•••

flnlfTe-R WlfDOm 28\\

~ finiJTE""R WifDOm 28 WIntER 1985
Editor and publisher: Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz

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Contributing editors: Gloria Anzaldua, Beth Brant, Irena Klepfisz
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Reader for the Womyn's Braille Press: Tryna Hope
Cover: Pen and ink drawing by zana
ISSN: 0196-1853
SINISTER WISDOM , founded 1976
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and Catherine Nicholson (1976-81)
Michelle Cliff and Adrienne Rich (1981 -83)
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Contents
Poetry
10
28
31
32
34
35
36
44
45
46
47

76
82

84

Cheryl Clarke. journal entry: qualification
Heather • Four Poems About Fat
Christian McEwen. Spell to separate your parents from yourself ..
Jan Hardy. for a friend, for the child inside her
Laura Derr • The Beginning of Briar Rose's Dream
Virginia Johnson. heritage-for/my grandmother
Linda Quinlan • Marie
Renee Pierce • Stress Management
Terri Jewell. Armed Recruit
Susan Stinson • Exhaustion Poem
E. J. Graff. Dorothy In Office Work; Blackbird, Fly
Shirley Glubka • Something Pulled At MeElaine Hall • Love Poem
Janice Gould. Small Subversions

Narratives
Jennifer Green Woodhull. Menu for an Unassuageable Hunger
Alice Tallmadge • The Woman of Gigantic Proportions
37 Mary Moran • from Letters to Mama
73 Eliza Morrison • from Tryst/Triste
78 Jewelle Gomez • To Choose
99 Kateri Sardella • Bar Scenes
100 Elana Dykewomon • A Train Ride
5

13

EssaysSusanna J. Sturgis. "Is this the new thing we're going to have to bepolitically correct about?"
48 Irena Klepfisz • The Distances Between Us: Feminism,
Consciousness and the Girls at the Office
104 Sandy Boucher • Half of a Map
16

Drama
87

Dredlight • two scenes from Word of Mouth
1.

Books110 Lucie Bauer. Lifelines: reviews in briefArt
4 Liron Bourla • photograph
9,36,43,
82,86, and cover zana • pen and ink drawings
15 Fauna Yarrow. pencil drawing
33 Tata Andres • pen and ink drawing
83 Barbara Hammer • still from Stone Circles
112 Contributors' Notes
114 Letters about To Go To Berbir, Sinister Wisdom 26
123 Announcements2

- - -- -t
I

ItThis issue of Sinister Wisdom is dedicated to Barbara Deming

I

I
I

whose death this last year leaves many lesbians, fighters for justice,women concerned about survival on this planet, bereft.
4t

3

Liron Bourla

4Jennifer Green Woodhull
Menu for an Unassuageable Hunger
The Appetizer:
My mother makes a bowl of porridge.

With her own hands, my mother prepared a bowl of porridge for my breakfast.
Her hands shook: she had just flung a small plate to the floor.
"1 wish I'd thrown it," she said quickly to my father, an instant before it struck.
He was washing while she dried. She had, of course - thrown it, that is, so thatsplinters shattered all across the worn, beige linoleum - but she'd had to call it an accident. He could become violent in a minute, and then everything would fly apart.
When last night's supper dishes were all clean and dry and stacked away, and thebroken sideplate swept up and dumped in the dustbin whose lid flipped up when you
stepped on the pedal, she got the square green box of Tiger Oats out of the cupboard
and began to make my porridge. It was winter, and raining out of sheer resignation.
The sky had been a dull, opaque grey for days. Warm porridge is so kind on comfortless mornings, especially when you put raisins in the pot so they get soft andplump, and then sprinkle loads of sugar over it all in a mottled porcelain bowl.
My mother's hands still trembled as she stirred her tea. I spooned my porridge. I
was empty but not hungry, my stomach a fist. The sugar melted into clear threads as I
stirred and stirred. She was pale as china. Her eyes were dead and pulpy. I felt the fear
sprout in the pit of my belly and shoot up into my lungs.
"Thank you, Mummy," I said. "Thank you for my porridge." She looked at me asthough she might never see me again.
"Don't worry," she said. "Grownups have fights , and then it's over." Her voicegrated over the lie.
"I'm not worried," I lied back. "1 love you, Mummy." Her grateful, loving glance
drenched me with misery. She stopped stirring and gulped down all her tea before
lowering the cup and smiling at me. By the circles around her eyes, she might havebeen starving. I scraped smudges of cold paste together around the edge of my bowl
and swallowed hard. I was late for school again.
I rose from the table and went to hug her. The intensity of her grasp boiled throughmy small body until I couldn't tell my own frightened breathing from hers. Finally, I
fell free and ran to my father's car, the porridge a lump of glue in my stomach. Rode all
the way to school beside his familiar rage. He scribbled his customary note on the backof an envelope: Please excuse Jennifer for being late.
When I got home, she was gone.

5The Entree:
There is always plenty to eat.

I require special feeding. From the start, no-one could feed me. Not
even my mother, who was supposed to know, though nobody told her
how. No-one had fed her, either. Dark, sweet warmth should have filled
me at her breast until in perfect safety I overflowed, oblivious, halfdreaming; but that soft body expelled me, then had nothing more to give.
I drew and drew on it and was not nourished.
Imagine a kitchen. In the center of the kitchen, which is not large, a table, the kindwith tubular legs and a red formica top. Possibly there is a tablecloth. At the head of
the table sits the father. His viciously unhappy wife is at his right, or else she is serving
from a pot on the stove; behind him. On his left sit two small girls, sister and sly stepsister, each eyeing different loopholes and grasping at different conclusions.
The eldest, also a girl, faces him from the foot of the table. Behind her is theporcelain sink and beyond that, the back door. She has a slight click in her jaw, and it
can be heard as she chews, a rhythmic counterpoint to the silence that follows the raspof the woman's chair, everyone having been served.
I love food. I love caressing the indulgences crowded into my cheerfulrefrigerator. I love combining and juxtaposing, proposing outrageous contrasts of texture and flavor, rerunning old favorites, constructing impossible extravagances. I love playing over the cans of anchovies and peas,chili and olives in my kitchen cupboard. Breathing between the boxes oftabouleh and macaroni cheese. Handling the fat jars of rice and artichokehearts and honey. I love spreading peanut butter and marmalade on matzoh and crackers and dark rye bread. I love having food here in myhouse, food that I love, love in my house.
When the oldest girl comes home from school, she goes first to the kitchen. Inside
the refrigerator, she knows, are milk and cheese and probably other excellent tidbits
wrapped in waxed paper or tinfoil or sealed in Tupperware containers. She seldom
pays attention to these things, however, as they are not for her. These things are forguests, or for the children, who need them for their bones and their teeth.
But the breadbox is easy and free. Usually, there is a good white loaf there, andfrom this she cuts two slices and butters ·them. She makes a pot of tea and drinks it
black, with plenty of sugar, as she eats her bread and butter. Sometimes a cup of tea isfinished while the last slice of bread is not. Then she pours another cup and stirs inmore sugar. At other times, the bread is all gone while the pot is half full. Then, shecuts and butters another slice. Often she is alone in the kitchen with her tea and breadfor what seems like hours, after she gets home from school.
6Warmth fill my belly. Sweet swelling heavy warmth like cake rising in
the pan as it leavens, spongy and moist and thick, steaming and sighing in
its dark oven. Like oatmeal must feel at its own heart, when it bubbles
rich in the pot and the honey streams off the spoon in rivulets and isdrawn into that hot and secret love. Warmth fill me, quiet and essential
and safe and enveloping and hold me, hold me. For Christ's sake, holdme.
There is a problem. The father and his wife are not in agreement. She serves foodfirst, as always, onto his plate. Her movements are mean and sharp. She clenches thespoon as she might an enemy's throat. The two small girls are next. The sister is weeping with terror. The stepsister takes her food smirking, but uneasy. Then the oldest
girl. She thanks the woman several times, makes certain her plate is squarely in frontof her, attends to her manners. She chews cautiously and swallows whole, so as not toannoy with her clicking jaw. The woman serves herself and sits, but does not eat. The
silence stretches longer and thinner and longer and then.
The woman stands suddenly and snatches her plate to throw it with great force
against the wall. Yellow curry oozes down the sweating paint, lumps of meat and carrot and dull green peas sliding down to congeal among the shards. The impact shakes
loose a cupboard door, which swings slowly open and hangs over the mess. The silence
has not been broken.
After a while, the oldest girl stands and goes to clean up the debris. As she rises
with a handful of splinters and gravy, she strikes her head on the open cupboard door.
She cries quietly as she works: not from the pain, but because things come out of
nowhere and hit you, even when you 're taking the best possible care.
Nothing else matters. It is imperative that I eat, immediately is not soon
enough. I should already have eaten many times what I have eaten. What
I eat should have heft, should carry density and real weight. What I eat
should force great channels open in my body, should fill all hollow
spaces and push against the straining walls; it should suck to every partand make solid what is insubstantial. What I eat should crowd mostespecially into my belly, should cram and bloat this vast, extraordinary
vault, this innocent and undefended womb where my power sleeps like astupid, drunken giant.
Silence. Their forks click on their plates. Suburban trains can be heard rumblingby from time to time as they carry boisterous girls and boys home to happy families
and hearty suppers. Silence, except that no matter how carefully she chews, her jaw
clicks. Some whimsical bone plays light percussion against the void surrounding, eachtime she bites down on her potato or her mutton. She chews to the left, to the right, shechews lightly, she chomps down hard, it's no use. Her jaw clicks as she eats.
7

The father is bitter about his destiny, and irritable. He holds his knife poised above
his chop and looks straight at her over the kitchen table. His wife, absorbed in her own
fury , continues to eat with the air of one irrevocably disgusted by all she encounters.
The sister stops breathing and waits wide-eyed, paralyzed. The other child's face
flushes with anticipation and glee. A picture of respectful receptiveness, the older girlswallows an unchewed mouthful and sits very still while the mass tears a path throughher chest. At last, the father speaks.
"Do you," he says, "have to make so much bloody noise when you eat?"
I make great noise with my pleasures. I howl as orgasms rage through myorgans. I gasp in galleries and scream at concerts. Having been touchedby the promise of tenderness, I drive away shrieking raw delight. I moan
and sigh and make frequent appreciative remarks when food , especially,pleases me. I crack bones with my teeth to suck out the tender marrow,then chew the gristle so it crunches and snaps between my jaws long after
everyone else has finished. With beans and noodles I like to make soft,
wet sounds, to blend the grainy starches with my tongue.! conduct eloquent conversations while I eat, parting warm sodden wads to ease thewords thickly through. I demand that food salute my tongue gladly, withnoisy greetings; that it make merry in my mouth; that it coax myshameless body to unfettered response, in a chaos of loud and joyful
celebration.

A Sherbert.

Dear heart, how time has run away with us. Has it been just a year since we called
it love, wanting something more? Vividly I remember the oysters caressing our throats,
the wicked coffee, that mousse. You poured into my eyes and fed me chunks oflobster, the butter dripping clear as my heart from your reckless thumb. "Take it withyour mouth full," you crooned. I never dreamed that meal could end.
Only a year, and now you give my birthday cake to the waitress. You shame mewith complaints at my only restaurant. I'm wasting away from the hunger, but you
aren't paying attention. You should be coaxing me, the spoon shimmering with liquid
understanding; you should lick the overflow from my chin. But you eat alone instead,
growing pale and querulous. This cold drizzle of power has seeped through these pores
too long. My stomach hardens against it.

8

The Dessert:
The revenge.

Oh, you cheap, you joyless lovers. You mean and restless women,
who count out your love as though it can never be replenished; who skim
the cream from your pleasure in case it should be spent, who breathesour sorrow over all our desires. Oh, you misers, disgust is yourdiscipline, you cringe from your own moldy leftovers. Fear cools to skinover your eyes, the chill of certain hunger tightens your jaws. Your
mouths are useless for loving.
Wait, stay quiet. I have a bathtub full of butter right here. I have acloset crammed with cheesecake. Hold still, I'm stroking it through yourhair. I'm packing your throats, I'm parting' your buttocks, lie still. I'm
stuffing you like turkeys. Are you beginning to feel?
Hang on, now, there's more - I'm two women, thirteen, nine million
coming at you, pelting you with chicken fat and unspeakable brews,
delicious! I have a dump-truck, I'm heaping pate on your heads, pilingfigs around your thighs.
Are you drowning? Good. Are you soggy and breathless with forbidden pleasure, does the richness overwhelm? Are you too bloated to tense
yourselves against the glut? Good, good. I'll leave you then, pale dough insecret ovens, leave you to marinate and swell, to moan and simmer until
you're just as tender as truffles. I'll be patient as you've never known me,
I'll wait and wait till you're swooning in your creamy crusts, till you 're
mellow and yielding as the ripest cheese.
And then, my loves, I'll wade back through the stew to find you. I'll
come for you where you sputter like sweet, fat cherries in the breast of apudding. I'll singe my fingers to pick you out, my darlings, and I'll eat
Y'" , one by one. Borning my tongoe. Smocking my lips as I go.

m

\J
9

Cheryl Clarke

journal entry: qualification(I'm a compulsive over- eater and this poem
is about that.)it began for me like many others:
not having for a long time
not having at critical moments
i wanted comfort
stroking
someone to sleep withwhen my sister ran away.
having had i knew the ways of comfort
touching.
i taught myself to get it how i could:
on the runquick
as much as i could stuff into me
at once.
the quest for foodbecame the central
the rising
the falling
action of my life.
comfort, joy, successwhet my appetite for more
and marijuana.
i wanted everything at once
giving to get more.

mornings:
the pot first t,he best friend since my sister
always calling me
making me feel good about myself
making me miss her
taking risks to have her.
the record player next essential to the writing process.
then a yolky gravy burst all overthat bland dixie delicacy
half pound of breakfast meat on the side
any form of sugar, white flour, and butter
baked and dunked in four cups of coffee before
noon.
10

noon:
extra mayo
or extra cheeseon.
coke, pepsi, anddairy is always a comfort for taurus.
a midafternoon raid on the vending machines more pernicious than one-armed bandits.
driven by desire for what i had to holdin check til later.
feeling good.
my appetites primed.
people are food.
food is people.
one or the otheror both. both.
i didn't know it for a long time.
when who i want denies me
i eat something.
or buy something.
or smoke something.
if i don't have a lover, i eat,listen to blues, won't write
and am never home.
if i have a lover,i eat, play rock 'n' roll, write love poems,
and take many sick days.
one night after a day of not getting what
and who i wanted
during a nicotine jag
a caffeine bingea streak of intense doping
the music loud and constant with otis redding
who reminds me of potato chips and beer nuts
i turned to the refrigerator:
nothing
and no gas to drive to the 24 hour
gourmet 'foodtown' but half a jar
11

of peanut butterand 23 stale breadsticks.
i ran out of peanut butter
before i ran out of breadsticks
vowing each to be the last
dancing between the record player
and breadbox
night fast approaching dawn
and for every toke i took
every sip of coffee
every record i played
i ate.
later, after 3 hours of sleep,i amazed at my amusing lack of contro!.
got up.
began the daily regime without breakfast.
ate lunch in honor of someone's leaving.
went to the working class 'foodtown'.
" avoided the peanut butter shelf.
bought matzos.
picked up a pack of cigarettes.
rolled some reefer.
and came to you with my compulsions full blown.
it began for me like many others
calling you late at nightfor language and intellecttwo irresistible foods
after so much dulling.
the urge to consume never"leaves.
i'm learning to take my time
instead of swallowing you whole
and resisting projecting to the end of sex
so i can raid the refrigerator,
smoke a cigaretteand pass off into dreams
of sugar, dough, caffeine light and sweet.
o

0

0

12

Alice Tallmadge

The Woman of Gigantic Proportion
They do not know how the woman of gigantic proportion got that way.Some say she
began like the rest of us, but unlike the rest of us, continued to believe in her
possibilities until she grew out of the span of most mortal eyes. Some say her bigness isa legend, dusty as sand. Some say she's the ghost of a woman grown huge with grieffrom the loss of her wayward daughters, who haunts the twilights and dawns, swathedin vapors and moaning through holes in the wind.
I, who have met the woman of gigantic proportion, do not believe any of these, entirely. She is no legend or mournful ghost. She's as visible and as untouchable as themoon, has more faces than temptation and sleuths around cities and towns with an eye
sharper than Sherlock's and a mission far more weighty in import.
Often when the woman of gigantic proportion goes out for a walk, she dresses up
behind thick glasses, spills out of bright, lime-green polyester pants and checkered
acrylics, rolls her stockings to her knees, mutters while she waits for the bus anddrools at stoplights. Sometimes, without warning, she laughs, and pulls her lips backon rows of endless ivory beads strung in unison down to the gate of her cavernous
throat. This woman moves thighsome, lithesome along, dares stares and gives in to no
one - she gathers round gaping eyes like grapes off a laden vine, eats them, and grows
wider.
Behind this disguise the woman of gigantic porportion is watchful. She knows about
the Sirens, that they don't always stay on lonely islands calling to fickle hormones.
Knows they call too from the hips and lips of her trussed-up daughters: small bottles,
thin threads and skinny heels holding up a thousand suckling hopes. Her daughters
have forgotten her face, the bigness of their ancestry. The woman of gigantic proportion knows what fo do, and walks with her eyes wide and ears sharp, plotting entrances and looking for likely vessels.
The woman of gigantic proportion is cagey, like any successful sleuth, and ignores
limits. Skin, skies, dead-ends, barbed wire, nettle fields, imbedded pasts, oceans, tightlips, closed doors, none of these stop her. Changeable as wind, she pops out of her formidable mass of flesh whenever it suits her and travels - vaporized, liquified,magnified, wherever she wants to go. Propelled by dreams and carried by sighs, she
has travelled to regions of hearts and minds so dark they defy description, so wondrous
they cannot be believed. In her packed or airy essence she holds keys, many keys.

13

The woman of gigantic proportion slipped into me insidiously, through a crack in myskin I thought I had healed. She settled there first, just beneath the surface. Slowly, myfingers, before gripped in politeness, in clinging, in refusal, loosened. Now, runningalong the day's predictable walls they find openings smaller than shrew's teeth throughwhich all of me can slip quicker than the blink of an eye. Skins unfold their velvet at
my touch. Barriers vanish. Deaf to the sweet calls of the Sirens, their spell slips off melike an old skin. 0 how I swell with this woman inside me! In every space I'm in thecorners curve to hold me. My dry sponge - desert - cracked lip understanding soaks
her up, and I bloom into bigness.
I cannot explain this phenomenon to my friends. They think I am holding back major details of my life - a time in the Orient, riverruns down the Nile, a past or future
life I'm still in the midst of living. Once I would fight them, defend myself. Now I am
elastic. I ooze like a mudslide. I stand before their suspicious faces, their accusations,and slowly begin to widen. Imperceptibly, from the back of my ribs like she has
shown me. Soon (they do not know how it has happened) they are no longer in front of
someone they do not understand. The words just thrown from their lips like darts are
hanging in another history. Somewhere in their bodies are small pulses, beats matchingmine. We meet, like the rings around rain falling in water.
I am more careful these days. I've quieted my cackling assumptions and look twice
at what calls to me before I answer. I don't knock against the world as hard as I used
to. It's almost as if I'm afraid she'll leak out if I tear myself. But I know better. The
woman of gigantic proportion does not depart with the night breath. I do not wake inthe morning flat like old ale. I do not wake up two weeks later in the same bed, desert
flowers withered around my feet and a tongue as thick as a hunk of stale bread. Thishuge, green-hipped, waddling, toothy old fool. This left-over legend. This monstrous
mother-eye who wafts through her children as if we were hollow chimes hanging on
trees. She has set herself up in the dome of my heart. I know she will stay, but not allof her. That trickster! That ephemeral face! Just tonight - I am still swelled, still larger
than my little life - I h/lve seen her. She slipped out of my pores, like she does, andsettling like fog in the evening, softly and hugely covered everything. And I know
tomorrow, when the red tongue of sun first licks at the dawn, I'll see her again. Risingsteamy from the top of the river, rolling around defiantly under the sun and finally,near noon, departing, maybe south, scheming and squinting her eye, watching sharp
for her daughters, for tiny holes to slip through, for tunnels she can re-arrange to end
in herself. ~14

Fauna Yarrow

15

Susanna]. Sturgis"Is this the new thing we're going to have to bepolitically correct about?"
P.C.: politically correct. I have two rubber stamps that I use indiscriminately onoutgoing correspondence, one reading "politically correct," and the other (of course)"politically incorrect." I do not like to believe that we are swayed, or even influenced,
by prevailing dogmas. I use "p.c." and "p.L" lightly, ironically, in jest. For me "pj."denotes independence and originality, and "p.c." suggests an absence of humor and alack of flexibility. Someone who is p.c. would probably not duck to get through a low
doorway.
In her excellent essay "Traveling Fat," 1 Elana Dykewomon describes her experiences as a fat poet-writer on the road giving readings. At the request of readingorganizers in one city, she prepared a brief statement on some fat liberation issues: she
explained that the selling of diet drinks and the unavailability of t-shirts in multiple-X
sizes made it unsafe for fat women to attend women's events. When she made the statement at a reading in another city, the response that·reached her, second hand, was, "Is
this the new thing we're going to have to be p.c. about?"
Although this woman was presumably encountering fat liberation for the first time,
she was already dismissing it as "the new thing we're going to have to be p.c. about."
It is unlikely that she would then turn her critical attention to the essential feminist
issues that fat activists have raised - to, for instance, the diet industry, which uses
billions of women's dollars to tell us that our bodies are not good enough. It is unlikelythat she would bother to try to imagine what it is like to be perpetually too big for"standard" sizes, in feminist t-shirts as well as required-for-work clothes.
And I was chastened to realize that, though the fat liberation movement has deeply
affected my life, I recognized myself in this woman. I recognized her exasperation,
since I have felt it too: oh, god, something else I'm supposed to feel guilty and shut up
about. Reading Elana's essay, hearing over and over again that woman's response, convinced me once and forthat p.c.lpj. is more than a joke.
Like our double-headed axe, political correctness has two edges. Pushed to identify
what exactly is p.c., even we who ridicule the concept will list important feminist goals
and ethics. When I say that someone is "too p.c. for words," I am usually not criticizing her specific beliefs' and commitments. What I mean is that in espousing andlor implementing them, she tends to be self-righteous, humorless, and inflexible. She produces silence and mistakes it for agreement.
.
Communication breaks down easily, particularly among feminists who strongly
disagree with each other. Whether the subject is sexuality, spirituality, confronting oppressive behavior, or participating in electoral politics, our public explorations tend todegenerate quickly into a series of mortar barrages between two bristling camps, with

all

16

a sizable neutral zone of unnatural quiet between them.
So many truths lie submerged and even unimagined, yet we have developed, and areskillfully using, a variety of techniques to deflect and dismiss issues that we do notwant to deal with. I believe that this much-ridiculed concept of political correctness is
one of those techniques, imd that it contributes profoundly to the difficulties we frequently experience as we struggle to speak and work together. Political correctness
simplifies, and the way of truth is to be complex.
I think that it is the very complexity of feminism that makes the simplicities of
p.c.lp.i. so attractive. Since feminism is a struggle with many, many fronts, trying tocover more than a few at once is a fast route to overextension and burnout. Many of us
nevertheless want to/ or think we should, be doing it all, and we react to the resulting
frustration in different ways. We drop out and do nothing. Or, once we acknowledge
that we can/t do every thing, we say, "Well, then, we should ALL do this particularthing."
Our various attempts to influence each other usually have a much more immediate,visible effect than our challenges to patriarchal institutions and ethics. One/s certainty
and sense of purpose may be affirmed by making converts; or maintaining doctrinal
purity may be the overriding concern. Either way, it isn/t hard to persuade oneself thatflexibility and tolerance are no virtues when our feminist goals are so essential and solong overdue.
Feminism is a worldview, a philosophy, a politic, a way of interpreting what happens and has happened, and of developing strategies to empower women of manybackgrounds and circumstances. Most of us have grown up disempowered: we havelearned that our part is to obey laws, or perhaps to evade them very discreetly, rather
than to make, remake, or repeal them.
Grounded in the connection of personal and political, feminism emphasizes the
ethical self-determination of each woman, working always in cooperation with her
community and the natural world around her. A woman becomes a feminist as she
realizes that the rules society applies to her are dangerous and constricting. She comesto ·understand that the language she speaks warps all of her senses. For many women,
becoming a feminist means rejecting, or radically transforming, her designated place inthe world. But becoming a feminist does not aut~matically free any of us from the contradictory ways of our particular heritage.
When in the early 1980s our discussions of feminist sexuality burst into the open, it
immediately became apparent that our differences on these issues were great and deeply felt, and that our impatience and inexperience in dealing with this gut-felt diversity
were combining into an overload of contradictions and frustrations. In some cases thisoverload was "resolved" by defining some women out of the movement - "excommunicating" them 2 - because their actions and/or ideas did not fit into a particulardefinition of feminism.
After more than a decade of theorizing and organizing, we are still finding it impossible to devise unambiguous, comprehensive definitions of "feminist" and "feminism" .
17This ambiguity has caused us no little trouble. Tolerance for constant uncertainty andchange varies from woman to woman and for each of us over time. We are pressed by
nonfeminist theorizers and activists who will not respect a theory that lacks a polishedfinish. How comforting it would be if we could only layout a few rules, a few thoushalts and thou shalt nots, by which to decide which of us is doing it right. Since consciousness is just about impossible to assess, these rules would naturally have to deal
primarily with our outward behavior.
What further complicates the issue is the obvious but overlooked fact that outward
correctness is often, in many ways, better than nothing. It's safer and more pleasant towalk through the world without being constantly threatened by physical or verbal
abuse. Sometimes an individual's willingness to avoid sexist behavior in public, for example, will lead to a lasting change in his or her consciousness. It may, however,
become a kind of shield, a garment worn outside in order to avoid criticism.
Underneath, nothing may change.
Some roots of political correctness
Living in a movement where behavior is heavily emphasized brings out thechameleon in us. Many of us have learned along the way, whether from earliest
childhood or at the onset of adolescence, that behavior matters most of all; in practice,
you can think anything you want as long as it doesn't show. The rules the adults laidout for us were myriad, often incomprehensible and capriciously enforced, always
undebatable. Sometimes we muttered di~content among our siblings, climbed trees inour party dresses, or escaped from the stodginess of it all by retreating to a quiet corner
or sneaking out of the house.
When we got to school, unless we were very fortunate, we learned that sitting stilland doing what you were told was far more important than curiosity, enthusiasm,
creativity, or originality. In history we were rewarded for learning lists of dates, battles, and famous men; in science it was parts of the body or the periodic table; inEnglish it was standard grammar and poetic forms. Again, unless we were lucky in our
teachers, family, and peers, unless we somehow developed the ability to see behind thelists, we never sensed the currents of history, our connections with the earth, the immense, miraculous possibilities of language.
What we learned at home and school prepared us for dealing with the larger society.
We have forgotten all the lists but this much we remember. Don't make waves. Defer
outwardly to those more powerful than you. You can mutter all you please in private,
you can even speak in opposition - as long as you behave. These are not the virtues ofa transforming social movement. As radical feminists, we have had to unlearn much.
If so many of patriarchy's lessons, subtle and explicit, have taught us that behavior iswhat matters, a feminist might well be suspicious of any movement phenomenon thatby accident or by design delivers the same message. Good manners may make my lifeand many others safer and more comfortable in the short run, but in the long run they
can present a formidable roadblock. Even when behavior changes and the words
change, the motivating consciousness may go unchallenged ..All that matters is that our18behavior is beyond reproach.
Gradually, however, the pressure builds up. Presented over the years with one rule
after another, a woman adapts and adapts, or pretends to adapt, until, when yet
another prescription presents itself, she sneers, "Is this the new thing we're going tohave to be p.c. about?" Fat liberation is still a new and vulnerable movement; for thetime being, it's a handy, safe place to channel all the resentments that can't be voicedon other issues. When fat is generally accepted as a cause of oppression, the snide
remarks will be directed elsewhere.
Because we avoid examining the workings of p.c.lp.i., we generally criticize only theparticular aspect(s) of political correctness that chafe us personally. By dismissing
p.c./p.i. as a phenomenon that affects only "minor" (as defined by us, of course)
issues, we are able to overlook the fact that there are correct, coercive, usuallysimplistic lines on every other thing that concerns us: race and racism, class andclassism, sexuality, reproductive rights. It's a mistake to assume that a line is not a line
just because we agree with it, or because the issue is agreed to be crucial.
In a recent Lesbian Connection, an Oakland, California, lesbian wrote, "Politicalcorrectness grew from an innocent wish to transcend our racism, sexism, homophobia,
anti-Semitism, lookism, ageism, religionism, ableism, etc."l Political correctness may
indeed be rooted in our "innocent" wish to transcend our constricting attitudes, butmuch of its coercive power and persistence derives from other, older, less idealistic
sources - gleaned from our upbringings, the survival tactics of manipulation, silencing, and intimidation. It is given force by our urgency, by our understandable but impossible desire to undo generations of oppression in a year or so.
Since we have recognized and developed the essential connection between personal
and political, feminists are in a good position to understand what can happen whencorrect behavior is emphasized to the neglect of inward growth and transformation.
Consciousness raising (CR), for instance, has been the single most important strategy ofthe feminist movement because it encourages all women to value and speak their lives,
enabling us to build our movement, organizations, and theories from the ground up.
Once CR becomes part of a virtually obligatory program, however, it becomessomething that many of us were once intimately familiar with: the required class. We
know how to respond to required classes. We do the minimum required to get by. We
may emerge at the end basically unchanged but with the necessary credentials: "I wasin a CR group on ... " I've done my bit.
Ideally, consciousness having been raised, either by individual effort or with agroup, we perceive things differently. Privileges whose presence or absence we once
took for granted now have historical context and political significance. We are less likely to make unfounded romantic or patronizing assumptions about other cultures, or toreact angrily when someone points out our mistakes. We recognize habits and attitudes
of our own that need changing, and we begin to change them. We go into the world
prepared to make a difference. We will confront Xist behavior when we encounter it
and respond sensitively when confronted ourselves.
Confrontation, like CR, is a valuable tool, and like CR it can become useless. As con19

sciousness raising may come to mean no more than a course in etiquette or diplomacy,
confrontation carelessly used becomes more effective for intimidating or manipulating
people than for showing them necessary truths about their own behavior or aboutothers' lives. The ongoing firefight that has taken place in the sky above our discussions of sexuality is a form of confrontation - confrontation become a hostile exchangeof loaded words: "sexual fascist/" "anti-feminist/" "neo-Nazi/" "classist/" "racist/!
These are important words for describing certain acts, attitudes, and institutions.
They are also effective weapons. In the heat of debate, passionate feminists tend toshoot first, ask questions or consider the subtleties later (if at all). Taking cover is amore pressing priority than looking to see where the bullets are coming from or what
they are made of. After a few heart-stopping pyrotechnic struggles, we learn something
about prevention: how to avoid drawing fire in the first place.
This is nothing we haven/t learned at home, in school, on the job, in the street. It/s sobasic a·part of our lives as women that we do it without thinking. We risk rape on thestreets; we restrict our movements. We risk abuse from men; we avoid antagonizingthem. We are trashed for being competent, original, creative, or "difficult"; we pretend to be otherwise. We hear the ridicule heaped on fat women; we compress
ourselves into small shapes. In each case, we pretend to be, and eventually become,less than we are.

