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

1971-06-04 "Ain't I a Woman?" Page 9

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similar problems, however, we as women see money as something of prime importance because a great deal of our oppression centers around economics. The male who wrote the COPS Commune article saw sex of major importance. We too were dealing with sex - but homosexuality not heterosexuality in our collective and for many of us it was a very heavy thing. However, with time almost all of us worked through lesbianism, and we've gone on to different problems concerning being gay. It seems to me that while times were good we earnestly tried to deal with many problems, but the two problems that we never could get into proper perspective or deal with realistically were money and then eventually class differences as they became more apparent and important. So we've asked why is it that we can't see feminism in a class perspective or class in a feminist perspective? Even in the past issues of AIAW it is obvious that issues dealing heavily with feminism deal little with class and vice versa. So not knowing exactly what all this has to do with a female sub-culture, I'll try to describe a little of the feel of what I think has grown here in Iowa City, much of which our living collective was the center of. I remember last summer as the time that many of our old friends dropped by the house alot. Occasionally we'd be playing records and then people would get up and start dancing and pretty soon almost all of us would find ourselves dancing. For me the summer is most remembered for the dances, working through my feelings (really inhibitions) about touching other women, taking showers together, and dealing with lesbianism a whole lot in the house. It's real hard to remember back to those days and for some reason it's hard to think of me ever being any other way than I am right now. But I know that I was very different. I remember the summer as being fun. We had few money problems at that time, and not having to hassle with that gave us alot of time to work through many things, and to develop a trust and love for each other that would have come much more difficultly. Also, that summer the gay cell really got going. in the gay cell women were able to talk with each other about things they had never dared talk to anyone else about before. Problems were discussed and everyone showed concern and interest. With fall came going back to school for me. The fall was marked by me relating alot to the gay cell, really loving the women there, getting through placing heterosexual roles on gay women, [photo] becoming very strongly gay identified, discussing woman-identified woman alot, having my mind blown by it, working through the relationship I was having with a woman that caused me much trauma, and going to conferences and meeting gay women. At the same time we had moved to a much bigger house, and lots of new women were coming over, gay parties were being held more frequently, people from all over were crashing at our house, and the type of music we played was becoming almost always female singers. At that time we and other people viewed our house as a place where women could get together, where women could come for help if they needed it, as a place to crash if a women needed it and as a place to come to rap. In general it was viewed as a women's center. However, those of us who lived in the house found that we could never live in such a place and expect to have our own personal needs met. Yet we held on to the idealism of trying to be everything a women's center would be and trying to meet our own needs too. Somehow if we couldn't do that then we had failed all those women that needed us. With time we became more comfortable with our decision to try to meet our own needs first. However, frequently there was disagreement about this, and other people still saw us in the idealistic way of being able to meet everyone else's needs (usually their own). Slowly we have become more comfortable, e.g. not as guilty, about our decision to try to meet our needs. With this I think that other people have come more and more to accept the definition that we had chosen for ourselves. So that now even though the problem is by no means entirely worked out, people are once again more comfortable about our collective and what we are. However, during this whole time we were having the financial problems and problems of class differences mentioned in the other articles two issues earlier. These problems being centered around our feminism and woman identification did a great deal to pretty much split our house in two, so that now each group relates to the group of women in town that we want to. This division is too complex to discuss thoroughly but it has to go with such issues as separatism, gayness and feminism vs. humanism. Our of our living collective I see many other things coming besides those things that I have already mentioned. There are gay parties that most of us in the house have gone to and where we've met many new women and become better friends with other gay women. There's the constant playing of women sung by female singers, and being excited everytime we discover another record by a woman. There's the free space that all of us were given to be something different, ie. less in the roles put on us by society, and become more what's really inside us. For example, I discovered that not only could I dance, but I love it, and I don't feel uptight about it in front of women. We're doing more things together as women and with other women, such as the women who are on the softball team. We've learned that we are not all exceptions and that you can usually assume that to a degree other women have been fucked over just like you have. This realization and living with each other has given us confidence to reach out to other women that we don't even know and offer them help. For example, on one of our many trips to the local free medical clinic we met a young woman getting birth control pills, talked with her, and gave her a ride home. Also, we are much stronger now and stick-up for each other, be it when facing a prick medical student or some jocks making sexist remarks at a wedding. As a result of living in a female sub-culture for a year now, I find that there are many assumptions that I make that other women can not relate to, and I find it very hard to relate to many of their problems that they see as important, ie. their husbands. Obviously, there is a schizophrenia that goes with living in a sub-culture. Our living collective has been a haven where we've been able to talk with each other about feminist issues. We've been able to talk with each other about our feelings and we've done it as one woman to another. So in a way we've developed our own style of talking, that is, openly and honestly with out the bull shitting around that male left politics so often reflects. Because I think we've developed even a different way of talking, I'm sure this also separates us from other people. But also talking alike and dealing with the same hassles has helped unify those of us who work together and live together. The living collective has now dissolved, and four of us will continue to live collectively. The female sub-culture which has developed and grown here in Iowa City around the living collective during the past year will continue to grow mainly among those of us who are women-identified women. Last, this article was written from the perspective of me, living in the living collective. It says little about what effect others such as the gay community had on the collective. I by no means want to imply that the living collective was the center of things happening here. In fact I feel the gay community has been a very important part of our collective and too often we've failed to see ourselves in terms of that community. FEMALE CULTURE/LESBIAN NATION FEMALE CULTURE/LESBIAN NATION FEMALE CULTURE/LESBIAN NATION FEMALE CULTURE/LES
 
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