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Ain't I A Woman? newspapers, June 1970-July 1971
1971-06-04 "Ain't I a Woman?" Page 2
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FOR ALL THE WOMEN WHO KEEP US SMILING [hand drawing of flower with name in each leaf and DIRT BAG at end of string] Deni A. Lois & Jeanne Dotty S. Lois C. Holly H. Rita Mae B. Those Women Two issues ago we reprinted an article we really like by Rita Mae Brown. Along with the article we ran our own comment because, although we thought the article was exceptionally good, we felt in discussing women's media (specifically how most of it did not deal with lesbianism) that she had ignored us. As we have grown closer and come further in our analysis of women's oppression - as we have come to better see our priorities - the things that are important to us, we have begun to feel more isolated - to feel the tenseness of political differences between us and other women - to feel like such a small group unwilling to compromise on some of the issues close to us. At this point we're almost doing a balancing act between being woman identified and yet critical of the women's movement on its racism and its class antagonism. It's a balance we want for we can never compromise our gayness to make ourselves less offensive to some women nor can we remain silent and uncritical about race or class. Even though there is a growing community of women in Iowa City, because of all kinds of differences, we sometimes feel alone in what we are trying to do. We begin to get scared and doubt ourselves and our direction, especially when there are such divisions on gay, race, or class lines among women who identify with WL in Iowa City. Since that issue with Rita Mae Brown's article things have been particularly heavy for us because of those issues and our disagreements with women here. But during a time of heaviness for all of us we have been getting a lot of letters from women and groups that do identify with us and the analysis we're attempting. It's a high and gives us a feeling of solidarity and community with groups of women around the country. For one thing Rita Mae Brown wrote us a letter in response to our comment on her article. Dear Sisters: Thank you for reprinting "Hanoi to Hoboken." I was really surprised when I discovered it and I was even more surprised when I read your note/criticism. Thank you most of all for that. You are right about us getting bogged down in our locality (especially East Coast people) and one of the reasons that happens is because the movement has a scant communication network. Another reason is, of course, East Coast chauvinism. I really want you to know that I do know of your paper and I think it is great. It is more woman-identified than any other and it seems to be slowly moving toward a coherent politics while the others are a collage of conflicting politics. I should have mentioned that in my article. And one day feeling down and wiped out JD and Pat went to the Post Office to find the following from a collective of gay women in D.C. Dearest Gay Sisters: Well, we've been meaning to write to you for a long time. Your paper is FAR OUT - we read it alot and identify with so much you are going through and saying about us and the Movement - where we are and where we should be going. Perhaps we should say a little about who we are - a collective of 11 women and 3 children functioning as part of the worldwide conspiracy of Radical Lesbians. We are - at the moment - located in two houses in Washington. We are working on a woman's skills center, a woman's radio show, a woman's studies curriculum for high schools, and alot of assorted other things. Our consciousness raising is centered on the question of class. None of this gives a feeling for the group so I hope to write in more detail another time... Dear Sisters, I've a need to write down and share some thought I've had since the installation (like a muffler) of my IUD. I went to a clinic expecting to be peered and poked at by 87 curious med students. I was surprised and relieved that I got a single doctor, old and apparently reputable. He considerately explained IUDs in theory and practice and then installed it with a minimum of hassle. The pain was considerable but brief. I was weak and had to lie on the table for a while before getting up. While I was there he held my hand -- I wondered about it but was too grateful to be out of pain to be seriously suspicious. On my way out to the hall he slung his arm around my shoulder in a fatherly (?) way. But then he tried to kiss me. I thought o christ but was far too weak to even be enraged -- I wanted to run but could only shuffle out crying. Since then I have experienced my IUD as an alien and frightening thing. And it has made a thingy out of my whole body. What should have been a positive and liberating action has turned into an ugliness to me. I have always had the best middle-class medical care and consequently a confident, positive attitude toward taking care of business medically. Now I somehow feel that someone has done something to me over which I have no control; it is not at all as if I had