Going Too Far (19 page)

—being told all about it in advance by kids at school who titter and make it clear the whole thing is dirty,
or

—being prepared for it by your mother, who carefully reiterates that it
isn't
dirty, all the while talking just above a whisper, and referring to it as “the curse,” “being sick,” or “falling off the roof.”

—feeling proud of and disgusted by your own body, for the first, but not last, time.

—dying of shame because your mother makes you wear a “training bra” but there's nothing to train,
or

—dying of shame because your mother
won't
let you wear a bra and your breasts are bigger than those of other girls your age and they flop when you run and you sit all the time with your arms folded over your chest.

—feeling basically comfortable in your own body, but gradually learning to hate it because you are: too short or tall, too fat or thin, thick-thighed or big-wristed, large-eared or stringy-haired, short-necked or long-armed, bowlegged, knock-kneed, or pigeon-toed—
something
that
might
make boys not like you.

—wanting to kill yourself because of pimples, dandruff, or a natural tendency to sweat—and discovering that commercials about miracle products just lie.

—dreading summertime because more of your body with its imperfections will be seen—and judged.

—tweezing your eyebrows/bleaching your hair/scraping your armpits/dieting/investigating vaginal sprays/biting your nails and hating that and filing what's left of them but hitting the quick instead.

—liking math or history a lot and getting hints that boys are turned off by smart girls.

—getting hints that other
girls
are turned off by smart girls.

—finally getting turned off by smart girls, unconsciously dropping back, lousing up your marks, and being liked by the other kids at last.

—having an intense crush on another girl or on a woman teacher and learning that that's unspeakable.

—going to your first dance and dreaming about it beforehand, and hating it, just
hating
it afterwards: you didn't dance right, you spilled the punch, you were a wallflower in anguish (
or
you were popular but in anguish because your best
friend
was a wallflower); you said all the wrong things.

—being absolutely convinced that you are a clod, a goon, a dog, a schlep, a flop, and an utter klutz.

—discovering that what seems like everything worthwhile doing in life “isn't feminine,” and learning to just
delight
in being feminine and “nice”—and feeling somehow guilty.

—masturbating like crazy and being terrified that you'll go insane, be sterile, turn into a whore, or destroy your own virginity.

—getting more information any way you can, and then being worried because you've been masturbating clitorally, and that isn't even the “right way.”

—swinging down the street feeling good and smiling at people and being hassled like a piece of meat in return.

—having your first real human talk with your mother and being told
about all her old hopes and lost ambitions, and how you can't fight it, and that's just the way it is: life, sex, men, the works—and loving her and hating her for having been so beaten down.

—having your first real human talk with your father and being told about all
his
old hopes and lost ambitions, and how women really have it easier, and “what a man really wants in a woman,”—and loving him and hating him for having been beaten down—and for beating down your mother in turn.

—brooding about “how far” you should go with the guy you really like. Will he no longer respect you? Will you get—oh God—a “reputation”? Or, if not, are you a square? Being pissed off because you can't just do what
you
feel like doing.

—being secretly afraid that you'll lose your virginity to a tampon, but being too ashamed to ask anyone about it.

—lying awake wondering if a girl really
can
get pregnant by the sperm swimming
through
her panties.

—having a horrible fight with your boyfriend, who keeps shouting how
he's
frustrated by not “doing it”—it never occurring to him that
you
might be climbing walls, too, which you maybe don't even dare to admit.

—finally screwing and your groin and buttocks and thighs ache like hell and you're all wet and maybe bloody and it wasn't like a Hollywood movie at all but jesus at least you're not a virgin any more but is this what it's all about?—and meanwhile he's asking, “Did you come?”

—discovering you need an abortion, and really learning for the first time what your man, your parents, and your society think of you. Frequently paying for that knowledge with your death.

—finding that the career you've chosen exacts more than just study or hard work—an emotional price of being made to feel “less a woman.”

—finding that almost all jobs open to you pay less, for harder work, than to men.

—being bugged by men in the office who assume that you're a virginal prude if you don't flirt, and that you're an easy mark if you are halfway relaxed and pleasant.

—learning to be
very tactful
if you have men working “under you.” More likely, learning to always be working under men.

—becoming a woman
executive
, forgodsake, and then being asked to order the delicatessen food for an office party.

—finding out how difficult it is to get hold of “easily accessible” birth control information.

—chasing the slippery diaphragm around the bathroom as if in a game of Frisbee the first time you try to insert it yourself,
or

—gaining weight or hemorrhaging or feeling generally miserable with the Pill, or just freaking out at the scare stories about it,
or

—going on a cross-country car trip in a Volkswagen, during which the Loop or the Coil becomes dislodged and begins to tear at your flesh.

—wondering why we can have live color telecasts of the moon's surface, but still no truly simple, humane, safe method of birth control.

—going the rounds of showers, shopping, money worries, invitation lists, licenses—when all you really wanted to do was live with the guy.

—quarreling with your fiancé over whether “and obey” should be in the marriage ceremony.

—secretly being bitched because the ceremony says “man and wife”—not “husband and wife” or “man and woman.” Resenting having to change your (actually, your father's) name.

—having been up since 6:00
A.M.
on your wedding day seeing family and friends you really don't even like and being exhausted from standing just so and not creasing your gown and from the ceremony and reception and traveling and now being alone with this strange man who wants to “make love” when you don't know that you even like him and even if you did you desperately want to just sleep for fourteen hours,
or

—
not
getting married, just living together in “free love,” and finding out it's just the same as marriage anyway, and you're the one who pays for the “free.”

