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HERESIES is an idea-oriented journal devoted
to the examination of art and politics from a
feminist perspective. We believe that what is
commonly called art can have a political im-

issues.) Possibly satellite pamphlets and broadsides will be produced continuing the discussion of each central theme.
As women, we are aware that historically the

pact, and that in the making of art and of all

connections between our lives, our arts and our

cultural artifacts our identities as women play a

tory of femina sapiens, and generate new cre-

ideas have been suppressed. Once these connections are clarified they can function as a
means to dissolve the alienation between artist
and audience, and to understand the relationship between art and politics, work and work-

ative energies among women. It will be a place

ers. As a step toward a demystification of art,

where diversity can be articulated. We are com-

we reject the standard relationship of criticism
to art within the present system, which has
often become the relationship of advertiser to
product. We will not advertise a new set of

distinct role. We hope that HERESIES will stim-

ulate dialogue around radical political and esthetic theory, encourage the writing of the his-

mitted to the broadening of the definition and
function of art.
HERESIES is structured as a collective of fem-

inists, some of whom are also socialists, Marxists, lesbian feminists or anarchists; our fields
include painting, sculpture, writing, anthropology, literature, performance, art history, archi-

tecture and filmmaking. While the themes of
the individual issues will be determined by the
collective, each issue will have a different edi-

genius-products just because they are made by
women. We are not committed to any particular style or esthetic, nor to the competitive
mentality that pervades the art world. Our view
of feminism is one of process and change, and
we feel that in the process of this dialogue we
can foster a change in the meaning of art.

torial staff made up of contributors as well as

members of the collective. Each issue will take
a different visual form, chosen by the group re-

sponsible. HERESIES will try to be accountable
to and in touch with the international feminist

community. An open evaluation meeting will
be held after the appearance of each issue.
Themes will be announced well in advance in
order to collect material from many sources.
(See inside of back cover for list of projected

THE COLLECTIVE: Patsy Beckert, Joan Braderman, Mary Beth Edelson, Harmony Hammond,
Elizabeth Hess, Joyce Kozloff, Arlene Ladden,
Lucy Lippard, Mary Miss, Marty Pottenger, Mi-

riam Schapiro, Joan Snyder, Elke Solomon, Pat
Steir, May Stevens, Michelle Stuart, Susana
Torre, Elizabeth Weatherford, Sally Webster,

Nina Yankowitz.

HERESIES: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics is
published in January, May, September, December by
Heresies Collective, Inc. at the Fine Arts Building, 105
Hudson Street, New York, New York 10013. Subscription
rates: $10.00 for four issues ($16.00 for institutions; $12.00
outside the U.S.). Single copy: $2.50. Address all correspondence to HERESIES, P.O. Box 766, Canal Street Station,
New York, N.Y. 10013. HERESIES, #1, January 1977 © Heresies Collective. Application to mail at 2nd-class postage
rates is pending atNew York, N.Y., and additional mailing

offices.

Frontispiece (traditional status values of the village. .….):
poster by Australian artist Mandy Martin.

This issue of Heresies was typeset by Myrna Zimmerman in
Optima and printed by the Capital City Press, Montpelier,

Vermont.

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Feminism—Art— Politics. What is their connection? In
theory? In reality?

Once there was a women’s art center that was very
excited about an “Art as Work” seminar I proposed. They
wanted a short personal resumé to follow the course description in the catalogue— to let students know who I was,
where I was coming from: Harmony Hammond is a lesbian
feminist artist who has exhibited at Gallery X and Gallery Z
and taught at R. University and C. University. They wanted
my labels and then did not like them. No seminar. Really, I
was coming on too strong. Couldn't I use a different word?
Or just not say it at all? Would I be teaching art or politics?

They were an “Art” center. They were afraid, they said,
afraid I would jeopardize. ...
Jeopardize what? Their art? Their teaching? Their students? Their bodies? Their minds? Their sexuality? Their
politics? Their power? Their authority? Their thinking? They
did not know. . .they were just afraid.

I did not fit their concept of a feminist and therefore |
was dangerous.
Labels. The meaninglessness of labels. The power of
labels. The confining. What does it mean to be a lesbian,
radical feminist, activist, mother, artist? I am all of these
individually and combined. It means I am political. It
means | want to change existing power relationships. A list
of experiences. The power of labels is the power of ideas
and action combined.
The political mother, the political artist, the political
feminist, and the political lesbian refuse to be secondclass. They take action by “doing.” They refuse to be
isolated into separatist stances, and they become a total
whole. They add up to what Charlotte Bunch has called a
“non-aligned feminism”—not automatically attached to
one line of feminism (socialist/left vs. reformist vs. cultural/
spiritual) but rather evaluating each individual issue and
situation from an independent feminist perspective.
Lesbian. Radical feminist. Activist. Mother. Artist.
The common denominator is woman. Women are oppressed as a class. This oppression underlies the patriarchal
institutions of capitalism, imperialism, racism, and heterosexism. To end all forms of oppression we must first end the
oppression of all women regardless of sexuality or economic class, racial or cultural background.
Lesbian. Radical feminist. Activist. Mother. Artist.
Together they form my feminism. Feminism is my politics. My art both is formed by and is a statement of my

feminism. H.H.