voluntarily made a choice and then gone about effectuating that decision. I am experiencing a kind of rejection of my body--I want to throw it away, toss it out and start over clean and fresh. And for the first time in my life I am experiencing intimations of the stone-in-the-gut feelings that poor women must get when they find themselves pregnant and powerless. Above all I fell a kind of nebulous fright that I think comes from being at once impotent and angered. For the first time I am connecting the words "oppression" and "body" in an intimate way. I can't identify the source of these feelings. I'm not sure if they all arose because of that revulsive doctor. Perhaps some of the alienation is coming from generalized feelings about my body that I was unaware of. In any case, I ought not to have to feel this way. I'm preparing to fight, it's only that the face of the enemy is not so distinct. AIAW has been invisible in the larger women's movement in Washington to a certain extent because the lesbian community has been invisible... BUt we are beginning to intensify our struggle against this invisibility... So please keep going - this is positive plus feedback. THOSE WOMEN Washington, D.C. We're excited about the Skills School they've started. They offer courses in Self Defense, Home Repairs, and Auto Mecanics. Dear AIAW, Thanks for the new issue. Each one seems even better than all the others. I work at the Women's Center in N.Y., which is to some extent, an outpost of the "feminist" part of the women's movement. We're afloat in the anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist sea, but just barely. It's important to get a paper that consistently affirms women and their right to be (even if they're not Vietnamese, or on welfare, etc. etc.). Beyond that, though, the paper has helped us clarify our relationship to ourselves and other women outside our part of the movement in away which does not deny our own integrity or theories. Is there any chance that you will begin to explore the problems of women with children, and children, in a way that goes deeper than the need for babysitting? So far the movement's understanding of child-related issues is rather superficial. And there's been more: the letter from Deni in Chicago and always the letters of encouragement from Dotti in Euclid, Ohio. If we're leaving anyone out (we probably are) it's not because your letters haven't meant a lot to us. It's more likely our disorganized hurriedness the week of putting out the paper. Please keep writing - it's been really nice for us. Love to all Revolutionary Gay Feminists 2 Vol 1 No 16 Ain't I
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FOR ALL THE WOMEN WHO KEEP US SMILING [hand drawing of flower with name in each leaf and DIRT BAG at end of string] Deni A. Lois & Jeanne Dotty S. Lois C. Holly H. Rita Mae B. Those Women Two issues ago we reprinted an article we really like by Rita Mae Brown. Along with the article we ran our own comment because, although we thought the article was exceptionally good, we felt in discussing women's media (specifically how most of it did not deal with lesbianism) that she had ignored us. As we have grown closer and come further in our analysis of women's oppression - as we have come to better see our priorities - the things that are important to us, we have begun to feel more isolated - to feel the tenseness of political differences between us and other women - to feel like such a small group unwilling to compromise on some of the issues close to us. At this point we're almost doing a balancing act between being woman identified and yet critical of the women's movement on its racism and its class antagonism. It's a balance we want for we can never compromise our gayness to make ourselves less offensive to some women nor can we remain silent and uncritical about race or class. Even though there is a growing community of women in Iowa City, because of all kinds of differences, we sometimes feel alone in what we are trying to do. We begin to get scared and doubt ourselves and our direction, especially when there are such divisions on gay, race, or class lines among women who identify with WL in Iowa City. Since that issue with Rita Mae Brown's article things have been particularly heavy for us because of those issues and our disagreements with women here. But during a time of heaviness for all of us we have been getting a lot of letters from women and groups that do identify with us and the analysis we're attempting. It's a high and gives us a feeling of solidarity and community with groups of women around the country. For one thing Rita Mae Brown wrote us a letter in response to our comment on her article. Dear Sisters: Thank you for reprinting "Hanoi to Hoboken." I was really surprised when I discovered it and I was even more surprised when I read your note/criticism. Thank you most of all for that. You are right about us getting bogged down in our locality (especially East Coast people) and one of the reasons that happens is because the movement has a scant communication network. Another reason is, of course, East Coast chauvinism. I really want you to