Going Too Far (14 page)

III: WITCH HEXES THE BRIDAL FAIR

O
N
SATURDAY
, February 15, 1969, the first New York Bridal Fair was held in Madison Square Garden. A rather tacky, motorboat-showtype extravaganza-commercial, this fair was sponsored by radio station WMCA, and. boasted exhibitors from the “Bridal Industry”—manufacturers and marketers of gowns, wedding pictures, caterers, furniture, appliances, honeymoon trips, etc.—the biggest daddies being Chase Manhattan Bank (where you get the loan in order to buy all the things you don't need), International Coffee, American Telephone and Telegraph, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and J. P. Stevens.

Appalled at the notion of the Bridle Un-fair, as they termed it, and smelling the corporate rats behind such an American tradition, members of WITCH issued a call to other groups in the Women's Liberation Movement to join them in a demonstration at the Garden on the opening day of the fair. The slogan of the action was “Confront the Whoremakers”—and ten thousand stickers appeared all over New York City two weeks earlier, issuing that call.

Accordingly, while the brides-to-be and their mothers shivered in the cold, waiting in line to get into the fair, the women demonstrators assembled, about a hundred strong, to leaflet, picket, perform guerrilla theater, and cast a hex on the manipulator-exhibitors. Some of the demonstrators carried signs reading:
Always a Bride, Never a Person, Coffee Causes Chromosome Damage, Ask Not for Whom the Wedding Bell Tolls
, and
Here Comes the Bribe
.

The women demonstrators were protesting not only the obvious chicanery of the buying ritual which insists one must have sixteen
appliances and a matched bedroom set—all the commercial and legal trappings—before one can simply live with another person; they were also bent on exposing the Dracula face of capitalism behind all the orange blossoms, pointing out how Chase Manhattan enslaves and murders in South Africa, how International Coffee exploits the peasants of South America, how AT&T and Blue Cross oppress and control people at home. But the heart of their attack was aimed at the institution of marriage itself, and at the structure of the bourgeois family, which oppresses everyone, and particularly women. In a “WITCH Un-Wedding Ceremony,” performed in the morning, the women made the following pledge of disallegiance:

We are gathered together here in the spirit of our passion to affirm love and initiate our freedom from the unholy state of American patriarchal oppression.

We promise to love, cherish, and groove on each other and on all living things. We promise to smash the alienated family unit. We promise not to obey. We promise this through highs and bummers, in recognition that riches and objects are totally available through socialism or theft (but also that possessing is irrelevant to love).

We promise these things until choice do us part. In the name of our sisters and brothers everywhere, and in the name of the Revolution, we pronounce ourselves Free Human Beings.

Later, inside the fair itself, women disrupted the “question-and-answer” period for brides, and zapped the trousseau fashion show by releasing 150 live white mice (a permanent present to the Garden). There were no arrests, but fifteen women from Brooklyn College SDS were roughed up by cops and thrown down a flight of stairs. As they were being carried out through the audience, they cleverly co-opted their bouncers by screaming, “I
won't
get married, no, no,
I won't
.”

A few days later, San Francisco women's groups disrupted a Bridal Un-Fair on the West Coast with almost the same tactics. Yes, Betty Crocker, a conspiracy
does
exist.

February
1969

¹
Regrettably, the original large Redstockings group no longer exists. Even more distressing are the recent attempts of a few women to wear the honorable name “Redstockings” while initiating patriarchal-style attacks against a number of feminists and feminist groups.

²
A general convocation of all Leftist groups, to protest the Vietnam War and to solidify the male “Movement.”

³
Mobe: Mobilization Against the War—umbrella group of the demonstration.

BEING REASONABLE: TWO LETTERS TO MEN

If considering some women sisters was trying to one's patience, considering some men brothers was trying to one's sanity. As each “movement man” came forth with
his
reasons why “the woman question” should not be seriously considered by radicals—or why it
should
be taken up and used to further the antiwar effort—I began to think that there was hardly a Leftist male alive able to chafe two brain cells together into the spark of a genuine thought.