While l’d always worked in social programs, | never
considered myself a political person. Political groups so
often revealed confused priorities that I inevitably ended
up by questioning my own. But feminism was different—so
much was personally at stake. If I questioned my commitment (how can I be amused by this or not outraged by
that), I soon found I was not amused and I was outraged by
things I might once have considered innocuous or simply
unalterable. Feminism had become a persistent way of living

The editorial collective of this first issue of
Heresies shares not a political line but a commitment to the development of coherent feminist theory in the context of practical work. The

time for reformulating old positions or merely
attacking sexism is past. Now we must take on
the most problematic aspects of feminist theory,
esthetic theory and political theory. We are not

only analyzing our own oppression in order to
put an end to it, but also exploring concrete
ways of transforming society into one that is
socially just and culturally free.
The role of the arts and the artist in the political process is our specific arena. By confronting

the very real differences in our own attitudes
towards art and politics, which reflect those in

the wider feminist community, we have uncovered networks connecting a broad range of
forms and ideologies. As material for the first
issue came in to us, we found that no hard line

could be drawn between texts and visual material. There are, therefore, few “illustrations”
here, but independent statements expressed
visually, verbally, or in combination, sharing

When pressed by the people who ask “What do you do?”
at times I call myself an artist and then no one knows what
to expect. The term is so vague and useless that it does not
begin to identify a point of view. The fact that art work
keeps the bourgeoisie in style, and the bourgeoisie keeps
all the art, suggests that most artists don't bother with
politics and ideology, instead they are united by a lifestyle: generally you must privatize your work, hang your
head to the left late at night in the bars, and think deeply
about how your work will be understood in the melancholic
future; be concerned about your isolation from the community.

It is difficult not to become a cynic. Opportunism
knocks. Even the women’s movement is another stepping
stone towards critical recognition. Most people are more
concerned with the objects we are producing than the

and thinking and the most important awareness of my life.
Today I trust the impulses calling out for radical change
because they're rooted in a lifetime of self-analysis contin-

world into which we place our work. I make abstract paintings and super-8 films—but not for a living. I work as an

uously and consistently validated by other women. Frustration, it seems, is being resolved in conviction and action
and the awareness of this power has been startling to me.

editor for a left news magazine called Seven Days. This is
where I learned the business of developing an audience
and disseminating information. Heresies is an attempt to

Needless to say, art which strengthens that awareness is

politicize the art world; a chance to attack the history of
our work as opposed to “documenting” it.
I have been a feminist it seems ever since I noticed I was

exhilarating.
I am a medievalist. I was attracted to the field by the
escapist fantasies of folklore and romance. But I now feel
that all art—whether ancient or modern— can be seen and

judged within a feminist context. A.L.

living with great difficulty; it came out during the 1960s—
but thať's a long story. In the 1970s, feminism has tendencies which serve merely to push liberal institutions to their
farthest extremes. This has left many women caught in a
dubious struggle; a recognition of strength and an inability
to act. The feminist movement should not work towards
gaining economic power, but towards developing a coherent ideology if we are to participate in change and work
towards socialism. (You knew I'd say that.) The point is that
an undĀrstanding of feminism without an analysis of class
is like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

Capitalism is so efficient that it can sustain its own alternatives; likewise the art world— one more radical magazine.
E.H.

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When we decided that each of us in the first issue
collective should write an individual statement to put
our political differences “out front,” I thought it was a fine
idea. But trying to write one page about my notion of how
feminism relates to Marxism relates to making theory and
making films was easier said than done: too much to argue
in too little space. So what I wanted to do was write,

the same power and the same intent, and indicating that word and image can be equal
ingredients in politically effective art.

We found no solutions to the issues raised,
but we are finding approaches that feel fresher

and more satisfying. Working together toward
collective decisions was entirely different from
working alone or as part of conventional hier-

“please see my article on page x” where I've tried to work
out some of these problems in more analytical depth. But
my sister-editors said, “write something personal.” They
chided me for my rhetorical style and my obsessive?
academic? commitment to making “complete” arguments.
“Who are you in all that,” they asked. O.K. I'm a woman,
I'm white, I'm 28. I'm a film teacher, I'm a student, I'm a
writer, theorist, critic, filmmaker. I do political work—in
the feminist community and with a new Coalition (July 4th)
thaťs building toward a mass, progressive peoples’ movement in this country. I guess I'm what's come to be called a
cultural worker.

archies. Each of us worked on every page of this

magazine, a slow and frustrating process, but
one from which we learned a great deal: about

each other, about editorial and mechanical
skills, about the collective process itself, about
our subject—feminism, art and politics—and
about what it means to be political in a real,
active, living situation. We mean to go on from

these beginnings and we look to the larger
feminist community for participation, response
and criticism. Together we can work toward
some answers. We have nothing to lose but our

Often it seems there's just not enough time in each day
to do all the things that have to be done. And to earn a
living, and write a dissertation, and see the art I care about,
and do the laundry, and talk with students, and be with the
friends I love, and see the ocean sometimes. Putting it all
together, I'd often like a few clones of myself to help out. |
juggle whaťs possible with what's not.
Where does the fight for women fit with fighting imperialism? Does working in collectives really help change
our deeply entrenched American individualism? How can
“cultural workers” best advance these struggles? I often
argue esthetics with my political comrades. Films, I say,
don't have to be simplistic to communicate with mass
audiences. We're all subject to subtle propaganda from
Hollywood and Madison Avenue. We're all jugglers of
contradictions and need to see and hear and read about
alternatives to what is. We have to make films that not only

illusions.

Joan Braderman, Harmony Hammond,
Elizabeth Hess, Arlene Ladden, Lucy

say something different but say it in a different way. They
have to be made in a practical political context, in a
coherent theoretical context, and they have to be able to

Lippard, May Stevens.

I am a feminist first and a socialist second, rather than a
Socialist-Feminist. Not because I don’t care about what

recapture the imaginations of masses of people being lulled
to sleep by the crap that's sold as “mass art.” We have to
find strategies for making our alternate points of view
visible, making peoples’ voices heard, our ideas and films
seen; find ways of fighting the commercial monopolies that
own the air waves, the movie screens, the mass media, that
OWn US.

happens to the oppressed men in the world. Not because
I'm against an ideally democratic socialism. But because
women’s oppression crosses economic-class lines. It’s a
matter of focus. Clearly the needs of welfare-class women

I argue politics with my feminist sisters. No more separatism, | say. I work on HERESIES to say that and also
because—another contradiction—l need community in a
country that is in fragments. In short, and as labor people

are most urgent and those of upper-class women are least

like my grandparents always said: women, artists, men,

urgent. Some socialists say that getting rid of patriarchy
won't change the world. I wonder. Even in revolutionary
socialist movements women must maintain an autonomous

people; we've got to get organized. J.B.

base. Revolution for Everyman isn't the same as real social
change; it has taken place in the past without solving the
“woman question.”
In the meantime, living in a capitalist country without a

What kind of socialist-feminist-artist am l?
What kind of socialist artist loves Corot as well as
Courbet and forgives oil painting its bourgeois origins and

strong Socialist Party provokes an irresistible urge to kill
time as a liberal feminist. Even though l'm aware of the

abstract expressionism its heraldry of U.S. imperialism?

dangers of opportunism, reformism, co-optation, and all
the slimy horde, I often find myself working for reform
rather than revolution because I can't bear to see nothing

be sparingly used?

