really do have problem with so-called homosexuality because they are brainwashed, and it's not their fault. They think: 'If I'm going to hook up with one of the sisters, well I'm going to be the fucking boss. You sit here and I'll sit there.' See, we don't believe in that -- that makes it ugly. The matrons like that -- when they see two sisters really hooked up with one having to play the man role, one having to play the woman role. We're trying to get away from those roles anyway. A lot of sisters want to play the man role because they've been fucked around by men for so long. Now it's their turn, they want to fuck someone around. So now we've told you some things about Niantic, just a little bit of what happens down there, and there's a lot that really has to be done. It's going to take sisters like Ericka, it's going to take sisters like us, to do it. It's really a fucking drag that sisters have to go to a prison to get it together. Today we went to Ericka's trial. When I saw her, it was just unbelieveable. I couldn't believe it was her. You really have to meet her. A lot of people are afraid of her. They put her on a pedastal, they make her an idol. She really hates it. Because Ericka is just Ericka. She had a big smile on her face. Walked in just as strong as she is, you know. When we saw her Marsha and I started crying. And she said, 'Wipe away the tears. Be strong.' So I wiped away the tears. We were leaving the courtroom because there was no session today, one of the jurors was sick. She yelled 'I love you,' and we said, 'Well, we love you too Ericka.' And the pig that was so-called escorting us out of the courtroom said, 'Hurry up, clear the courtroom.' We said, 'Yeah, we'll clear it. We love you, Ericka.' and walked out. * * * Write to Ericka, c/o Catherine Roraback, 265 Church St., New Haven, Connecticut 06511. Thoughts to keep in mind as we find out more about ourselves.... There are so many temptations that face us as we struggle to free ourselves. We sometimes take a leave of absence from the world--from the battleground which has hurt, tormented and sometimes deeply scarred and crippled us. In that leave-taking, we often forget one of the most basic truths that the Movement has brought out...that whatever hang-ups we have, whatever personality problems that destroy our ability to relate creatively and inhibit our growth--these are not mere idiosyncratic responses--our own private neurosis...and they just don't stem from what happened in our early childhood, in our families...all these things have real roots in the society in which we live...in its values...its institutions...its dynamics. We developed patterns of relating for very good reasons. But as we find ourselves in relationships with women, we realize that we have to relate different ways. Many of us (particularly because of the vaious descriptions which appeared in different papers) expected a garden of eden as we moved from heterosexual to lesbian relationships. We thought that once we could relate to women everything would be fine. But we have learned that altho the shit in us may have been a response to the destructiveness of the world around us, we are still carrying it around with us. We bring along to our lesbian relationships many years of feelings, defenses, insecurities from that other world and it is hard to change oneself and even harder to be understanding and be sympathetic to a sister who reacts in ways which anger, displease, or hurt us. Many of us have felt intensely inhibited physically...have moved awkwardly all of our lives...never really felt together with our bodies...found it hard to move--to dance--to express whatever sensuality and sexuality we felt living inside of us. But, the world has taught us well, and has had many years to play with our reactions and values. We have been taught by experience and/or moved and expressed ourselves physically...for (as we have been so dutifully taught) if we did let out that fluidity...the sensuality that is in all of us--we would be responsible for whatever happened...we would have to pay the debt created as men responded to whatever was released. Remember that whatever happens is always the woman's fault. So all my life I went around feeling that inside me was a graceful dancer...a passionate sensual force which could never be expressed because it would be too dangerous. So from my earliest days I blotted out whatever grace I might have had and sought protection in no movement at all or in jerky awkwardness. Clodiness has enormous protective value and in my child's mind I think I sensed that safety and so I became uptight and inhibited...finally unable to move at all. At 30 I could barely move--until another woman took the time, energy and understanding to teach me to dance. I was 30 before I could let go and feel my body merge uncaringly with the music. I could not dance before because I did not know what reactions would come down on me. If a male should respond to me and I was not interested there was a sense of obligation there. After all I HAD behaved in a certain way...there were responsibilities...being called a cockteaser was a terrible insult...especially if you were even slightly 'liberated.' I was even afraid of being openly warm and affectionate with people. In fact, once again it was from other women that I learned to be easy with demonstrations of affection. In my past (heterosexual life) to be openly warm and loving entailed climbing into bed--always the collected obligation...gestures had commitments, obligations and meanings beyond just the immediate expression of affection. I think I learned to be warm and easy with women because there was no collection demand. Women do not have penises which when erected have to be satisfied. The belief that things that happen sexually are the woman's fault really does presuppose a certain view of male sexuality, presuppose the "myth" of the erected penis and its demand for explosion inside of your body...its demand for release. Take a look at D.H. Lawrence, "Drawing him to her that her hanging swinging breasts touched the tip of the stirring erect phallus and caught the drop of moisture. She held him fast. 'Lie down!' he said. 'Lie down! Let me come!' He was in a hurry now." A little later in that same scene after he has come, she examines the wilted penis, "And he was helpless, as the penis in soft, slow undulations filled and surged and rose up, and grew hard standing there hard and overweening in its curious towering fashion. The woman too trembled a little as she watched. 'There! Take him then! He is thine!' said the man." In all of this he never does anything with her body...he never explores it with her...everything that happens is a function of his erection...and we are taught to acknowledge, accept, and in fact seek the force and demand of that erection. We are taught the legitimacy and demand of his arousal...and that we are obligated if we are at all implicated in that penis' erecting...so naturally we learned to control all sorts of things...for we never knew when we would be implicated and forced by our training to accept our obligation. It is not that we are cold and frigid in our responses to people. What we have to learn is that being with, loving, and sexually relating to women is an entirely different reality--a different situation and that old fears are not really relevant. Lesbian women know this...straight women don't. So many straight women get very uptight and threatened by Lesbians; they feel that they are now sexual objects for the whole human race...that the safety they had with women is gone because of Lesbianism. but stop just for a moment--that fear reveals more about the character of the heterosexual world--than anything else. And it is important for us--lesbians and non-lesbians to recognize what shaping effect that heterosexual--that male-dominated society has had on all of us We cannot explain our reactions...our relationship to ourselves and our bodies and to each other without going back and understanding that world which has shaped us. Reprinted from Spectre c/o Women's Liberation Office 1510 SAB U. of Michigan/Ann Arbor, Mich. 48104 a Woman? April 30, 1971 11