The ethics of vulnerability
In an excellent and important essay, "Vulnerability and Power, "4 Sarah Lucia
Hoagland has written that women have developed vulnerability as a strategy to obtainsome limited, individual control over those who have power over us. Some manifestations of this strategy are acting helpless, running down other women, and denying connections with feminists, lesbians, radicals, andlor separatists - all in order to makemen feel competent, necessary, and comfortable. These self-protective responses canbecome so ingrained that we resort to them automatically, even in feminist contexts.
To illustrate the danger of translating any of these tactics into lesbian ethics without
very close scrutiny, Hoagland uses an incident from Sally Gearhart/s The
Wanderground s, a series of stories that envision a lesbian-feminist utopia. Margaret
has escaped from the male-controlled city after being raped and dressed in armor as a"joke". Seja, one of the lesbian separatist hill women, finds her and is unable to communicate with her. To show that she means no harm, Seja kneels down and exposes
her neck to the armed (with a sword) and distraught Margaret.
This incident ends "well", i.e., Seja is not hurt. Hoagland/s point is that the episodecould easily have ended tragically for both women.
By using vulnerability to transform Margaret's fear, Seja is forcing Margaret to choose be·
tween killing a womon or letting loose her own armor,her defenses. And in choosing to letloose her armor, Margaret must still her anger, contain it. Yet it may be too soo~ forMargaret to do this: it may be time instead for her to vent her rage and thus to assuage her
wounds.

Margaret could have killed Seja and been saddled with a lifetime of guilt and regret.

20

As Hoagland points out, Seja's strategy
is based on the practice among some animals of exposing their bellies, necks, or genitals toother members of their pack. The problem is that such behavior establishes dom inance anda dependence which comes with a form of security, but it does not establish trust amongequals.

Hoagland asks "whether vulnerability ever comes with no strings attached .... Even in
the best of contexts," she writes, "to use vulnerability as a tool is to take a 'short-cut
through another's personality"'6 - to control the outcome of the situation by limiting
the other's options. This use of vulnerability avoids the risk of bonding, which "lies ina willingness to take the next step, to change the relationship, to lose the security ofpredictableness' ~Displaying the vulnerability that Hoagland describes has become a prescribedfeminist tactic for dealing with the isms. A woman confronts a member of an oppressor
group. The oppressor is not supposed to explain, argue, defend him- or herself, or doanything but agree, apologize, and promise to take steps toward changing his or her
Xist behavior. Following the prescribed sequence reliably has the effect of shortcircuiting anger, yet one can do all this without changing, or committing oneself tochanging, consciousness.
.
I sometimes hear comments made in "safe" spaces that suggest that the changes
wrought in these interactions are frequently superficial and short-lived. My own
resentment festers, bringing up the bitter taste of childhood encounters with an angry
parent, whose power coupled with fury could erase the nuances and sometimes the entire truth of a situation. Why? I come from a very privileged background and am
relatively privileged even now. Why do I see myself as the silenced child? The following incidents provided me with some clues, and thus sparked some ideas on how to
avoid reducing important issues to "the new things we're going to have to be p.c.
about' ~In Common Lives/Lesbian Lives 3 7 a poem appeared. It was called "some likeindians endure" and it began "i have it in my mind that/dykes are india:ns" . In the
biographical note that followed, the poet, Paula Gunn Allen, was identified as"Lebanese-American," when in reality she is LagunalSioux-Lebanese-American. Not
only does this (partially) describe who Paula Gunn Allen is, it was particularly significant for this poem. It assured the reader that this was not a non-Indian trying to romanticize either dykes or Indians.
In the following issue of the journal, the Common Lives collective described the incident, acknowledging their racism in omitting Allen's tribal affiliation. They wrote,
We further compounded the situation by failing to take immediate, aggressive actions when
we first discovered the omission after the books came off the press. We did not inform Paula
and we distributed the books without informing our readers. We did not take responsibility
for what we'd done until after Pau la called us to express her anger and to challenge us on
our racism.8

The collective further described how the incident had grown out of their unexaminedwhite privilege and the mundane pressures of publishing a magazine.
Common Lives/Lesbian Lives 6 brought to light a similar incident. A story by21

Jewish lesbian Judy Freespirit was published in issue 3; without consulting the author,
the editorial collective had deleted the last paragraph of her story, thinking that it was"stronger without the last three lines ': The author saw those lines as very important,"significant to me because they were a twist of a Jewish joke ('It might not help, but itwouldn't hurt.') ':9 The Common Lives collective apologized for its anti-Semitism andcultural bias.
By examining the Common Lives collective's exchanges with Paula Gunn Allen andJudy Freespirit, I want to take a closer look at two specific points. One is the way inwhich certain highly charged words can be used to bludgeon, intimidate, and silence
rather than to identify and challenge. The other is the peculiar power reversal that frequently takes place among feminists, progressives, and others who are committed toaddressing these matters of oppression and oppressiveness.

Loaded words and fake emotions"The New Feminism I am committed to building," wrote Paula Gunn Allen to Common Lives/Lesbian Lives,
is one which never lets fantasies, noble, romantic imaginings, or learned emotions (I callthem "fake" emotions because they are conditioned, not spontaneous) interfere with realitybased understandings and actions 1 0

Allen's "fake emotions" encompass the kind of political correctness that goes no
deeper than outward behavior. Our learned responses - fear, silence, superficial
change, the parroting of required formulas - do indeed "interfere with reality-based
understandings and actions'~
What struck me about both of these episodes is that, once the issues of racism andanti-Semitism were raised, some significant underlying questions were pushed aside.
What was emphasized was who did it and to whom; what was actually done wassomewhat obscured. The collective omitted a crucial part of Paula Gunn Allen'sbiographical statement, then did not take immediate steps to inform her and correct theerror. They lopped a paragraph from Judy Freespirit's story without consulting theauthor. If my work - the work of a white upper/middle-class anglo-saxon ex-protestantlesbian writer - were handled in this manner, I too would have good cause to be
angry_
In effect, what was done was racist and anti-Semitic. In practice, as the collective
members themselves pointed out, it resulted from carelessness, ignorance, anddeadline-itis. In personal interactions, these cause a great deal of oppressive behavior.
They also cause a great deal of pain and grief that cannot - because of who does it
and/or whom it is done to - be classified under any of the identified isms. These
underlying question~ - of honor, of editorial responsibility, of feminist ethics - tend
to get buried under all-sense-numbing barrages of loaded words.
The various oppressions have developed differently, and they operate differently.
Yet, although none is exactly like another, the similarities suggest that, at least on the
personal level, there are some common causes: ignorance of other women's lives, theassumption of sameness, fear of difference, laziness, carelessness, insensitivity. Learn22

ing the isms as a list of disparate elements obscures those connections and makes it all
the harder for us to understand each other. In the end, learning lists teaches us to begood at learning lists. Learning the underlying shared characteristics, on the other
hand, enables us to recognize the oppressions and cruelties and omissions that no one
else is yet talking about.
Learning lists, ironically enough, brings us around to the very situation that we say
we are trying to avoid. Someone else has to point out and describe whatever is to go
onto the list - and very often the only "someone else" who has the credibility and insight to identify the "whatever" is a member of the oppressed group.
Power reversals

When I, a woman, confront a pro-feminist man, a curious dynamic comes into play.
Usually when around men, I do the tiptoeing and hope that I can get through before
one of them blows up, but when I tell a pro-feminist man that he has said or done
something sexist and offensive, I put him off balance. Because of the man's politicalcommitment, our relative positions are reversed. The reversal is situational: it lasts
only as long as the relatively privileged participant allows it. If the pro-feminist man
decides that he doesn't care about feminism any more, that no woman is going to tell
him what to do, or that I am just an unreasonable man-hater, my influence ends.
As my own anger about fat oppression boils to the surface, I have erupted more thanonce at an insulting remark or a familiar but erroneous assumption. What happens? A
woman cowers. She adds fat oppression to her p.c. list. She doesn't say fat-oppressive
things around me. Behind my back, however, she strongly suggests that being fat is not
only physically unhealthy, see what it's done to Susanna's mind. Or maybe she justyells that I am full of shit.
Temporary they assuredly are, yet these power reversals are real and must be considered in devising and revising strategies. History and experience may justify myanger, but if I believe that my pro-feminist co-worker and my fat-oppressive friends
are sincere, I do not want them to cower ritualistically to protect themselves from what
I say. I remember too well being corrected by those who had power over me. I
remember how I tuned them out, said what I was supposed to say and secretly crossed
my fingers. This learned response to threat from above became automatic with me; I
still practice to unlearn it.
Political commitments, coupled with the pressure to be correct, work other reversals
too. To "pass," for instance, generally means to present oneself as, or to let oneself betaken for, a member of a more privileged group. In conversation among (say) white
middle-class people, to reveal that you or your parent is a janitor is to risk being erasedby the stereotypes of your listeners. 'Among feminists and radicals, though, it isn't
unusUal to find a person from the upper or upper-middle class passing for middle, oreven working, class. The motives for both kinds of passing are similar: a woman
believes either that her own truths are not good enough,I I or that acknowledging
membership in the group in question will lessen or destroy her chance of acceptance as
an individual. Some of these pressures come from within. Others are imposed by a23

community's standards of acceptability.
On ready-to-wear words
Consider the difference between sending a friend a birthday card with a preprinted
message and writing and/or drawing your own. By extensively advertising their products, the card companies manage to persuade a lot of people that by not using canned
sentiments you prove that you do not care enough to send the very best. Use your own
words, your own drawings, and your own handwriting and you will be thought acheapskate. But by using those cards exclusively you risk losing your capacity to speakin your own words.
In 1983, Women: A Journal of Liberation published my "Class/Act: Beginning a
Translation From Privilege," an essay about coming from an upper-class background.
When I wrote "Class/Act" (1981), I had not heard the voices of fat women writing of
fat oppression and fat liberation. In my journal there were long, raw screams of pain at
the harassment, the rejection, and the isolation that my life as a fat woman was full of.
As I worked to begin translating my class privilege into radical feministllesbian terms,
I could not even imagine translating my personal knowledge of fat issues from myprivate journal into my public writing. When I reread "Class/Act," I admire it but I
think to myself, "This makes my life look easy."
In retrospect it's easy to understand. Because the privileges of class and race havebeen much discussed, many helpful words were readily available for me to use. Had
Michelle Cliff, Audre Lorde, and others not published works on these subjects, myown work would have been much more difficult. But for my experience of fat oppression I had no words. Though I was a writer, it did not occur to me that I could start
making my own. In classic, prefeminist fashion I thought, "If there are no words, it isbecause the subject is not worth discussing."
Who decided that the subject was not worth discussing?
In exploring the issue of political correctness, I confronted this question in several
forms. Who decided that this was significant while that was not? Who decided thatthese were the words we would use? Who decided that this was correct and that incorrect? Sometimes I could identify the group that put out these priorities, phrases, orideas. Then I would ask myself why I was letting myself be swayed or intimidated.
Because "they" got there first, they had access to print, they had greater numbers they had the words.
A catchy phrase would surface in a publication. It would be quoted and requoted,
used as epigraphs, used to name organizations. It might once have been a resonant,clever, or eloquent phrase, but pretty soon I would groan when I heard it coming. A
living phrase had lost its power and come to be a mere insignia,a kind of verbal shorthand that conveyed the user's group affiliation but little about her person. Politicallycorrec'!.
'Who knows exactly how or when a living phrase or image becomes stale? Whoknows when a basic feminist goal becomes just another form of political correctness,something that one does in public but ridicules or ignores in private? Over and over24

again, ferment turns to orthodoxy, new words become cliches. Even a volcano's molten
lava cools and turns solid. Must feminism inevitably become a politic of thou shalts
and thou shalt nots, of public correctness and private resentment?
To prevent this, a first step is to push ourselves beyond the ready-to-wear words andideas that we have inherited from the academy, from the left, from the psychologists,and even from our own feminist predecessors. Opening up language involves flexibility, experiment - play. Among feminists Mary Daly is one of the best at this; although
she is often called "heavy", what keeps me coming back to GynlEcology is its humor,
its whimsy, its playfulness. So many of those who made essential criticisms of the book- particularly about its cultural myopia - regularly missed its humorous spirit, were
so resolutely humorless and inflexible in their own approach, that for years I could only perceive an either/or choice: be playful, provocative, and culturally solipsistic like
Daly, or pedantic, self-righteous, and anti-racist like her critics. It was Audre Lorde's
moving, compassionate, still-unanswered "Open Letter to Mary Daly"1 2 that showed
me a way beyond the either/ors.13
Beyond political correctness
In the past, reformers and radicals have battled over which was more important: inward psychological and moral transformation or the transformation of social institutions. Each faction has had its way in various times and places, and both have led todead ends and betrayed revolutions. Radical feminism demands the transformation ofboth at once. In theory it makes perfect sense: new institutions growing from our needs
and beliefs while we shed the old ways of relating and develop some new ones. In
practice it's like dancing on a razor blade. It's a constant temptation to jump to one
side or the other, and if you do manage to stay in the middle - it often hurts. Try
working in a feminist business sometime. Try living in the world.
Things are never as clear as they look on paper. Years ago I burned out working incollectives because many women seemed to think that calling ourselves a collective
made us one. The power-over dynamics in those so-called nonhierarchical collectives
gave me headaches. One equally exasperated co-worker said something that I've
remembered ever since: "The problem is that none of us can stand to be uncomfortable for more than five minutes." 14 Yet learning to work in collectives when we'vebeen brought up for hierarchies has to be a discomforting process.
We must start from where we are, with habits and defenses brought from the worlds
we want to change, with ideas, situations, and other people that are not acceptable,
simple, correct, and/or "attractive': For the last several years, the most vital currents
in the feminist movement have been those of women exploring and developing theory,fiction, and poetry from the particular circumstances of their lives. I S Publications andorganizations are growing around the lives and goals Of women from manybackgrounds, of many interests. We are making new words, insights, and priorities
because the old ones didn't fit.
Some warn that we are becoming too specialized: everyone has her own book, her
own group. Often the warning comes from those who do not see that we have been too
25

specialized - too white, too privileged by class and education - from the beginningand that as a movement we are finally becoming less so. Where we have found, andwill continue to find, strength in the recognition of similarity, now we must find it also
in the celebration of difference. Since many of the groups we belong to have been at
odds for generations and centuries, this discovery and celebration will be a challenging, often threatening, process.
Women sometimes say that focusing on (presumably tangential) issues like fat oppression will divert attention from "more important" concerns. For me, white, upperclass, and fat, the exact opposite was true. It was as a fat woman - not simply as awoman, or as a lesbian - that I understood what it's like when your mere presence offends and angers a total stranger. It was as a fat women that I learned what it's like tobe erased and excluded - to accept erasure and exclusion as inevitable - to be resentfully grateful for the occasional offers of inclusion - to feel from within the effects ofmy own corrosive rage.
Being both outsider and insider, white and female, upper class and lesbian, educatedand fat, has given me what Marilyn Frye calls binocular vision: the capacity to seefrom two angles at once. 16 For that anonymous woman on Elana Dykewomon's travels,
fat oppression was yet another ism to be inscribed on a lengthening list, another rule tolearn, another subject to watch your mouth about. For me it provided a key, a will to
go beyond the "oughts" toward a transformation of consciousness, toward a gut
understanding of how I oppress as well as how I am oppressed.
There are many other keys. Being female, for instance, or being lesbian, or being theonly heterosexual woman in an openly lesbian group. Being working class, or mixed
class, or mixed blood. Difference - whatever it is, inborn or chosen, that locks you outof simplicities and generalizations and forces you to find your own way and your own
language - provides many of the keys. Being different in some ways does not
miraculously allow you to understand all forms of difference. It can enable you,though, to realize that there are women whose ways you don't know at all; it can remind you to be flexible, empathetic - to listen with care.
Years ago we recognized that the personal is political and the political, personal.
Radical feminism pushes us both inward and outward - out into the world and in
toward our own sources and particularities. We do not expect ourselves to be perfect.
We try not to pounce at the first sign of imperfection. We try not to create movements
and communities where a woman has to pass for something she is not in' order to betaken seriously and treated with respect, where she is encouraged to keep silent or tomaneuver cagily through the minefield of p.c.!p.i. We are, after all, each of us thewoman for whom we are creating a world. Every one of our voices is needed.
Any woman's silence is a flaw in our foundation, a flaw that weakens the growing
whole more surely than any dissent or disagteement. The responsibility is twofold: notto silence others, and not to let ourselves be silenced. Neither is easy.

26

NOTESlIn Shadow on a Tightrope: Writings by Women on Fat Oppression , edited by Lisa Schoenfielder
and Barb Wieser, Aunt Lute Book Co., 1983, pp. 144-154.
'I borrow the phrase from Karen Lindsey, who used it in "Debate, Don't Excommunicate," in Sojourn er,
February 1983.
lIn Lesbian Connection, vol. VI, no. 4, August/September 1983. This article, one of the first I've seen thatrefers to the harmful effects of p.c.ip.i., discusses ways to make our movement less vulnerable to government
infiltrators and provocateuses.
'In Sinister Wisdom 19, winter 1982, pp. 13-23 .
'Published 1978 by Persephone Press; reprinted 1984 by Alyson Publications.
6This echoes a phrase in Adrienne Rich's "Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying." It appears in Rich's
On Lies, Secrets and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978, W.W. Norton, 1979, and also as a pamphletfrom Motheroot Publications, 214 Dewey Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15218.
'Common Lives/Lesbian Lives 3, spring 1982, pp. 75-78. Lest anyone be tempted to take these remarks
as a condemnation of this vital quarterly, I want to say that CL has shown great courage and lesbian commitment from its first issue. By openly discussing its editorial process, the CLiLL collective took a major,
probably terrifying, step toward ending some particularly frustrating silences.
'CLILL 4, summer 1982, p. 107.
9CLlLL 6, winter 1982/3, p. 45.
I·CLlLL 4, summer 1982, p. 109.
"For this also I am indebted to Adrienne Rich's "Women and Honor," cited above.
"In This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherrle Moraga
and Gloria Anzaldua, Persephone Press, 1981, pp. 94-97; reprinted 1983 by Kitchen Table Women of Color
Press), and also in Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde, The Crossing Press, 1984.
IIDaly's disciples, I should add, are oftentimes as adept as her critics at bleeding the resilience and humor
from her work. They don't play or expand any frontiers; they take Daly's words and apply them like a freshcoat of paint to a variety of subjects and settings. The new color may be pleasing to the eye, but it neithertransforms nor reveals anything new about the underlying structure - as Daly's own work often does. In thehands of those who lack her spirit, Daly's innovations congeal, surprise no one, become cliches.
"I do not know how many times I have quoted this remark, whose truth becomes more clear, important,and many-faceted with age. This is the first time I have used it in print, so I want to credit Lorraine Biros,with whom I share a Gemini birthday. For the last four years we have inaugurated each new year in goodpolitically incorrect style by discoing to the strains of "Macho Man." Each year more women join in.
15Cherde Moraga discusses this "theory in the flesh" in -This Bridge Called My Back . "A theory in theflesh means one where the physical realities of our lives - our skin color, the land or concrete we grew up
on, our sexual longings - all fuse to create a politic born out of necessity." (p. 23)
16In The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory by Marilyn Frye, The Crossing Press, 1983.
" . .. (M)arginality opens the possibility of seeing structures of the dominant culture which are invisible fromwithin it. .. . Most ~f us (gay men and lesbians) know that straight world from the inside and, if we only
will, from its outer edge. We can look at it with the accuracy and depth provided by binocular vision."(From the essay "Lesbian Feminism and the Gay Rights Movement: Another View of Male Supremacy,
Another Separation, " pp. 128-151. The quotation cited appears on p. 148.)
Acknowledgments
Thanks first to the many women who have supported me in the writing of "politically correct" by telling meover and over again, "Yes, it is important, and no, you won't get murdered for it". I am particularly gratefulto the women who have labored over various of my drafts and gives generously of their insight, perspectives,and literary skill: Susan Wood-Thompson, Susan Bernick, Maureen Brady, Judith Treesberg, Donna
Harrington, Jane Noll, Liz Quinn, Tina Moon, and Pat Daly.

27

Heather
Four Poems About Fat
PORTRAIT #1.
She once dieted down to a size 18,
got a lover and lost her virginity.
That was a hundred pounds ago;she hasn't been touchedin seven years,
and doesn't expect to be.
She owns two dresses
and a robe - size 52;
doesn't go out unless it's
absolutely necessary.

Last year she almost diedfrom a boil on her thighwhich got infectedeven though she'd doctored itwith over-the-counter medications
and kept it antiseptic.
By the time she called for help
she was near delirium.
The doctor called her a fat slob
and said she deserved her fate.
She was not too sick to care.
Next time she may choose to die.

28

She baby-sits
for less than minimum wage
with children
too young to criticize.
She has a college degree
in English;
wanted to be a teacher;now she reads a lot.
Her parents pay the rent,
for which she writes
good-daughter lettersevery week.
She drinks herself to sleep.

She has thin blond hair
which she fixes
in a graceful chignon.
Her hands are delicate.
She blushes easily
and her eyes are large
and pale, pale blue,
almost lavender.
When she smiles,
her face is radiant;but she doesn't much.

PORTRAIT #3
By the time she'd had
her second child,she passed 200 on the scale.
Her husband wouldn't
sleep with her;
he said fat was disgusting.
It took her over a year
to diet to her former size,
and then she left him.
She' s back to normal now.

PORTRAIT #4: WEIGHT LOSS
"She looks so good," they said,"so healthy and so good! "But I was shocked to see her,angular now and hard,
her neck a cypress tree,
tendon roots all visible
and anchored toa jutting collar bone.
At first I didn't recognizethat she's someone I know
and I had to stretch to recall
how it was she used to be.
Still the same quick wit
but somehow ·sharper
now that her face
has lost its soft.
She never used to wear
a low necked blouse.
It's sad she kept
her shoulders covered
all that time
when they were beautiful.
But it seems there's no one here but me
who mourns the loss.

29

An Affirmation
To be chanted daily by every woman who has everdieted, while looking in a full length mirror (and asneeded in trying social situations).

Here I come walking
my fat all around me,
flouncing and bouncing
like layers of ruffles;
a fancy and fine way
to decorate bones.
Here I come striding,like ocean waves rolling,
my thighs two huge whales
at play in the sea.
Make way for the Venus
embodied in me.
Here I come dancing,flesh jiggling and dimpling,breasts swinging, hips giggling,a vast celebration like party balloons
andstreamers festooned.
Here I am sitting,the Buddha incarnate,
the tide of my body
welling round me;
the universe grounded,a wide spreading tree.
Here I come billowing
and roiling and rumbling,. like thunderclouds swellingto scatter the dry.
Don't be fools fighting lightning;t~ke heed, clear the way.
I'm the GRAND mother,
BIG sister, GREAT daughter,
insuring survival,
the fat of the land.
And I cannot wither
lest all pass away.
30

Christian McEwen

Spell to Separate Your Parents from Yourself,andto Connect with Them Again.

Look into a mirror, and notice what in your face is like your mother andwhat in your face is like your father. Take time for both, imagining theirfaces as precisely as you can, and describing them to yourself wth interest
and affection, as you would describe the face of a new friend. Then
describe your own face in the same way. Inevitably some old stuff will
come up about what it means to be good looking, or not so bad, or ugly.
Let that pass through you, write it down, but do not hold onto it. Stroke
your eyelids softly with the little fingers of both hands, and imagine
yourself back into your heritage, part of a long line of people: being born,and giving birth and dying. Make reparation. Kiss your own reflection on
the lips. Know that you are still learning and that that is all right.

31

Jan Hardy

for a friend, for the child inside her
your chosen namelike new skincovering the wound of your childhood
i've tried to imagine - me, with a family
whose anger always turned
inside - my mother's tension headaches, her eyes
begging for quiet
my father's withdrawal behind a booki try to imagine
the sting of liquor in your mother's throat,
her words becoming poison, her hands
weapons
you and your sister afraid to wake her
taking turns and ducking the slap
i try to imagine - me, with a mother
who only drank sweet, strong iced tea,a mother whose laughter
healed her daughters instead of cutting themeven now
i lie in bed on weekend mornings
listening to sounds from downstairs apartments,
and in a homesick half-sleep
it all comes back:my father's low, calm voice,my twin sisters' counterpoint, the dogs
barking and scuffling,
the smell of toast and coffee,
and i'm curled again in my single bed upstairs
then i think of you as a childtied to your bed
from nine at night to whatever time
your parents woke up
the morning after their party they didn't want you
bothering the guests
32

i think of you in your dark bedroom,
wrists and ankles chafed,muscles stiffening, and your tears
streaming slow
time passing so slow - i can't
imagine it
i only dropped one syllable from my nameyou needed to change yours entirely
you wore it at first
like a child playing dress-up, the fabrictoo stiff and heavy, too brightslowly the cloth began
to fit your muscles,
took on the colors and contours of your skin
finally
becoming a second skin, a spell
your new namespoken by women who love you,who call to bring you closer
for the healing, sweet oilon the wounds inflicted by the firstwoman to hold you - let us
lift you in our arms and rock you
over and over, singing
the music you choseto the child inside you that still,somewhere, answers with fear
to an old name. df53I.""""'~

33

Laura Derr

The Beginning of Briar Rose's DreamThe inside time. Winter. The time of chaos. The time when things come apart. The
time when the structures that are no longer useful fall apart. The time before the newforms have begun to come together. The time of chaos. The time of fear that nothing
will come. The time when nothing comes. The time of wanting to hold on. The time offalling. The time of falling and falling and nothing is there. The time when the only
thing there is faith that there will be something there. The time when nothing is there.
The time of letting go and falling. The time of falling and falling. The time of falling
asleep.
I fell asleep. I fell into the chaos. I fell into the endless chasm, into the nothingness. I
fell into my sleep ing time. I let go of the edge. I fell through the first skin. I saw
nothing. I fell through nothing. I saw more nothing. I fell to the next skin. I thought I
had landed. I fell through the next skin. Now there were pieces flying past me. My
mother's whisper. My father's command. The golden plates. The wise woman's eye.
Her other eye. Her spinning wheel. My father's horses. All of them. My mother's ring.
The whisker of the wise woman's cat. Her cat's eye. Its other eye. I fell to the next
skin. I thought I had landed. I fell through the next skin. Now the pieces flying past me
were unknown to me. They had no names. I could not name them. They only called to
my fear. My fear was enormous. I was surrounded by my fear. I fell through my fear. I
fell to the next skin. I hoped I had landed, but I thought now maybe I hadn't. I fellthrough the next skin. Now the pieces weren't even pieces. They weren't separate fromeach other. They were something thick. I was falling through something thick. It was
unclear, but it was all joined together. I fell to the next skin.
I knew I would fall through. I fell through the next skin. Now what was thick had
form. The thickness had names. Many names. The mud. The earth. The land. The soil.
The clay. The rock. The crystal. The fog. The mist. The drop. The tear. The blood. The
ice. The stream. The river. The water. The pond. The sea. The ocean. The grass. The
willow tree. The oak. The ash. The elm. The hazel. The briar. The spider. The snake.
The lizard. The toad. The frog. The cat. The ox. The horse. The animal. The people. All
the people. The wise woman. My mother.
~'---------------------~----------------------~~

34

Virginia Johnson
heritage - for my grandmotherburied andliving in a locket
you glowin the centerof my dreams
white lightedges your bodybendingover washboard
bruising out stains
you are a piece of orethat ticks
emitting light and eons
- generations
in one bodybent over minebruising mysolitary sleep

old-country farm
grandmothers
leaning on
plow-horses
hay-wagons
nursing babies
in the furrows
grandfathers
leaving behind fields
to follow a black sun

down a hole
you light up
the new country nights
shape of a bottle's mouth
brawls under a yellow moonover worn-out clothes
over lovegasping for breathin black lungs
the grandchildren
stand clean
unfreckled by coal
you feed us
raisin-speckled breadsweet buttersmooth our hair stained hands
penetrating
to our bones

35

Linda QuinlanMarie
Two shopping bags
hitting against thin knees,
and a scarf for church
almost reaching white ankle socks
she left 45 years
taking what she came with,a Brooklyn accentand five familiar blocks.
They were good streets,and backyards
with grapes that shaded six children
as she planted and picked
fine red tomatoes for sauce.
It took a long time to leave himin that cobblers store,so many years of banging and pounding
to restore the marks on her face.
The shopping bags weren't too heavy,
he had the house,seven empty chairs in the living room.

36

Mary Moranfrom Letters to Mama
The Pinto Express
April 14
Dear Mama,
Well, I got me another job. It's with the hospital. I drive around the city to various
clinics and pick-up stuff from their labs. Mostly test tubes of blood, bottles of urine,swabs of viral matter, biopsy samples .and the like. I take it all back to the hospital
here, after making sure that it's properly labeled. Then our lab people analyze it, do allkinds of tests on their fancy machines and write reports on their findings. After that, I
deliver the results back to the doctors at the clinics.
Oh ya, they're teaching me how to do the billing and book-keeping, too.
The pay's not real good, but I like the driving part of the job alot. They gave me a little Pinto to use. It's purple on the outside and black inside. Real easy to drive.
On my morning route, I usually fit-in a stop at Dunkin Donut for a cup of coffee anda glazed french twist or a custard filled. A couple of the boys-in-blue are usually hanging out there when I stop. Regulars, ever since they discovered the prostitution ringworking out of the place a few months ago.
Afternoons, I like to stop at the Dairy Queen. A vanilla cone dipped in chocolate andsprinkled with crunchies tastes mighty fine about two-thirty.
Love,

Jo
April 29
Dear Mama,
It's quite a trick to time my route so I don't get slowed down at a railroad crossing
and have to wait for some twenty-minute-Iong freighter turtle its way past my street.
But when it does happen, me and my Pinto get comfortable and wait it out. Sometimes
I even take my shoes off and hang my feet out the window. I read the names on the box
cars and wonder what's inside. When an empty car passes by, I imagine myself hopping on and riding the rails all the way to the ocean. You know, to see the prairies andmountains and desert. And checking out Hollywood before switching trains and coming back through southern Canada... .I see the caboose pass and a flagman waving.
37

"Good-bye," I say and wave back. The gate lifts and I drive on to the next stop on myroute.
Love,
Jo. May 6
Dear Mama,
Did I tell you that I have to stop once a day at Greyhound? I pick-up boxes of things
sent down from a hospital up north for our pathologist here to examine.
On Friday I ran into Ruby at the station and chatted with her for a few minutes. She
was on her way horne for the weekend. Said the city was really getting on her nerves.
She seemed awful homesick to me. Did she drop in for a visit? I told her you'd bemighty pleased to see her again.
Love,
Jo
May 19Dear Mama,
I never realized just how many fire trucks and ambulances are out on the city streets
every day til I got this job. Why just yesterday I was headed for the last stop on myroute when I heard sirens. I checked the rear view mirror and spotted the flashing red
lights of an ambulance. By then I was stopped at an intersection with a car on each sideof me waiting for the signal to change. I figured one of us had better move so the ambulance could get through. Since neither of them budged, I started to. Well, half way
across the street I hear the siren right next to me instead of behind. I turned my head
and there was another ambulance headed right for me! I thought I was a goner for sure.