What kind of feminist artist sees pink as a private color to

To the women’s movement I would like to bring, as to
art, the subtlest perceptions. To political action, I would
like to bring, as to art, a precise and delicate imagination.

done.

Within the art world, this means I work to get women
artists into a system I oppose. Outside, in the real world,
this means I want the ERA passed because it’s going to
make a difference in women’s lives. I want to see a politically aware feminist culture and I hope that Heresies will
help create it and help destroy some of the boundaries that
separate women from the power to make a better society
that will fit our needs as well as men’s.

(P.S. Because I'm a critic, I’ve been called a “class
enemy” of artists, which is bullshit. I'm exploited by publishers, and perhaps editors, just as artists are exploited by
galleries, and perhaps critics. | identify with artists whether
or not they identify with me because long experience has
shown me that our lives are more or less the same.) l

The personal is the political only if you make it so. The
connections have to be drawn. Feminism without socialism
can create only utopian pockets. And the lifespan of a
collective is approximately two years.
Socialism without feminism is still patriarchy. But more
smug. Try toimagine a classless society run by men.
Trying to be part of a collective is a little like being a
chameleon set on plaid. I may split apart before I get the
pattern right. But somehow it seems worth the pain because I believe community is the highest goal.
I believe every womar's life is a little better because of

what we are doing. M.S.

L.R.

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Toward Socialist Feminism*
Barbara Ehrenreich

At some level, perhaps not too well articu-

A logical way to start is to look at socialism

long time. You are a woman in a capitalist

and feminism separately. How does a socialist
—more precisely a Marxist—look at the world?

society. You get pissed off: about the job, about

How does a feminist look at the world? To begin

lated, socialist feminism has been around for a

the bills, about your husband (or ex), about the

kids’ school, the housework, being pretty, not
being pretty, being looked at, not being looked
at (and either way, not listened to), etc. If you

think about all these things and how they fit
together and what has to be changed, and then

you look around for some words to hold all
these thoughts together in abbreviated form,
you'd almost have to come up with something
like “socialist feminism.”
A lot of us came to socialist feminism in just

that way: we were reaching for a word/term/
phrase that would begin to express al! of our
concerns, all of our principles, in a way that
neither “socialist” nor “feminist” seemed to. |
have to admit that most socialist feminists I

with, Marxism and feminism have something
important in common: they are critical ways of

looking at the world. Both rip away popular
mythology and “common-sense wisdom” and
force us to look at experience in a new way.
Both seek to understand the world—not in
terms of static balances and symmetries (as in
conventional social science), but in terms of
antagonisms. So they lead to conclusions which
are jarring and disturbing at the same time that
they are liberating. There is no way to have a

Marxist or a feminist outlook and remain a
spectator. To understand the reality laid bare by
these analyses is to move into action to change it.
Here l am going to restrict myself to what I see
as the core insights of Marxism and feminism,

know are not too happy with the term “socialist

and state these as briefly and starkly as possible:

feminist” either. On the one hand it is too long

Marxism (in 20 words or less) addresses itself to

(I have no hopes for a hyphenated mass move-

the class dynamics of capitalist society. Every

ment); on the other hand it is much too short

social scientist knows that capitalist societies are

for what is, after all, really socialist internation-

characterized by more or less severe, systemic
inequality. Marxism understands this inequality
to arise from processes which are intrinsic to

alist anti-racist anti-heterosexist feminism.

The trouble with taking a new label of any
kind is that it creates an instant aura of sectarianism. “Socialist feminism” becomes a challenge, a mystery, an issue in and of itself. We

capitalism as an economic system. A minority of

people (the capitalist class) own all the facto-

have speakers, conferences, articles on “social-

ries/ energy sources/resources on which everyone else depends in order to live. The great

ist feminism” —though we know perfectly well

majority (the working class) must, out of sheer

that either “socialism” or “feminism” is too huge
and too inclusive to be a subject for any sensible

speech, conference, or article. People, including avowed socialist feminists, ask themselves
anxiously, “What is socialist feminism?” There
is a kind of expectation that it is (or is about to

be at any moment, maybe in the next speech,
conference, or article) a brilliant synthesis of
world historical proportions—an evolutionary
leap beyond Marx, Freud and Wollstonecraft.
Or that it will turn out to be nothing, a fad
seized on by a few disgruntled feminists and
female socialists, a temporary distraction.
I want to try to cut through some of the
mystery which has grown up around socialist
feminism. Here I am going to focus on our

necessity, work, under conditions set by the
capitalists, for the wages the capitalists pay.
Since the capitalists make their profits by pay-

ing less in wages than the value of what the
workers actually produce, the relationship between these two classes is necessarily one of
irreconcilable antagonism: the capitalist class
owes its very existence to the continued exploitation of the working class. What maintains this
system of class rule is, in the last analysis, force.

