Moratorium: Front Lawn: 1970

Kate Jennings

watch out! you may meet a real
castrating female
or
you'll say I'm a manhating braburning
lesbian member of the castration
penisenvy brigade, which I am

I would like to speak.

I would like to give a tubthumpingtablebanging emotional rap AND be listened to, not laughed at. You don't laugh at what your comrade brothers say, you wouldn’t laugh at the negroes, the black panthers. Many women are beginning to feel the necessity to speak for themselves, for their sisters.

I feel the necessity now.

It's the moratorium. l would say, oh yes, the war is bad a pig bosses war may the nlf win, I also say VICTORY TO THE VIETNAMESE WOMEN. Now our brothers on the left in the peace movement will think that what I am about to say is not justified, this is a moratorium. It's justified anywhere. We've heard you loud and clear before, brothershits, we know we have to work towards the Revolution and then join the ladies liberation auxiliary if we have any time left over. I've worked my priorities out, I will work towards what I know about, what I feel, and I feel because I'm told ad infinitum that I'm a woman, I'm a second-class citizen, and I should shutup right now because my mind's between my legs. I say you think with your pricks. We should all get our priorities straight and organise around our own injustices, our own condition. There are a lot of people here who feel strongly about the Vietnam war. But how many of you, who can see so clearly the suffering and misery in Vietnam, how many of you can see at the end of your piggy noses the women who can't get abortions, how many of you would get off your fat piggy asses and protest against the killing and victimisation of women in your own country. Go check the figures, how many Australian men have died in Vietnam, and how many women have died from backyard abortions. Yes, that's cool, they're only women, and you'll perhaps worry if your own chickie gets pregnant. Can you think about all the unwanted children, or the discrimination against unmarried mothers. Illegal dangerous abortions are going to be performed regardless. So make them legal. And to these women who think an abortion campaign, or women's lib for that matter, is reformist, I quote "in fighting for our liberation we will not ask what is revolutionary or reformist, only what is good for women" some of us are revolutionaries, some of us are manhunting crazies, but we are all working toward one thing, the liberation of women, and most of us will recognise that this will only happen in a socialist society.

We all feel very strongly about conscription and freedom of the individual, some go to great lengths to martyr themselves on the issue of the draft. I don't feel very strongly anymore about the ego scenes of the mike jones's around me. I do feel strongly about my freedom and my sisters' freedom. Women are conscripted every day into their personalised slave kitchens, can you, with your mind filled with the moratorium, spare a thought for their freedom, identity, minds and emotions, they're women, and your stomach is full. It suits you to keep women in the kitchens, and underpaid menial jobs, and with the children. You, by your silence, apathy and laughter sanction the legislators, the pig parliamentarians, the same men who sanction the war in Vietnam. You won't make an issue of abortion, equal pay, and child minding centres, because they're women's matters, and under your veneer you are brothers to the pig politicians. And I say to all you highminded intellectual women who say you're liberated with such force and conviction, I say you make me sick. So women's lib doesn’t concern you. Ask your companion what he would prefer—to talk to you or fuck you? (and if you say you'd prefer to be fucked, you've absorbed your conditioning well). And the women in the suburbs are no concern of yours? Your mother is no concern of yours? so long as you think you're liberated, all's well. You and your sisters and the silent suburban women are all part of a capitalist PATRIARCHAL society which you cannot ignore.

And don't start to trust the sympathetic men who want a socialist society. Where will the women be after the revolution? Go, ask them, the men on the left stink—they stink from their motherfucking socks to their long hair, from their jock straps to their mao and moratorium badges. The ones who pretend to espouse our aims are far worse than those who at least wear their true colors on their sleeves. And to my brothers on the drug scene. Grass is good. Oh yes, but instead of becoming happy and peaceful and oh so motherfucking loving all I can see is you sitting there, asserting, even grooving on your maleness, dominating every joint every puff. Chickies aren't very good at rapping, aren't clever or subtle enough. I mean, it's a male scene, isn't it, you fat arrogant farts.

Okay, I've stopped trying to love and understand my oppressors.

I know who my enemy is.

I will tell you what I feel, as an individual, as a woman.

I feel that there can be no love between men and women.

Maybe after the revolution people will be able to love each other regardless of skin color, ethnic origin, occupation or type of genitals. But if that happens it will only happen if we make it happen. Starting right now.

I feel hatred.

I feel anger.

Without indulging in an equality or marxist argument I say all power to women because that's what I feel.

ALL POWER.

And I say to every woman that every time you're put down or fucked over, every time they kick you cunningly in the teeth, go stand on the street corner and tell every man that walks by, every one of them a male chauvinist by virtue of HIS birthright, tell them all to go suck their own cocks. And when they laugh, tell them that they're getting bloody defensive, and that you know what size weapon to buy to kill the bodies that you've unfortunately laid under often enough.

ALL POWER TO WOMEN.

"Kate Jennings is a feminist. She believes in what Jane Austen recommended at fifteen: 'Run mad as often as you chuse; but do not.'" This "biography" appears on the jacket of Jennings' book of poems (from which "Moratorium" is reprinted)—Come to Me My Melancholy Baby. published in 1975 by Outback Press, Fitzroy (Victoria), in her native Australia.