Fortunately, my foot automatically floored the gas pedal and saved me from getting
broad-sided by one ambulance and possibly rear-ended by another. I sure was scared
for a minute there, you know.
I drove those last few blocks to the clinic, trying to breathe easy and calm down. My
heart felt like it was going sixty miles an hour. When I walked into the lab I must havestill been shaking lik.e a leaf and looking like I had seen a ghost. Jeanie, the lab tech,made me sit down in her blood-drawing chair and tell her what happened. She got me
to laugh about it. That sure helped to shake off the fear.
All the excitement of the day really wore me out. I slept like a log last night.
Love,
Jo

38

May 26
Dear Mama,
Ruby called last night. What a surprise! She told me that she did stop-in to visit you
and Gerri. She said you two were real life-savers for her. When I asked how so, she got
all quiet for a minute there. I wondered if I was getting too personal. But then Ruby
started-in on telling me how her heart was broken because Pearl had up and left her
for a younger woman. Mostly I listened to Ruby pour out her heart. I know she wascrying because her voice was shaking so, and I heard her try to blow her nose real
quiet-like a few times. Oh mama, Ruby is hurting so bad and feeling old as the hills. I
just wanted to hug her close then so she'd feel better.
If you were here, I know you'd be telling me that Ruby will be OK and that all we
can do now is to have a shoulder ready for her to cry on.
.
Before Ruby hung-up, she told me that I sure was my mama's daughter. I felt rightproud to hear that. And I told her she could call me any time.
Mama, Ruby made me feel so grown-up by her talking with me like she did lastnight.
Love,
Jo
June 9Dear Mama,
My days with "the pinto express" are numbered.
The hospital just hired two more drivers and leased another car because more of theclinics around the city are interested in our service.
My boss told me I'd be responsible for training and managing the new drivers. He
said I would continue to be fully responsible for doing the billing and book-keeping.
Then he tells me my favorite part of the job-the driving-will be cut back to threehours a day. When I asked him how much of a raise I was getting, he said: " None" .
Then he went on to say that in six months all three of us would be evaluated andmaybe then I'd get a raise.
So after I train Roberta and Patti, I'll be looking for another job. Maybe I can get inat V.P.S. They're unionized and their drivers make three times the wage that I get
here.
Love,
Jo

39

Bringing Home the Bacon

July 30
Dear Mama,
I guess Mr. Fraser at Job Service got real tired of me calling him every day
about whether they were interviewing yet for new U.P.S. drivers.
He called me at home last night and said, "Oscar Mayer is taking applications
tomorrow from seven to nine in the morning. If you go, be there .early."
Well, mama, I called a taxi and was out there at 4 a.m. There already were fifty
people ahead of me in line. The good news is that I got my application in before
they closed the door to Personnel.
They'll be calling me tomorrow or the next day to say if I get to go on to thenext step-the physical. After I pass that, they'll make me a job offer!
Love,
Jo

August 5
Dear Mama,
They hired me! About a hundred of us got in. They put us in Bologna, Bacon,and Kill. We're the lucky ones. Over a thousand people had showed up wanting
jobs and were turned away.
Twenty-five of us started together in Bacon. We're called scalers. (That makesme think of fish, not bacon.) We weigh out estimated half-pounds of bacon strips as
they come rushing down a conveyor belt. If it weighs too much, we pull off a slice.
If it's not enough, we add a slice. When a full slice is too much or too little, we use
our scissors to cut part of a slice to balance the weight to exactly one half-pound on
our scales. Then we toss it on the upper conveyor belt and send it on to the wrapping machine. That's about all there is to the job. Pretty easy, huh.
Right now the hard part is trying to keep up-to work fast enough. The othernight my meat was piling up and all I could think of was an old "1 Love Lucy"show. It was the one where Lucy was working in a candy factory on the assembly
line. When her bon-bons started piling up, she began eating them to get rid of them.
Well, my supervisor came over and helped me catch up before I resorted to suchdrastic action. Thank God!
Love,
Jo

40

August 9
Dear Mama,
My joints have been aching. It's b!!cause of the cold temperature at work. I
know it has to be that cold there. When it's not, the slices of bacon stick together
like they were glued and that slows down our work. If it gets too cold, the slices fallapart and then it takes extra time to rearrange them for packaging after we get theweight right.
Pretty soon I'll be used to all this. In the meantime I take a long, hot soak in the
tub when I get home.
And no, mama, I don't smell bad from working there. Inside the plant there
isn't any stink. The bad smell is outside. It comes from the smoke stacks after theyburn the parts of the pigs and cows that people wouldn't want to eat.
Love,

, Jo
August 13
Dear Mama,
Thursday night I was trying to work too fast. Thinking about bonus pay insteadof watching what I was doing. I went to trim a slice of bacon and I cut right throughmy glove and into my finger. It wasn't anything serious, really. But because I was
bleeding, they took me off the line and sent me to the nurse. She had me soak myhand in some chemical stuff until the bleeding stopped. Then she bandaged myfinger.
I felt bad because I lost my bonus pay for the night. And because I was off theline, I made all the other women lose their bonus, too. I felt worse about that.
My finger is fine now and I'm being more careful at work.
Love,

Jo
August 19
Dear Mama,
Did I tell you they gave me a skid to stand on while I work? Makes me taller. I
can work faster. My legs don't hurt so much as when I was standing on the concrete
floor.
Our line is working so well together now that we're getting bonus every night.
You know I never made money like this before. I earn more in one week here than
I did working a whole month at the hospital. Can you believe it?
I hope pretty soon I'm not so tired from working. I mean I would like to haveenough energy left over to enjoy spending some of this "big money".
Love,

Jo
41

August 26
Dear Mama,.
Bad news. Our foreman told us last night that the bacteria count on the meat
was too high. He said that made the supermarket shelf-life too short. Then he told
us they were going to have to shut down our shift until they found the source of the
problem.
All of us who got hired last month know we won't be called back to work. We
haven't worked long enough to get into the union and so don't have job protection.
My last day is Friday.
I'm sorry, mama.
Love,
Jo
September 4
Dear Mama,
On Monday morning I went down to Job Service. I wasn't alone. All thewomen from Bacon were there standing in the unemployment line. We got to talking, started laughing about feast or famine and making jokes about bringing homethe bacon. The time went pretty fast.
I'll be getting unemployment compensation checks. Because the pay was sogood at the "weiner works", my VC checks will be the maximum ... higher than if
I was working myoId job at the hospital right now. This is kind of like a paid vacation! Of course it won't last long, so I'll start calling Mr. Fraser again every day
about any V.P.S. openings. It kind of worked for me before. Maybe it'll work again.
Mama, can I come home for a couple days? I miss you.
Love,
Jo

42

43

Renee. Pierce
Stress Management
Everything is going along 'quietly and suddenly one girl begins to
scream. If you don't move quickly . . .everyone in the room isscreaming. -Manager of an AMD semi·conductor plant in Malaysia.

The stress management classes in the Valley
had not described
the appropriate exercises
to manage
the screams
of women upon row
of women conducting semi-lives:
1,000 bonded chip leads a day
equals three dollars and fifty centsequals six days a week
and no money left for the seventh
equals headaches, eye strain, exhaustion.
Stress that defies
the measurements devised
Here, the beauty classes
for civilized levels of Silicon tension.
cannot distract
women forced to moonlightas prostitutes.
The company picnics do not relax
women living 16 to 3 rooms
in a furnitureless house.
Here, management's "open-door" policy
cannot force women to explain
why they are screaming.
So, here the management classes teachthat unions are the greatest source of stress.
They teach that exhaustionis the best antidote for organization.
They teach that while "worker freedom"
may do the job at home
What the management classes
chain-link fences work best here.
can not teachis how to stop the screams.
44

Terri Jewell

Armed Recruit"There will be no show ofemotion while in formation, girl!"
Her long river clay eyes bakedin slimy tracks of his smile,country dust/sow's swill.
"There will be no crying here.
Where in hell do you think you are,at a wedding?"
Peach orchards flashed hot in winterand her fingers tensed
rigor mortis on loose trigger.
"I hope you never give birth, female.
I'd hate to think you'd bring moreof your kind into the world.
That would be pathetic."
The rifle,
utterly clean/richly oiled
like skin under her eyes
spoke its well-rehearsed lines into
the CO's brain. He fell likeleaves back home
and the red Georgia rain
oozed into dirt at her
precisely-spaced feet.

45

Susan Stinson

Exhaustion PoemMaria Medina punched me out
while I scrubbed a tub .
. I took no breaks, no lunch.
She marked my card at 4:03.
I worked an hour free.
My tag says "Alma"so the guests know a name.
My vacuum says "Betty."
My cart says "Grace."46

E. J. Graff

Dorothy in Office WorkAs though new scarves could alter the color of her hair,as though the snoring dictaphone could call back the carpet of those
unrolling roads,
as though an IBM and instant-printing xerox could distract her fromthe stormclouds that once hauled her toward Oz,
as though she could return to being ordinary,as though she'd never seen her name scrawled across the angry witch's sky,as though she'd never wandered through spook-infested woods and slappedin fright the frightened lion,
as though her hands were born to a secretary's pencils,
she tries the role, she hangs up ferns beside the wide black files,
she fits whatever she's given inside the standard margins.

Blackbird, Fly
As I leave the spit-gray factory,
crowds of black birds drift
up into the cumulus
like released balloons.
I hold the wings of my fingertips
in my coat pocket.

47

Irena Klepfisz
The Distances Between Us: Feminism, Consciousness andthe Girls at the Office
An Essay in Fragments
For Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz who insisted,[ write it.
I am indebted to a number of people who helped me think through many of the issues
raised in this piece: Gloria Anzaldua, for her sympathy, feedback and dialogue; Esther
Hyneman, for dialogue, feedback, and editing; Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz for dialogue,
editing, and, above all, editorial patience; Berruce Mennis for consciousness'raising aroundthe issue of shame and for helping me get past the block; Judy Waterman for ongoing
dialogue over the past two years, criticism, feedback, and willingness to read it "just one
more time."
My acknowledgement of these women's support in no way indicates their endorsement of
positions that I take.

This essay is based on my experiences doing office work, something I have done on
and off for the past 25 years, supporting myself through college and graduate school
as a typist, receptionist, medical transcriber, and librarian's assistant (file clerk).
This was not unusual. In the late '50s and through the '60s most students at my college, CCNY, 1 and most graduate students at the University of Chicago worked(stipends and government loans never sufficed; men usually got added income fromwives). During this period, office work seemed to me necessary and tolerable
because I assumed it was temporary. While I was sensitive to many of the inequities,
I did not really focus on them. I assumed they would not be my problems. I was looking forward to a teaching career. I received my Ph.D. in 1970.
Between 1969 and 1973, I had a full-time teachingjob as an assistant professor
of English in New York City. When enrollment dropped, the teaching market was
already glutted and I, along with non-tenured faculty across the country, was laid
off. While I have done some adjunct teaching since then, I have never held anotherfull-time teaching position.
After a year collecting unemployment, I fell back on my office skills. For the past
10 years, with breaks for adjunct teaching and editorial work, I have held what
seems an infinite number ofjobs - frequently 2 or 3 part-time jobs at once. These
were usually higher level office positions such as legal secretary, proofreader,
copyeditor. In addition, I taught Yiddish for a while, tried my hand at Yiddish
translation, and taught creative writing workshops at home. But always sandwichedin was simple office work: typing, answering the phone, xeroxing, filing, and more
recently word processing. My income has never been steady, always uncertain. I remain constantly worried about where the next job will materialize.
1 City College of New York was free at the time, yet there was hardly any student I knew who did not workat least one part-time job.

48

In the mid- '70s it was still possible to survive by working part-time, but by the endof the decade, I had to return to full-time secretarial work - first in a law office,later in a school for disturbed boys, finally and more recently, in a posh psychiatrichospital. During this four-year period which ended in November, 1983, I managed
to carve out one block of uninterrupted time - eight months unencumbered by a job- that allowed me to write. I had saved some money and received support (rom mymother and then (rom a grant. One thread: my livelihood.
The second thread: my writing. Since I began to publish in the early '70s, mywriting itself has brought me virtually no income. I have self-published or been
published, have accumulated a substantial number of credits, but as for money, in
11 years, I have earned a total of $695 (rom contributions to anthologies. 2 As an
editor of Conditions, I received $1 ,200 for 41/2 years of work. 3
Where the threads converge. Keeper of Accounts was the collection I worked on during my eight month "break" in 1981-82. Though I have so far made no money (romit, it has been the positive response to that collection that has (reed me, at least for
now, (rom office work . Keeper has made me better knQwn as a writer, thereby qualifying me for a number of creative writing jobs and for a writer-in-residence grant.'
Since November, 1983, I have lived on income (rom these as well as (rom adjunctteach in/? in two different colleges. It has been a relief
I offer these details about my work history, my career as a writer and a teacher,and my economic situation because I want to be clear that I am not writing (rom theperspective of an office worker who has only done office work and has never had
other kinds of opportunities. Clearly, for a long time my life had all the markings of
upward mobility, and the Ph.D.' was intended to place me solidly in the middle class.
It was a course I had chosen and which I was not ashamed of It was only the
economic situation that checked these plans.
My history is not unique in this sense; I believe there is a far greater mixture andmix-up of education, class, and economic insecurity among women than feminists
recognize. Some of the reasons for this I discuss in this essay. Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, in one of our num erous dialogues, pointed out that on the whole our movement has too often equated the issues of class and race, thereby obscuring the needfor a separate analysis of each. One result has been an erasure of the white workingclass experience. A white woman - and especially a Jew like myself - is usually
Z My first collection of poetry, periods of stress, was self-published through Out & Out Books and later
distributed by me directly. I borrowed money for this venture and never broke even. My contributions toLesbian Poetry, Lesbian Fiction, and Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology have netted a totalof $145 and a complimentary copy of each anthology. When Persephone Press went bankrupt, it had already
distributed almost 2,500 copies of my second collection, Keeper of Accounts, but I had received no royalty payments. Ultimately [ borrowed $1 ,500 to buy the remaining 2,400 from Alyson Press to whom thebooks had been sold. Sinister Wisdom is currently dist ributing Keeper and I am expecting royalty
payments. The biggest royalties I have ever collected were for an essay anthologized in Why Children?
(The Women's Press Ltd., London: 1980). Editors Stephanie Dowrick and Sibyl Grundberg shared profits
equally with contributors; so far I have received approximately $550.
3 This was not from a salary, but from a $5,000 editorial grant which the collective received from the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines and split four ways.

• This was awarded by the New York State Council on the Arts, 1984.

49

assumed to be middle class, while a woman of color - especially Black, Hispanic,or Native American - is usually assumed to be working class, or poor, which isoften, but not inevitably, true.
My own experience in the movement substantiates Melanie 's analysis. Much of
the impetus for this article has stemmed from my frustration and anger at what I
have observed: distortion and erasure of the lives of women I have worked with atvarious jobs; ignoring, misunderstanding, and romanticization of my own experience. The resistance to clarity has, predictably, been greatest from middle classand downwardly mobile women who have never felt and thus simply do not understand economic traps and limitations.
Because the office experience is not my life's work either, because I expect that thenext 10 years will be like the last, with office work comprising only part of my working life, because I expect to continue benefiting from my writing and my training as ateacher, I too cannot completely convey what it means to remain 25 or 35 years typing at a desk and never to have any other options. And while I have frequently beenbroke, have been and am constantly in debt, I have never been the poorest of thepoor. But I have experienced the sense of entrapment and futility that office work canbring for periods long enough to enable to me to glimpse their meaning. For this
glimpse I feel peculiarly indebted, knowing that had my life gone according to myclass, I would have known no work but office work; and had my life gone according
to my plans, my knowledge of this kind of working life would have been almost nonexistent. In fact, this knowledge and my friendship with other office workers havebeen the only benefits of the experience .

... *.

I keep asking myself why I need to write this - what it is that I need to say. As often
happens with my writing, the title comes first: "The Distances Between Us." The "us"- my sisters in the women's movement (however, one defines it) and the women in
the offices I work in - who talk disparagingly about that movement, about "libbers,"
about how they like to have doors opened for them, about the poor "spinster" living
down the road.
I did not say my "sisters in the offices I work in" because I'm not used to writing or
reading that phrase. My failure. Our failure. But sisters they are with a connection I
feel strongly despite our different lives, our different levels of consciousness, despite
the fact that most of the time I cannot be open about myself as a dyke, a Jew, a writer.
But then, am I fully myself in the women's movement when the life I lead - the experience of offjce work and economic pressure - is not part of the feminist consciousness? So there is distance there too.
This essay represents my attempt to balance a perspective in a movement I am deeply committed to - the feminist movement. I want to view the world, or at least the immediate society in which I function, not only from the vantage point of a deliberate,conscious lesbianlfeminist, but also from the vantage of those women who seem to reject feminism theoretically, but obviously need a feminist movement because they areaffected by women's issues - including class, work and economics about which they
are the experts and can teach us. Too often these women are excluded because they do
not have the correct political language or consciousness. Ironically, much of our50political rhetoric includes their condition and living circumstances. And yet how often
do we dismiss them or put down their perspectives as uninformed and unenlightened
because they do not talk like we talk, do not operate from the same framework.
**** *March 11, 1983: The deadline for this essay is almost past and nothing that looks likean essay has yet emerged. s I have a pile of separate sheets of paper with first-draft
notes: memories, observations, half-formulated ideas and theories, questions, suggestions for answers, reminders to look uP .certain passages. Most of these have been jotted down at high speed on my office IBM selectric, usually when I should have been
doing something else and was tense that I might be caught.
These separate sheets physically embody part of what it is I want to write about.
What it is like to be an alert, thinking human being absorbed, assaulted by mindless,unintelligent work. The fragmentation. The sense of being scattered. What it is like not
to have time to think, to consider an idea and follow it through to its logical conclusion.
This condition - devoid of logic because it is irrational, devoid of structure because it
is aimless, devoid of theme or thesis because it is pointless - is not unique to me justbecause I happen to want to write. Rather it is the common experience of many working people, an experience that I have observed and shared primarily with those who do
office work.6 Most of the office workers I have met are not writers and do not want tobe; nor are they lesbians or conscious feminists. Yet how often between transcription
tapes, during extended coffee or smoke breaks, on those Friday afternoons that seemendless - how often have I heard them speak of the sense of deprivation, of being robbed, the sense of loss that I happen to experience in relation to my writing. Eight hours
a day, five days a week, we all lose possibilities, lose self.
I am stuck with this paradox. Those who do not share this life of aimless, meaningless work, those who do not sit and feel day after day go to waste, simply do not
know, cannot, I believe, fathom the depth of its destructiveness. They do not know,
and yet they think they know, frequently creating theories about it, stating how workand economic issues are important, yet how we must move past them towards"deeper" or "higher" ones. Poor and working-class women know that a lot of the timethese are the only issues; no wonder, therefore, they find such theoretical writing not too difficult as some would have us believe - but too abstract, too divorced fromtheir own daily struggles.
My own experience has taught me that work and economic issues are essential starting points for feminist discussions, ones which cannot be quickly skipped over. They
affect us psychologically, affect our personalities, our creativity, our ways of thinking,affect our relations with each other. Unfortunately those of us who understand thisthrough direct experience - well, the experience itself frequently blocks us from communicating what we know. After all, how many of us have the time or space to pull
As this indicates, [ have been trying to finish this essay for the past year and a half.
Gloria AnzaldUa pointed out that this is true of those who also do physical and factory work or for that matter any kind of work not involving the self.

5

6

51

together our knowledge and observations? How many of us have the energy, in fact,
both to absorb the experience and to convey it to others in whatever form? And this isprecisely the trap in which I now find myself. Knowing. Yet not being able to speak.
Fact 1: My life at this time does not allow me to write the traditional essay: beginning, middle, end - state your thesis clearly; develop the argument; illustrate appropriately; smooth out transitions; refine the logic, conclude. And I really do not wantto produce such an essay, but rather something that is closer in form to my way of life
and, equally important, closer to the process of my writing.
The fragmentation of this piece, therefore, is not unlike the fragmentation of the livesof those of us who have no time to ourselves. The leaps, ellipses, zigzags are the resultof a specially developed thought process, one that is not linear because it is always interrupted, frequently free-associative and haphazard, rarely schematized. We think.
But we think differently. Sudden realizations, half-finished paragraphs, an outline, asketch. But not smooth development, ordered philosophy.
Fact 2: If those of us stuck in these situations are going to say anything at all, thenwe must say it in non-traditional ways. We must speak in leaps, in zigzags, iii incomplete parts. To wait until we can speak smoothly and completely is to doom
ourselves to silence.
Inside and Outside
I frequently talk about being in the "real" world as opposed to the feminist or lesbian circle. What is the opposition I set up?
Everything outside the feminist movement is the "real" world. This consists of theinstitutions, the office and office workers at my current job, my family and friends"from before." When I think this way, do I mean the feminist world is "unreal?"
Not so much unreal as sifted. To some degree. To a great degree. The "movement"
world - the inside - is created through choices. We choose the people we want towork with, we choose the causes we want to work on, we choose the feminist institutions we want to create. None of this is absolute, but certainly it seems true to a greater
degree than in the "real" world - the outside. Because we are so used to thesechoices, coalitions are frequently difficult to make. We think we have a choice about
whom we work with. And there are people we choose not to work with.
OutsideI have no control over the circumstances in the office I work in. I look for a job andusually take what I can get, hoping for a decent salary or benefits or a manageable
travelling time - all the considerations surrounding work. But I do not choose theother people in the office, just as I do not choose other members of my family, just as I
do not select who can be a Jew or woman. Jhese all come with birth. And working circumstances come with the job.
What always astonishes me is how quickly people whom I have never seen before
begin to exert enormous power and influence over my life. My boss could be constantly proving his authority by demanding I let him know when I need to leave my desk52

and go to the bathroom. My supervisor might hate her job, be frustrated with the administration and take it out on me by constantly dropping in to see "exactly what you
are doing." The supply person might take a disliking to me and not give me a goodtranscribing machine. When you consider that you must spend 8 hours a day, 5 days aweek dealing with any or all of this, life can become a complete nightmare. It is noteasy just to say: I guess I'll leave and find something else. Not in these times when jobs
are scarce, when you're middle-aged and no longer can "pretty up" some man's office,when you've been conditioned by poverty not to leave any job.
Given these circumstances, most women in offices know it's to our advantage to pull
together. There are always exceptions, the ones sucking up to the supervisor or boss;
but these individuals are easy to spot because of their isolation. There is no faking
around this issue. Most of us know who the enemy is, even if we are very different
from each other. In the office, we rarely mistake what side of the line we are all on.
InsideWe act as if we always have a choice. We are insulted when asked to associate or joinwith someone we disagree with or dislike. We try as much as possible to pick andscreen those around us.
This is probably an exaggeration.
This is probably not an exaggeration. Look at the in-fighting, the pulling apart, thetrashing and back-stabbing. We confuse who the real enemy is, frequently fingering
each other. We act as if we can afford to pick and choose. And we can't.
Two Episodes
Outside: I am being interviewed for a secretarial job. I have made a mistake in this application by admitting, not that I have a Ph.D. (which I know never to admit to inthese situations), but that I have an M.A. The job as advertised seemed to require someresearch and editing experience. I misread. My prospective boss, a psychiatrist, worries that I'm overqualified. Would I be bored? he asks. I've been asked this question
before whenever the issue of my education has come up. The implication is, of course,that the more educated you are, the more tedious the work will seem.
Does he think women with a high school degree find transcription and typing interesting and stimulating? What kind of hierarchical conception of human beings does
this psychiatrist have? How is it that a well-educated man, supposedly trained in sensitivity, does not have any idea that every single secretary around him sees through his
arrogance and condescension and is repeatedly outraged by them? And to what degree
does he - and those like him - have to dehumanize office workers in order to maintain this limited view of them?
Let me put it another way: what deliberate ignorance and callousness to people high school drop-out and Ph.D., secretary, housewife, athlete, construction worker,
farm worker - would allow for the conclusion that anyone would find this work
anything but boring?

53

Inside: Another writer has just finished reading my short story "The Journal of Rachel

Robotnik." The story is about a woman office worker - and a writer - trying to findtime to write, trying to cope with the tensions between other transcribers in her steno
pool and their boss, trying to find some balance in her chaotic life. My friend, a
political writer, proud of her political awareness and commitments, likes the story
very much, but confesses: "I've always wanted to write about office work. But it's soboring. I've never been able to do it." At first I am stunned. Then I feel rage at theignorance, insult of the remark. Office work, I know is very boring, very boring indeed. But the people who do office work are not. Certainly not any more than any
other people. My friend knows she must be aware of the "working class," must "reachout" to them, but in her own life, what she does is distance. For her the work and thepeople are one and the same: only boring people would spend a lifetime doing boringwork. No wonder she - and others like her - can't build personal or political bonds
with working-class women.
Inside and Outside: One night when I had a bad case of insomnia, I remembered these
two episodes and suddenly realized that in both the word "boring" loomed large -though the judgment came from two people seemingly opposed politically and ethically. Neither my boss (and he finally hired me) nor my politically correct friend with her
guilt toward the working class sees the woman office worker for what she is: as complex a human being as the political writer wanting to make an impact on the world
through her radical political analysis; as complex a human being as the head of a
research department of a modern psychiatric hospital, claiming to have insight into thepsyches of others. As complex and as simple. But only those who have allowed
themselves to look beyond the occupation label and made personal contact and sharedexperiences will know that.

.** ••

I have encountered extraordinary arrogance and ignorance concerning working-classpeople, often from feminists who are well educated, of middle-class backgrounds, andwho pride themselves on their political analyses, their raised consciousness andawareness, and their critical appraisal of privileges. Some examples:- I review a novel about a waitress and ask for some feedback. On one note I receive
the following question: Given that this novel is written in different voices and from different perspectives, should you not deal with the fact that a working-class woman will
not understand it?
Why should she not understand it?

- I present a poem to a workshop that I am leading. It describes a working-classwoman who - among other things - mentions that she believes in seeing things"aesthetical." Members of the workshop object. How could such a woman know sucha concept, much less the word itself?
Why should she not know it?

-A woman tells me about a political group in which members decided to use theword "ain't" in their flyers so that the group would seem like "one of the people."
No comment.

54

-Another woman tells me of rewriting leaflets primarily in monosyllables so the"masses" could understand them better.
No comment.

-A "downwardly mobile" dyke tells me she's going to get unemployment. It's notvery much, but she's decided to collect anyway even though it seems a lot of trouble
and somehow, she implies, is demeaning to fill out all those forms and stand on line
once a week.
What must she think of the rest of us who line up obediently and to whom it neveroccurs that we should do otherwise because we have no choice?

Arrogance. Contempt. But above all - incredible ignorance. The "masses" out there
are stupid, uneducated, unreachable unless you speak to them in kindergarten English.
They are not people with a different way of living, surviving, with their own perspective. They are inferiors. To most middle-class feminists, as to most middle-class nonfeminists, working-class women remain mysterious creatures to be "reached out to" insome abstract way. No connection. No solidarity.
A Feminist Consciousness
A memory from the late 70s: I am teaching a course: Introduction to Women'sStudies. It is summer and we meet four times a week in the evenings. The class is atypical New York City mixture of Third World and white women, middle-class andworking-class, gay and straight, Jew and Christian, old and young.
Before I started teaching, I had been warned that women registering for it would probably have a low level of consciousness on feminist issues in general. This turns out to
be too true. Though they live in New York City, not one has ever stepped inside a
women's bookstore (at the time there were three) or attended a women's event (andthere were dozens). Most are here out of a conscious curiosity as well as an unconscious pull towards feminism. And so we spend a great deal of time on what isbasically consciousness-raising. After about three weeks they are much more sensitive,
more aware of sexism, of feminist perspectives and analyses. Initially very skeptical,
they are now frequently angry.
At the midpoint in the course, I assign a story from the violence issue of Heresies, astory about a family outing at a lake.7 As I remember it, no overt violence takes place;but throughout the outing the father bullies the wife and children incessantly. The classdiscusses domestic violence, the different degrees, levels, types. Without thinking verymuch about it, I ask casually: "Well, what about the mother? What do you think ofher? After all, she's fairly passive. Do you think she can be reached?"
The answers come quickly. No. Absolutely not. She's beyond help. Maybe this isnaive of me, but I am genuinely shocked. Most of the women in the class seemed inher condition only three weeks before. And now - they deem her a hopeless case:She 's the type that never changes. Why, I wonder, do they give up on her so quickly?
Why do they distance themselves from her?
Suddenly I am angry. Everything we've been doing for the past three weeks seems
worthless. What's the point if there is no identification, no empathy? So I return the7

Anita Page, "The Pleasure Outing," Heresies #6 11978), pp. 27-33.

55

next day and make a very clear statement: I refuse to let them give up on thischaracter. I tell them I am willing to sit in silence for the remainder of the course until
they come up with some kind of satisfactory answer in relationship to the woman in
the story.
And so we sit. And I wait. No one is particularly comfortable. The silence goes on fora long, long time. And then finally one woman blurts out: "What the hell is she supposed to do? Just pick up the kids and go? Where? And do what?"
And with that question, with what is clearly an identification with the woman's
perspective and options, the class is off. They begin a serious discussion of choices. Of
helplessness. Of indoctrination. Of breaking through the indoctrination - what makes
it possible, what blocks it. Of available support systems. Of support systems thatshould exist but do not. Of the feelings that led them to register for the class. The factthat the class existed. The fact that they knew someone who encouraged them. And on
and on.
What they bridged at this point was the distance their consciousness created between
themselves and other women who had not reached the same point. They remembered
and integrated their past experiences with their new perceptions. They realized that ayoung mother with two children, with no independent income or social support will
tolerate a great deal from a cruel husband. Her remaining with him might not be juststubborn resistance to feminist ideas of women's strength and independence, nor her"ineducability," but rather a realistic acceptance of the circumstances which allow her
and her children to survive, even if painfully.
A Recent Interpretation: When I described this episode to Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz,
she remarked that when people first discover new parts of their identity, their tendency is to strengthen their self-perception by separating themselves from those who do
not share it. This solidifies one's new position. We see this frequently with just-out lesbians who can't bear heterosexual women, or newly born radicals who scorn all who
are not politicized like them.
Still, if this type of separating is a necessary stage of the process, it should be only
temporary. For when consciousness does nothing except separate us from each other, it
is useless. Maybe worse than useless. It is divisive.
I have watched feminists with such "raised consciousness" be contemptuous of theoffice worker who wears make-up and worries about her weight (never mind if thesemight be legitimate concerns in relation to her job). Such a judgment reveals: one, thatthe working-class woman is seen as completely passive, having to be changed by others
and having nothing to offer; and, two, that her experience as well as her being are
deemed too lOWly. This analysis frequently passes for "consciousness" or "being
political," again separating those who are from those who aren't. In this context, being
political means being morally superior.
I am reminded of Anzia Yezierska who, in her story "Brothers," wrote: "Education
without a heart is a curse." And a raised consciousness without a heart is not only acurse, but a fraud.
*****
56

February 22, 1983: Why do we always assume that having a "raised consciousness"or "political awareness" is desirable? I remember my initial exhilaration after finishing
Tillie Olsen's Silences. Though much of the content was not "new" - my background
had already clued me in to many of the limitations that this book describes - I had
never really thought about silencing in such a systematic way, nor had I thought about
how it applied to myself as a writer.
For example, I had always characterized myself as "not very prolific." This was not
said defensively, just descriptively. I did not produce much. It hadn't occurred to me
that the circumstances of my life did not lend themselves to my being prolific because
most of my energy was expended on trying to support myself. Writing was, of course,
important, but not most important. It was not anything I cried about. Who cries aboutsuch things? Certainly no one I knew while growing up. I was taught that everyone
works. And no one expects any pleasure from it. You just do it. And writers are no exceptions.
I read Silences at a time when I was taking my writing more and more seriously. As
I said, the initial realization of the various barriers - sexist, social, economic, racial that silence us, that prevent us from externalizing our vision and experiences of theworld was exhilarating: certain discrete perceptions suddenly fell into place andcreated a pattern in the midst of complete chaos.
But as the recognition took hold, as it sank deeper into my consciousness, as the true
implications of that pattern became clearer, as I realized the full force of the "givens"of my life in relation to my writing, I began to experience a tremendous upheaval - aperiod of intense rage and pain. I became acutely aware, in a way I had not been
before, of all my limitations.
I read Silences in 1979 during a short three-month "break" from work. Afterwards, I
began working full-time in a law office. I had begun to write the story "The Journal of
Rachel Robotnik." Every day during that period, while typing, while transcribing,while xeroxing, while filing, I would think: I could be writing. I could be writing mystory. I could be working on many stories, on many poems. I went through a period of
intense self-observation, of focusing on the exact meaning of what I was living through.
Day after day completely wasted in meaninglessness work. Getting up every morning.
Crowding into the dilapidated subway. Other people crowding around me. Empty,
bleak days. All I could think was: I am wasting, wasting everything in me. For almost afull year I counted and measured every minute, every second in my life that was being
wasted. The constant calculating was excruciating.
The rage was soon accompanied by an envy that worked like a high-powered
microscope, making visible and enlarging differences, magnifying what others had andwhat I did not have. A writer I knew who didn't need to work was looking for a roomso she could write in seclusion and peace; her home, she said, was chaotic. I envied
her, could barely look directly at her when she explained "her problem." Another
woman was taking time off because she was feeling scattered and just couldn't focus(she had income from sources outside of her job). Someone else went away on vacation
to unwind. Someone else was just staying home. I envied them and sometimes hated57them. I could not forgive them for not being in my position.
These were the kinds of emotions that erupted in me as I awakened to the limitationsof my growth as a writer. Envy is a horrible thing, especially when directed at what is
not within our control. It is like raging at a thunderstorm. It is stupid. It eats you up.
But I felt it. And it came with the perception that consciousness brought. At the time,
there was nothing I could do about my condition. And so I yearned for the time when I
was oblivious to it.
••• u
I remember another feeling I experienced during this period. Every morning I would
take the train from Brooklyn and get off at 42nd Street and Grand Central Station in
Manhattan. I would hurry through the station surrounded by hundreds and hundredsof other people, all also rushing to get to work on time. Thousands of us would bunch
up near the escalators that took us up into the Pan Am Building, a short cut to theHelmsley-Spear Building where I worked. As I waited, completely surrounded bymasses of people, completely lost among them, and then as I began to move upward on
the escalator and saw those above me getting off and those below me still crowded andwaiting patiently, I would be overcome with a feeling I can only imagine close to
mystical. I, raised an atheist and completely non-spiritual in my approach to life,
would be overcome with such a sense of oneness with the people around me, such asense of being with them - a feeling I had never before nor since felt. I knew we were
all lost together, that we were all being eaten up, swallowed up as if we were on a large
conveyor belt feeding us to oblivion.
At those moments, I neither envied nor raged. I felt enormous peace with everyone. I
knew I was sharing a basic experience with thousands of people. I did not feel alone.
Wasting a Life
A memory: I am meeting a friend who is working for the "Fair Hearings Court" of theState of New York. She transcribes the court proceedings of welfare recipients whochallenge decisions on a local Jevel.
The transcribin'g pool is in the midst of a vast floor space - on the edges are crates
filled with files , desks piled on top of each other. Smack in the center of this upheaval- there's no way to tell if they're moving in or moving out - there are 10 transcribers
sitting in two rows facing each other. At the head of the two columns sits the supervisor, a woman who used to be one of the giris. She has risen through the ranks andalong the fringes. Behind each row of transcribers are a few other desks with e)ctra
space around them - state bureaucrats. And then the cartons, crates and stacked officefurniture. Large windows look out on the State Capital. Outside, I can see the enormous towers built by Rockefeller in honor of himself. His labyrinthian highways run
under this plaza, unnecessary highways which required the demolition of century-old
bridges.
The transcriber who is my friend is also a sculptor of massive structures that seem topush themselves out of the studio, that always seem to demand more space than she
can provide. Karen is sitting, one of the girls, dressed in typical "bohemian" fashion bright green Indian pants, a burning pink blouse, her long black hair defiantly loose58and the grey streaks quite unashamedly visible.
She sits the third one down. She is facing a young woman who has her hair cut punk,defiantly green. Karen sits and transcribes. She is wearing boots, her foot is on thepedal, the headset over her ears. I stand for a moment and watch her silently. She cannot see me.
Later she will tell me how not a single case that she has transcribed during the past
three months, not a single welfare recipient who has come for a hearing in order to increase payments or be reimbursed for a refrigerator, for an electric bill, for nursing
care, for food - not a single one has won a case in the state/s "Fair Hearings Court."
And how can they? she asks. The state picks the judge, the prosecutor and the defending lawyer. So why should anyone win?
I look at Karen and watch her foot press the pedal.
Stupid is not the word for it. Criminal.
And I know that I could walk along these two rows of women and stand and watch
each one and say the same thing:
Stupid is not the word for it. Criminal .