“theory” —the way we look at and analyze the

The capitalist class controls (directly or indirectly) the means of organized violence represented by the state—policemen, jails, etc.
Only by waging a revolutionary struggle aimed
at the seizure of state power can the working
class free itself, and, ultimately, all people.
Feminism addresses itself to another familiar

world. I am not going to deal with our total
outlook as socialist feminists because I want to

some degree of inequality between the sexes. If

stick as closely as possible to the interface of
the two main traditions we grow out of —socialism and feminism.

inequality. All human societies are marked by
we survey human societies at a glance, sweeping through history and across continents, we
see that they have commonly been character-

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tative and logical: “Make a choice! Be one or

ized by: the subjugation of women to male
authority, both within the family and in the
community in general; the objectification of

another!” Yet we know that there is a political

women as a form of property; a sexual division

hybrids or fence-sitters.

of labor in which women are confined to such

activities as childraising, performing personal
services for adult males, and specified (usually

To get to that political consistency we have
to go beyond the capsule versions of Marxism
and feminism I laid out. We have to differ-

low-prestige) forms of productive labor.

entiate ourselves, as feminists from other kinds

Feminists, struck by the near-universality of

consistency to socialist feminism. We are not

of feminists, and as Marxists from other kinds of

these things, have looked for explanations in
the biological “givens” which underlie all human social existence: men are physically

Marxists. We have to stake out a socialist femi-

stronger than women on the average, especially

ty that things will “add up” to something more

compared to pregnant women or women who
are nursing babies. Furthermore, men have the
power to make women pregnant. Thus the forms

that sexual inequality takes—however various
they may be from culture to culture—rest, in
the last analysis, on what is clearly a physical
advantage males hold over females. That is to
say, they rest on violence, or the threat of

nist kind of feminism and a socialist feminist
kind of socialism. Only then is there a possibili-

than an uneasy juxtaposition. |
First, what is our outlook as feminists and

how is it different from that of other feminists? |
think most radical feminists and socialist feminists would agree with my capsule characterization of feminism as far as it goes. The trouble
with radical feminism. from a socialist feminist
point of view, is that it doesn’t go any farther: it

violence.

remains transfixed by the universality of male

The ancient, biological roots of male supremacy—the fact of male violence—are commonly obscured by the laws and conventions
which regulate the relations between the sexes
in any particular culture. But they are there,

supremacy: things have never really changed;
all social systems are “patriarchies”; imperialism, militarism and capitalism are all simply
expressions of innate male aggressiveness. And

according to a feminist analysis. The possibility
of male assault stands as a constant warning to

“bad” (rebellious, aggressive) women, and
drives “good” women into complicity with male

supremacy. The reward for being “good”
(“pretty,” submissive) is protection from random male violence and, in some cases, economic security.

I hope I have written these capsule summaries of Marxism and feminism in such a
way that some similarities of approach show
through. Marxism rips away the myths about

so on.

The problem with this is not only that it leaves

out men (and the possibility of reconciliation
with them on a truly human and egalitarian
basis) but that it leaves out an awful lot about

women. For example, to discount a socialist
country such as China as a “patriarchy”—as |
have heard some radical feminists do—is to
ignore the real struggles and achievements of
millions of women. Socialist feminists, while
agreeing that there is something timeless and
universal about women’s oppression, have insisted that it takes different forms in different

of class rule that rests on forcible exploitation.

settings, and that the differences are of vital
importance. There is a difference between a

Feminism cuts through myths about “instinct”

society in which sexism is expressed by female

“democracy” and “pluralism” to reveal a system

and romantic love to expose male rule as a rule
of force. Both analyses compel us to look at a

fundamental injustice. If either, or both, make
you uncomfortable, they were meant to! The
choice is to reach for the comfort of the myths

infanticide and a society in which sexism takes

the form of unequal representation on the
Central Committee. And the difference is worth
dying for.
One of the historical variations on the theme

or, as Marx put it, to work for a social order

of sexism which ought to concern all feminists

which does not require myths to sustain it.

is the set of changes that came with the transi-

Having gone to the trouble to provide these
thumbnail sketches of Marxism and feminism,

tion from an agrarian society to industrial capi-

talism. This is no academic issue. The social

them up and call the sum “socialist feminism.”

system which industrial capitalism replaced was
in fact a patriarchal one, and I am using that

In fact, this is probably how most socialist

term now in its original sense to mean a system

the obvious thing to do would be just to add

feminists operate most of the time—as a kind of

in which production is centered in the household and is presided over by the oldest male.

hybrid, pushing feminism in socialist circles,
socialism in feminist circles. Practically speak-

The fact is that industrial capitalism came along

ing, I think this is a perfectly reasonable way to

and tore the rug out from under that system:

operate a lot of the time. One trouble with

production went into the factories; individuals
broke off from the family to become “free”
wage earners. To say that capitalism disrupted
the patriarchal organization of production and

leaving things like that, though, is that it keeps
people wondering “Well, what is she really?” or
demandıng of us “What is the principal contra-

diction?” Such questions often stop us in our
tracks: It sounds so compelling and authori-

family life is not, of course, to say that capital-

ism abolished male supremacy! But the particu-

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lar forms of sex oppression we experience today

are, to a significant degree, recent developments. A huge historical discontinuity lies
between us and true patriarchy. If we are to

Furthermore, in our brand of Marxism, there

is no “woman question,” no big mystery about
women —because we never compartmentalized
women off to the “superstructure” in the first

understand our experience as women today, we

place. Marxists of a mechanical bent continual-

must move beyond the biological invariants of
human experience to a consideration of capital-

housewife): is she really a member of the work-

ism as a system.

ing class? That is, does she really produce sur-

There are other ways I could have gotten to
the same point. I could have said simply that as

feminists we are most interested in the most
oppressed women—poor and working-class
women, third-world women—and for that reason we are led to a need to comprehend and
confront captialism. I could have said that we
need to address ourselves to the class system
simply because women are members of classes.
But I| am trying to bring out something else

ly ponder the issue of the unwaged woman (the

plus value? We say, of course housewives are
members of the working class—not because we
have some elaborate proof that they really do
produce surplus value—but because we understand a class as being composed of people, and
as having a social existence quite apart from
the capitalist-dominated realm of production.
When we think of class in this way, then we see
that in fact the women who seemed most periph-

understand sexism as it acts on our lives —never

eral, the housewives, are at the very heart of
their class—raising children, holding together
families, maintaining the culture and social

mind class oppression for a minute!—without

networks of the community.

about our perspective: that there is no way to

putting it in the historical context of capitalism.