I got angrier and more militant as a women's liberationist. But I hadn't yet stopped answering them. I replied, I shouted, I even
reasoned
with these jock “revolutionaries” whose intellect seemed to hover perilously near that of a drunken gnat.

It took a lot of time, adrenaline, and idealism. It also took a lot of rather touching stupidity.

DEAR
RAT
:

B
ARBARA GARSON
'
S
¹
husband's article, “The Feminine Mistake,” in your October 4th issue was a masterpiece of male supremacist liberalism combined with love-freakiness of the most nauseating type.

That Garson could ever assume Women's Liberation was a “joke, a lesbian conspiracy, or a Trotskyist splinter group” just shows where he's at, and he cops the Rennie Davis award of the year (for misogyny, subtle variety) for “hoping we will soon be finished with the phrase ‘the women question.'” Dig it, Marvin:
More
than half of humanity are women—the only majority to be treated like a tiny oppressed minority.

Sure, the system oppresses men as well as women, which is why all of us must work to destroy the system together. But there's a sub-oppression, a “pecking order” that permits oppressed white people to take their rage and misery out on blacks, oppressed men to do the same
to women, etc. A concrete example, small but enraging: how many “Movement couples” stagger home from a demonstration, or from jail, court, etc., so that he, exhausted, can collapse, while she, exhausted, fixes something to eat for them,
or
cleans up the pad,
or
picks up the kids,
or, or, or
. (If in certain cases there is cooperation between them on the gray shit of everyday living duties, is it because the guy has volunteered to do his part naturally, or because after hassling and pressure he is forced to cooperate, despite his inclination
and power
to do otherwise?)

Garson claims that “women oppress men as well.” Sure, baby, and what else is new? The blacks were the white man's burden, eh? It's rough to be an oppressor, particularly when the oppressed begin looking around and see where they're at.
Then
: speak up for yourself and you're a castrating bitch. Plead for your rights and you're a nag. Refuse to be a sexual object and you're a tease. Shriek your rage and you're a hysteric. Articulate your anger quietly and you're a manipulator. Get disgusted with the whole bag and you're frigid, neurotic, etc. Sure, pity the poor oppressor “man-un-kind.” Well, we want to free men from that role, too—and by any means necessary, no matter what we are called.

Garson's reaction to the “sexual electricity” that can make political meetings where women are present “unproductive” is a symptom of his being unable to see the person for the woman. And his description of the Movement “sexual code of freedom” (whatever the hell that is) I deplore for different reasons than he does. For one thing, it doesn't exist—for women. Sexual freedom still operates on a double standard among radicals as everywhere else. For another thing, sex is
not
at the heart of women's liberation (unless you're a male liberal who still sees women in terms only of their genitals). The same issues are at stake here that are moving all oppressed people to rebel—we will not be dehumanized any longer!

And a new “revolutionary” society that carries with it contaminating stereotypes about more than half the human beings alive today is doomed, brother, doomed.

October
1968

DEAR
LIBERATION
:

D
ESPITE THE
trepidation felt (so I understand) by certain fair-minded male editors of
Liberation
who wished to afford me the chance of replying to a letter attacking my article on the women's movement, but who were afraid I'd “savage this man in true Amazonian fashion”—despite this reaction, which in itself is instructive, I prefer to draw
attention to the ironies implicit in reading “blacks” for “women” in his statement, “In my opinion, women are a lower form of life that has not yet evolved to the human level.” I doubt that even
Liberation
's fair-minded white male editors would ask any black leader to answer such a statement, so rephrased. Such a denial of my humanity makes any attempt to “be reasonable,” or indeed reply at all, unnecessary.