•• •••I am attending a feminist brunch. An intense discussion develops around the issue of

women/s lives and the lack of opportunity, the repression, oppression, the exploitation.
One woman becomes extremely upset, indignant because she cannot bear to think that
her mother' s life has been a waste. Some women try to comfort her. I do not say
anything. I know, of course, that no person who has exhibited kindness, caring andsupport can be said to have wasted her life entirely. But I also know the bitter fact thatmost lives are incredibly wasted, that the opportunities for developing identity, forreceiving pleasure, for achieving a sense of self-worth are limited and, not only
underdeveloped, but in most cases not developed at all - because no one thinks that ahousewife, or a mother, a typist has anything to develop. It simply has never occurred
to most people. And that judgment is passed on through the silence surrounding them.
I do not say anything. But I know that this woman/s mother has probably wasted a
lot of her life, just as I have wasted periods of my life. And there is no getting awayfrom that knowledge.
Art and Other Callings

I have been asking myself why I always focus on the artist. I focus on her because art- in my case writing - is the most obvious yardstick I have to measure the waste in
my own life. I do not know what yardsticks to use for others, for most people have notbeen allowed to see their own possibilities. Art/ after all, is not the only means to selfexpression and though some of my co-workers might - given the chance - want to beartists, others might want to be organizers, engineers, philosophers, full-timehousewives and mothers, physicists, athletes, activists, greenhouse keepers, animal
doctors, furniture strippers.
How easily do I and many of the feminists I know accept the fact that some of us areborn with "talent" that should be nurtured and supported, without considering the59implications of labelling and naming only talents associated with art or professions. In
doing that, aren't we implying that those born without a specific, visible talent areautomatically meant to be transcribers or xerox machine operators or factory workers?
Sometimes I wonder if, in fact, most formally educated people do believe just that.
Just as an artist or doctor must have the proper, conducive working atmosphere toflourish, so the secretary or office worker must have the proper, conducive working atmosphere for her calling. So how can we help her? How can we nurture and support
her? Musak perhaps? Good lighting? A self-erasing selectric typewriter? A word processor?
When people think in these structures, when they separate the artist, intellectual, or
professional and think of her as a person apart, as special, as disconnected from the"masses," from the assembly line, from the stenographic pool, they reveal their basic
distance from working people. When feminists think in these structures, our commitment to helping the "non-artist," the "ordinary" woman becomes nothing more than adesire to make her more comfortable in the current social order, a failure to see theseparate value of her life. Such distancing denies our connection to her. For while weplace ourselves outside that order by virtue of our "unique talent," we doom her to remain forever inside the xerox room or steno pool. That is not radical thinking. That isplain elitism.

.....

November 30, 1982: Talked to Nina this morning. She is the cook for the staff -psychiatrists, administrators, office workers. She makes our lunch. She works fast.
Uses all her free time to read. I wonder about her. She's tough. Used to work in a gas
station. Raised dogs. Yes, I wonder about her.
Said to me she didn't like working. Said she's wishing her whole life away. (She's
only 22). Isn't it terrible, she asked, to live just for 2 days out of 7, and to wish theother 5 away?
Bonding
Given external facts, friendship between Elizabeth and me would seem impossible.
Born a Catholic in a small Massachusetts town where she lived all her life, she was theoldest of four children. Went to work immediately after high school at the same
psychiatric hospital where I met her more than 20 years later. Learned about sex bytyping charts. Married O
at 20. Did not say much about Kenneth except that he nevercomplained and was a good father. Had three children. The oldest boy had visualproblems, hated school, was denied graduation until he passed a certain reading test.
Elizabeth had worked with him almost every day since he entered second grade. The
second boy just began college, the first one to do so in his family. The "baby," a girl, isstill in high school. All worked. Elizabeth was exactly my age when we met: 41. She
returned to work in this hospital about a year before I arrived.
I am a Jew, a survivor of the Holocaust, a lesbian, an author of two books of poetry, aPh.D., a teacher, an activist, I have never married and have no children. I knew agreat deal about Elizabeth within a couple of months. Until I left, almost a year later,
Elizabeth only knew that I was a Jew, a survivor, that I aspired to write, and that I had
60

a roommate.
Yet Elizabeth and I did become close friends. I admired her and listened as she
analyzed and reflected on her life at home and at the office. She taught me about thehospital and kept rejecting my suggestions for greater efficiency and accountability
with: "Haven't you learned they're not interested in your opinion? That they don't
care what we do or how often? Th.at they simply don't care?"
She hated her job with a passion, but saw no way out. She was in constant crisis.
Five adults, all needed transportation to jobs and schools, and. cars and motorcycles
were forever breaking down, kids getting into accidents, bills constantly popping up
and out of control. She said she felt cheated because she could never enjoy the housewhose mortgage she and Kenneth were killing themselves to payoff - she was either
in the hospital typing or at home cooking and cleaning. Once, I came into her room
when she was collating a long monograph and was moving from desk to table. She
said: "Irena, I feel like a corkscrew, just driving myself deeper and deeper into thegrave." And then she began to turn in place and say: "Work. Grocery. Home. Work.
Grocery. Home."
She understood basic feminist principles, though she openly rejected any feminist
labels. She analyzed the structure of male thinking in relation to organizations andstated that men simply could not diversify and do more than one thing at a time while
women had learned to play multiple roles in the home. She was sure if the women took
over the hospital, it would make more sense.
Yet she was devoted to family and the job. I would try to convince her, for example,
to take a day off because she was totally depleted and exhausted - that "sick" did notmean exclusively "physically ill." It was hard for her to accept this; she thought it aform of lying. She felt responsible to the doctors. They relied on her. She refused tofudge or short change anyone, even though they constantly short changed her.
I understood het attitude. She wanted to salvage some sense of integrity. It was
through her job and her family that she saw any possibility for achieving self-esteem.
And so typing a report, quickly and flawlessly, was important. Meeting all deadlines
was important. Never lying was important. Though I had things outside of the officethat gave me a sense of worth - my writing, my political work - I too would often set
goals for myself so I could have some sense of achievement during the day.
Still, I lied all the time, determined to use every sick day I could. I had no shameabout it and Elizabeth and the others knew what I was doing. Yet no one blamed me or
guilt-tripped me. They simply accepted me and my behavior. Elizabeth was particularly giving, enjoying our differences. She liked hearing about my outings to New York
City, about my mother, about the woman I lived with - though that relationship wasnever clarified. She sympathized when I was really bored or disgusted. She sympathized when I was broke. And I was always eager to hear about her life, about how. she
had grown up in this town, her pre-marriage innocence, the progress of her kids inschool, and to give any kind of advice based on my own experience outside the office.
She in turn advised me patience, showed me short-cuts and pitfalls of the institution,and became a model of how to live without envy and constant rage. I tried to help her
61make more room for herself, pointing out the kids were old enough to take over more
responsibility. I also felt helpless and stymied, as with other friends, because I could
not get her to break a lifelong pattern of self-sacrifice. At times I would feel angry andfrustrated, especially when I found her asleep, her head resting on her typewriter. She
countered: "It's not so much that we're not as good as we were. We're just not as goodfor as long."
Elizabeth made me feel privileged because I had reasonable hope that eventually in a year or so - I could leave. I would get a break, if only temporary. I knew what
one free week would have meant to her. Talking to her month after month, I realized
over and over again, no matter how deeply unhappy I was, how depressed, that it was
not the same as her unhappiness, as her depression. She made me feel the great difference between us and our lives.
And yet this difference did not separate us. It was possible for us to share equally to share the particular strengths we had developed from our different lives. We formeda close bond based on a common experience of trying to cope with nonsensical regulations and the callous behavior of our bosses. Elizabeth made me more conscious thanever that her life was like so many others - devoured by meaningless work. She mademe conscious of the kinds of lives so many women lead and the waste of it. As she put
it: "You know, Irena, when I got out of high school in '58, no one thought I should doanything but type."
1982: A Photograph
Source: A local upstate New York paper.
Content: Two people shaking hands.
He is older. The president of a college. It is obviously graduation. He is dressed in an
elaborate cap and gown - inverted collar, tassles, colored stripes, a multitude of folds
evoking complexity, emeritus, honorary, distinguished, doctor.
She is young, very young. She is wearing the plainer costume: black cap and gown.
No frills.
It is graduation.
They are shaking hands.
She has just received an award from the Secretarial Arts Department for "outstanding achievement in typewriting."
A Soap Opera
She was not glamorous. That is important. Because receptionists are always supposed
to be glamorous. But Sandy was 35, wore casual make-up, clothes that were clearlyfrayed at the edges.
It took me a while to piece together the full portrait. Initially, Sandy struck me as
happy-go-lucky. She was always laughing and joking whenever I came into the main
office to pick up mail or do my xeroxing. She talked a lot about her kids, about her
baby, twelve-year-old daughter, who was now wearing her "training" bra; about her
fourteen-year-old son who had decided he was a "breast man" and not a "leg man."
She was divorced and talked a lot about crushes she had and dreamed out loud about

62

meeting someone, about trying to show interest without overstepping the limits ofladyhood, about the middle-aged man at the post office who was interested in her but
who she couldn't abide because, after all, he was balding.
She talked endlessly about all this. It all seemed fairly usual, simple.
But Sandy's life and history were complicated, so complicated that some people mainly the administrators of this special school for boys - laughed behind her backand called her life a soap opera.
Her health, it turned out, was poor. She had kidney problems and she was taking
special medication for arthritis. One day I noticed a black and blue mark on her arm
and, without thinking, asked about it. She blushed, and then confessed that her brotherhad beaten her. Many family members were alcoholic, she herself was one, though she
was sober now. The night before one of her brothers had arrived drunk. She shrugged
and blushed again.
She also had custody problems. The arrangement was not permanent. Custody was
reassigned on a monthly basis. And it was partly contingent on her ability to support
the kids, pay her mortgage, her fuel bills, etc. She kept reassuring me that her husband
was really a nice guy and loved the kids.
Since she had been hired to replace someone who had gone on maternity leave,
Sandy had no job security, or benefits. She was earning $3.25 an hour working a
40-hour week (not including lunch) .
Her "responsibilities" included switchboard, typing, xeroxing, collating, and filing.
She worked in the main office of the school. I was a secretary, but in a different
building. Compared to other secretaries - there were six of us in all - Sandy was notvery good. Her work at the switchboard and xeroxing was fine. But her typing was filled with errors and misspellings, her filing sloppy and confused. Most of us would help
her out whenever we were in the main office; but we could never give her all the help
she really needed.
One day towards the end of the summer, she got sick - sun stroke complicated by
the arthritis medication she was taking. She collapsed and was rushed to a hospital.
She remained critical for a few days and then finally stabilized. After two weeks, she
was back home.
The day after she got home, the supervisor called and gave her two week's notice.
Another secretary came to stay with her. She could not get out of bed yet. She had absolutely no money. She was worried about custody.
Another woman had been interviewed for the position. But when it came time tonegotiate the salary, she refused the $3.75 (50¢ more than Sandy was getting) . Not anticipating any problems, the supervisor had fired Sandy before the other woman had
actually accepted. Now the school was stuck.
Shameless, as always, the supervisor called Sandy. Forget what we said.
And, of course, she did. What else was she supposed to do?
The other secretaries tried to make her deal with the situation, emphasizing that theadministrators had no scruples, that this could happen again, that Sandy needed to get
a firm commitment. It was obvious the woman she had replaced was not returning and63that the administration was not going to offer the job to Sandy. She had to clarify thesituation. If they refused to make a commitment, she had to start looking for somethingelse - now.
Sandy listened, but was afraid to move. And then things changed. The supervisor
gave notice and was replaced by a Mrs. Conroy. Everything got very quiet. We all sat
tight and watched. It could get better. It could get worse.
We told Sandy that there might be some hope since Conroy was new. We urged her
to talk to her and finally she did. Though it was now the end of October and though
Sandy had been working for the school since April (eight months!) , Conroy told her she
would be put on 3-months probation. If she did well, the job was hers.
We were appalled. We knew it was a set-up. Clearly they intended to let her go. We
told Sandy she had to start looking for another job, had to start now. But she just smil~ed. She felt hopeful. She was going to work hard, get her typing speed up, and thenshe'd become a permanent employee.
•
A couple of weeks later, her car broke down. She had no money to fix it. She lived
about 25 miles from the school. During the next week, she hitched, once walked 12
miles, a couple of times got rides from people who deposited her at the office at 7 a.m.
and picked her up at 8 p.m. She was keeping up, but barely. She was beginning toapply for jobs.
And then one day, they fired her. It was November, the week before Thanksgiving.
Oppression
Inside: There's a romance about it, a romance by middle-class women who feel guilty
about their privileged backgrounds. Downwardly mobile, guilt-ridden, they embrace
the status of the oppressed and wear it like a badge. They point with pride to how little
they have, able to measure it by what they've given up. They are, they claim, clerical
workers, office workers, struggling with the injustices of the capitalist system.
Outside: I do not believe anyone really chooses to be a clerical worker, though I
know many women might say they do. I believe that most people have never had theopportunity to examine what their true potential is and so the selection of clerical work
is not done in a framework of complete freedom. Most women are told they arewithout potential - intellectual, athletic, artistic - are raised to fear responsibilities
outside of the home and to question their ability to deal with non-domestic issues.
My experience in offices is that clerical workers, who are the lowest in status andpay in the hierarchy of office workers, despite all conditioning, dream privately andsometimes quite openly about doing something else. Most never do and instead spend
endless years doing the worst office shit work, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. They
spend this time in dead-end rooms, usually the useless corners or walk-in closets oflarge suites, rooms blocked off for files that don't need air or light. These women workfor years, stooped over folders or climb -ladders to reach drawers close to the ceiling.
Dusty, dirty, boring, unhealthy work, endless index cards, endless folders, staples,
paper clips, punched holes, reorganizing, pulling, shuffling, filing.
They do this when they are nine months pregnant, when they can barely bend, when
they are too exhausted to move, do it till the day before the baby is born. And then,64

two weeks later, after the delivery, they are back while a sister or a grandmother takes
care of the newborn. Whenever you walk into their workspace, that dark area that
nobody else wants, they greet you eagerly, chat, show photographs of the baby, try todelay your departure.
There are some who hold two or three part-time jobs in different offices. Some sneakin books, take correspondence courses so they can develop new skills and perhaps one
day become a secretary.
These are the clerical workers I have known. They do not think about their status
with pride or with shame. It is simply where they are in this society. The work they dois not a ticket to anything. And the only thing they get for it is a very, very small
paycheck.
*****In the hospital where I worked, each doctor received an $ll ,OOO/year raise between
October, 1982 and January, 1983. In January, 1983, each secretary received a$lO/week raise. Out of thirteen women, not one had been earning more than $10,400 a
year ($200/week before deductions) and, because health insurance went up that year, anumber of secretaries took home less in '83 than they had in '82.
Victim
A woman was once describing a friend of hers to me - someone who was always
hurrying from one part-time job to another, trying to piece together a living, always ina kind of frenzy and chaos that I know well. Perpetual deadlines. Different focuses.
Irregular schedules. The woman concluded her long detailed description by commenting: "I don't think she'll ever get it together."I swallowed hard. I had completely identified with the woman in the story. Get it
together? I thought. With what assumptions does this woman operate? Who gets it
together? How many people in this society ever get it together?
Most of us fail miserably at it. And we're meant to. Yet, we cannot accept the concept of ourselves as totally victimized, totally done in. We must feel some measure ofpossibility in our lives, for how else could we ever hope to gain any degree of control?
So victim? Yes and no, I suppose. I know a lot of people - skilled and hard working- who cannot get it together the way society wants them to. They do not meet current
needs - whether that be typing skills or computer knowledge. They have many otherskills - skills to care for the old, skills associated wit~ compassion and patience, skills
to build and construct, skills to teach and awaken. Are we to say they are playing victim, that they're not taking responsibility for their lives because they cannot, however
hard they try, get their typing speed up or learn to use a word processor?
How glib. Would we ever say to anyone outraged at sexism, you've got to accept thegivens of this society? But how quickly we say - accept your lot because you'vechosen it or otherwise you would have gotten out long ago and "gotten it together. "MoneyFeminists have barely learned to say the word to each other. How afraid we are totalk about it. Whenever the subject is broached, we run as if on hot coals and don't65

stop until we reach a cool spot. Talk about anything but that.
A woman I know has so much more than me. She has a good job - good pay,
benefits. She is secure, takes vacations. Another woman doesn't have to work at all.
Both leave, take long, what seem to me luxurious periods of time off. I say good-bye tothem. Wish them well. And I mean it. But I also think, why them, not me?
Another woman I know has so much less than me. In her eyes I am rich. She works
as a 'chamber maid, is dependent on tips, is never quite sure how much she'll takehorne. She can never save, thinks it's a real luxury that I can take a day off with pay
because I have sick leave. She thinks it's good that I have a day to write. And shemeans it. But she also thinks. Why her, not me?
Women sit around a table. Perhaps they're planning a benefit. Perhaps they're
writing a statement. Perhaps they're organizing to participate in a conference inanother city. One glances impatiently at her watch and calculates the cost of thebabysitter. Another is thinking of the cost of a round trip ticket out of town and if she
can afford to go. Still another feels depressed because she has to work that day andcan't afford to take off. But they do not mention it. Some don't even think about thedifferences between them. Some do and feel guilty. Others want them to feel guilty.
Others don't give a shit. But no one talks about it.
Shame and Humiliation
When Need Becomes Shame and Asking is Begging
November 10, 1984: I have postponed and postponed finishing this piece. I must
finish it, I tell myself. But I am blocked, have been blocked for over a year ~ow on anissue that sticks in my throat. It is the issue of shame and humiliation.
How can I write about this without exposing my own sense of shame? How can I
write about this without confessing that just publishing this article about economics
and money is intertwined with shame and humiliation? A shame that sterns from earlypoverty. A shame that sterns from my having internalized the worst of Jewish
stereotypes. That because I'm a Jew, I must be rich. And if I say, no, I am not rich,then I am hiding my wealth, trying to get out of something.
I remember the first time I heard that some people would rather die in a burningbuilding than run out and be seen naked. At the time, I could not quite grasp the depthof shame that could force someone to accept death rather than be exposed.
For the past year or so I have been thinking about this phenomenon, the power ofshame over our lives, over my life - its power in stopping me from completing thisessay, for example. I have been trying to sort out the times when I have felt ashamed as
if I had done something wrong when, in fact, I had done nothing; to sort out the circumstances in which I have felt humiliated.
Need. I feel shame in feeling need, a shame that I associate with my early childhoodof not having, of always wanting, of feeling that not to have a dress, a game, a toy mademe somehow deficient, beneath, below, less than - apart.
That is, if those I am with have more. For if others share my circumstances, there is
no shame. What occurs is complete understanding, camaraderie: a comparing of notes,

66

of swapping suggestions, of exchanging strategies - how to write a check and not haveit bounce if the account is empty; which gas station gives credit; how to get an advance; etc.
But when the need is visible and public in the presence of those who are above it, or
who have power to choose to help or not, who could bestow their resources, use theirprivileges, call it what you will - then need becomes shame and asking feels like begging.
Why?
I think back to group situations where assumptions are made, assumptions I do notshare. It might be a question of which restaurant to go to. Or whether we should go toan event I want to attend but can't afford. Or even a discussion of whether the price ofa certain book is reasonable. And what is reasonable? Ho w can something bereasonable if I can't afford it?

I think about these situations and my own sense of exclusion - of wanting to be apart of a group and feeling I can't, of having to draw attention to it, knowing I will embarrass everyone, knowing I will be the wet blanket and burst the happy bubble oftogetherness.
And what is it I really want of them? To carry me? Do I have any right to ask
anything, I who have not gotten it together?
Sometimes, I think, all I want is the issue acknowledged. That in itself. But above all,. I want someone else to raise this issue, someone for whom money is not a problem, but
who recognizes that her framework, her "reasonable cost" is not necessarily
everyone's.
As feminists, we pride ourselves on our "awareness" of class. Our events invariably
have the "more if you canlless if you can't" tag attached to the entrance fee, hardshiprate for journals, sliding scales. And yet, I know that many women who cannot afford
the standard price will not admit it because to admit it is to admit to failure, to inadequacy - to admit to something shameful - the fact of not having gotten it together.
Often, it is the feminist with the middle-class background, downwardly mobile, who
pridefully puts down her dollar at a five-dollar event. Many women I've known whostem from poor backgrounds, from a life of welfare and unemployment, a life of piecing it together, barely, week by week, day by day, would rather die than admit to theirpresent poverty. Everything in their upbringing, everything in this society says that"failure" (and that is equated with economic dependence) is their own fault, a deficiency in them. They have not worked hard enough to "succeed" in the climb - it is
all their fault, they should have tried harder.
TRAIL OF 2 LIVES THAT DISINTEGRATED LED TO LONELY
DEATHS ON AN ICY DAY - by Nathaniel Sheppard, Jr. (The New
York Times, February 3, 1983)
This article has been hanging over my desk now for a year and a half. The first few
paragraphs read as follows:67

Chicago, Feb. 2- The lifeless bodies of Norman and Anna Peters were found, wrapped intattered blankets against the January cold, on the icy seats of the dilipated 1971 station
wagon that had become their home. With no resources and no place to go, they had died ofcarbon monoxide poisoning, presumably while running the car's engine in an effort to keep
warm.
It was the sad final chapter to the tale of the disintegrating lives of two ordinary people, astruggling blue-collar couple who exemplified the lives of a sizable part of America. Theirs
had always been a difficult existence, a constant struggle to make ends meet for a family ofseven with an income from Mr. Peters' periodic employment as an equipment mover. ...
The Peterses had been a proud and private couple who had maintained a code of silence
about their personal problems. It was a silence that often extended to their children.

The Peterses had lost their home - unable to keep up mortgage payments. Financiallydepleted by hospital costs to correct the birth defects of a child who had died 15 years
ago, plagued by alcoholism and unemployment, Norman and Anna saw no way out.
Their life had been an endless series of crises - member of the Riggers Local 136, themachinery movers' union to which Norman belonged, commented:"There was no reason for them to sleep in a car. We would have figured out some way tohelp. If Norm had just come in, you can always get the guys to give five, ten dollars, fifteen
dollars each. If only we had known."

But they didn't know. Norman did not say anything. Anna did not say anything .

•• **.
When I decided to lead my first writing workshop in Brooklyn around the winter of
1976-77, I began to experience enormous anxiety when it came time to advertise_ I
needed to put up posters locally as well as in gay bars and women's bookstores in
Manhattan. I felt enormous resistance to doing this and I kept procrastinating. Finally,a friend walked with me up 7th Avenue in Brooklyn and the signs went up.
POETRY WORKSHOP
led byIRENA KLEPFISZ
author of Periods of Stressan editor of Conditions magazine

My paralysis went beyond any insecurity over my ability to lead such a workshop.
Like everyone else, I have self-doubt, but never to the degree of near incapacity. It was
only after trying to sort it out and understand it, that I realized that for me the placingof such an advertisement was a public admission that I needed money, that I was doing
this only because I needed money.
And I really did need the money. It didn't seem to matter that I was providing a service. My name was appearing in huge, shameless letters and announcing, just as
shamelessly, that I was broke. Of course, no one necessarily knew; after all there aremany writers who lead workshops for the p easure of teaching or for even the prestige.
And no one looking at my advertisement could distinguish me from them. Still, I
knew of my need. I knew I was dependent on people signing up. And it was that senseof need, of dependence that paralyzed me_•• *.*
68

When my mother and I came to the United States in 1949, we lived on charity fromJewish organizations. We occupied one room - the living room of a one bedroom
apartment - and shared the kitchen with an older Jewish woman who did pieceworkin the garment district. We lived in this room for four years and much of this time mymother earned some money as a seamstress - doing alterations (taking up hems, taking in waists, puckering shoulders, and tightening darts) and sometimes creating
originals of her own design. It was a difficult existence - uneven in income, very
crowded and depressed, completely suffused by what we had just managed to survive
in Europe.
The charity we were living on was never clearly defined for me. My mother wanted
to protect me and tried to hide it. But it could not be completely blocked from my consciousness and instead what was strongly communicated was that we were not to refer
to it. When pressed, we were, in fact, to lie about it. It was a source of shame.
Once someone she knew offered to print advertising cards for her. Since she wanted
to build her list of customers, my mother accepted and soon there were hundreds ofcards to be distributed.
ROSE KLEPFISZ
SeamstressOriginals and Alterations
Building -1, Apt. H·22

We took the cards and went out to the newer buildings of the cooperative complex
we were living in. I was about 10 at this time and I found it all very exciting. We rodein the elevator to the 14th floor and then began slipping the cards under each door. For
reasons I could not understand, if someone stepped out of an apartment, my motherwould immediately slip into the stairwell. She did not want to be seen.
Everything about this endeavor seemed magical. The modern building, the elevators,
the cards with my mother's name, the feel of the cold metal bannister as I ran down
the stairs, skipping, jumping, leaping off the last four steps on to the next landing,rushing out into the hall ready to push more cards under the doors. But if someone
stepped out of an apartment, my mother would immediately slip into the stairwell. She
did not want to be seen.
She did not want to be seen.

.. ...

You must ask, a friend once advised.
Yes, I thought, she is right. But my tongue could not form the words and at different
moments I have been like the person in a burning building willing to die rather thanstand bare with my need. I know that I could pass up the opportunity of a lifetime
because of this deep-rooted shame. Some, I know, would categorize such behavior as"playing the victim." I don't agree. The person overwhelmed by shame, unable tomove while the flames inch closer and closer and the heat becomes more and more intense - that person is not playing victim. Rather she is paralyzed by a socially learned
lesson so deeply absorbed it has become almost an instinct life itself cannot counter.
The opportunity of a lifetime. Let it pass rather than ask or inquire. It is too
humiliating to acknowledge the power of others over you, your dependence on them. It
69

is too humiliating to think that you might risk asking and they will turn you down. It is
too shameful to wonder why you must go through this, why you do not have such
power. Why it is that you have failed and have so little control over your own life.
You must ask, a friend once said.
Inside and Outside
What is real? What is feminist?
What is inside? What is outside?
All false distinctions, something I've known all along. There is no inside or outside. I
do not live in two worlds. I live in one. The economics of the "real" world are notseparate from the "feminist" world, even though the attitudes are often different. And
this fact is one we ought to begin paying more attention to. For example:-Women working in a battered women's shelter decided to unionize because they
feel "their labor was exploited." The workers in Women Against Abuse (Philadelphia)
stated that they did not view their problems as "isolated" and that "they have talked
with staffs in other programs who have similar problems and concerns."9-A feminist editor rejects a reconsideration of distribution of profits in an author's
contract on the basis that such notions are "child-like" and inappropriate for the"real" world. The same editor sympathizes with protests of clerical workers over conditions and salaries, prints pamphlets about these injustices. Still she tells an author to"grow up" and face "real" facts when it comes time to sign a contract.
-A political organization becomes financially stable enough to hire women to do thepaper work. Immediately a hierarchy is established. Political activists - feminists have become employers and now must relate to employees, in this case also feminists,
whose work is inevitably more mechanical and less prestigious.
-A number of writers protest treatment by The New York Native and publish theirstatement in other gay papers. They maintain that gay institutions must have economic
responsibility to their workers and are not exempt from the standards that would beapplied to mainstream institutions.
-A Woman's Studies Department has its "own" secretary or "shares" one withanother department. She is, of course, an employee of the school. But how do membersof the department deal with her and use her?
-A writer complains she received only a token honorarium for her contribution to afeminist anthology, and that out of 25 contributors, only the editor made any money.
Why, she asks, is this woman not sharing some of the profits? Isn't she living off thework of others? Isn't that what we fight against in all other places? Why should this be
the exception?
-A collective gets a grant and is able to pay one of its members for some of the shit
work all have shared so far. On what basis is the person chosen? The neediest? Or the
one with skills because she already has the experience? And when she messes up,
another member, without thinking, says angrily: "But you're being paid!" And suddenly behavior that was tolerable as a volunteer is totally unacceptable. What happens, Womannews, July/August 1984, p. 8.