Now let's go on to our outlook as Marxists.
Again, I think most socialist feminists would
agree with my capsule summary as far as it

So we are coming out of a kind of feminism

and a kind of Marxism whose interests quite
naturally flow together. I think we are in a position now to see why it is that socialist feminism

goes. And the trouble again is that there are a

has been such a great mystery. It is a paradox

lot of people (l'Il call them “mechanical Marxists”) who do not go any further. To these
people, the only “real” and important things
that go on in capitalist society are those that

only as long as what you mean by socialism is

relate to the productive process or the conven-

have nothing in common.

tional political sphere. From such a point of

really “mechanical Marxism” and what you
mean by feminism is an ahistorical kind of radi-

cal feminism. These things don’t add up; they
But if you put together another kind of social-

view, every other part of experience and social

ism and another kind of feminism, as I have

existence —education, sexuality, recreation, the

tried to define them, you do get some common

family, art, music, housework (you name it)—is

ground. And that is one of the most important

peripheral to the central dynamics of social
change; it is part of the “superstructure” or

things about socialist feminism today: that it is

“culture.”

cated kind of feminism and a truncated version

Socialist feminists are in a very different
camp. We (along with many Marxists who are
not feminists) see capitalism as a social and
cultural totality. We understand that, in its
search for markets, capitalism is driven to

of Marxism —a space in which we can develop
the kind of politics that address the political/
economic/cultural totality of monopoly capi-

penetrate every nook and cranny of social exis-

a space—free from the constrictions of a trun-

talist society. We could go only so far with the

available feminisms, the conventional Marxism,
and then we had to break out to something that

tence. Especially in the monopoly capitalism

is not so restrictive and so incomplete in its

phase, the realm of consumption is every bit as

view of the world. We had to take a new name,

important, just from an economic point of view,

“socialist feminism,” in order to assert our de-

stand class struggle as something confined to

termination to comprehend the whole of our
experience and to forge a politics that reflects

issues of wages and hours, or confined only to

the totality of that comprehension.

as the realm of production. So we cannot under-

workplace issues. Class struggle occurs in every
arena where the interests of the classes conflict,

and that includes education, health, the arts,
etc. We aim to transform not only the ownership of the means of production, but the totality
of social existence.
So, as Marxists, we come to feminism from a

completely different place than the mechanical Marxists.” Because we see monopoly capitalism as a political/economic/cultural totality,
we have room within our Marxist framework for
feminist issues which have nothing ostensibly to

do with production or “politics,” issues that
have to do with “private” life.

At that I may have fulfilled my mission of

demystifying socialist feminism, but I don’t
want to leave this theory as a “space” or a
common ground. Things are beginning to grow
in that ground. We are closer to a synthesis in

our understanding of sex and class, capitalism
and male domination, than we were a few years
ago. Here I will indicate very sketchily one such
line of thought:

1. The Marxist/feminist understanding that
class and sex domination rest “ultimately” on
force is correct, and this remains the most
devastating critique of sexist/capitalist society.
But there is a lot to that “ultimately.” In a

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day-to-day sense, most people acquiesce to sex

sis to emerge which will collapse socialist and

and class domination without being held in line

feminist struggles into the same thing. The cap-

by the threat of violence, and often without

sule summaries | gave earlier retain their “ulti-

even the threat of material deprivation.

mate” truth: there are crucial aspects of capital-

2. It is very important, then, to figure out

what, if not the direct application of force,
keeps things going. In the case of class, a great

deal has been written already about why the
American working class lacks militant class
consciousness. Certainly ethnic divisions, especially the Black/white division, are a key to
the answer. But, I would argue, in addition to
being divided, the working class has been
socially atomized: working-class neighborhoods
have been destroyed and allowed to decay; life
has become increasingly privatized and inwardlooking; skills once possessed by the working
class have been expropriated by the capitalist
class; capitalist-controlled “mass culture” has
edged out almost all indigenous working-class
culture and institutions. Instead of collectivity
and self-reliance as a class, there is mutual
isolation and collective dependency on the
capitalist class.

3. The subjugation of women, in ways characteristic of late capitalist society, has been a

ist domination (such as racial oppression) which
a purely feminist perspective simply cannot account for or deal with—without bizarre distor-

tions, that is. There are crucial aspects of sex
oppression (such as male violence within the
family) into which socialist thought has little
insight—again, without a lot of stretching and
distortion. Hence the need to continue to be
socialists and feminists. But there is enough of a
synthesis, both in what we think and what we
do, for us to begin to develop a self-confident
identity as socialist feminists.

*Versions of this article have been presented at the Socialist Feminist Conference, Yellow Springs, Ohio, July 1975; at
Women’s Week, Brown University, April, 1976; and in WIN
(June 3, 1976) as “What is Socialist Feminism?”

Barbara Ehrenreich is the co-author, with Deirdre English,
of Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women
Healers, and Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics
of Sickness (Feminist Press, New York). She is a member of
HealthRight (a New York women’s health collective),
Action for Women in Chile, and New American Movement.

key to this process of class atomization. To put

it another way: the forces which have atomized working-class life and promoted cultural/
material dependency on the capitalist class are
the same forces which have served to perpetuate the subjugation of women. It is women who

are most isolated in what has become an increasingly privatized family existence (even
when they work outside the home too). It is, in

many instances, women’s skills (productive
skills, healing, midwifery) which have been discredited or banned to make way for commodities. It is, above all, women who are required to

be utterly passive/uncritical/dependent (i.e.,
“feminine”) in the face of the pervasive capitalist penetration of private life. Historically, late

capitalist penetration of working-class life has
singled out women as prime targets of pacifica-

tion (or “feminization”) because women are the
culture-bearers of their class.
4. It follows that there is a fundamental inter-

connectedness between women’s struggle and
what is traditionally conceived as class struggle.