—playing the role to the hilt, cooking special dishes, cleaning, etc.—and knowing you'll
never
make it as
Good Housekeeping
's “ideal,”
or

—“dropping out” together in a “hip, groovy” commune—and cooking brown rice instead of Betty Crocker.

—having menstrual cramps each month quite normally, cramps and/or headaches and/or nausea that would put a “normal” man out of commission for two weeks—and going on with your job or chores, etc., so no one will be inconvenienced.

—finding out that you're bored by your husband in bed.

—faking an orgasm for the first time: disgust, frustration—and relief (because he never even knew the difference).

—feeling guilty for not having an orgasm:
what
is wrong with
you?

—finding out that
you
bore your
husband
in bed. Getting desperate-where have
you
failed?

—wanting desperately to know what special things he wants you to do to him in bed—and being afraid to tell him what you'd want him to do; or telling him hints that he promptly forgets for ever after.

—wanting to be the power behind the throne and finding out either that he's not a great man after all, or that he doesn't need your support.

—being jealous and hating yourself for showing it.

—hating certain books that you might have loved—all because he read
them first and told you all about them. Feeling robbed. This goes for movies too.

—wanting to go back to school, to read, to join something, do something. Why isn't home enough for you? What's wrong with
you?

—coming home from work—and starting
in
to work: unpack the groceries, fix supper, wash up the dishes, rinse out some laundry, etc., etc.

—feeling a need to say thank you when your guy actually fixes
himself
a meal now that you're dying with the flu.

—getting pregnant, hearing all the earth-mother shit from everyone, going around with a fixed smile on your terrified face.

—having men on the street, in cabs and buses, no longer (at least) regard you as an ogle-object; now they regard you as Carrier of the Species.

—knowing there must be some deep-down way to enjoy this that maybe women in some “primitive” tribe feel, but being elephantine, achy, nauseated—and
kvetched
at having to be cheerful.

—wanting your husband with you, or wanting natural childbirth, and either he won't, or the doctor or hospital won't—and you're on your own,
or

—maybe you're lucky and he's not afraid or disgusted and the doctor approves and you go through it together and it's even beautiful—and you hear another woman screaming in solitary labor next door.

—feeling responsible for
more
lives—your kids' as well as your man's—but never, never your own life.

—learning to hate other women who are: younger, freer, unmarried, without children, in jobs, in school, in careers—whatever. Hating yourself for hating them.

—trying desperately not to repeat the pattern, and catching yourself telling your daughter one day that she “isn't acting like a lady,” or warning your son “not to be a sissy.”

—knowing that your husband is “playing around” and wanting to care, but not even being able to.

—being widowed or divorced, and trying to get a “good” job—at your age.

—claiming not to understand the “revolt” of your kids, but understanding it in your gut and not being able to help being bitter because you think it's too late for you.

—still wanting to have sex but feeling faintly ridiculous before your husband, let alone other men.

—being patronized and smirked over by your own children during the agonizing ritual of widowhood dating.

—getting older, getting lonelier, getting ready to die—and knowing it wouldn't have had to be this way, after all.

April
1970

P
ART THREE

Feminist Leanings: Articles for a Women's Newspaper

PART III:

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

In the late 1960's
, Rat
was one of the major “underground” newspapers of the New Left and the so-called alternative culture. Although published in New York and focused partially on local issues
, Rat
had a national circulation and in fact an international list of subscribers. More serious at its inception than most underground papers
, Rat
was perhaps best known for having dared be the first to publish documents stolen by anonymous students from the administrative offices of Columbia University during the Columbia student rebellion. The documents seemed to implicate the university in the U.S. war in Vietnam, and
Rat's “
scoop” in publishing them created a sensation in both the mass and alternate media
.

Yet despite its attempts at genuine muckraking journalism
, Rat
nevertheless had been created and sustained by and for men and male attitudes. As the gentle flower-children style of the middle sixties flared into the confrontation tactics of the late sixties, these male attitudes solidified themselves in Leftist consciousness—being tough, butch, “heavy,” and “a street-fighter” were now prerequisites for being a radical, male
or
female. Not surprisingly, most men had a better chance at cutting such a figure than did most women
. Rat
reflected these changes, and began presenting as well a kind of “cultural nationalism” for young white males: rock music coverage, pornography articles, and sex-wanted ads (euphemistically called “Personals”) began to clog the pages. As the women
Rat
staffers later wrote
, “Rat
has given the impression that [it] regards politics as that thing the Black Panthers and the Young Lords are into. White youth and non-Panthers/Lords (one would think after reading back issues) just lie back and groove on pornography, rock, dope, and movies
.”

In
1968 I
had written some articles for
Rat
on the emerging “Women's Liberation Front
”—
a front, that is, of the
real
movement, the New Left. During the following year I had been inching my way toward a more feminist position, although my attitude of Marxism-
überalles
persisted. Still, even I could no longer tolerate the blatant sexism of
Rat,
and by the winter of
1969
I
refused to write for the paper any longer. I had heard that the women who worked at
Rat
(none of them in any positions of power, naturally) were also angry and had been confronting the men about the paper's sexism and its hierarchy, which employed men as editors and feature writers, women as (usually volunteer) secretaries and bottle-washers who were sometimes permitted to write a short article. I had even warned one of the
Rat
men that women might take over the paper if there were no change forthcoming. But I was still unprepared for the delightful telephone call I received in January of
1970
from Jane Alpert, one of the
Rat
women, in the course of which she serenely informed me that the women on the paper had seized it and now needed ideas, support, and the physical presence of Women's Liberationists to sustain their action
.