70when our commitment turns into a job?
-A three-day feminist conference is scheduled for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
All working women are automatically excluded from participating in two-thirds of theactivities. The feminist organizers have forgotten that we live in one world and thatsome of us do not have the luxury of stepping out of it even for a minute.
But if society has taught us to be ashamed over not having money and privilege,some feminists' romance with oppression has also made them ashamed over having
money and privileges. The result has been a kind of dishonesty, a fudging around economic issues, of falsifying backgrounds and current possibilities, of blurring distinctions, of ignoring or denying power and achievements. With all our emphasis on truth,on breaking taboos - why is it that so much lying occurs around economic issues?
I remember that among the first feminists I met some were downwardly mobile andconsidered oppression a status symbol. Some had higher degrees. Some were college
drop-outs. A predominant criticism was directed at anyone who had any education
beyond high school. Because I was new to feminism and still naive, because I wanted
to be accepted, I did not challenge attitudes which even then, 'in my heart of hearts, I
knew to be wrong. Instead, I went along to such a degree that in my first book of
poetry I was too embarrassed to list the Ph.D. in my biographical note. I - an immigrant, a Holocaust survivor, despite economic obstacles, having worked 20 hours aweek through most of graduate school and full time during the summers, having
managed to overcome psychological odds and traumas - I, Irena Klepfisz received aPh.D. Truly something to be ashamed of.
How utterly crazy, when I think about it now. How utterly crazy .
.... t

The aspirations of most people-security, pleasure, leisure, meaningful
work, creative and intellectual pursuits-are to be supported. Thesedesires and dreams are not shameful. In supporting them, we are showing solidarity with working people, for whom these are luxuries and not
givens.

*****Feminism cannot be separated from the economic realities of our society, and, as
feminists, we need to face the economic unity of our lives; we must also learn to identify those of our actions that fall short of our best hopes. There is no such thing as purity. We must be willing to recognize and name powers and privileges that we do haveand assess their significance and usefulness. And we must all recognize that these are
not constant, but sometimes chang~ in different contexts.

Sitting at various conferences, workshops, collective meetings, I have often marvelled at our ability to articulate perfect political theory while remaining insensitive andstubbornly ignorant to the life of the feminist sitting right next to us. At those moments,
I have understood why so many women - deeply oppressed by sexism and economic
necessity - find feminism and feminist theory abstract and irrelevant. At thesefeminist events, I too have sometimes felt alienated from discussions of sexism,
71homophobia, racism, or anti-Semitism, though all these touch me personally. But thefact that there is no allusion to the working day from which I've just emerged or to theeconomic pressures which I carry with me has frequently made these discussions seem
highly theoretical and left me estranged and angry .

•• **.

It has occurred to me that it would be a good idea every once in a while to begin
meetings with a lO-minute round robin so that each woman could say how she had
spent the day and thereby ground the group. The differences between us, not only interms of work, would then be clarified as each woman's assumptions, framework, andmental state on that particular evening become evident. The political discussion, no
matter what its focus, would, I believe, be ultimately enriched and informed by the immediacy and concreteness of this information. We would then be not simply feminists
speaking about feminist issues, but feminists rooted and bound in different ways in thesame society - stating our frustrations as well as our pleasures and achievements. At
the end of the meeting, members might want to do another round robin, this time
focused on what each woman was going to be doing the next day. Thus, the political. discussion would in some way be framed by and connected to our daily lives.
I offer this suggestion even though I know it is fraught with obvious dangers: selfhate, breast-beating, envy, anger, guilt-tripping, and lying. But I think, also, this kindof process contains the possibility of a much deeper view of our differences at any
given moment and their relationship to our politics.
Above all, such a process might actually help all of us articulate the words we mostfear and face the discomfort of our economic and class differences. For we need to put
an end to the shame and guilt surrounding both power and powerlessness. We canbegin with direct questions, of ourselves and each other:- What should I do with what I have? Share it? Keep it? Give it all away?
Will you talk to me about your life? Will you help me understand? Can I
learn from your strength? Will you tell me how I can be most useful toyou? Can you trust me?
Difficult questions. As difficult as:-Can I ask without shame? Can I show my strength? Can I stop equating
all power with money? Will you listen to me? Will you give up some control? Will you see my need and not blame me-or fear me? Can you trustme?

And always the underlying question: How do we work together? For if we wantliberation for women, then we're committed to building a society in which these
distances-of class and economics-dissolve, and all our authentic differences-cultures, personalities, sexualities, talents, and aspirations-emerge and areequally nourished.lo\0 I'm indebted to Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz for her discussion of the feminist movement 's failure to addressclass issues in her unpublished essay, "Is There Post-Feminism Before Women's Liberation?"<:,,1-":)

C"'...,

72

Eliza Morrison
fromTrystiTriste

The (allowing words are taken (rom a longer manuscript wh ich was written
primarily to explore musical ideas, responses to music and to the pressures o( amusical career.
The word "Triste, " when it appea rs in the upper-Ie(t corner o( a piece o(music,
is a direction to the musician to play the piece sadly.

from December 9, 1982

I return to this journal easily and contentedly, probably because I am not a writer. It is
often not easy to return to the harp.
I jumped into a deep, freezing mountain pool once at dawn. Beginning the day's practicing is similar to that. I crack my spine a few times and adjust theheight of my bench, open the window a bit to admit light and air, arrange my piles ofmusic and pry the cover off my new Taktell metronome (this is rather like trying tobash open a coconut). I place my hands on the strings. This is the moment at which I'll
discover how well I really slept last night - will I be foggy, or alert? Lately I am usually foggy. The alert days are great - steam rises noisily in the old radiators while I giveof my muscle and emotion and thought until exhausted. It amazes me that such things
as how sensibly I've been eating, what's on my mind, how clean my hair is and how
long it's been since my last orgasm all determine how I play - as do, I'm sure, dozens
of other factors of which I'm unaware. Even what I have dreamed the previous night
can surprisingly shape this early morning practice time.
I am good at hiding pain. I mean mental pain; no doubt I'm vocal enough about
physical pain. But I smile so much that a· great deal of hurt is well masked. I neverdiscuss my personal life with Ann (though I'd like to, for what is more personal to me
than this harp playing stuff?) But when I sit down to play I can't hide pain. It's in myfingertips and they fumble or drag when my heart is heavy, they betray my secrets,
they tell all. Wrong notes flyaway from me into the thin studio air. The pedals makeawful stinging noises. This fumbling and stinging has happened a lot in lessons this fall.
Ann says nothing, she doesn't reprimand, but I wonder if she thinks I'm not working.
How often I've wished for the luxury of a little time away from the harp. But now I
have the opportunity to take the spring semester off, and it's a horrible thought, I won't
do it! I seem to need the early morning orchestra rehearsals after the late, soulsearching nights. I need the regularity of lessons and the steady stream of new, untried
notes to conquer. And I need the fellowship of other musicians - they are wacky, they
are sensitive, they are sad, they are loud, they are jittery, and above all they are
beautiful, and I love them. We come from all parts of the world to be together in thiscolorful Conservatory. In the rather dumpy cafeteria which I love and to which I
73

return day after day I am surrounded by voices: a smooth French accent, excited
Korean, sounds of solfege being practiced, relaxed and expansive laughter, tight little
conversations of deadlines and grades. My friend Nancy is a jazz vocalist. She has long,
curly red-brown hair and eyes that are nearly the same exotic color. We put our feet upon the ugly orange plastic chairs and divide a bag of parsley, munching happily andwashing it down with Tab. The caffeine is undoubtedly very bad for me, but Nancy's
effect on me is the opposite of caffeine, very calming. A Zen sort of person, not like me(thoroughly Western, Christian, and neurotic!)
If musicians are not neurotic innately, the stresses of the music business must eventually make them that way. All of the performing makes for an uncomfortable degreeof vulnerability and aliveness. We probably all long to sleep better than we do.
from December 13, 1982

I am so immersed in music all day that when I come home in the evening, sometimes
there is no sound more refreshing than silence.
Silence is not passive.
My teacher, Ann: she is so organized, and so calm. Nothing seems to perturb her. No
matter how hectic her schedule becomes, however crammed with the Symphony, thePops, the Chamber Players, concertos, tours, teaching, Tanglewood, trips to Japan,
France, Nova Scotia; she always looks rested and lovely - always. Her hair is perfect.
Her eyes are clear. She may admit to being tired, but I rarely see it. On the telephone
she is invariably calm and cheerful. I am awed by the strength of her technique and by
her physical beauty. What do my obligations amount to, compared to hers? Yet I am
the one who arrives at lessons tired and disoriented, she never does. Ann is unfailingly
patient and diplomatic. She does not raise her voice. Why, then, am I so afraid of her? I
suppose it's because, for all her civility and serenity, I have a frightened feeling in mygut for how high her standards are. I cannot imagine what would happen if I were to go
unprepared to a lesson. Ann wouldn't shout, but the sky would probably fall.
The standards are never off my mind. Her standards haunt me waking and sleeping.
How many days until my next lesson? And after a year and a half of lessons with Ann,
I've not relaxed before her yet, not for one instant. No minute inaccuracy slips past
her. She sees it all - each finger - always.
I am not like Ann. I do not have her control. She teaches methodically, I learn erratically. Technique, technique - how fast can I move my fingers? How many notcheson the metronome this week? And always, can I produce more sound?
from December 18, 1982

In the autumn of my nineteenth year I spent three days and nights alone in the North
Carolina wilderness. My dreams were vivid.
Most of the time it rained. I had no shelter, only a wool sweater, a wool cap, and my74

sleeping bag. My leg was injured; four tiny ulcers had formed over a scratch, so I moved
about very little. I dressed my leg with gauze bandages and filled my water bottle atthe creek, sterilizing the water with a few drops of iodine. I lay on the ground on myback and watched the bats sweeping overhead. A bee stung my ankle. I fell asleep
when it grew too dark to watch the bats and woke when the first light came into thesky: The quiet rhythm of day followed by night, no subdivision of time into hours, nohuman voices, no demands, felt both frightening and ineffably right. When I returned
to civilization I could not abide advertising, make-up, fashion, Muzak. Getting out into
the woods clears away a lot of debris. Those days were a stark, hard grace. Cold raindrops pelting my face woke me in the middle of the night. The third day I sat by theswollen creek and sang songs. This was my baptism of loneliness.
Going into the practIce room is a recapitulation of this loneliness, which is why ittakes a certain amount of courage to walk through the door and shut it, saying, now I
must practice. But when we make music together, when we play chamber music, it is,
at its best, a celebration that kills loneliness, kills the very word loneliness, letter byletter. It is, at its best, an intimacy so complete that I used to have a recurring dreamthat I was making love to someone or we were playing chamber music - I was neverquite sure which it was.
Sometimes I play so well in the practice room, and then I am downcast. No one
heard. No one was there to share it. So what does it matter? I have this in me, but I
can't give it away; what does it mean?
A young doctor said to Jewel today, "Medicine is like music. You and I are the sameage. We've gone through the same number of years of training. We feel the same
degree of responsibility. The difference is that I never need to worry about money,
never again."
I worry about money until my stomach bums. We all do, I guess. We borrow
thousands to complete these degrees. A twenty-four year old acquaintance of mine will
make monthly repayments until she is fifty-one.
But the physician's training doesn't start until the beginning, or maybe the end, ofthe bachelor's degree. The musician's training begins much earlier, at the age of four,or six, or eleven; with youth orchestras and private lessons and parties and overnights
missed in order to get the practicing done. It begins with an adult concept of discipline
imposed upon a child who, in most cases, simply cannot carry it, but must do her best.
In how many ways can a person be creative simultaneously? When I've a sexualoutlet my creative power is poured into it. When I don't have a sexual outlet, I writeand I play my harp and I go running. Everywhere there are artless corners to be filled.
When I'm sexually replete I see no artless corners.

miZ gig:

75

Shirley Glubka

Something Pulled at Me
Farm smells disturbed my mother. She hated the chickens,
their dirtied eggs, shit on the floor of the coop.
Worse than that their bloodied necks, the axe in her hand.
She determined a course for herself: up the ropethat dangled, tantalizing, from clouds; the rope an immaculate
construction of words, sentences, paragraphs to be grasped
one by one, hand over hand, until, in the higher altitudes,
they become ideas, knowledge, beauty, truth, being:respect.
Somewhere above the clouds: respect.
If ever the clouds end: respect.
I myself was raised as cleanly as possible,
ignorant of crop dirt and animal perversities,
a town girl in farm country.
The smells of my childhood are print smells-paper, ink, books,
the uncontaminated dust of libraries.
Also incense, candles, clean priest smells.
Nothing, however, is perfect. On Sundays in the pew ahead of us
sat a farmer. He reeked of garlic sausage.
From Introit to Final Benediction: my poor mother: garlic sausage.
At eighteen I climbed into the convent like a child coming home to bed at night:
the upper bunk, clean sheets, one blanket.
The rope of braided abstraction was firm in my hands.
At twenty-three, still wrapped and veiled,
I had first sex. Do not imagine here lust springing out
like a jack-in-the-box, a sudden exit. Do not
imagine a figure dancing free and naked away fromcatechism pages,
Sunday sermons,the strict gaze of the Novice Mistress. 'Do not imagine even a tired seeker
emerging with satisfaction from the final tunnelof the terrible maze of the Summa Theologica, her body carried
sweetly alive in her exhausted arms.

76

We went, avoiding boards that creaked, down midnight halls
to narrow beds and let our long white nightgowns touch.
Some nights we kissed. On wild and rare occasion, hands were let loose.
My sex that year was like the first thin juices of creation;squeezed from nothing, pale, and of uncertain flavoring,
still it was a sort of scrawny miracle, a fact.
My sex, unlikely, inappropriate, existed.
If there was a map for going on from there, I didn't know it.

Something pulled at me, weak as a toddler's hand with a distracted mother;
this way, it said, for no apparent reason.
Something pulled at me, persistent as a toddler's hand with a distracted motherand I followed with my body, half my mind, and large unclear intentions.
We went gathering, my little sex and I,
through a stretch of rounded common coming over years,
through rough dry nights and silken places bright with redor hushing down to pleasure blue,
through quirky growth
whose brambles rolled at last to merely texture adding interest.
We collected smells and all available varieties of touch.
We picked the fruit of language and community, we grew a history.
And here we are at forty, alive and lesbian and learning still.
Last year on the island we had chickens.
Predictably, their shit was copious.
It waited, silent, under the long clothes line on laundry days.
It offered itself, apparently innocent, even generous,
to the deeply indented soles of my shoes; and stank when squashed.
I thought of the young Harriet, my mother, forced to farm.
But there was Ginny, who smells so good to me,
sitting down beside the chicken house she built
and watching by the gentle evening lighther chickens.
Over months I learned:
that there is comedy and tragedy in chicken life,
adventure, duty, pride, and social strife;that eggs are individual,
small from a hen who lacks practice,sometimes speckled,sometimes such a smooth brown sculpture in the handthat contemplation, not eating, is wanted;
that even the ridiculous chicken shape,
splayed feet, pin head,
becomes magnificent when sunlight strikes the blue-black feathers
and a prism-split of color leaps at me. 5)77Jewelle Gomez

To Choose
Jo sat impatiently waiting for Gail to ring the doorbell as if it were still 1964 and they
were back in high school. She'd swept her aunt's rambling, Roxbury apartment threetimes, even under the bed in her tiny room at the back. In spite of this attention it was
the same shabby (but now spic and span) flat it had always been. The same from its
worn linoleum to the cracks in the ceiling paint that Gail and she used to look up at
and create fantasies around on nights that Gail slept over. Jo's Aunt Irene was out at
her weekly poke no game and would be home at 10:45 precisely, just a little more
winded now by the three flights of stairs she'd been climbing for twenty years.
Jo picked at her newly cut Afro, which Gail had not seen yet. Most things had notchanged since Jo went away to college. Despite the "movement" her neighborhoodand friends remained as she had left them. There were a few more children on theblock; the apartment bUildings were a bit more shabby but some facts remained immutable. Jo still knew that she was a woman wanting to be with women. It was a reality she'd accepted since that first night with Gail six years ago. They'd been sixteen andbest friends. The wanting had not been a loud shout beating against Jo's breast but a
low hum in her throat like the soloist at Concord Baptist Church.
The thing Jo remembered most about that first night with Gail was the laughter.
They'd watched the beginning of "East Side/West Side" on television and seen an uncharacteristically absurd segment before they rushed off to bed to beat Aunt Irene's arrival home. Laying in bed giggling over the show, they let the energy of adolescentdesire sit atop their humour like oil and water rippling in a storm. The laughter shookthem until they were weak. With no preparation or calculation they began to talk about
sex. It was not a new topic. They were teenagers living in Roxbury. Wit and words
were their particular hobby. Sex and speculation about it was daubed on the sidewalks
and tenement stair wells of every .building they lived in. Along with the words,
laughter embodied the essence of sensuality for Jo. A good laugh was as important as
good sex, a friend or love; and with Gail she'd had all three. On that first night thepowerful fear of rejection was a hyperbolic energy thrusting them into the grammatical
third person but it did not stop them.
" If someone wanted to try kissing another girl. .. ""Or doing it with her.""Right, doing it," Jo had agreed, not sure what "doing it" meant specifically, but
sure she wanted to.
," If someone wanted to try doing it with another girl," Gail went on, "it doesn'tmean there's anything wrong with her, right?""There don't have to be anything wrong with her just to try it.""And if either of them don't like it they could just stop and choose not to do it any
more, right?"

78

"Right!"
With that contract they moved into each other's arms for the first time. There wereno lessons. Gail translated her backseat experience with boys into the real thing. Whenshe pulled Jo onto her a sigh of relief and expectation escaped them both. The sweet
smell of cornfields that Jo had come to associate with Gail filled the small, girlish
bedroom, settling over the rhythmic breath and rustling comforter. The slow roll ofJo's hips brought fire to Gail which she fed with her own need. For abrief moment Jo
was startled at the massiveness of her desire. She realized she had never thought about
Gail "sexually". Not envisioned her here beneath her as she was now. She'd thought
about Gail's legs sometimes. She loved to look at them and the dark hair imprisoned
between the nylon and the firm beige of Gail's calf. The desire had been sure, intrinsic
but not specific. Never as specific as fucking. That was something people did in"adult" books, kept hidden under the mattress. Neither her Aunt Irene who joked intimately with the men on the block nor Gail's mother who was young and pretty andwent out every Saturday night seemed likely to engage in anything resembling what Jo
had read about in those stolen books.
Yet here with Gail's wetness dampening her thigh and her own irretrievable desire
to press her lips to that wetness, Jo knew, at sixteen, this was it. And it was much morethan they'd described in those books. More than what she'd seen at the Uptown Movie
Theatre. Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue had kissed and breathed heavily, leaving a fog
on the screen; but whether it was their blondness or the distance of celluloid, what
they expressed never culminated in the laughter and chaos of desire that Jo felt at thatmoment.
For four years Jo and Gail explored that loving on Wednesday's poke no night andSaturday date night until they fell asleep drained of dreams. They spilled desire into
each other's hands and mouths like a torrential, cleansing storm that blew up twice aweek. At school they watched each other, jealous, yet indulgent lovers; the laughter
always between them. Nothing changed except that Jo's heart beat furiously when she
saw Gail coming down the hall. Whenever someone talked about wearing green on
Thursdays or made bulldyke jokes, Jo sucked her teeth but the words were not hers
yet to be claimed or denounced.
For Gail it was sex, not so different from that she'd experienced in the back of her
boyfriend's Ford, except she really liked Jo. Neither openly acknowledged the intensity of their connection. Questions had no validity or resonance within their arena.
"Why're you spending the night at Janet's house?""Basketball practice went late and her mother's car is in the shop.""Umph!"
Together again, the click of the light going off was a dam broken. Their arms encircled each other and words disappeared. Gail's tight small body learned to fit between
Jo's long dark legs as if they were matching parts. Neither movies, ball games orchurch dances approximated the reality of their nights together. Their boyfriends
became a topic, a joke they shared. Flirtations were a diversion, but never a subterfuge. They were not yet aware they needed one. It was normal for teenaged girls to be79

inseparable and proprietary.
They speculated whether other girls in the school shared their kind of secret but
were ultimately oblivious to the rest of the world. Even for Jo, who had poured over a
copy of The Well of Loneliness discovered in her aunt's closet, literary and local reality was unconnected to them. They'd protected and exiled themselves unconditionally.
Their love and desire were a "thing" they had, nothing that could be named or
testified to, except in high pitched passion when they both sang out in joy and satisfaction. This unnaming left them both quiltless but alone.
They were lovers who remained friends. It had been Gail who rented a car anddrove Jo and her suitcases up to Waltham to college. She, who joked and cajoled Jo
until she let go of her fear of being the lone black stranger in a suburban, white university. She made the separation as natural a part of their relationship as the loving.
It was Jo who wrote to Gail every Monday night, newsy, gossipy, friend letters withquestions about who was pregnant back home and who was in jail. Jo arranged aprivate dorm room so Gail could come up for the weekend and they could make love.
Jo dropped classes for a week to be with Gail when she almost died from an illegal
abortion. Neither questioned the other's devotion nor its nature. They acted as if thesun shone on their every moment. "And perhaps it did." J0 thought now, waiting forGail. Perhaps it was the sunlight which had blinded them to the rest of the world forthe past few years.
Jo sat like a camper awaiting inspection. Her body was still, while her thoughts
darted around through the years, from Roxbury to Waltham and back. The last paper
she had due for her sociology class fought for her attention. Graduation was only twomonths and one paper away. There was nothing to think about really, only typing and
Gail.
When the bell finally rang, Jo remained still; her heart jumped. She rose to answer
the second ring, her body stiff. She opened the door knowing exactly what to expect:Gail, small body, light brown skin, large dark eyes under a thick head of hair that fellin the same permanent, Clairol curls around her face. The last few years had rendered
no changes. Gaii was Gail: everything J0 had ever wanted.
They held each other tightly, the laughter picking up from where it left off the lasttime they'd been together. The laughter and the words tumbled out of them freely.
"So what, you an African now, huh?" Gail said with her hands in Jo's hair.
"Yeah, yeah." Jo answered preening to the touch.
"You gonna give me a little tribal dance?" Gail asked, her inflection carrying about
three move paragraphs than the question.
"Naw, you heathen thing, I thought I'd just put you in the pot and eat you!""We can do that with or without the pot!"
Once again the rest of the world disappeared. Graduation became only a word in the
dictionary as did wedding, bridesmaid and husband. Just words they could make up
jokes about or words they'd heard in the movies. Gail said, "Sam is picking me up
tomorrow morning, here.""Good." Jo said as she closed the door to her small bedroom, not hearing or caring
about the outside. She did not think about typing her paper or ironing her simple
80

bridesmaid dress or Sam, tomorrow at the courthouse.
She remembered the smell of freshly succulent corn and it turned into the starchy,
aroma of their coming. She listened for the slapping of their wet bellies, one against theother, the sound of fleshy thighs rubbing against the stiff hairs.
There was no thought of stopping the events as they moved on course. The tide of
tradition and history was still the natural order of things and a wedding was not unexpected. There were no words with which Jo could say "don't" because her desire wasstill only a soft sound and "lesbian" meant only Stephen Gordon or the white, middleaged Daughters of Bilitis, those shadowy figures hidden in the back pages of little
newspapers.
No one had ever said to love each other was bad. There had been too many other bad
things to worry about. So they'd done it and never thought about the words that went
with it. Those came later, along with the knowledge that love, like everything else,
rested on a series of choices. Things might have been different if: if she knew someother way; if she knew some other lesbians; if she'd only hold on to Gail this morning .
. Dawn came and Jo found herself awake, listening to Gail's shallow breaths. Just
before her Aunt Irene called out to tell them to come to breakfast, Jo realized this had
been the last time. She lay still with the knowledge and her mind went blank. A window closed, light no longer entered making room for thoughts, plans or laughter. Jo
heard the scuffing sound of her aunt's slippers coming down the hall from her own
bedroom.
"You girls gonna sleep right through the wedding? Come on now, that boy gonna behere soon!"
As usual, Gail's eyes just opened and she was awake, aware of Jo's stillness. For once
she had nothing to say, no pun, no laugh. She closed her eyes again as if she could pull
those years back inside of her and give them to Jo allover again. But she became
distracted by the worry that her mother would not be dressed in time for the
ceremony. She decided she'd call as soon as she showered. Gail opened her eyes again
to see Jo smiling down at her. Gail said softly, "Thank you." Then she hopped fromthe bed, her feet light on the cool linoleum as she darted down the hall to thebathroom. The water from the shower was a comforting touch.
Jo turned on the radio, that way her aunt knew she was really awake. Jo could hear
her down the hall at the ironing board and she smelled sausage cooking. By the time Jo
had showered, Gail was already sitting at the kitchen table in her slip, putting butter
on her grits, while Aunt Irene poured homemade things out of the refrigerator onto thetable, each a special wedding gift.
Jo went back to her room for a moment listening to the thudding of her heart. It
blended with the rhythm of a deep moan at the back of her throat. The sound washeavy and broad and stretched across her throat blocking the air. Jo stood holding onto
the worn edge of the dresser. Her mouth opened in pain before the mirror. The rumble
inside pushed higher and her mouth moved soundlessly. A noise pulled itself out, pulled taut with the effort and rode the air as a high pitched wail of loss. The sound could
not be heard over the quiet normality of the whistling tea kettle and the insistent soundof Sam's car horn from the street. A choice had been made for the moment. ~81

Elaine Hall
Love Poemr dreamed of you last night, woman.
r dreamed your tongue
searched for the salt of my bodythe way deer searches for the vein of salt
dripped through the forestby some hunter
who has her in the sights
of his rifle.

r dreamed your fingers
split me open
the way my Grandma's fingers
split the chicken belly and breast open,
digging for the liver and other meats.
r dreamed r cried your name, woman,
the way wolf cries her lonelinesson long winter nights
stunned by the beautyof moon on snow.

82Barbara Hammer still from Stone Circles

83

Janice Gould
Small Subversions
after a Hungarian film
shown at Pacific Film Archive
Fall, 1983

In 1955,(a year before you were born,
just before my father lost his job)
two young women met in Hungary.
They met at a newspaper
where they both worked.
(You were premature,
my father was an outlaw)
One woman was a lesbian,the other woman had a husband.
They met at a newspaper,and they fell in love.
(It somehow makes sensethat you were prematureout of nine pregnancies,
only two survivedperhaps that is why
your bones are so slight.
Any my father lost his job
when the government purged himfrom the sanctified worldof the defense department.
After that we moved northand made a new life)
In Hungary, in 1955, two women met
they went away together
to the country,
there they made love
for hoursin sheds, in barns, in mama's house.
When they came back to the city
their lives were never the same:84

their thoughts were filled with one another,
they contrived to meet in various places,a park bench in the middle of a green lawn
on a cold day in November
just after a rain.
They must keep their gloves on
and their scarves about their necks.
They sit very close, huddled against the wind,
almost they look like children.
They kiss. For one moment
the world vanishes(for one moment,
it seems there is only you,your mouth and eyes,
the way your clothing smells of sweat
and skin, how your blood warms
and warms beneath the pressureof our embrace)
Then the police arrive.
The women are searched, separated.
The lesbian is taken to headquarters
for further questioning.
(After that, my dad worked like a maniac,
sometimes eight days a week.
Our home, it never was the same.
My dad must show he could support us,
for perhaps he was afraid
wondering always why such a small subversion
should cost a life)
The lesbian had learnedof some government bribes and cover-ups
on a collective farm in the country.
She meant to expose the situation.
The other woman would no longer
sleep with her husband. She admitted,
defiantly, her love for her friend.
One day when she was taking a bath,her husband looked for his army pistol.
He took it from its caseand shot her.

85

In 1955, in Hungary,two women met,t they loved,' s they me ,as human bemg
mmitted acts
they work~d , they co,of subversIOnct
and respe ,loversblindly push,,pushmg, asdariesagainst the boun' the constraints' I order , That, is whyd sociaof State an in 1955, the lesbianin Hungary, d half submerged
was found dea , d e of a forest,in a river at ~he e ,g the headal hmes mshot sever d this frontierand heart, an
dary
represents t~e boundof her beautiful Ian ,.

86

Dredlighttwo scenes fromWord of Mouth
This play is a skeleton, a series of suggested scenes/events. Mayo and Sensa are driving across country to attend {reluctantly} Mayo's sister's wedding. These two excerpts are scenes that happen along the way.

{Mayo goes around truck in blackout coming up to front left tire as lights come up on
gas station/truck stop. JoJo enters. Sensa begins to speak. She is cut off by JoJo
reading aloud wild women bumpers tickers on back of car such as: "The Future is
Female," "Castrate Rapists, " etc.}
JoJo: {after reading} Hi. I'm JoJo. Fill her up? {starts to do so}.

Sensa: Hi. Uh yes. Well how much is it?
JoJo: Cheapest. You all better be careful riding around this part of the country withthose bumperstickers.
Mayo: Any part of the country.
JoJo: Yeah. I guess that's so. Want something to eat? We got (long detailed list of shitfood).
Mayo: Can't we go inside?
JoJo: Closed.
Mayo: How come?
JoJo: Oh, renovations. Had a couple of good old boys in here last week. Shot the place
up. Blood and guts allover the floor and walls. You want a burger?
Mayo: Jesus. Were you here?
JoJo: Oh yeah.
Mayo: What did you do when they started shooting?
JoJo: {moves closer to the cilr} What do you think? I got my butt out of there to mycar, grabbed my shotgun and displaced one of those fuckers myself. Bastard used tocome in here every night. Sitting in my station talking about "brown sugar this,brown sugar that." Leave me two nickels for a tip" "That's one for you and one foryour girlfriend, Sugar." Well that's all for him.
Mayo: God. Why didn't you quit?
JoJo: Easy to talk about quit, white girl.
Mayo: Yeah. Sorry. But aren't you scared you'll get caught?

87

JoJo: Shit no. All that shooting going on - no one sees me going or coming back. I give'em some female hysterics when I come back in. Just for good measure. (she tops up
gas tank, replaces gas cap, returns hose to pump). Yeah. Opportunity knocks,
you got to open the door. There's one harassed woman and a bunch of kids out
there breathing a lot easier and sleeping better nights knowing their good for nothing
drunk and mean old man ain't gonna be showing up no more. That'll be $19.87 forthe gas.
(Sensa hands over the money).

Sensa: That really happen?
JoJo: Maybe.
Sensa: Or maybe it's like an inspirational message?
JoJo: Maybe. Remember what I said about those bumper stickers now. Something
to be said for caution and slow stealth. So long now.
BLACKOUT(Lights up on Mayo and Sensa driving. Sensa is driving. Mayo is eating a salad outof a bowl and feeding some to Sensa who is also eating a sandwich.}

Mayo: Does Kala know you're coming?
Sensa: No.
Mayo: Well have you heard from her recently? She . . .
Sensa: She's seriously deranged. I saw her last time. Last year or two years ago I
guess. I hadn't heard, so I went to New York. On a plane. Just borrowed the money.
Scammed some, and went.
Mayo: You hate planes.
Sensa: Yeah. I do. I hate planes.
(Lights fade on driving pair. Sensa gets out of the car and walks over to Kala 's apt
scene as lights completely out on car and up on apt. Tiny lower east side tenement
special. Mattress on the floor, minimal furnishings. Walls and ceilings covered with
forest service maps. Kala is on the bed looking at maps through binoculars. She does
not respond to Sensa throughout this scene. Sensa speaks mostly to Mayo/audiencebut sometimes appeals directly to Kala . Kala does not respond.)