Not all women’s struggles have an inherently
anti-capitalist thrust (particularly not those
which seek only to advance the power and
wealth of special groups of women), but all
those which build collectivity and collective
confidence among women are vitally important
to the building of class consciousness. Conversely, not all class struggles have an inherently anti-sexist thrust (especially not those which
cling to pre-industrial patriarchal values) but all
those which seek to build the social and cultural

autonomy of the working class are necessarily
linked to the struggle for women’s liberation.

This is one direction which socialist feminist
analysis is taking. No one is expecting a synthe-

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2

Te enseñá como hacer botanas para las fiestas de los patroLos hombres me conseguieron un empleo con una familia muy

Estaba aterrorizađdđa: yo estaba segura de que nos iban a

se
mucho:
trabajan
familia.
para
laMe
frontera,
patrona
pagarían
todo
como
con
menos,
el
sus
los
día
inspectores,
pero
de
jaguares;
y
repente
siquiera
atedejan
no
diario.
quitan
cruzaría
cruzar
Son
la tarjeta.
impredecibles,
la
a diario, cada semana, y
encontraría,
especialmenta
a diario
sin
mica,
mis
Muchas
para
ciudad
mujeres
ir quería
de
compras
poner
sounaque
ruta
por
25cansan
durante
la
pero
noche
lacruzara
Greyse
ocupan
de
sus
familias.
En
fin,
los te
homencontrar, jero.
también
Sólo tenía
sabía mucho
unas zan
pocas
miedo
palabras
delamente.
ircon'la
ade
un
Diego
inglés.
paísniños!
yuna
extraniQué
de
allí
sola el
seme
van
en
uncruhound
camión
logrő
podría
urbano
estar
ala
sus
corte
con
trabajos.
los
mis
parara.
niños
Si
en
yo
las
noches,
apero
diario,
las
que
lo
haEllas
se
toman
El tarjeta
Greyhound
Greyhound
es
muy
para
caro,
el
casi
centro
$1.
de
Oícen
San
decir
a centavos,
alguien
que
bres
la me
dijeron
que
sólo
podía
trabajar
viviendo
con
una

La mujer me dió un libro para que lo estudiara, llamado

como
las
Hamburguesas,
los
Hot
Dogs,
gos.
Guisado
Los favoritos
de
de
Bistecs,
patrones
eranpreparar
Los Martinis
y los 01d
americana
libro
con
trae
el
nombre
también
de
recetas
Lomo
todas
Asado
las
de comidas
cosas
Pastel
ennes,
típicas
español.
de
como
Manzanas.
americanas,
Este
Galletas
Fashioneds,
con
tal Atun,
Caviar,
Symis
también
como
los traque
trabajaría
de
Rositay
los
7sorprendida!
días
Juanito
de conseguir
la
Home
ellosme
semana,
teach
pero
Spanish
un
the
cuando
día
native
Cook
Mexican
y
lesBook.
medio
dishes.
conté
or
help.
El
Spanish
de
She
We
libro
descanso.
can
things
want
speaking
dice
do to
Y
"Our
that
have
0 maid
Uto
aim
R
her
perfection
how
is
way"
help
not
toEl
Y
to
make
libro
and
0O
U
her
without
tiene
in
own
the
un
our
kitchen.
dibujo
deToyuna
do
cocina
y me
ayudó
con
aprender
elLaidioma
inglés,
Ella
gracias
vestirme
me
adijo
Dios
y
que
por
peinarme
sólo
haberme
conpara
conseguido
poder
empleo.
Ellos
suponian
realmente.
Ella
mede
taba
enseño
con
como
que
duraría
funcionaban
uninglés.
unos
empleo
las
8buena,
meses
en
cosas
unaen
con
oficina.iEstaba
suella,
calo
suficiente
tan
para
Sólo Maid
ledieron
daban
rica, el patrón
era sahombre
negocios.
patrona
eracomo

1

Tijuana Maid*

Martha Rosler

Crucé por primera vez cuando tenía 22 años. Hacía 6

carros
americanos,
muy
lustrosos
y
bonitos,
y
zartambién
laDiego,
frontera
ydeobtener
empleo.
Prefiero
jeta.
no
discutir
$350
1los
por
una
falsa,
entonces
pero
casi
me
cruzaron.
siempre
uno
Por
todo
jeres
Tijuana
cada
hay
Nohombres
lo ysabía
con
entonces.miles
ella,
yde
ella
my
buscar
la
de
crudiciendo
que
les
daría
mitad
prometiendo
de
mino
sueldo
poraño.
3Ellos
meses
cruzan
a esperando
cientos,
de mupoco
trabajo
que seriá
y
fácil
hermana
arreglarlo.
tenía
Dejaría
amigas
detalles
a ayudaría
que
Rosita
dían
estacomo
yamucho
Juanito
llegué
pronto
dinero,
aquí.
con
ymanera
luego
Había
peroQuerían
la
unos
prometían
tarjeta
pasa
hombres
más
verde.
conseguirme
allá
que
Pero
deme
los
nunca
peempleo
inspectores
recibí
muy
la
con
taréstas.
Firmé
unempleos.
papel
ban
de mi
criadas
en
estaba
segura
de
meses que Como
había había
llegado
atrabajando
Tijuana,
viniendo
miSan
pueblo.

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6

7

Después de un tiempo regresé a San Diego con mi mica.