Actually, what is less simple and more insidious than this blatantly bigoted letter is one published last month in
Liberation
(November 1968) by Allen Ginsberg—a brother who, one might think, should know better. It was a gentle, loving missive which degraded women far more than any statement calling us “a lower form of life.” Allen, dear Allen, would never say that, and he's too well-read to quote imaginary biological facts which every finding of modern science refutes. Yet he proposed busing hundreds (or better yet, thousands) of “calm girls” to Fort Dix and other military installations, to talk with the soldiers (not about politics, God forbid), to sing and look pleasant and give the boys a good time and not be hostile—all this as the “best strategy” for “transforming” the boys in uniform. Strategy it may be, and even a shrewd one, but at the cost of again presenting women as sexual bait, albeit in a subtle new “hip” disguise. It is interesting, too, how uninvolved and
un
empathetic Ginsberg allows himself to remain, as a declared homosexual, to the suffering of another oppressed people.

Look, Virginia, look. See the stereotype live. Color the A scarlet for Revolution. See how girls are calm, passive, unpolitical bait-objects to lure unsuspecting males in ways unavailable to other males who wish to manipulate both groups. See how the women are shamed by this misuse of their own political convictions. See how the soldiers are taken in by the ploy and then resent it. This destructive attitude-evinced by the leading gentle soul of our day—is precisely what I am fighting against. Ah, give me the equivalent of a Southern redneck like your other correspondent any time, rather than such a Northern liberal; with the former at least I know where I stand.

In any event, I propose a dialogue-duel between the two—Allen's weapons being bells, flowers, candles, and a loaded hookah, and his twin adversary fighting with a volume of the Nazi Party's theories on evolution. The two deserve each other. Please do not misunderstand the suggestion—it is hardly because I wish to return to the days of gentlemen fighting over ladies. It is rather that I think both parties might benefit from such an exchange, and besides, it really is their problem, just as racism is something whites, not blacks, have to “work through.” And although it's a confrontation I personally would love to witness, nevertheless we in the struggle for the liberation of women—and men—have more important things to do with our time.

December
1968

¹
Playwright; author of
MacBird, The Co-op
, and
All the Live-Long Day
.

HOW TO FREAK OUT THE POPE

When this piece was written, the Supreme Court decision on abortion and the liberalizing of abortion statutes in many states (including New York) seemed a far-off dream. I was doing secret abortion referrals, as were many other women in and out of the Women's Movement.

The reference in this article to some women beginning to withdraw their support of Bill Baird is an understated forecast of what was to come. Baird turned out to be one of the more male-supremacist men around, despite his years of having fought for legalized abortion and contraceptives. (Men frequently support these issues in the hope that abortion reform and more easily available birth control will make women “come across” better and more often—a very different reason from that of women's support in these areas, obviously.) Whatever Baird's reasons had been, he came to feel martyred. He tried to crash various all-women conferences, and when he was turned away, he denounced the women therein as “ungrateful.” He thought of himself, it was said, as the leader of Women's Liberation—a concept which not surprisingly offended many of us. We
had
been working on these issues, after all, and our bodies were the ones at stake. Yet Baird must have fallen into the trap which had closed around so many white radicals during the civil-rights movement in the early sixties: the arrogance of expecting oppressed people you claim to support to feel gratitude that you are doing only what you
should
have been doing all along, given your position of relative power and any sense of decency.
¹

I, in my chronic confusion, was at least clear about being for outright repeal of all abortion laws, not their reformation.
That was one of the few things I
was
clear about. In other respects, I compartmentalized, carefully refusing to make the connections which would have raised that specter of genuinely
feminist
politics.

Thus I could, in this article, speak reverently of the Catonsville Nine (Catholic pacifist anti-war activists) and conveniently ignore the fact that no major Catholic Leftist—male or female, priest, nun, or lay person—had taken a public stand differing with their church on the issues of abortion or even contraception. On “politics” they were radicals, but on Faith and Morals they were Catholics. Unfortunately the church feels that a woman should be the repository of Faith and the carrier of Morals, as if these were a kind of gene, like that for hemophilia. We do not qualify—once more—as “political.” Simone de Beauvoir's bon mot, that the church has always reserved its uncompromising concern for humanity to life in the fetal form, is still true. The Catonsville Nine, one might say, had an uncompromising concern for human life everywhere except in the female form.