Sensa: She sits - rather, lies - on her bed and studies her maps. Through binoculars.
See the maps are pinned to the walls and ceiling. Every inch is covered. With
wilderness maps. The kind you get from the forest service that tell where the towns
and cities finally stop and the trees begin again. Its her study. At least that's what shecalls it. Learning the escape routes. Only she never goes out anymore. I told her. ..
I told her all the maps in the world weren't gonna help if she didn't get up off thatbed pretty soon. I asked her; I said, "You're so busy studying the Sangre deCristos, all right, here's one for you, how do you get from your mattress to any
88highway out of New York City?" Any highway I said. She couldn't tell me. She justsat there and thought about it but the best she could come up with was the 23rd St.
entrance to the West Side Highway. 23rd St. is an exit ramp. And the West Side
Highway... the West Side Highway's been closed for ten years.
(Po use as Sensa surveys scene, perhaps reaches ever so slightly toward Kala, but
pulls herself back.)

Sensa: (to herself, Mayo, Kala) I don't go to wakes.
(Slow fade on Kala 's space as Sensa goes to car, lifts up hood. Lights up on car.
Mayo in the driver'S seat. Sensa has opened tool box and taken a wrench to theengine.)Sensa: Try it again. (sound of engine turning over but refusing to start.) Again.
(Mayo revs and revs it without success) All right. All right. Shit.
(Mayo gets out of car. Comes around to look into engine. Looks long.)\

Mayo: It's something simple.
Sensa: How do you know?
Mayo: It has to be something simple. The goddess would not allow something
complicated to be wrong with this vehicle because she knows that as women we
have been discriminated against in that we did not get to spend our formative years
messing around with cars. For this I am eternally grateful and trust in her wisdom
and mercy to get us the hell out of here before a car fuli of red necks should happen
by. Amen. Now I will take out my crystal and ascertain the cause of the trouble.
You should take a nap. You're getting cranky.
(Mayo proceeds to start swinging her prism gently back and forth asking yes or noquestions, such as, Is it the starter motor? etc. Sensa, disgruntled, looks at the cal',kicks a tire, and goes to lie down. She falls asleep and in her dream: she astral
travels to jojo and Kala 'sSoyburgers (sign to that effect) where Kala is working on a
soyburger. This scene will take some production to establish its dream quality.}
Kala: (sees Sensa) Hiya.

Sensa: Kala! You got out of bed.
Kala: Sure. What happened. I finally focused in on all those little map symbols andrealized they were uranium mines and dams and military reservations. It hit me. It's
dangerous out there. I can't just escape to the wilderness. I've got to save her first. So
I've been reading up, and looking around, speaking out some.
(fojo walks in).

Sensa: JoJo!
JoJo: Hey Sensa. What it is. What it is.
(Kala and jojo commence to pack soyburgers into boxes.)

Sensa: So you two - you're together?

89

JoJo: Yeah . We fix soyburgers and foment revolution. Keeping our eyes and ears open
for opportunities knocking, you know. Been going up to the state legislature lately.
Checking them out. You wouldn't believe what they're doing up in that pork barrel,
Sensa. All kinds of plans to "develop the resources, " you know. They're talking
national sacrifice areas and nuclear waste dumps and all kinds of shit. That's allright. Let them talk. We got some plans for those boys. Wait and see. Opportunity,
she be knocking any time now.
Sensa: You be careful. I mean - you know. Be careful.
Kala: That's all right. We're real low key. Only talking about it now because we're allin this dream together. Good time to talk about things you can't talk aboutotherwise.
Sensa: Yes. Astral communication. We'll have to keep working on that. But .. . Kala?
Kala: Sensa?
(foJo exits a bit before this.)Sensa: I miss you sometimes. Your physical presence and all. I, I miss you. Do you
think maybe you could remember to write to me - anything - a postcard - and letme know where you are - on the physical plane I mean?
Kala: You came to s~e me on a plane last time, didn't you?
Sensa: Yes, I did, and I hate planes. I just want to know you're all right. Yes. Well I
see you're all right. I kind of... Well I was looking forward to seeing you in New
York. I mean I was scared to see you because I didn't know . .. Last time I came tosee you - you scared me.
Kala: You wanted me to act right.
Sensa: Don't pull that sanctimonious crazy person act on me. I wanted you to snap outof it before they took you off to Bellevue. They . . . Oh Kala. We were so close andthen you went off on this private crazy trip.
Kala: I had to.
Sensa: Well I had to go to San Francisco too.
Kala: OK. I understand that. You were tired of keeping it together for me. You split.
OK.
Sensa: OK. Hell, it's not OK. I may never get over it. Kala, since this is a dream couldn't you just throw your arms around me and beg me to take you back?
Kala: (laughing) No. Not even in a drea~.
Sensa: Is it because I deserted you?
Kala: Sensa, you are such a Catholic. "No guilt. No blame." Remember? You taughtme that.

90

Sensa: I am an ex-Catholic. And just remember. You deserted me. This dream ismaking me tired and I need my strength because the truck's broken down and Mayo,
Mayo ... Kala, I made Mayo promise she would stay with me forever.
JoJo: (re-entering on Sensa's last line) Good Luck. Kala, we have a delivery to make. I
can do it myself if you want.
Kala: No. It needs two.
Sensa: OK, well, I'll go, I guess.
JoJo: Hey, you can't leave without trying the product. (foJo hands Sensa a wrappedsoyburger from the box she's brought onstage with her. Sensa bites in.)Sensa: Oh good. Very good. You got any little packets of ketchup or salt?
Kala: (laughing) Sensa.
Sensa: Oh. Right. Sugar and salt. Right. Packaging. Right. I'm cool (still eating).
Listen, I'm just going to eat this and go. I hate good byes you know, so I'll just turnaround now. (She does. They leave. She gives some farewell sign with her backturned and returns to her sleeping position on the truck. Mayo is still asking thependulum. After, Is it the fuel pump? - sounds of two motorcycles going by andscreeching to a halt. Sensa starts waking up. Two people in full motorcycle dragstride onto the stage. They stand for a moment taking in the scene.)

Sensa: (fully waking up and seeing them) (to herself) Oh shit.
(They stride over to her. One continues on to the vehicle. They lift up helmets. They
are women.).

*****•••••(Lights up on early morning camp. Snake Shade. Fairly well established. A group of
women are practicing t'ai chi to soft flute music. Others are eating or drinking tea
around communal kitchen. There is a whole life going on which is very important toestablish during all of the time in S. Shade. Mayo and Sensa are watching this scenefrom a distance, unobserved by the participants. At the right moment, the t'ai chiceases. There is a pause and someone switches on a portable box and some of thet'ai chi group and some of the breakfasters and all of the kids join in to some jumping tune on the order of "Bad Girl. " Towards the end of this Mayo and Sensa enter
the scene, perhaps dancing, perhaps just walking in. I think dancing. When it isover, they take melons or whatever fruit they have brought out of their pack andstart handing them around. All eat and talk and kiss and hug, etc. It quiets down abit.)

Osa: So where are you two headed?
Mayo: New York. My sister's getting married. (growling from some of the younger
sisters.)91

Osa: I was married once.
Mayo: How long did it last?
Osa: Two weeks. It wouldn't have been that long - but everyone was on the side of
the marriage, telling me to "give it a chance." So I did. Two weeks.
Rita: Mine lasted six months. Everything was all right for the first two months. Not
great, but all right. Then he started complaining that I didn't get his laundry as clean
as his mother, and what was wrong with me, I wouldn't go down on him, I wasn't areal woman. So I stopped doing his laundry and sleeping with him, and one day I
put all his nasty clothes right out on the stoop with all his other things and left him anote telling him to go find himself a real woman - good luck, motherfucker.
(General laughter and reaction to her story.)(A ca ll is heard announding the arrival of Carrot Juice loaded downwith books and papers which are almost but not quite falling fromher arms. Mayo and she embrace and she acknowledges Sensa.)

Carrot: Oh, I'm so glad to see you. I have just millions of things to show you andtapes; I'm doing music now too. Really mostly music and pictures. The printed
word is just the past. I mean not as far as I'm concerned. In no way. The printed
word has saved my life on many, many occasions. Without books my childhoodand early womanhood would have been a great deal more painful than they were.
I .. . well, you know all about that. Now - how long are you staying, because thenI'll know how much you can take in. There are several women's reggae tapes I want
you to hear and then all this new Celtic Rock I've got and ...
Mayo: (interrupting) Carrot - only until tomorrow. We're on our way to New York
City. Pat's getting married.
Carrot: (searching for who Pat is) Pat? Pat? Pat. Yes. Canning St. Your sister Pat isgetting married. We met at Canning St.
(At "Canning St. ," another part of the performance space lights up and the story
Mayo now tells is danced silently by a group of women.)

Mayo: Canning St.! Right!
Rita: What's Canning St.?
Mayo: In Berkeley. Carrot Juice had this crazy warehouse on Canning St. Three floorsof this condemned building with gaping holes in the floors and boarded up
windows.
Carrot: (with great fondness) Oh, Canning St. That was the best work space I everhad. Loads and loads of room. Everything filed and organized.
Mayo: Organized! Boxes, you mean. Boxes and boxes and stacks of books and magazines and comics. And rats. On the third floor there were rats.
Rita: Ugh. Mayo, you lived there?

92

Mayo: Oh, yeah. We all did. About thirty of us moved in when we had to leave themountain. Thirty women and kids with all their worldly possessions.
Carrot: It was the beginning of the end, but what could I do? They needed a place.
Mayo: The first two floors were totally taken up with beds and hammocks. We had
one coleman stove to cook on and everyone was fighting.
Carrot: Very distracting. It got to the point where I had to move the files up to thethird floor. Luckily, Carla was there and knew what to do about the rats.
Osa: What did she do?
Carrot: Shot them. She had this rifle. I believe it was a twenty-two, and she just sat up
all one night on a stack of Scientitic Americans, and shot them down as they cameout to nibble the files.
Rita: Oh my God.
Mayo: Yeah, it was gruesome. Just two days after rat-kill night, I get a call. My sister
Pat is in town and she's on her way over. The place is complete chaos. Carla isundergoing some very complex ritual to cleanse her of the blood of the dead rats.
There's little candle stubs burning all over the floor.
Carrot: Terrible fire hazard.
Mayo: Carla's friends are chanting in some unknown language. She's sitting in the
middle of the room, covered with ashes, weeping and howling. The noise level isbeyond belief.
Carrot: And the groceries. Don't forget the groceries.
Mayo: Oh, yes! There's about $300 worth of groceries that have mysteriously appeared in the kitchen. We have no money - no foodstamps. Dust Storm is sitting
there earnestly apologizing to Carrot about getting a little carried away with her
provider karma, while her gang of teen dykes is scurrying around hiding these hugevats of peanut butter and fifty pound bags of brown rice. Meanwhile, two of them areat the window watching for the man, and who should they spot coming up thewalk?
Carrot: Your sister Pat.
Mayo: My sister Pat. At which point they give the alarm, being very hyped up on
stolen ice cream. The entire mad scene ~ Carla, the chanting, the hiding of thefood. Dust Storm's earnest apologies - everything stops. Everyone's eyes are rooted
to the door. My sister Pat walks in.
Rita: (hushed voice) What did she do?
Mayo: She stood there. The smile was starting to fade from her face. Her eyes were
trying to take in all the people and why they were staring at her. And I said, "It's
my sister, Pat." There was a big sigh of relief and everyone went right back to what
they were doing.
(Laughter)93

Carrot: Two days later the police did come - or someone like the police. Healthinspectors? I don't know. But we had to leave fast.
Rita: Where did you go?
Mayo: Well, Dust Storm and the gang had been out looking for a place because wejust had to get that act out of the city. We holed up at one of those white boy
ashrams for a few days, and somehow she found us and took us in five broken downcars to this beautiful place on the Yuba River. Lots of space. No. people. Everyone
took off their clothes and calmed down. We lived off Dust Storm's groceries for the
rest of the summer.
{pause}Carrot: Oh, damn.
Mayo: What?
Carrot: Well, if I'd known we were going to talk about Canning St., I would havehooked up the tape recorder.
{Chorus of No 's}

Carrot: But listen, this is our herstory. We're always digging and scratching around forour past and it's so hard 'cause Women hardly ever made it into their records.
Rita: Or got cut ~ut later.
Carrot: Or cut up, or burnt up. And the children coming, they'll want to know about
us. What we did, how we thought.
Rita: How we survived.
Carrot: Yes.
Mayo: But part of our survival is not telling. Women can't afford to set it down in
names, dates, and places. Never could.
Rita: Right. We just tell each other in those undertones the man can't hear. In the
kitchens and laundromats and ladies rooms. {pause} Me and my sister once spent awhole hour talking in a Ladies Room at the Port Authority in NYC. She was goingaway and it was killing us both to separate. But the husbands were with us and we
couldn't get down, you know. So we just sat in a stall and held each other for anhour and told all the things we never told anyone else. (pause) Mayo, you go see mysister. She's back in the city. I'll give you her address. She's by herself with her
kids. Trying to work and go to school. You go see her. Don't bring a tape recorder.
Just remember.
Carrot: OK, OK. Word of mouth. Come on. Come on, Mayo. There's not much timeand so much material.

94

Mayo: I'm coming. Rita, Ire.ne's here?
Rita: In solitary. But she'd be glad to see you. Carrot'll show you.
Carrot: (collecting papers) It's on the way.
(They exit, lights go down on main camp. Women have been dispersing for last little
bit. Sensa has left already. Mayo and Carrot walk. We feel them getting deeper in,
to more isolated place, maybe branches projected behind them moving as they walkin place.}

Carrot: (as they are walking) Listen, I'm just going to drop you off at Irene's. When
you're finished there, just follow the path to my place.
Mayo: Come with me.
Carrot: No way.
Mayo: Why?
Carrot: Because I don't need to be an invisible bystander at the great reunion.
Mayo: I wouldn't make you feel that way.
Carrot: Oh yes you would. The two of you together is a massive ego trip I can dowithout. Course I feel that way about most couples.
Mayo: We're hardly a couple.
Carrot: Here it is. Later. (She exits.)(Mayo finds herself in Irene 's camp, which was there and is now lit or has just comesmoothly on. At any rate, Irene is there stripping poles with a hatchet. Mayo approaches. Irene turns at sound and sees Mayo. Turns back to her work. Pause.)

Irene: I guess you're real. Not an apparition. Are you real? (Looks again). Yes, you'rereal. Sometimes .. . I'm alone a lot. Sometimes women visit - their shadows come . .
Sit right down and talk for hours. Or yell. Susan comes and yells at me about how I
done her wrong. And I did. I did. (Turns to Mayo) Hi Mayo. (Mayo comes to her.
They embrace).

Mayo: What are you working on?
Irene: Oh, just cleaning some poles. Build myself a winter shelter. You staying?
Mayo: No. Me and Sensa, we're on our way to New York for my sister. She's getting
married.
Irene: Is that good?
Mayo: I don't know. I'm tired of thinking about it.
Irene: Then don't. Here (gives her hatchet), strip a few poles for your old mama.
(Mayo begins stripping).

Mayo: Rita says you're in solitary.
95

Irene: Yes. Self-imposed. {She laughs} I'll tell you, nobody objected when I made thatdecision. Can't blame them. I was pretty far gone when I got here. Hadn't been
sober in three months and no intention of stopping. Smuggled in a case of beer andstarted recruiting drinking friends and lovers. Like before. Like always.
Mayo: What happened?
Irene: One day Rita came on over to where me and a couple of others were having a
mid-morning shot. She just stood there looking at me. Not saying a word. Just
looking. Well everyone got the message, 'cause they all put down their cups and sortof melted into the woods. And then it was just her and me. I was pretty high, but I
couldn' t think of nothing to say to turn it into a party. So I looked at the ground.
Pretty soon she comes up to me and kneels down so we're the same height. She
reaches out her hand, and real gently, lifts up my face so we're eye to eye. She gives
me a minute to focus and then she says, " Irene, get sober or get your white trash
act out of here. You've got twelve hours. " Then she got up and left. When she was
half-way across the field, she turned and yelled back, "And you better pick up
everyone of those fucking pop-tops while you 're at it too."
Mayo: You got told.
Irene: I got told. So I sat there, finished up whatever was laying around in half-empty
cans, and started picking up pop-tops. Kept going 'til I cleaned the place up, thenlaid down on my bed and stayed sick as a dog for a week. {Pause. Mayo strips
wood. } Mayo, it took me a month to get back to feeling good this time. I'm just
now having the strength and concentration to work, and I need to work. Every
morning, I lie in my bed and watch the sun come up and plan my slip. Where I'm
gonna get it, and where I'm gonna drink it, what I'm gonna do, who I'm gonna telloff. Everything. {pause} I'm talking too much. Living alone. I'm learning to talk out
loud to myself - that it's OK - but it's hard. I think of the bag ladies and I'm afraid
to get that loose.
Mayo: You going to AA?
Irene: Some. I try to get there at least once a week.
Mayo: What's it like?
Irene: Pretty Christian. But accepting. They know I'm from the "girl's camp" that's what they call it - but we're all alcoholics and that's all we have to deal with.
I even got myself a sponsor. Betty. She's an old farmer lady. Been sober for twentyfive years, but she still comes to meetings and sometimes I go over to her house andwe all sit down and eat together. Then me and Betty go for walks. She tells me thenames of the wild flowers. We talk.
Mayo: {who has perhaps grown impatient with this AA talk, which she has heard
before} Have you been doing any painting?

96

Irene: Not really. Seems like painting and drinking go together for me. Did somewildflower studies for Betty, though.
Mayo: Bet she loved them.
Irene: She did. Now I'm tired of talking about me and my addictions. Tell me aboutyou.
Mayo: Me and Sensa are living in a house with three other women and two kids.
Sensa's cooking at this Italian restaurant. We usually have the overflow from thebattered women's shelter at our house, so it's fairly crowded there, but it works out
most of the time. I'm still working at the hospital. I have some of your paintings in
my room and the food one in the kitchen.
Irene: Is that, "Breakfast in Bed"?
Mayo: Yes.
Irene: Great. I thought I lost that one when they impounded my truck in Denver.
Mayo: No. I have it. You were out of it and don't remember. One of the Denver
women called me and I went up there to the car jail and got all your stuff out.
Irene: That was you?
Mayo: That was me.
Irene: Well, thanks Mayo. I'd really like to see some of that work again
sometime.
Mayo: Well, I could send it to you, but. . .
Irene: No. No. It would just get ruined here. You keep it. I like to think of it up
somewhere women can see it.
Mayo: You could come for a visit and see it yourself.
Irene: That's a long trip, Mayo. But who knows. Betty's always wanted to see thePacific. Maybe she and I will jump in her old pickup someday and take a trip. She
said she had a dream that I was going to be the one to open new doors for her.
Mayo: I'd love it if you came. We could run all over town - go to the thrift storesand tryon clothes, like we used to. And Irene, you wouldn't believe the music.
There's so much really good music around. And the galleries. You could see all
your old friends. They're always asking about you and .. .
Irene: (interrupting) Mayo, Mayo. You're going too fast. One day at a time.
Mayo: Come on, Irene, you can at least think about how much fun we'd have.
Irene: No, I can't. Because then I'm living in the future. I need to live in the present,
Mayo.
Mayo: Well shit, Irene, I have to say that all this AA stuff is too much if you can'teven let yourself imagine a visit to your old friends.
97

Irene: I'm an alcoholic. There's certain ways I have to live my life. I have to accept
my limitations, same as anyone else with a disease.
Mayo: Does that mean you never paint another picture?
Irene: That's it, isn't it? You want me to be the great Lesbian painter. That's cause
you 're from the suburbs.
Mayo: I want you to be the woman you are, and yes, that woman is a great painter.
Irene: Mayo, I never painted a picture without at least a bottle of bourbon a day. How
many more paintings you think I got left in me at that rate?
Mayo: Irene, I .. .
Irene: Let's see: figure about two months per painting, that's sixty bottles each, with amonth or two in between to dry out. What do you say, Mayo? Five? Six? That's
360 bottles of bourbon. I don't want to die, Mayo. Not like that.
Mayo: (because the discussion is ended) I'm sorry, Irene.
Irene: It's all right. I just had to make you see what it means to be a drunk.
Mayo: You're not a drunk.
Irene: I am, Mayo. If you're my friend , you 'l! accept that. Until you do, you'l! just be
stuck with regrets. No regrets. It's what I'm trying to learn. It's a good lesson.
Hel!, maybe I'I! never paint another picture, but I painted a few good ones in mytime. And maybe in ten years I'l! be able to pick up a brush and put down all thecolors in my head without alcohol.
Mayo: No regrets. I'll work on it, Irene. That's al! I can do.
Irene: That's all I'm asking. (pause) Hey Mayo, Monkey on your back?
(Mayo responds by laying her back over [rene's bent over back . Irene moves in sucha way that Mayo gets stretched out. They reverse positions).

Mayo: Thanks, Irene. Listen, I've got to go see Carrot. She'l! be beside herself by
now. What are you doing later? I mean, can I come over again?
Irene: Sure, Mayo.
Mayo: What I really mean, is if I promise to be on silence, can I sleep with you
tonight?
Irene: You don't have to be on silence. Why bother now? I would love to sleep withyou tonight.
Mayo: It's not planning too far in advance?
Irene: Very funny.
Mayo: Sorry. I had to. I have an adversary relationship with AA. I'I! see you later.
(Sh e overcomes her reticence to kiss [rene and leaves. [rene looks after her andgoes on with her work.) ~98Kateri Sardella

Bar Scenes

I stand at the bar and listen to the sounds. The incomplete and slurred sentences.
The hustles. It all fills my ears.
The bartender, dressed in white tight pants and no shirt runs up and down the bar.
He's popping bottle caps, clinking ice into glasses, and pouring whiskies and liquors
over the coldness of already melting ice cubes.
I see the drinks on the bar. I see the bottles behind the bartender, neatly lined up on
the shelf to either side of the cash register. The rows and rows of comfort, numbness,beckon to me; line up to be guzzled, promising to take away my pain.
Standing here feeling the music and the heat of intoxicated bodies so close to one
another, intoxicated with lust and alcohol, I can't remember who I am now, how it isnow. Only how it was and who I was. I raise my hand, trying to get his attention. I am
drawn to the sadness, the familiar pain, the one life I knew so well. I yearn -for thefamiliar and predictable discomfort again.
I'm wet between my legs. I can't tell if it's sweat from dancing so hard trying to
avoid the beauty of beer bottles being lifted to meet the mouths, the throats, of thirsty
drinkers, or if it's desire for the ocean of waves of release waiting for me behind thebar.
What is it really, behind the bar, that I desire? What is in these bottles and bottles ofvodka on the rocks and Budweiser chasers? What secrets do I keep there? Whatmother, father, or sister waits for me there to bring nourishment to my body in a mostdisastrous way?
My decision is made and my body relaxes. The bartender has finally noticed me andknows that I am thirsty and I am beckoning him to me, willing him to come and serveme. Give me what I need to keep my sanity.
My lips are dry and my throat is constricted when he stands behind the bar, in frontof me. He's asking me what I'd like. He's looking through me and already clinking half
melted ice into a glass for me. The vodka is on the shelf. The smell of Budweisel beer
is on his breath. Just one drink. Who would know? Who would know?
"Mineral water, please. With lime."

99

Elana Dykewomon

A Train Ride
I was a long way from where I might be recognized. The morning had started insufferably hot, and the afternoon baked us in our individual seats. Most of the passengers
sat back with their eyes shut, resembling a corridor of corpses. I was tempted to walkthrough the aisles placing pennies on their eyelids. I restrained myself.
It's an old trick. Divert the mind from the body's, or the spirit's, pain. Conjure up
the morbid, remember your old lover, take a ride. I don't claim to have evolved any
farther than the first womon who was inspired by thunder, the claws of the tiger, an infestation of lice, to chant, or simply change her gaze to some other, easier, naturalwonder.
None of us has changed much. When you look out the windows, at the landscape.
We age, and change to each other. But. The train suddenly lurches in the middle of avery fiat, straight section. The jolt sloshes the sweat around on my body. I am annoyed
and don't care at the same time. Some petty negligence. It's too hot to hold on to it.
Friday night it was cold. Actually cold. I walked by the sea with an old lover. The
beach was only slightly littered, the lights from the road muddied the darkness, but
still the darkness was vibrant enough for the moon's path to compel us toward thewater. A certain angle of dune, a slight rise in the beach, gave the optic illusion of great
distance. We did not have to walk all that far to be at the hem of the Pacific.
She liked it when I said "the ocean's hem". Many womyn like it if you are a little
poetic. They don't know how much work it is. Days alone walking on the beach, astolen trainride, for a single observation. That search, to re-imagine the familiar. I likethe work, but it is hardly as effortless as I used to like it to appear.
Maybe effort changes with age. She had been working on herself, too, my ex, with a
new inclination for introspection and the time to indulge it. Clearly, it had been an effort for her. We were talking about anger, and love was in it, in the subject of anger.
She has been studying meditation, release, mythology, compassion. The words, theformulas she had learned, stirred me unexpectedly.
The first time I had gone to see her again, I had anticipated being merely tolerant,slightly above the practice of any organized technique, willing to lend a patronizing ear
to Buddha. Fortunately, my willingness overcame my patronization. Her language wascompelling, and the discussions we have now give me new ways to look at the eventsof my life. Re-imagine them. Release them, so that they can grow, and I can go on, withthe old growth all around me.
That's a pleasant way to think of it, but it's not so pleasant, don't get me wrong. Certain forms of growth terrify me. Probably they terrify you too, if you're honest.
My ex and I must have stopped sleeping together almost ten years ago. Now when I
come to visit, she wants me to lie beside her again. This has happened twice in six
months, but you can see it gets to me. She is particular, still, and wants to be on a cer100

tain side of the bed, so I am left to lie under her huge asparagus fern. She remembers
my fear of plants, but I say no, it's okay, and cope with the green tendrils about to suckthe tender moisture of my nose.
It's like that about growth. I have no plants in my bedroom. Growth is not always
pleasant. It thrives on dead and rotting things, it needs nourishment, and will takenourishment wherever it can. It can move into places it was never invited - take up
the refrigerator, knock the books off your shelves. That's why I like rocks. Hard things
you can hold in your hand, and believe in as finished. But I read that even collectedrocks grow. That gave me pause, until I realized how slow it would be. I'd be deadlong before I noticed my rutilated quartz sprouting by my bed.
Okay, even so - I like to imagine myself as a womon capable of change and depth,of learning. What we call growth. Learning and the need to control are often at odds
with each other. Fortunately, I'm a Libra, so I get to go back and forth. First a little
learning, then a little control. A little growth, a little rock garden.
Also I'm a Jew, so I laugh at myself right about now. My ex is also a Jew. I know thatmany Jews study Buddhism, so I pay attention.
I know some already. A little about the 8-fold path and bodisatvas, and Kuan Yin,
the goddess of mercy, but it is all high school education and reading the labels inmuseums.
She goes to the desert to meditate. To learn compassion towards herself first, andthen towards others.
So we lie on her bed, ten years later, and speak of compassion. She is very practical.
She says, "1 said, 'have compassion' when my neighbor's dog kept shitting in mygarden. That was a real test." She is completely serious.
I laugh and am relieved. Along with the talk of archetypes and meditation,' she is thesame womon struggling with the same things I do - and so many things seem so muchharder for her than for me that I'm surprised.
Even in her body, for instance. She is half my weight, and the same height. I imagine
if I were her size I would not hurt, I wouldn't have sciatica, arthritis, even though it's
obvious this isn't true. I imagine I could run, bicycle, I would play tennis on the city
courts. I would hike the Appalachian trail alone and not have to depend on trains for
my long distance mobility.
But myoid lover does none of those active things. She used to study karate, I
remember that, but she drifted from it. Her back hurts her all the time. She says
because she stopped being physical, stopped doing her exercises.
So here I must put into practice exactly what we've been talking about. I must havecompassion that is neither pity nor anger, nor self-congratulation.
And this is just an example. An aside. Aside from what?
How we lie together after 10 years, speaking of compassion, how later she holds meat the cold border of water we have come to. She is wearing my jacket over her jacket,
and is barefoot, shivering in the sand.
I have my arms around her, we speak of how we are amazed by our returning to101each other. But I am trying hard not to be amazed. To use the phrases of compassion as
formulas like the formulas of mathematics. Precise, logical tools to apply to certain
spiritual problems. As she hugs me, I try not to think about love, or need, or bodies. I
look over her shoulder, out to sea, and keep thinking 'that's where my dog went when
she died' - meaning the wet horizon.
I watch rows of trees disappear, come close, disappear, out the window. The world
is moving. The night will be cooler here, even in the midwest. We wait for the coolnight to come on the train. People wake up then, go to the bar car, look for action.
She calls that the desiring mind. As soon as we have what we want, we wantsomething else.
I say, I know about that, but I can get beyond it sometimes - not with womyn with womyn I am always wanting something - but in nature. I can be satisfied inmyself on the journey, with a stone, with a leaf. I call that Hassidism, though, I say.
She laughs. She holds my hand. Years ago I interpreted the very same gestures to besigns of unexpressed sexual desire. Actually, I still think it's unexpressed sexual desire.
Her motion towards me, towards a touching physical intimacy, where the heart can be
spoken. But I stay very guarded.
I have another relationship very much like this old one. One which is not so delicate,in which I am not quite so careful. I have learned a lot about being guarded fromwomyn who still say they love me. It is not a question of their love. They do love me.
Being wanted is not necessarily getting what you want. So I practice opening up, froma great distance. A distance from which I cannot be moved, no matter how deeply I am
touched.
The train goes by lake after lake. The evening sun is beautiful on the lake water, thechanging color relieves the monotony. Repetition is a simple part of the world. When I
repeat myself everyone says I should go into therapy. But I don't want therapy. What I
want is this train ride.
When I can do anything I want, I take a train across the country, and then comeback. I get this wish less than I get what I want in love. I shouldn't be doing it now - astolen week, money I don't have. And I didn't expect it to be so hot. Living by theocean you forget how it is with the rest of the country. I justify what I've done bydescribing it as need. But it's just what I did. What I'm doing.
It occurs to me to desire her again after all this time. Because she reaches out to me,
touches me. Desire occurs to me, although I will not act on it. I think how strange it isthat we always expected her to be the one with lovers. She has been celibate for two
years, and I have had many lovers. Not casual lovers. Heaven forfend anyone should
think I'm not serious about intimacy here. And intimacy keeps occuring to me.
But more than reaching towards her, I'fantasize trading places with her. I would
want her leisure, her size, her solitude, her studying, her room, even her backproblems. I want her to have mine - my body, the crowdedness of my life, my job,
my feet, my relationships, my frustrated ambition.
Her frustrated ambition.
102

Frustrated ambition. Compassion. I think of having compassion for myself, for how I
loved her and how I love the other one, who is often so like her. It isn't so hard to havecompassion for myself, really.
But when I think of having compassion for them, it isn't so easy. They love and hurtme, they drew so close and went so far away, they left me feeling humiliated and angry
because I pushed, I wanted, I wouldn't let go of the intimacies they offered and thenwithdrew. That is hard to have compassion for. They want to hug me, 10 and 3 years
later, and be comforted that love endures.
I stand there, hugging and enduring love as they control it. They would see it differently. They would have to find compassion for their own fear of intimacy, andwhatever else has happened in them around loving me. They would not feel in control.
They would see it as a new opening, the possibility of tenderness and growth; theywould be scared allover again. And that too is hard to have compassion for. To havecompassion for them. To let go, and still be part of that which I let go. To have theevents grow again without the constraint of my anger and my need, take on newshapes, while I go on in my life.
I cried. I looked out the train window at the world turning dark, clenched my fists
and cried just a little. Then I started to breathe. The night air is cool at last. And I am
just riding. A long way from where anyone can recognize me.