Hicimos un trato y acabé de pagarles a los hombres. Era

Después de este incidente he conocido a l mujeres que han

Esta gente era muy mala cuando se trataba de pagarme. Una

sido
por
sus depatrones,
unaasuerte.
de ellas salió embarazada.
tuve
de
San
laDiego
frontera.
me
pasé
lavioladas
noche
esperando
eltođo
plata
enfrente
suficiente
cerrar,
para
zafarse.
el centro
carro
Finalmente
prendió
y
of
secosas
lay
fué.
puerta
corriendo
comencé
a llorar.
Aún
después
laelal
de
polecía
que
porque
acabó
tenía
yoy
era
miedo
ilegal
mi
de
ycuarto.
abrir
porque
RecogíÍ
este
tipo
todas
de
mi
gente
tiySalí
mede
fuí.
TomeaDespués
un camión
alcamión
puerta
pensando
parte
en
que
cuarto.
é1
podría
Sabía
estar
que
escondido
no
tenía
en
esperanza
qualquier
üe
ayuda
con
la agarró
puerta
con
candado.
Insistía
tumbando
laene
puerta
yo
cuando
elque
patron
la patrona
puerts.
Le
terior.
dijedede
que
Empező
esperara
ay forzarme
porque
me
zafé
ycasi
corrí
baño
y
cerré
ba
tratando
besarme
me
tiró
apero
cama.
Rompió
mi
ropa
intenía
vestirme
bre
Traté
pero
de
de
todos
escapar,
modos
me
entró
yfuerte
se recargő
ylalapeleamos.
soEstaunos días.
leyendo
en
mi
cuarto
una
noċhe
verano y losvisita
niñosporestaban
entocó
el Estaba
campo
y lami.
se
fué

enoje
y lesno
ridiculo
dije
queporque
le
iba
atenían
enojaron
hablar
ame
yla dijeron
polecía,
que
que
leempleo.
fué
iban a echar la
garon dijeron
que
podían
porque
cuentas.
Me
migra.
Estaba
asustada
y dejé
el
vez
atrasaron
5o semanas
y cuando
lessepedí
quemuchas
pasonreía
conmigo,
pero
me
hablaba
como
quese
fuera
niña"Spanish
gringos
quieren
comer
la comidas
comida
Maid."
de
los
pobres.
La
esposa
seuna con
bien
estúpida.
También
tenían
los libros
de
nas,
asi lindas
es
que
me
estorbaba
cocinar
tanto.
Todos
estostodos
2periódico
niños
se
que
la la
pasaban
desempolvar
de
México.
pasar
de
barro
televisión.
La
yaspiradora.
muchas
comida
Haera
estatuas
Tenían
mejor,
muchas
hechas
apreciaban
por
vasijas
losmis
indios
de
mexicaObtuve
una
con
profesor
bía
y su
muchas
esposa
estatuas
en
Laantiguas
yenfrente
Jolla.
pinturas,
pagaylaylaalfombras
y no
mucho
Esta vez sabía
buscar
ban en
sóloelun
$25
a la siempre
semana
como
encontrar
pero
casa
chamba.
era
másyMe
chica
s610

desayuno a las----- .

QUILLA DE CACAHUATE
con un vaso grande de leche.

supermarket?

Bueno, mis patrones me dejaban comer lo que yo quería desHabía bastante que hacer, con tres chamacos muy cochinos,
una comida
para nosotros alguna vez?
Will you Nos
cookcocina
a Mexican
dinner mexicana
for us sometime?

El libro contiene una lista de frases en inglés y en español:
etcetera,
etcetera,
una frase que ofa siempre:
Have
ever . shopped
in aque
Ha nos
ido sirva
ustedyelalcontiene
super-mercado?
scrub
Sweep
the
kitchenEstregue
floor. Barra el piso
cocina.
encere
likede breakfast
yla saque
brillo
servedyou
at----Nos gusto
slicewith
ofnadas
bread;
cut
in
la of
jalea.
la pan
Serve
with
a1half.
large
glass
otra
rebanada
de
y corte
Còver
remaining
quilla
for
de
acon
cacahuate
hearty
y Cúbrala
luego
a la con
mitad
(diagonal).
Sirva wax and polishWe
one slice
generously
with
peanut
de mente
pan.
Unte
generosabutter
andjelly.
topUnte
layer
of
rebanada
con lunch.
manteslices
of bread.
Spread
de a mantequilla
2 milk
rebaPEANUT BUTTER & Butter
JELLY 2SANDWICH
EMPAREDADO
DEwith
JALEA
Y MANTE-

se
suicidó--claro,
se
hombres,
cuarto
ysemana
comía
erade
acomido
chica
tiempo.
ytanta
mal
s lacarne
aluzado,
amigos,
luego
la Estaba
sacaban
de la
cocina
para
puás
que
quesus
los
mi
ellos
amigos
vida!
acababan,
Hacía
lainglés.
$30
iyomi
por
nunca
había
los cuales
mitad
en pero
iba a tenía
los trabajo,
an
cocinando
vieran.
mexicanos
bastante
joven,
picantes
ymató.
para
no
podía
hablar
Ella
niños,
pero
pasaba
tođo
elplatillos
día
limpiando
y muy
cocinando.
Lasola
teníque
fué me
llevada
a Laguna
Beach
una
pareja
para
cuidar
sus
sabía
que me
disgustaba
na. Mi
más,
hermana
si gustaban,
cocinar
platicó
las
de
una
americanas
muchacha
de
nuestro
pueblo
tan
aburridas
que
les
o comidas
los
tacos
una
vezpor
a la
semapero
no
iba
durar
si preguntarme
mela quejaba.
Entonces
hacíatanto,
tacos.
No
cuándo
iba No
meElplatillo
daban
unos
ganas
dea hacer
Me
hacía
tamales.
mal
No esperaba
entendida.
cocinar
con
carne,
que
no
esa hacerles
un
mexicano,
para
estaba fiestas
tan
malhablaba,
apenas
podía
entenderle.
señor
casitamales.
no
la casa grande,
pués. yLa muchas
señora
trataba
me
con
dequehablarme
bastante
nomas
de
enpara
limpiar
español
preguntarme
despero
su de
accento
cuándo
iba
a ohacer
chile

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10

1i

=

a]