know that I do know of your paper and I think it is great. It is more woman-identified than any other and it seems to be slowly moving toward a coherent politics while the others are a collage of conflicting politics. I should have mentioned that in my article. And one day feeling down and wiped out JD and Pat went to the Post Office to find the following from a collective of gay women in D.C. Dearest Gay Sisters: Well, we've been meaning to write to you for a long time. Your paper is FAR OUT - we read it alot and identify with so much you are going through and saying about us and the Movement - where we are and where we should be going. Perhaps we should say a little about who we are - a collective of 11 women and 3 children functioning as part of the worldwide conspiracy of Radical Lesbians. We are - at the moment - located in two houses in Washington. We are working on a woman's skills center, a woman's radio show, a woman's studies curriculum for high schools, and alot of assorted other things. Our consciousness raising is centered on the question of class. None of this gives a feeling for the group so I hope to write in more detail another time... Dear Sisters, I've a need to write down and share some thought I've had since the installation (like a muffler) of my IUD. I went to a clinic expecting to be peered and poked at by 87 curious med students. I was surprised and relieved that I got a single doctor, old and apparently reputable. He considerately explained IUDs in theory and practice and then installed it with a minimum of hassle. The pain was considerable but brief. I was weak and had to lie on the table for a while before getting up. While I was there he held my hand -- I wondered about it but was too grateful to be out of pain to be seriously suspicious. On my way out to the hall he slung his arm around my shoulder in a fatherly (?) way. But then he tried to kiss me. I thought o christ but was far too weak to even be enraged -- I wanted to run but could only shuffle out crying. Since then I have experienced my IUD as an alien and frightening thing. And it has made a thingy out of my whole body. What should have been a positive and liberating action has turned into an ugliness to me. I have always had the best middle-class medical care and consequently a confident, positive attitude toward taking care of business medically. Now I somehow feel that someone has done something to me over which I have no control; it is not at all as if I had voluntarily made a choice and then gone about effectuating that decision. I am experiencing a kind of rejection of my body--I want to throw it away, toss it out and start over clean and fresh. And for the first time in my life I am experiencing intimations of the stone-in-the-gut feelings that poor women must get when they find themselves pregnant and powerless. Above all I fell a kind of nebulous fright that I think comes from being at once impotent and angered. For the first time I am connecting the words "oppression" and "body" in an intimate way. I can't identify the source of these feelings. I'm not sure if they all arose because of that revulsive doctor. Perhaps some of the alienation is coming from generalized feelings about my body that I was unaware of. In any case, I ought not to have to feel this way. I'm preparing to fight, it's only that the face of the enemy is not so distinct. AIAW has been invisible in the larger women's movement in Washington to a certain extent because the lesbian community has been invisible... BUt we are beginning to intensify our struggle against this invisibility... So please keep going - this is positive plus feedback. THOSE WOMEN Washington, D.C. We're excited about the Skills School they've started. They offer courses in Self Defense, Home Repairs, and Auto Mecanics. Dear AIAW, Thanks for the new issue. Each one seems even better than all the others. I work at the Women's Center in N.Y., which is to some extent, an outpost of the "feminist" part of the women's movement. We're afloat in the anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist sea, but just barely. It's important to get a paper that consistently affirms women and their right to be (even if they're not Vietnamese, or on welfare, etc. etc.). Beyond that, though, the paper has helped us clarify our relationship to ourselves and other women outside our part of the movement in away which does not deny our own integrity or theories. Is there any chance that you will begin to explore the problems of women with children, and children, in a way that goes deeper than the need for babysitting? So far the movement's understanding of child-related issues is rather superficial. And there's been more: the letter from Deni in Chicago and always the letters of encouragement from Dotti in Euclid, Ohio. If we're leaving anyone out (we probably are) it's not because your letters haven't meant a lot to us. It's more likely our disorganized hurriedness the week of putting out the paper. Please keep writing - it's been really nice for us. Love to all Revolutionary Gay Feminists 2 Vol 1 No 16 Ain't I
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