© Elana Dykewomon, 8-10/84

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103

Sandy Boucher
Half of a Map
Party. Kitchen. I'm sitting up against a high counter behind a collection of Calistoga
and wine bottles, looking out into a room where women, dykes like me, stand talking.
Two of them have sat down on the floor to compare shoes. One wears those soft brightly colored laced shoes that are fashionable\this year. The other arches her foot to show
off a pair of brown and white Spaulding saddles that she found in a secondhand store.
Immediately I recall how absolutely crucial it had been, when I was a high school student in the early fifties, to wear Spauldings. And I realize I am the only woman in theroom over thirty. Usually I don't notice ages, but now as I look around I see the firm
cheeks, the slim or if not slim yet resilient bodies, the clear eyes and particularfreshness of very young women.
They examine the laces in the shoes, thick ropes of pink and grey.
And I find myself talking, my words astonishing me. "When I was young," I say,"the boys wore charcoal grey flannel suits with pink shirts."
The women in the kitchen barely glance at me. There is a small jerky pause, andthen the woman with the Spauldings says, "Oh yeah, charcoal grey, I could get into
that. I could see it-and a pink shirt, hey I bet that'd look hot."
When I was young . .. I am numb, sitting there staring at a wide-hipped greenish
bottle of chablis. I can't remember ever uttering that phrase before. It has pointed to achasm that I never imagined to exist: between that presumably distant andunreachable time when I was young, and now. Now ... what?! Now, according to thelogic of the phrase, I am not young. Then am I old?
I look around the room. Any woman here under the age, say, of 27, is young enoughto be my daughter. That spiffy dyke over there with the crewcut and the three earrings
in a little row up the curve of her ear: I imagine her as my daughter. What an arresting
thought. As it is, I am free to enjoy her loud laugh and the swagger of her thrustforward leg, her tanned arms crossed over her silky shirt. How differently would I feel
about her if she had suckled at my breast, had tested me with the demands of her
growing up, had given me the delight of her developing mind and body, had loved me
and then rebelled against me and finally condescended to me or maybe become myfriend.
But she could be my daughter, and this fact stuns me. She has only heard and read of
the Second World War, whereas my childhood took place under its shadow; the fifties
exist for her as "Happy Days" on TV, while I lived that complicated decade as a highschool and college student; there is so much that formed me that she knows nothing of.
Another woman, lounging near the doorway, draws my eye. She wears shorts, andher legs are flawlessly smooth. I am reminded of the picnic in 1979 where I first noticed the changes in my own legs. I happened to glance down at my thigh beneath thehem of my shorts, and saw a little swelling under the skin. What is this? I wondered.
104

And then I noticed on the inside of my calf a lumpy snake of bluish vein crawling
toward my knee. Now that I saw it, it began to ache. Later I remembered my father'slegs, on the rare occasions when he wore a bathing suit, his calves clutched by thebluish crooked fingers of varicose veins. So the hereditary weakness arrived. Having
lurked outside the door like a shy friend , now, noticing my body's (only beginning)loss of resilience, it came furtively in to bestow its gift.
In 1982 the letters on the page of the book I was reading began to blur if I read byanything but intense sunlight. If I moved the book away-ah, there, it's better-I could
find just the narrow range in which my eyes could focus. Soon my arm was not longenough to manage this. One of my students who was near my age told me I, could buy
magnifying glasses at the Emporium for twelve dollars. I did so, and use them now
when I must.
Yet my picture of myself lags behind the actuality. For many years I thought ofmyself as a big rangy girl, an Irish-setter type person, longlimbed and supple, flopping
about goodnaturedly. That image had little to do with the constricted ladylike creature
I most certainly appeared to be through my teens and twenties. I came closer to it in
my thirties after I became a lesbian, with all the freedom that choice brings, to be
oneself. Still, people tell me I was often remote, and intimidating when threatened.
Now sometimes I sense a person's conception of me when she looks at me, and if I am
seen as an "older woman," someone weighty with years, dignified, to be deferred to, I
feel like snorting raucously at the deception. No, no, I want to say, you're not seeing
me. I'm as vital, as "experimental with my life" as you. Then if I am tired or in a position where I need to get something done, I use the deception. The deference becomes alever to get what I want, the deception works in my favor and I let it, while knowingthat this erodes me morally.
But I am only 48 years old, at the very beginning of this journey. When I think of my
Aunt Helen, who is 83, who can barely see or hear, who walks with two canes and isso twisted by age that to cook a meal in her kitchen is a slow, tortuous and evendangerous endeavor that requires tremendous energy and inventive skill-when I
think of Aunt Helen still insisting on cooking meals for my mother and me, I experience the vacuum of my knowledge about age. Standing at the stove, Helen shakes
her head and says with the brevity that has always characterized her utterances,"Don't get old. "But my body has begun speaking to me differently than ever before, and so I am
brought to these thoughts, this investigation that Helen has been engaged in for thirty
years or so. I'll know more when I'm eighty, but that's no reason to keep my mouth
shut now.

In the summer of 1982 I was driving across the Midwest doing a promotion tour for
my book Heartwomen. Alone in the car, I would drive for six, eight, ten hours, arrive
at a town, be interviewed by the newspaper and the radio station and that evening givea reading and slide show at a university women's center or a woman's coffeehouse orbookstore. Then I would sleep over at someone's house, get up the next morning and105drive six, eight, ten hours to the next specified town. Perhaps because this schedule
was so strenuous, my period was delayed, and for weeks I endured the swollen breasts
and belly, the irritability, the increased emotionality that precedes my period. In Iowa
City, Iowa, I happened to examine my breasts and found several distinct lumps, andeven though I knew that before my period my breasts always show such changes, I
decided that cancer had finally struck. The next morning, my birthday, I awoke in a
strange bed in an empty house, with a thunderstorm raging outside, and my firstthought was, "I'm forty-six, I'm over the hill. " That noon I went to lunch with a young
woman from the Iowa City Women's Press, who, noting my depression, asked delicately, "Are you tired?" I glanced up at her, gauging whether I could lay this burden onher, but she appeared so dewy with youth that I felt the way I did in the kitchen at the
party when I noticed how young everyone was. Lonely. And not able to speak of whatbothered me, because I would have to start at zero and so it might take all day andeven then she might not understand. "Yes, " I said, "I'm tired."
Here I am reminded of an encounter with Elsa Gidlow. I and several other younger
women drove Elsa, who is in her seventies, home from a poetry reading. As Elsa is a
iesbian poet of a time so remote from our own, we were eager to talk with her, and asked her many questions. Elsa responded with tart half-sentences or monosyllables, herstrong lined face set in an expression of restraint, until finally we gave up and drove insilence. When she had left the car, my friends wondered whether Elsa had not beenfeeling well or if something in our questions had been particularly annyoing to her. But
when I thought of it, it seemed to me that perhaps Elsa simply despaired of communicating to us a reality so different from our own, of doing this in one shortautomobile ride, with women she did not know and might never see again. Remembering her in the front seat, small and sinewy and elegant, her grey hair bound with a purple headband, her narrow shoulders swathed in plum-colored suede, her backresolutely straight under the barrage of questions, now I feel her loneliness.
On my return to Oakland from my promotion tour, I discovered that the cancer
scare had been a false alarm this time. But a week later my period arrived with aviolence I had never experienced. I was not bleeding, I was hemorrhaging. All strength
left my body, and a great heat entered to take its place. I lay in bed, my flesh burning.
When I did manage to get up, I was shaky and sweating, and poised on the edge oftears. I had never felt so vulnerable. All my life I had experienced regular periods withlittle pain. I had looked forward to my periods as a time of folding in, of taking care ofmyself and listening to myself. Now what I heard when I listened was a rampage. Odd
how predictability brings the illusion of control, for obviously my periods had neverbeen under my direction, and yet because I knew what to expect from them, I experienced that order that feels like control. Now my body was running riot. I had readabout hot flashes , of course, but nobody had said that one's body might burn with adeep heat from one's very center for two days without relief.
In this condition I craved the comfort of my lover's understanding and acceptance.
Much younger than I, yet she could sense how unprotected, how at the mercy of my106

body, I felt. She tucked me into bed, brought me ice cream, stroked my head. I
welcomed this special treatment. And as I lay in bed I understood something I hadn't
before: that the deference paid to old people comes, when it is most genuinely offered,
not just from respect for their years of experience but from the recognition of theirvulnerability. They are not so insulated as we by our strong bodies and sharp sensory
capacities. They become more and more fragile, prey to accident, to disease, to emotional distress.
I think of the photographer Imogen Cunningham, who had just turned ninety when I
met her. My lover at the time was shooting a film about Imogen, so she spent wholedays with her and often went out to dinner with her. Now and then I came along. On
one occasion we were all to go out to a Chinese restaurant in North Beach, but when
we arrived we found Imogen in her bathrobe, and she told us she was experiencing thevertigo that sometimes came on her and said she couldn't go with us this time. Her hairhung in a long white swatch down her back, her tiny body in the flowered robe trembled as she went to get back into bed. Sitting against the pillows, she was like a gnome,
her eyes blinking at us snappishly, as she shot questions at us, always in a tone of annoyance that was meant to be, and was, provocative. Her flame burned brightly, but it
was a small flame, her presence light. It was her skin that struck me most, for it was sodelicate as to seem transparent, in places ash white, with here and there a faint blushof rose, so delicately dry-seeming that it looked as if it would tear at the touch. So little
protection between Imogen and the world: no wonder she felt the need to hold people
at a distance with the scourge of her wit.
It was June 1983 in the makeshift camp next to the freeway which was being used asa jail to house the three hundred women antinuclear protesters arrested at the gates of
Lawrence-Livermore Laboratories. On my first day of imprisonment there, seated on
the ground at a meeting in the tent, suddenly I experienced the worst pain I had everfelt. A dagger plunged deep in my jaw. Stumbling outside the tent to hold onto a guy
rope, I bent forward under this agony, tears in hot rivulets down my cheeks. Threedays before I had gone through the first procedure for a root canal in one of my molars.
The dentist had prescribed codeine for the pain he said might come, but there had
been no pain at all, .and so I had not even tried to sneak the codeine into jail with me.
Now, clutching the tent rope, I longed for some relief. Mercifully, the pain lessened
and disappeared after a short while. But it was to return each day for the first five daysof our incarceration, and impale me for some minutes. After each bout I was exhausted
and could barely function for aperiod of time.
In the warehouse I sat on my cot for the meeting of our "cluster," the Cosmic Elders.
This grouping had come about because of Sarah, a seventy-year-old indefatigable
member of our affinity group who decided if she were going to jail she wanted more
"white heads" with her. Here they were, in their sixties and seventies, the eldest 82. I
felt privileged to be included in Cosmic Elders after a few of these meetings, for there
was such accumulated political experience and wisdom in the elders that our group107

generally dealt with problems more efficiently than the groups of younger women.
While they struggled to understand the significance of a particular move by the sheriffor happening in the camp, our veterans quickly put the event in a political context
developed over years in the labor and peace movements. The elders knew what things
meant and what our alternatives were.
I soon noticed, though, that it was not easy for them to be in jail with us. Conditions
were harsh for everyone, with inadequate beds and blankets, constant wind and sun,wretched food, fumes and noise from the freeway , and the subtle harrassment of theguards, but the elders brought with them additional hardships. Rose suffers from arthritis; I would watch her get up with great difficulty from her seat on the strawlittered ground. Marion has skin cancer; she wore a hat and rubbed sun-screen on her
face and hands. Helen apparently has some form of neurological disease, for she often
tottered and bumped into things, and her hands shook. Goldie's high blood pressure
showed in her flushed cheeks and her dizzy groping for support when she got up
quickly. Sitting with these women in our meetings, I rarely thought of these infirmities,
for such steadfast energy came from each woman, but when I did notice something-a
hesitation in speech, a shifting of stiff limbs, an attempt to shield the face from therelentless sun-I knew that my five minutes of excruciating pain each day werenothing next to this constant management of a problem, this continual dealing withdiscomfort or incapacity.
The elders probably did not understand before their arrests what their presence
might mean to the rest of us in jail, but on the third day of our eleven long days there acrisis occurred that prompted us to call upon them, and it became clear that their contribution was essential for the cohesion of the whole group. On that day certain womenmade a decision, independent of the larger group, to go for arraignment. The threehundred of us had previously pledged to refuse arraignment in protest against thepunitive sentences being meted out by a prejudiced judge. When these women acted
against the interests of the whole group, my heart dropped; along with most other people I felt betrayed, and panic hit us. Suddenly we were in trouble, women who had
been resolute and cheerful the day before becoming angry, confused and depressed.
The feel of defeat was in the air.
Then someone thought to ask the elders if they would speak to us that evening. Mer
supper, we gathered, women of all ages and backgrounds and political experience, in a
giant circus tent. When everyone was there - a mob of bodies sitting, squatting, standing along the walls and at the back - four or five old women came to the front of thetent. From my place against the canvas drape of the side wall, I felt the waiting silence
gather, its presence so intense that the roar of the freeway fell away. Soon the voice of awhitehaired woman in a red T-shirt ancljeans filled that silence. She spoke of earlylabor movement struggles and how, often, just before success was to come, the strikers
would feel most dejected. We must never give in to that, she cautioned. Another
woman told of how she had not engaged politically with others until a few years ago,
had been a staunch Republican individualist, but this threat of nuclear holocaust had
108brought her here with us, and she felt honored to be among us. Two more old womenstood before the group, simply, unseifconsciously, to tell of the political battles of theirlives and how they had managed to keep going when all seemed lost.
As they talked I could feel the mood in the tent and in myself changing. I was encouraged by these old women, I would be them one day, and if I could be as honest as
they, as generous of myself as they were, then I could be proud to be old. A warmth, acheerfulness began to grow in the tent. We trusted these women, we loved them forcoming here with us; and in so doing we trusted each other again, began to believe
once again in our collective strength.
I guess it was when I was about forty that I noticed that life is a long time. Most
women over forty have lived several lives: the growing up and becoming a woman; thetwenties and thirties of marriage, childraising, professional growth, searching,establishing one's lesbian identity, whatever occupied and fed us then; and the life thatbegan when that earlier existence fell apart or drastically changed. Looking back I see
that with the end of each period and beginning of the next, I knew more, could dare
more, and opened myself more trustingly to life. Now at this new juncture, I feel
tremendous possibility. And I know that the progress of each of our lives is not reallyso linear as we sometimes imagine. Elsa and Imogen, my Aunt Helen, the Cosmic
Elders, the spiffy dyke with her crewcut and earrings, my 32-year-old lover, my
teenage friend who has just started college: we stand not in a line reaching from thewomb to the grave but in a casual group, like women at a picnic, lounging, resting after
hard work, playing together, sharing our minds and bodies, living the present with all
the joy and attention we can call up in ourselves.

l ES aI J.\ 1"
COl" 1" EC~r I 0 1"~----------------.

A NATIONWIDE FORUM OF NEWS AND IDEAS
BY, FOR AND ABOUT LESBIANS
Ambitious Amazons, PO Box 811,
East Lans ing, MI 48823

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GOAT SONG by Dodici Azpadu. 1984. Aunt Lute. 110 pp. $6.50
Unconventional novel which explores the lives of assorted "low life queers," the violence of the roles assigned
to them by society, and, in a reversal of ancient Greek heroic conventions, the tragic fall brought about by
their individual and collective lack of awareness of what causes them to abuse themselves and each other.
SATURDAY NIGHT IN THE PRIME OF LIFE by Dodici Azpadu. 1983. Aunt Lute. 95 pp. $5.95.
Novel about a middle·aged lesbian coming to terms with her proud and aging Sicilian·American mother andwith the effect male·dominated Sicilian culture has on the women who exist both inside and outside it.
ABENG by Michelle Cliff, 1984. The Crossing Press, Trumansburg, NY 14886. 167 pp. $6.95.
Novel which evokes in rich, allusive language the coming of age of a light·skinned Black girl in Jamaica duro
ing the 1950's and her search for connection with women both living and long dead amidst the contradictionsof class, color, blood, and history in a long colonized country.
WALKING ON THE MOON: Six Stories and a Novella by Barbara Wilson. 1983. The Seal Press.
161 pp. $5.95.
An extraordinary collection of stories which explore connections between women in radically different land·
scapes and stages of life - a middle·aged woman leaves her husband in Italy and joins an all·women circus, a12-year-old girl meets Miss Venezuela at the 1959 Miss Universe contest, and a woman comes to terms with
her adolescent desires while revisiting Germany.
MURDER IN THE COLLECTIVE: A Feminist Mystery by Barbara Wilson. 1984. The Seal Press.
183 pp. $7.95.
Truly exciting mystery set amidst the everyday complexities of political struggle. Refreshing, provocative,and very true to life.
THE SOPHIE HOROWITZ STORY by Sarah Shulman. 1984. The Naiad Press. 158 pp. $7.95.
Tart, fast paced, hilarious, and politically acute mystery populated by the foods and accents of lower eastside
NYC and by an ingenious collection of urban misfits.
ANOTHER MOTHER TONGUE: GAY WORDS, GAY WORLDS by Judy Grahn. 1984. Beacon Press, 25
Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108. 324 pp. $19.95.
Imaginative reweaving of the unbroken, subterranean threads of an ancient gay culture which lives on
through our own most vital connections. Prose by the legendary lesbian feminist poet, who has been spinningdaily life into mythic proportions for two decades.
WOMEN IDENTIFIED WOMEN, ed. by Trudy Darty and Sandee Potter. 1984. Mayfield Publishing
Company, 285 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301. 316 pp. $11.95.
.
Superb collection of articles on lesbian identity, oppression, and culture which delineate both our diversity
and our commonality.
NEW LESBIAN WRITING, ed. by Margaret Cruikshank. 1984. Grey Fox Press, San Francisco,
distributed by Subterranean Company, P.O. Box 10233, Eugene, OR 97440. 200 pp. $7.95.
Anthology of poetry, fiction, and essays by lesbians old and young with an extensive bibliography and helpful
introduction. Especially useful to students and teachers.
THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID: CONTEMPORARY POETRY AND FICTION BY NATIVE AMERICANWOMEN, ed. by Rayna Green. 1984. Indiana University Press, Tenth & Morton Streets, Bloomington, IN
47405. 329 pp. $12.50.
Exciting anthology of work by a group of authors who are gifted, outspoken, supportive of each other, androoted in a powerful literary tradition. Pla~ed in context by Rayoa Green's moving introduction and extensive bibliography.
GATHERING GROUND: NEW WRITING AND ART BY NORTHWEST WOMEN OF COLOR, ed. by
Jo Cochran, J.T. Stewart, and Mayumi Tsutakawa. 1984. The Seal Press. 160 pp. $6 .95.
Poetry, fiction, essays, oral history, and art work by women from the many native and immigrant traditionsof the Northwest, giving collective voice to their individual struggles for self-definition in this beautifully
designed collection.

110

STEPPING OUT OF LINE: A WORKBOOK ON LESBIANISM AND FEMINISM by Nym Hughes,
Yvonne Johnson, and Yvette Perreault. 1984. Press Gang. 207 pp. $12.95.
Guided script for a two day workshop on lesbianism and feminism with detailed information for facilitators,
as well as many practical suggestions on how to effect personal and political change. A powerful truth forshared consciousness-raising.
LOOK ME IN THE EYE: OLD WOMEN, AGING AND AGEISM by Barbara Macdonald with Cynthia
Rich. 1984. Spinsters, Ink. 115 pp. $5.95.
Angry testimony from two women who have experienced the harsh shock of ageism in our society and, unforgiveably, within the feminist movement. Their painful truths break the silence for women who share theseindignities and challenge those still young to expand our horizons to include our older sisters as well as toface up to growing old ourselves.
OUT FROM UNDER: SOBER DYKES AND OUR FRIENDS, ed. by Jean Swallow. 1983. Spinsters, Ink.
239 pp. $8.95.
Eloquent anthology describing many facets of recovery from substance abuse (day-to-day recovery, thepolitics of chemical addiction, how we go on) drawn from the experiences of co-alcoholics, adult children of
alcoholics, and substance abuse counselors, as well as those of us who are recovering from chemical addictions.
SHADOW ON A TIGHTROPE: WRITINGS BY WOMEN ON FAT OPPRESSION, ed. by Lisa Schoenfielder and Barb Wieser. 1983. Aunt Lute. 243 pp. $8.95.
If you are fat and haven't yet seen the strength in yourself, or if you fear fat, read this painful, powerful collection of writings.
WE ARE ALL PART OF ONE ANOTHER: A BARBARA DEMING READER, ed. by Jane Meyerding.
1984. New Society Publishers, 4722 Baltimore Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19143. 320 pp. $10.95 .
Collection of writings by the late activist thinker which trace the evolution of her tough-minded insights into
feminism, gay liberation, and nonviolence. A gift of love from a fighter who never retired.
BLACK LESBIAN IN WHITE AMERICA by Anita Cornwell. 1983. The Naiad Press. 129 pp. $7.50.
Collection of writings by a fearless pioneer whose vision of racial and sexual oppression has been clearly articulated for decades.
YOURS IN STRUGGLE: THREE FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES ON ANTI-SEMITISM AND RACISM by
Elly Bulkin, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and Barbara Smith. 1984. Long Haul Press, Box 592, VanBrunt Station, Brooklyn, NY 11215. 233 pp. $7.95.
Courageous attempt by three longtime activists to uncover and fight racism and anti-Semitism as these form
part of our lived experience. Marred by the absence of an Arab-American perspective and by a disconcerting
imbalance in the length of the essays (Pratt 52 pp., Smith 20 pp., Bulkin 139 pp.)
STAGE V: A JOURNAL 'THROUGH ILLNESS by Sonny Wainwright. 1984. Acacia Books, P.O. Box3630, Berkeley, CA 94703. 144 pp. $6.95.
Story of a brave woman's struggle through massive chemotherapy into remission from bone cancer and of
the strength and support given by the community of women who love her.
FALLING FROM GRACE by EUy Van de Walle. 1984. Press Gang. 52 pp. $5.95.
Powerful collection of poems which explore the struggles and personal transformation induced by radical
mastectomy at age 28.

~-----------------------------,PUBLISHERS WITH MULTIPLE LISTINGS
Aunt Lute Book Co., P.O.B. 2723, Iowa City, IA 52244
Naiad Press, P.O.B. 10543, Tallahassee, FL 32302
Press Gang Publishers, 603 Powell St., Vancouver, B.C. V6A 1H2, Canada
Seal Press, 312 S. Washington, Seattle, WA 98104
Spinsters, Ink, 803 De Haro St., San Francisco, CA 94107

111

Contributors' Notes _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __Tata Andres is an artist who lives in Jamaica.
Lucie Bauer recalls several years lived in isolation on a small island off the coast of Maine when her soleconnection with the women's community was through the printed word. She writes in appreciation of SW
and for women who share a similar experience.
Sandy Boucher is a midwesterner by birth, a Californian by residence and inclination. Her books include
Heartwomen (nonfiction) and two books of stories, Assaults & Rituals and The Notebooks of Leni
Clare.
Liron Bourla, born 1954, is an Israeli artist living in Jerusalem.
Cheryl Clarke (b. Wash., D.C., 5116/47) is a black lesbian writer and feminist who lives and writes in New
Brunswick, New Jersey. The poem appearing in this issue is from her new manuscript of poems, Living as
a lesbian: Poems 1976-1985, which will be published in 1986. She is a member of the Conditions
Editorial Collective. She is a social worker. And she is the author of Narratives: poems in the traditionof black women (Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983).
Laura Derr is an expressive therapist who works with psychiatric patients in Boston. She lives in Somervillewith her sister whose daughter she helps to parent.
Dredlight: I'm 32 and living in New Mexico at ground zero. I've been acting, dancing, and generally hanging
around theaters forever. Deserts too. I'm trying to combine the two. I'd be happy (real happy) to hear fromanyone interested in producing Word of Mouth (write clo SW).
Elana Dykewomon is still writing and distributing lesbian arts through Diaspora Distribution with hercompanion-lover Zelda (aka Dolphin). She may have moved to California and play trivial pursuit on legal
holidays with the other seps, but she ain't mellow yet.
Shirley Glubka is a Child WeUare Caseworker Iivmg in Prospect, Maine. She has been published in
Feminist Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Summer 1983); Conditions: Nine; and Naming: Poems by 8
Women .
Jewelle L. Gomez is a poet, fiction writer and critic whose work has appeared in Conditions, Essence,
13th Moon, IKON, The Village Voice, Womanews, The New York Native , as well as in the anthologies Home Girls and Lesbian Fiction . She is originally from Boston and currently lives in New YorkCity.
Janice Gould: I was born in 1949 in San Diego, CA, but grew up in Berkeley. I'm a Native American(Maidu) lesbian writer and musician. Currently I'm working on my M.A. in English at the Univ. of Calif.,
Berkeley. My work appears in A Gathering of Spirit.
E. J. Graff lives and writes in Boston where "Blackbird, Fly" has been installed in the new Davis St. subway
station. Her new pamphlet of poems, "Passionate Women," is available from New Words Bookstore in Cambridge.
Elaine HaIl: I am a mixed-blood Creek lesbian, originally from Alabama. I now live in Los Angeles. I write
poetry and fiction.
Barbara Hammer is a lesbian filmmaker and artist living in New York City.
Jan Hardy: I'm a writer, reader, runner, sax player, library clerk, Leo, living with a cat named Leroy andtrying to love myseU as much as I love other wimmin.
Heather's poetry has appeared sporadically in feminist periodicals, including Ms. magazine, Motive , and
The Ladder, since the early seventies. She has published two books: Watch Out Brother, I'm Here
(1971) and Heat Lightning (1980), available from Black Widow Publications, Oakland, CA. She is fat,middle-aged and happy, living with two cats in a witchily turreted victorian house.

112TerriJewell: I am a member of the League of Lesbian Writers (Louisville, KY branch) & the KY State PoetrySociety, my work having been accepted by more than 70 publications including Black Maria, Off Our
Backs, Bay Windows, Telewoman, LesCon & Azalea.
Virginia Johnson (b. 1944, Pennsylvania) has worked as a social worker, an English teacher at Queens College, has completed a graduate degree in creative writing, ·and is currently working towards a Ph.D. in
English and American Literature.
Irena Klepfisz acknowledges that she has said enough about herself in this issue. Still, she wishes to announce that a British edition of her writing, pifferent Enclosures: Poetry and Prose of Irena
Klepfisz , has just been published by Onlywomen Press, London. She is currently on the summer staff ofWomen's Voices Writing Workshop in Santa Cruz, CA.
Christian McEwen: Born in London, grew up in Scotland, came to the States in 1979. Worked in construction and floor refinishing, also as a gardener, counsellor and English teacher. Her work appears in
Feminary.
Mary Moran: born in the upper peninsula of Michigan, grew up in Wisconsin, currently lives in California.
Her work has appeared in IKON, Sinister Wisdom, Woman of Power, and A Gathering of Spirit.
Eliza Morrison is 24, started studying harp at age 8. Received a B.F.A. degree in acting, acted in the experimental theatre movement, off-off-Broadway shows and television; spent a year with VISTA in Kentucky,
working with battered women; now attending the New England Conservatory (where Trysttrriste is set)
and working as a free-lance harpist.
Renee Pierce works as a secretary and has been involved in the women's movement for many years. Aftermainly writing poetry for herself and friends, she now wants to add to the growing number of poets who
voice their concern about what's happening in the world.
Linda Quinlan: I am a thirty-six year old lesbian mother from a working-class background, carrying on the
tradition as a house painter. I've published in Sing, Heavenly Muse, The Poet, St. Dreyfus, andWindhover Science Fiction. I am a pisces with no earth signs.
Sudie Rakusin is a painter and graphic artist. Her book of 48 drawings, Goddesses & Amazons isavailable POB 88, Brooke, VA 22430.
Kateri Sardella writes short stories and poetry. She has been published in Sinister Wisdom 's A Gathering of Spirit, various issues of Azalea and her work will appear in the upcoming issue of Ordinary
Women , Extraordinary Lives, edited by Paula Ross of Berkeley, CA. Sardella is a Native American
womon from Cornwall Island, Ontario and Syracuse, New York. She now lives in northern California.
Susan Stinson is a fat dyke, raised in Colorado, and now writing and working as a secretary in Boston.
Susanna J. Sturgis is finishing her first book Leaving the Island: Writings on Love and Change. Thissummer, she's leaving the best job she's ever had (book buyer for Lammas Women's Shop) and the only lesbian community she's ever known (Wash., D.C.) to move to Martha's Vineyard and write a novel.
Alice Tallmadge: This is the first piece I've had printed outside of our women's newspaper. I've lived in
Eugene, OR for eight years. I see my writing as eternally wrestling with the angels, and sometimes it seems
as foreign to me as daughters must sometimes be to their mothers. Because I love surprises, revelations, andthe working of a mind I rarely know I have, I keep it up.
Jennifer Green Woodhull is a student of meditation and cooking. She shares her home with a number ofplants and a small computer in Denver, CO, where she makes her living as a writer.
Fauna Yarrow is a sober Maine dyke who's learning to balance and blend creativity and work.
zana: i'm a disabled jewish lesbian living on arizona desert land with other wimin, learning (literally fromthe ground up) ways we can bring OUT unique selves together in community.

113

LETTERS

about To Go To Rerbir, Sinister Wisdom 26

I have received and read the issue of Sinister
Wisdom by Jill Drew and wanted to express to you
my conflicting feelings!
.
First of all it is well written and an interesting account of what she experienced as a woman, a peace
activist, and a totally human being. I am always
pleased to read something that leaves me withstrong feelings, leaves me musing afterwards about
its meaning, discussing it with others, rereading sec·
tions and in general not just putting it aside andforgetting about it. So from that point of view I am
glad she wrote it and you published it!
As with any war story there are "the good guys"
and the "bad guys" and Israel as the aggressor has
to be the "bad guy. " There is no question that when
this happened I felt (& many I knew felt) that what
was happening was horrible. At first I couldn't
believe that Israeli soldiers could have gone into thecamps & simply murdered women & children.
When it became obvious that this was in part true I
felt that Israel had really done the wrong thing
despite historical circumstances that led to it. So I
do not condone Israel.
Yet I wish you could have had a page or two of
historical perspective to set Israel's position in context. (The context, as I see it, of generations offrustration at constantly being the victim of guerilla
warfare from th~ Palestinians plus repeated attacks
against Israel by the Arab nations. )I think it might have been good (perhaps not toolate?) to have included a chapter that gave such aperspective to what happened in Lebanon. Maybe
Jill would object. I don't know.
I had a particularly hard time reading the partabout her visit to Jerusalem. Even here, when she isin Israel, she cannot begin to see the kind of hardship that people there have suffered from living
through 30 + years of continuing warfare, always
under threat from the Arab countries and completely dependent for support on a sometimes hostile
world community. And although Jill talks about
Jaffa, there is no context for the fact of how many
Arabs have been successfully absorbed into Israel(and not kept in camps).
-Judy Kesselman
Suffern, New York

Just finished reading "To Go To Berbir" - it is
all you said it is - a gripping story with a kind of
poetry in its words - so emotion-packed I wasteary·eyed in parts. All such a short time ago - andcontinuing still ... made me look up in my own"library" anything else I could find about Lebanon,
Israel, the PLO, what countries are suppor ting
whoThanks for choosing Jill's book as SW 26.
- Donolyn Hagelberg
Detroit, Michigan~

I congratulate you on publishing To Go To
Berbir, for choosing to go straight into the thicketof controversy I believe we feminist women must
confront, not avoid. I thank Jill Drew for making
human, for putting individual faces into what mostAmerican media characterize amorphously as theMiddle East situation.
Addendum on editor's statement from SW 27:
Yes, more historical & political context would
have made the issue more comprehensive but using
context in another way-where else could To Go
have been published in a context that was not anti·
Semitic & that reached the audience SW does?
-Carol Keyes
Nottingham, New Hampshire

114~. . .To Go To Berbir is a treasure of insight,
struggle and feeling wh ich left me weeping andshaking when I'd finished reading it (which I did all
in one sitting) ....JiII Drew speaks this story sowell, so movingly, honestly. Her courage in going toBeirut and for sharing this journal with her sisters
and the world will add strongly to our understan·ding of the complexities of racism and hatred.
Thank her for me, and tell her too, that her work,
her story is growing-becoming more than "just ajournal about a war." It is forming part of the truth,
the living foundation of women's new world view
where diversity is applauded and divisiveness, killing and hatred are abolished for peace.
I look forward to, and encourage you to take,other chances with 'Sinister Wisdom.
-Moonhawk River Stone
Albany, New YorkOn the night of 5/6 June 1982 I went to an
informal evening of guitars and folksinging that agroup of us were having about once a month. It was
spring, and we decided to hold it outdoors inHayarkon Park. We had a campfire, roasted
potatoes, beer. On the way home I realized thatevery other car on the Haifa Highway was an army
bus . .. The next morning, the Voice of Israel confirmed what I thought I already knew. I foresaw
another Litani-type campaign to "end Arab terrorism" (the Litani campaign took place in Spring1978 following the hijacking of an Israeli civilian
bus by Arab terrorists - many children on a oneday outing with their parents were among thosekilled) lasting a few weeks, costing "relatively
light" Israeli military casualties. It was, in the end,
useless. I had a rotten feeling about this new venture: I knew that while I lived in North Tel Aviv theborder cities and settlements had been suffering increasing katusha attacks in the past years. I also
knew that a quick, unprovoked macho foray into
Lebanon would not solve that problem.
The quick foray became a "Peace for Galilee"
campaign of 40-45 kilometers that became aLebanese War. Arik Sharon wanted a Milchemet
Breira (War of Choice) and it waited in the wings
for who knows how long until the attempted
assasination of the Israeli ambassador to Great Britain gave the excuse. It was a war that re-awakened
every carefully buried Vietnam War memory I had- especially the one of the "Honor Roll" droning
on during the Metromedia ten o'clock evening
news. By mid-Summer 1982 Israeli soldiers stationed in Lebanon had their own song, unlike any otherthat Israeli soldiers had ever sung before:
Little airplane in the shy,with you to Lebanon we will fly .
There we'll fight as Sharon says we should,
and come home in crates of wood!
A grim parody of a song these same boys and men
once sang in kindergarten. And a few days ago we
had our 600th military death there - a reservist
corporal from a kibbutz near the Lebanese border.
This kibbutz (Shamir) suffered a serious terrorist attack about a decade ago, but still the kibbutz
secretary did lIot hesitate to condemn Sharon at thegrave-side.
This is the root of what infuriates me and hurts
me in Jill Drew's journal. It's not her PLO bias (Isupport an independent Palestinian State bordering
my own) or even her Syrian bias (which I cannot

115

accept, but will not discuss here).
Jill Drew simply glosses over Israeli opposition tothis war and the Cahen (not Kahane!) Commission
in a few sentences. Do the journal's readers knowthat 400,000 Israelis came to demonstrate at Tel
Aviv City Hall to demand a Commission of Inquiry?
Do they know about the Israeli soldiers in jail forrefusing a call-up to Lebanon? Have they heard of
Women Against Occupation, Peace Now, Parents
Against Silence, Yesh Gvul ("There's a Limit" - agroup of reserve soldiers against the war). Are theyaware of the Citizens Rights Party, the Change(ShenUl] Party and the Shei Party (since disbanded, some members moving to the Citizens Rights
Party, some forming the nucleus of the Progress
List for Peace)? Did Drew speak to no Israeli soldier
who simply, sadly told her that he hated what he
was doing and wanted to go home? Do the readers
come away aware tbat we know about the horrors
we caused and are mortified by this war?
I don't for a minute doubt Drew's veracity inreporting or the sincerity of her love for thePalestinian people. But the Lebanese War is just likeany other war - each side sees itself as completely
justified and the other side as completely wrong. A
Christian phalangist, whose daughter was locked in
the attic for seven years to protect her from whom
he saw as the enemy, who tossed rice and candies atadvancing Israeli troops, whom he saw as liberator,
would tell almost the same story as Jill Drew. Only
the roles would be reversed. Unfortunately, as an
Israeli bitterly opposed to this war I can't react tbat
way, becoming one of the "gamesters at the board,squaring off one atrocity against another, until there
are no atrocities left" (An Israeli fringe productionused this theme a few years ago, with a divided
blackboard listing " Deir Yassin"l on one side and"He-Lamed Hey'" on the other, with the lists progressively lengthening as the evening went on. A
boxing-ring bell sounded with each new entry).
The journal mentions the Beaufort Castle. Every
year on the anniversary of his death (Every year. I
can't believe I wrote those words) the mother of
one of the boys who died there (eight, I think)
writes to the Jerusalem Post to remind Israelis
that Begin and Sharon deliberately lied the day they
told the nation that Beaufort had been taken
without a single Israeli death. That, the interview
with the American medical personnel testifying
before the Cahen Commission and those boys"somewhere in Lebanon" singing the little airplanesong are my clearest memories of this war so far.
The families of the boys who died at Beaufort
returned the official letters of condolence.
To brand every Israeli as a willing participant or
passive collaborator in this war is unfair. It's on thesame level as Rabbi Meir Kahane's ravings about
good Arabs and dead Arabs. Kahane thrives on
spreading the idea that all non-Jews hate us, on telling Israeli youth that the "goyim" don't careanyway, so we should be strong and kill with pride.
Blaming all of Israel for the sins of its government- not elected directly, but formed by bizarre coalition bargaining IThere are ten odd parties in the
Israeli Knesset. Over twenty ran in the lastelection.) - is coming very close to blaming a raped
woman for her dress, her manner, her walking freely where and when she wanted to - or simply forbeing female .
Melanie, my father survived the death camps, mymother Transniestria 3 • Can you imagine their horror at this war? My mother lived through beingchased from ghetto to forest and from forest to ghetto. She spent the infamous winter of 1941142 in theforest and knows that the best way to destroy a person is to keep uprooting them. Try to imagine how
she felt when the Israelis turned off the water. A
few weeks ago, the Women Against Racism held aforum in Tel Aviv. One of the speakers took part ina 1943 ghetto-uprising - Bialystock, I think. Can
you hear the revulsion as she described Kahane's
racism, a wave not unconnected with this war?
And Melanie, I know I promised not to exchange
atrocity stories, but I have to tell this one: any
Israeli would know exactly how the Sabra refugee
camp mothers felt when they "stuffed the babies into food cupboards and put socks in their mouths."
In 1977 there was an Arab terrorist attack in
Nahariya. A young mother inadvertantly suffocatedher daughter when she held her hand over thechild's mouth. They were hiding in a cupboard as
the terrorists killed her husband and other child.
On the Hebrew calendar the days between Rosh
HaShanna Ithe New Year) and Yom HaKippurim
Ithe Day of Repentance) are called Ha Yamim
HaNora 'im - the Days of Awe, the terrible days.
During those days we are commanded as Jews tolook back at our sins - the sins of commission andthe sins of omission. The first reports of the Sabra
and Shatila massacres came through on Israeli news
service just as Rosh HaShanna ended, and thosedays, after hearing such news, became "the worst

116

days of all our lives" here in Israel too. If we did
no! support this war, we were forced to see that not
openly opposing it was just as wrong. Many Israelis
who supported this war were forced to face the horrors it caused. The largest demonstration in thehistory of Israel proved that many of us, secularand religious, took this injunction very seriously.
In sisterhood,
Bat HaMa'avak
Tel Aviv
I An Arab village and scene of a massacre ofcivilians by Jewish irregular forces in April 1948.
The Hagana iIater the Israel Defence Forces) was
not involved.
2 A convoy of 35 Jewish students carrying relief supplies to the besieged Etzion settlements ambushed
and massacred by Arab irregulars in January 1948.
3 A forced re-settlement location administered by
Romanian and Nazi armies.

It is raining-a severe thunderstorm. My 4 year
old son calls to me from the doorway, "Mom, we
better buy a boat." And since I've just finished Jill
Drew's book I think- "Yeah we should- but wherewould we go?"When I started her diary, I felt like I was listening
to a close friend sharing her journey. As I kept
reading-Jill became mell became Jill. I saw andfelt her concern and her love.
There is no such thing as being proud of being an
American & old hopes die hard ... but the more I
identify with women all over the world-thestronger I become as a woman-not a woman witha national identity, but with a universal one:woman. Thanks, Jill.

Addendum on editor's statement from SW 27:
1. Aren't all journals basically about reactions andnot about historical context? Is the function of ajournal to teach political science or to let anotherperson feel my hurts and appreciate my uniquenessin my own situation?
2. Ajournal is not intended to be a resolution but
a journey-something shared with different parts ofmyself. The resolution of an issue/belief/etc. comeswith time.
- KathianOhio

I am writing because I am very troubled, outrag·
ed, and saddened by the recent publication in SW
26 of Jill Drew's "To Go To Berbir". Ms. Drew's
account is not an illuminating step toward thepolitics of reconciliation and peace to which I
presume SW is dedicated, but is rather, yet anotherexpression of the dreadful spiralling politics of hateand revenge that have raged so long and so tragical·
Iy in the Middle East, and which threaten to engulf
us all.
While I do not expect Ms. Drew, presenting uswith her journal, to obey the journalistic conven·tions of who, how, where and why, I did find itvery unsettling, from the outset, not to know who
the woman actually was, or is, and why she choseto go to Lebanon. Is she Jewish? Is she Christian? Is
she, perhaps, of Lebanese descent? Does she have aprevious position or involvement in the issue ofZionism, Palestine, or the Middle East in general?
Was her passionate concern for the Palestinians
new and sudden, or did it pre·date the Israeli inva·
sion? We are not told; Ms. Drew does not reveal
herself, yet we are being asked to accept her versionof things.
So, through the prism that is her view of things,
Ms. Drew, from the outset, equates the Israeli inva·
sion of Lebanon with the destruction of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, and with the Nazi death camps. "I
am not just hearing about genocide" she writes, "I
am watching it happen. Tonight." No, Ms. Drew,
no, you were not-the charge is outrageous,
revolting, and just plain wrong. It does not takeaway from the real tragedy that was the invasion to
say that it was not genocide. It is dangerous to blunt
our notion of what genocide actually is to call that
genocide, but it is revealing of Ms. Drew's perspec·tive that even before the massacre, even before sheeven leaves the United States, she has decided that
the Israelis have come not to conquer but to exter·
minate.
Therefore, that being her perspective, what
follows in her account should come as no surprise:when Ms. Drew is finally faced with the Israeli ar·
my on September 16th, 5 weeks after her arrival,
she tells a colleague: "I would like to have a gun
now," and then she immediately adds "Once upona time, I used to be a disarmament worker. .. "Once upon a time-36 days as a war·time nurse in
Beirut and her lifetime commitment to disarma·
ment has already fallen away. She wants a gun. She
wants a gun to kill Israelis, and this, I will point out

is pre· massacre, a massacre that was perpetrated by
Lebanese Christians against Palestinian Moslems,
however complicit one thinks the Israelis were.
Post·massacre Ms. Drew tells us ". . .I listened toan English physician entertain other medical
workers with an account of his close friendshipwith an Israeli captain posted at the south end of
the camps during these dreadful times .. .it will takeme a long time to forgive that respected English
doctor." What can she not forgive, his mere friend·ship with the Israeli? She goes on to say, paraphras·
ing the Old Testament, "And Arik, the king of
Israel, went out and slew the Palestinians and theirneighbors with great slaughter, and the children of
Israel slew of these people many hundreds in justthree days, and surely they were stronger thanthey." She ends this entry by telling us: "I will notforget them, and there is no forgiveness. Thus
endeth the lesson." The them that she is referring
to seems to be the Israelis. Where is her analysis of
the Christian role in any of this, or some self·reflection of herself as a Christian, which I can only
assume that she is. To say there is no forgiveness,end of lesson, flames only the fires of hatred. She
might have said that it is too early to forgive (or,since she is, after all, an outsider, in Lebanon for 90
days, she might have said that the families of thosemurdered cannot be expected to forgiveJ-that atleast leaves the door to peace open, if only in the
distant future. But Ms. Drew precludes forgivenessaltogether:" One massacre leads to another and theevil of the assasin lives long after he himself dies.
For what remains is grief. Grief is enduring: it is the
poison contaminating generation after generation.
Grief gives birth to vengeance, eliminates all
forgiveness. Our children are the target and we will
hand them the guns."
And therein lies the most profound problem withthis piece-Ms. Drew is so envenomed that she
simply accepts and promotes this hopeless point·ofview. Presumably, the gun she is handing on to thechildren is the very one she asked for on page 52.
Speaking of a Palestinian child she has befriended,
she writes: " .. .do I let him run into walls, falldown, always scramble to get oul of the way? Of
what? Of the bombs my country makes? Until hegrows older-if he makes il lhat far-and becomes awarrior, a fighter. Said is nol just the future of his
parents: he is my future." Why child·as-Warrior?
Why not as peacemaker? Her anger is not redeemed, she does not seem to think, feel or even imagine

117

beyond her anger, and that's her central failure. Ms.
Drew is entitled to her anger, she is even entitled toher hatred. But such anger and such hatred shed nolight: she is desperate, hopeless, unempowered, andunable to even envision peaceful remedies. Whenshe finally visits Israel. she is not looking to find out
anything about Israel itself, but for traces of thepre-1948 Arab community. The one conversation
she recounts with an Israeli is with a policeman
who is described as "young and large and with around blond face." (That very description has
strange reverberations for me.) She makes no attempt to seek out anti-invasion Israelis, and she has
arrived there just weeks after an Israeli crowd
estimated at between 100,000 and 400,000 rallied in
Tel Aviv against the invasion, a fact I do not expec t
her to mention, but surely she was aware of themassive internal opposition in Israel to the invasion? And, while we have been treated to her enthusiastic gushings of racial romanticism about theArabs ("Once I read that it is the desert that gives
the Arabs their pride and generosity, their courageand their passion." That's from her journal entry on
the day she arrived in the Middle East, so I can only
assume that she was no tabula rasa) the lyricism
turns sour when she arrives in Israel ("Straight sen·sible, modern middle-class construction for astraight modern middle·class nation.")Unfortunately, the world abounds in such
literature. But in SW? Why didn't you at least invite
your readership to present other points-of-view, toencourage people to really open up this discussion?
You say in your introduction that "In this book thevery word [Israeli] becomes painful: Israeli in thisbook-in this war-is a curse." Now curse, as you
should know, is defined as "a prayer for harm tocome upon one". Is that what you, as the editors
and publishers, wish to be sending out, a prayer forharm to come upon the Israelis? Whose end doesthat serve? To be told, and so condescendingly, that
"This will be scary for Jews-all too familiar withcurses; but this curse we need to hear" is anoutrage: I need to ask, Who do you mean by we?
This introduction is signed by two editors, one
Jewish, one not. If we means the Jewish editor ofSW, Ms. Kaye/Kantrowitz, and the Jewish reader·
ship of SW, I wish to tell Ms. Kaye/Kantrowitz thatmaybe she needs to hear curses, but I do not. And I
do not need her to tell me that I need to hear them.
I do not read SW to be cursed at as a Jew, and it
feels awful to be singled out like that in the in-118

troduction: all Jewish readers of SW must now
gather over here to be cursed at, you seem to besaying, while non-Jewish readers may simply turnthe page. Outrage.ous.
As a Jew and a Zionist who has been long criticalof the Israeli stand on Palestine, and as someone
who was outraged by the Israeli invasion of .
Lebanon, I am all in favor of publishing material
that will encourage exploration of the difficult
issues involved-even material that is sharply
critical of Israel. But to publish a book that, at its
root, offers hopelessness, and guns, and more killings as the solution, is a terrible mistake. If we areto survive (we, the human race) we must step out ofthat deadly whirlwind of hate, and we must searchin ourselves for the sources of wisdom, faith andfortitude to do so. Ms. Drew fails in that, and in
publishing her account, so, unfortunately, do you.
Cheryl Moch
New York City
This beautiful image [Golden Gate Headlands,
California] is a counterpart to the reason I'm
writing you. The scenery is so beautiful and theissue I read is so "beautiful" if I can say such athing of your publication of Jill Drew's journal "To
Go To Berbir." It's an unbearable thing to read, andI'm ashamed to say unbearable when I only have toread what she went through and even more what
the people went throug~. I'm sure the people concerned would have thanked you for publishing thestory of their miseries, and publishing it in such a"neutral" (at best) environment as America (or theworld). After all what goes on in EI Salvador or
Guatemala is not any different. Or elsewhere. But it
touches home directly and I am so full of things I
cQuld say and feel and the word thank you is justthe beginning of it. And if you see Jill Drew or write
to her tell her among her readers there is one who
wrote to you to thank her. Many must have alreadydone so.
-Etel Adnan
Sausalito, California
The Lebanese journal is an incredible publication.
Not easy to read through as a Jew. Not easy totouch that war, which Jill forces me to do. My eyes
are open a lot further. Thank you for publishing it.
-Linda Smukler
Brooklyn, New YorkI appreciated your statement re: the "Berbir"
issue of SW. It was full of seriousness and complexity . . . feminists must be aware and educated about
Middle East issues. This morning I was terribly
shocked by Indira Gandhi's death lassassination).
Though the violence of our times terrifies me, it issomehow still somewhere else-i.e. until I count the
women I know who've been murdered, raped,
assaulted, or attacked in the last five years. And
then it's close. The importance of "Berbir" is that it
shows us what it is like on a daily basis to live withviolence, death, pain. And I know nothing of this so
comfortably tied to my desk.
Cheryl Clarke
New Brunswick, New Jersey~

For a long time I have been debating with myself
whether I should reply, explain, or put into
perspective the numerous articles published inalmost every magazine and newspaper across the
U.S.A. about the "Israeli invasion of Lebanon". I
have not, because I am tired of justifying andfighting pure ignorance. Nevertheless upon reading
your last issue "To Go To Berbir" I felt anger, anddisgust for several reasons which will be discussed
within this letter.
Initially allow me to tell you that I am an Israeli
woman, who served in the Israeli Air Force for acompulsory service of two years. I am also a radical
feminist who was, and still is, active in all aspects offeminism: socially, politically etc. I was encouraged
to read this particular issue of Sinister Wisdomby both Jewish and non-Jewish women who had
been shocked to read the lies and misinformation
found within. As an Israeli who was present inIsrael during the invasion in 1982 and can writehonestly from experience, I will refer to specificstatements and descriptions given by Ms. Drew,
and then give an overall background to the situation
which did not begin in June 1982.
In your introduction to SW you write: "Sinister
Wisdom has published continuously for eight years,
collections of writings, art by women-identifiedwomen about women's experience". It is hard forme to understand why in a feminist magazine,
which I hoped to be mine as a woman, I must readabout men fighting, men's politics, and men's
issues. You call this diary an "honest book". If thisis an objective story, one does not have to read yourmagazine, but merely pick up any local newspaper
and read the same distorted view.

119

Ms. Drew is a nurse, has she forgotten to mention
that the P.L.D. planted cannons in hospitals, mainly
in children's wards, and bombed the Israeli forces
with the knowledge that they would not retaliate
against a hospital. Has she forgotten that hundredsof Christians were treated in Israeli hospitals via"the good fence" IIsraeli-Lebanese border) in thelast 12 years, due to the slaughter by the Moslems
in the civil war.
"There will be anguish for Palestinians, Lebanese,
Arab people ... " what about the Christian people?'
Women in Zor, Zidon, Damour etc. who for 12
years have been living under violent terror of
P.L.D. men, raped and murdered, their sons taken
away at 10 years of age, being trained to become
terrorists.
Thank you for mentioning that the majority of
Israelis want Israel out of Lebanon, perhaps at least
the people are not a "curse". Maybe you forgot that
the Israeli army is a citizens' army, these citizens
are those who fight the P.L.D. opposition. I also am
against Israel staying in Lebanon, not because of the"injustice" of trying to destroy a terrorist movement that has killed and continues to kill our
women and children, but because I believe that
Israel should not fight another country's civil war.
Since I believe most women who read yourmagazine are probably not well informed on the
middle east, I would like to present a brief historyof the cause and development of this current situation.
Prior to 1947 Palestine was occupied by the
British, and in that year they divided it into two
halves, one half for the Arabs, and the other half for
the Jews. The Arabs disagreed with this division,and refused to recognize Israel as a state, a situation
which has not changed to this day. Their disagreement resulted in constant attacks on Jews. Due tothese acts of terrorism the War of Independence
broke out in 1948. Undoubtedly one can notdisagree that six million Jews burned to death inGermany was enough to justify a Jewish state. I
myself do not know of any Arab tragedies inhistory, with the exception of those caused by theirown disputes IIraq-Iran, Libya-Egypt, Jordan-Syria).
The fact that 3.2 million Israelis are surroundedby more than 100 million who wish to see Israel
destroyed, necessitates a well trained army. I do not• Editor's Note: Palestinian, Lebanese, and Arabpeople can be Christian.

remember Israeli terrorists planting bombs (except
a recent incident in which those responsible werearrested and sentenced) in civil buses, garbage cans,or mining highways and parks. Nor do I recall
groups of terrorists attacking buses, this type of terrorism was common against Israel prior to 1967. As
a result Israel attacked and occupied the West
Bank, and the Sinai Desert. I wonder how many ofyour readers would like to live 7 miles from ahostile border, as I did until 1967? It is unfortunatethat Ms. Drew wasn't in the Arab villages during
1967 to see how primitive and patriarchal Arab
women (and non-women) lived, without runningwater, electricity etc, in order to appreciate that today in every Arab village (in Israel) there are
women's health centers (Tipat Chalav, drop ofmilk); also there are technological advantages
available. Throughout history has any other country
given back captured land, two and a half times its
own size, complete with oil refineries, cities, and aflourishing tourism in exchange for peace?' What
happened to the Palestinians? To my best
knowledge the idea was to form Jordan as a placefor Palestinians. Unfortunately, King Hussein did
not want them, perhaps that is why his armyslaughtered thousands of them, destroyed theircamps, were you aware of that? If the concern for
Palestinians was so great, why can not the Arabcountries find land to put them on? That Arabs can't
accommodate their own is why the Palestinians areliving in camps not fit for human beings. Ms. Drew,
did you see where Israeli Arabs live? Israel does nothave camps. I saw them living in Tel Aviv, Haifa,
Jerusalem, and Nazareth. They attend Israeli
universities, utilize Israeli hospitals, and they carry
Israeli citizenships (which no Arab country will givethem)! They vote and have members in the Israeli
parliament, mayors of cities, etc. True, Syria allows
5000 Jews to survive in 5 blocks in Damascus.
In 1973 Israel was attacked by all the Arab nations, which almost destroyed it. The attack occurred on the holiest day for the Jews, Yom Kippur,when all the men were at temple. Israel, after suffering thousands of casualties managed to recover,and subsequently surrounded the Egyptian Third
Army which consisted of tens of thousands ofsoldiers. Arik Sharon, "the man responsible for
Sabra and Shatila" gave them food and water, and• Editor'S Note: Exchange of the Sinai for a peact
treaty with Egypt.

120

later released them. This is hardly the characteristicof an army Ms. Drew describes as "cruel". Does
Ms. Drew remember in 1973 when 3 Palestinian
terrorists captured a classroom of 13-14 year oldchildren in Ma'alot, and murdered them all? Is she
familiar with the incident when terrorists enteredan apartment in Naharia, took a father and his threeyear old daughter and smashed her head on a rockin front of his eyes before shooting him to death?
Did Ms. Drew forget the bus full of families on atour in 1977 which was captured by Palestinian terrorists, after they murdered an American woman
bird photographer who they happened to pass? Did
Ms. Drew forget that the bus was sprayed by theguns and grenades? There is no end to this list.
Perhaps she did not forget, only she is ignorant of
the facts that have not been publicized through theconventional media. Many of the facts usually get
no pUblicity or so little that you really have to lookto find it.
The P.L.O. is an organization not recognized by
all Palestinians. It is basically a terrorist movement
led by Yassar Arafat. There are other Palestinianorganizations as well, and usually there are major
disagreements among them alL It is not uncommon
for leaders to be murdered by one another. There isconstant fighting among them.
After being expelled by King Hussein from
Jordan, they established themselves in Lebanon
which suffered from tension due to different power
struggles among various Arab groups, and thus contributed in making Lebanon an unbearable place tolive in. For 12 years, boys and men walked in theChristian cities with M-16 guns, feeling free to do
anything they pleased. Need I explain the many
liberties which were indulged in by these men at
the expense of defenseless women? Commandeering
homes, killing the man in the house, and taking
young children to train as vicious terrorists against
Israel was the common strategy followed. Morethan once the terrorists captured in Israel werechildren of 13-14 years old. The Christians formed
forces of their own in an effort to recapture theircities, and regain their liberty with the support ofIsraeL
Meanwhile the Palestinians were building anarmy with the aid of Russian arms and knowledge,
bombing Israel's northern border, kibbutzim, cities
and villages. For 12 years people left their homes
not knowing whether the home would still bestanding upon their returning. When they slept at

night, they never knew whether they or theirchildren would awake. Hundreds of Israelis were
killed, and injured by the constant bombing by the
P.L.O.
The invasion of Lebanon was planned in an effort
to stop the bombing and the invasions of terrorists
into Israel. The operation was planned to take a few
days, but once the I.D.F. entered they found arms,
ammunition, and military devices that took weeks
to unload and move to Israel. The P.L.O. had built
an army that in a short time could have been a verysignificant force to supplement another army geared
to destroy Israel. We can all agree that war is
disgusting, and no matter which side you are on terrible losses are suffered. Women and children were
killed because the P.L.O. strategically positioned
themselves among innocent citizens. Israel learned
the hard way. Instead of using the air force, soldiers
went from house to house to .Iocate terrorists, andbehind every child a gun suddenly appeared andshot them. After hundreds were killed, Israel realized that the only way to solve the problem was tobomb from the air, in the hope that the terrorists
wou ld leave the civilian area. They did move, but
now the terrorists occupied hospitals, churches etc.
World powers began giving advice, orders, suggestions, "withdraw, get out. .. ". Sabra and Shatila
was the first camp which the Israeli troops
withdrew from. This was the first slaughter ofrevenge by the hands of the Arabs, not the Israelis.
Today they are continuing a tradition of many yearsof slaughtering each other. Israel left most of
Lebanon. Ms. Drew you can stay there, and continue to work in hospitals. I assure you that you will
have employment, especially when Israel is totallyout of Lebanon.
Israel wanted the terrorists out of Lebanon, not totake away their right to live and survive. Israel's
first priority was to assure its own survival. Whenthe P.L.O. was leaving Lebanon, Israel did not sinktheir ships, nor did they kill them. Let me assure
you that this generosity would not be found with
the Arabs.
I felt it necessary to give this other side of thestory because Ms. Drew's diary is very biased, andsubjective. I am sure that working in a hospital
under attack must be an awful experience as
described, but one can not ignore the picture as awhole, and take something out of context, and makeit objective. After reading the diary with such an introduction of Israe l being a "curse", your readers121

could be left with very strong feelings of antiZionism, anti-Israeli and consequently anti-Semitic
feelings . . .. This male political issue can only promote unnecessary hatred toward Jewish women!
Dana RothWillimantic, Connecticut

Author's Statement about
To Go To Berbir, Sinister Wisdom 26
To Go To Berbir was written during a war. Asa daily account - my daily account - I wrote
about what I saw firsthand both in my work and in
my life in Beirut. I also wrote down what myfriends and comrades told me, and I wrote of the
sharing of our lives and sometimes of our dying. I
would not today, under any circumstances, modify
my own observations from that time or those of thepeople I knew.
The people I knew in Lebanon were indeed forthe most part kind and generous. The people in
Lebanon are Ara b people regardless of theirreligion. I was not - for obvious reasons - in aposition to meet Israelis. And when I went to Israel
itseU, [ did not go to meet Israelis: [ went to convey
a message to the editors of a Palestinian publication.
I did not - during the time [ was in Beirut - havecause to meet with members of the Kataeb, except
on two occasions at military checkpoints. (Myfather once advised me during our mutual work at anational political convention, "Never drink withyour enemies." [ have tried to follow that advice all
my life, and I was careful to follow along those lines- metaphorically and literally - during the summer and fall of 1982.) For anyone working in the
medical field in West Beirut during that time, to saythat the Israeli Defence Forces or the Kataeb
militias were NOT the enemy would have been
sheer lunacy.
To set the record straight: I am a Christian bychoice. [ was raised in my father's house and on
both sides of his family were long lines of Congregational and Episcopalian ministers. [ would neverdeny that, nor would [ deny the influence thatbackground has had on my thinking, on my choiceof action, or on the images [ use in what [ create.
The Christianity I was surrounded by has in no way
anything in common with the Christianity of the
Kataeb.

I am also a Jew. My mother is Jewish. I believe in
the Jewish fait h - to the extent that I raised, withvarying degrees of success, my so n in a Jew ish
school during his younger years. My mother's
re latives died under the Nazi regime in Poland andothers fought in the Jewish resistance in Italy. My
Jewish faith has nothing in co mmon with the tenetsof Zionis m and, unlike Melanie, I am not committed to the existence of the state of Israel. II am not
com mitted necessarily to the existence of any

Editor's Statement about responses:
It is ironic that the section of the introduction
which I had written to reach out to mypeople-other Jews-to say I know this is hard andwe need to go through it-was perceived by someJews as a particular insult: why was I lor we-since
the attempt came in the middle of a jointly written,
jointly signed statement) singling out Jews? And
why was I cursing Israelis?
Let me clarify. I did not/do not mean to curse
Israel the nation and certainly not the people. The
government that invaded Lebanon, I do curse. But
that's not what I meant either.
One piece of information that affected me powerfully about Jill's journal was that people in West
Beirut used the word "Israeli" as a curse. And for areason. Fair, not fair, historically contextualized orout of the blue, connected or not to generations ofreligious hatred in a part of the world where
religious wars have been waged for centuries
Ithough rarely by Jews who until the present century have not had access to state power)-rage andanguish are also facts. The word "Israeli" -which I
had always heard with pride-I now heard withanother edge, one which cut me deeply when I
allowed myself to hear.
Not that Israel is worse than any other nation-we could cite an endless list of atrocities fromthe last year alone. But atrocities are not to bemeasured and do not cancel each other out.
Because I love the Jewish people, care for our survival and our integrity, care when we suffer andwhen we make others suffer, I face choices nosimpler, no more complicated than such choices
have ever been for anyone. How to throw myweight on the side of justice? First I have toknow-even when the knowledge is painful. And
Jill Drew's journal gave me critical-if partial-knowledge about the Israeli invasion of
Lebanon.
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz
Rockland, Maine
December 1984

state.)

Given those two conditions of my bac kground, it
seems necessa ry to state that I am comm itted to theexistence of people - Jews, Palestinians, andanyo ne else who is threatened by what appears tobe genocide. There is little in the statements of
Israeli, Pha lange, or even United States leaders during much of the 1982 summer that gave me any
reason to believe that genocide was not the issue.
Genocide may yet be the issue in the Middle East,
just as it may have been the issue in Vietnam andjust as it may be the issue in the thinking behind the
U.S. intervention in Central America.
A fi nal word: Many readers of SW have broughtup the topic of lesbian writing... that this journal'could find publication in ot her places as lesbian
writing could not,' and furthermore, as one reader
wrote, we 'must read about men fighting, men's
politics, and men's issues' in a feministllesbian
publication. Perhaps it would clarify things to remind SW readers that I am a lesbian. Far more pertinent, however, is that war and human sufferingand oppression are not men's issues: they are
women's issues and they have always been
women's issues. The fact that we as women lesbian or otherwise - have avoided confronting
them has, I believe, contributed to the continuationof war and oppression and has added to the untold
num ber of victims - victims, I might add, who aremostly women and children. NOT to read about, actively part icipate in, and be witness to 'men's
politics' may well signify the genocide of us all.
Jill J. Drew
Albuquerque, New Mexico
November 1984

ADDITIONS TO BIBLIOGRAPHY IN
TO GO TO BERBIR
Bendt, Jngela and Jim Downing. We Shall Return:
Women of Palestine. Lawrence Hill, 1982.

ITawil, Rayrnonda. My
IEngland), 1983.

122

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