Ahora busco trabajo con una familia que

casó
con é1
un
gringo
que
aunque
no
lo
ama,
sorportar
pero
con
mis los
Si me
encuentro
un
trapero avale
la hijos.
pena.
quiere
una
amiga
buena
que
mujer
se
mexicana
y bajo
cocinera,
me deje traer
mis
SéTengo
que
haré
menos,
en
ahijos.
Estados
niños,
Unidos
no ibadonde
a tener
puedo
cochineros
quetener
enfrentar
de otra
losque
gente,
si ocosas,
les
lasvoy
señoras
a 10s
cocinar
que
me
una
cena
yuna
él
ađdoptő
México
a su
pero
hija.
noPrefiero
hay
trabajo
vivir
con
enlos
que
problémas
puedo
en
pre
la
me
frontera.
voy
a Es
preocupar
sierto
de¿que
siemcomo
preguntan
aotras
veces
en
inglés
quieren
olos
a veces
otras
en
cosas
español,
de mí. O pero que
también
esposos
que
no mexicana?
preguntan

Hay una senora en La Jolla que tratő de organizar las

Ahora que soy independiente podfa haber pasado más tiempo

inspectores
ya
no de
pagaban
$50
por
los
mojados
y
que
noAlgunos
les
imcriadas, cocineras
y trabajos.
los menos
jardineros,
loslaaquí
legales
en
donde
el país,
llegué
apatrones
aprender
que
cosas.
por
Aprendí
cada
una
que
de
los
nosotros
cienes
de
gente
con
mis
enuna
México
niños
que
me
pero
quitaron
2mi
semanas
mica.
Nos
mi
temor
quitaron
fué
20confirmada
opor
30y
cuando
yochequeaban,
estaporque hacen
Sivacaciones
dese $2llegan
hora
noa es
hay
enfermar
sin
trabajo.
tener
o seguridad
los
Hasta
portaban
he
ido
las
sus
sea varias
mujeres,
van
unas
de
de
solamente
las
juntas,
hambreađas
los
hombres.
yAunque
desesperadas
tan
malos.
que
ellos
Yocon
sé,
gusto
yo
era
tomarían
de nuestro
ellas.
tracarros.
Esta
vez
nos
pasaron
crefa
que
a varias,
ibahombres
una
a picar
a la con
vez,
una
de
antes
un que víboras
acabara de cruzar.
mismos
tienen
criadas
ilegales.
bajo
por
la
asihay
mitad
sea,de
todos
del
sueldo.
sabemos
Especialmenta
hoy,
con
nos
las
iban
nunca
a regresar
lastrabajo
regresan
después
días,
ahora
que porfinalmente
las
son
hombre
difíciles
aque
les
otro
encontrar.
pague
pero
parados
$50
casi
Misti
ame
enlosla
frontera.
Habían
tantas
bahace
hay,tiempos
todas
a la
vez,
sin
preguntar
nada.
Nos
dijeron
que

9

8

Chiles Rellenos con Salsa para una fiesta
Pero hace 6 semanas el señor entró al cuarto cuando nos

Mi siguiente trabajo también era en La Jolla, con un doctor

(Para preparar la salsa de jitomate, corte los jitomates, agre-

comidas,$55
los
ycasi
hacer
toda
latodas
limpieza
7cuidar
días
la
semana,
asi
es
año
que
of
no
decir
podía
de
ver
un
señor
mis
niños.
talarreglos
sus
y iGastal
amigos
pagaba
ydecomprabamos
$35
ladejaba
setener
otros
durante
el día.
sean
buenos
creen
es
que
que
estan
además
dando
de
limosna.
laque
limpieza.
A movimos
este $100
tiempo
te niños
bastante
deun
mi
dinero
llamandoles
pleóő
ay
2aquedarme
por
y
nuestros
hizo
telefono!
suelđos,
Después
LeLlegué
dábamos
ala aconocer
cuales
de
comer
son
bastante
toda
peores,
y emlalimpiíábamos
comida
gente
los trabajos
cruel
que
con para
realmente
de
esta
élnos
yhacía
manera.
demandan
No o estabamos
sá
los
aunque
desvestiendo
la
nos
semana
comenzó
cocinando
manosear,
y centro
limpiando
no salimos
y
diferente
gente, muy
6
y su familia,ipor
a la ade
semana!
Tenía
que
cocinar
mana
para
las
que
alguien
viviera
allí
5donde
días
aademás
semana.
Nos
ya
tenía
fama
por
hacer
buena
comida
nos
mexicana
paraaay fiestas,
un
días
hotel
aasila
barato
semana.
Y a soy
en independiente.
el
Es
muchísimo
de para
San
dinero,
Diego.
pero
Hago
trabajo
duro.
30 chiles 3verdes
libras salsa
de1 queso
de jitomate
fresco
libras
jitomates
libra
de
1 queso
docena
amarillo
huevos,
libra
separados
de onzas
pasas
aceite
libra
para
de
freír
onza
peladas
de polvo
de
chile
1dede
taza
đeharina
pasas
dientes
ajo1almendras,
cebolla,
8 picada
tazas
de
libra
orégano,
salsa
de đe
azúcar
saljitomate
y Ase
pimienta
cuarto
sal
de vinagre
las semillas
sas.
ymas
las
venas.
Deje
los
huevos
tallos.
Rellene
punto
de
con
merengue.
queso
y
Agregue
las
yede de
jengibre
vuelva
ensaque
un
trapo
porBata
10que
minutos,
chiles,
pélelos.
páselos
Abralos
por
porelespesos.
un
huevo.
orégano
lađo,
Sey fríen
la
sal
y pimienta.
que
estén
Hierva
a fuego
Fria
lento
porajos,
5azúcar,
minutos.
los chiles
sobre
el fuego
hasta
la claras
sedehasta
desprenda,
lasalestén
cebollas
Eny
la
salsa
de pajitomate
gue
un
preparada
poco
de
anteriormente.
agua,
jitomates.
hierva
Agregue
por
Agregue
una
el%
hora.
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vinagre,
sal.
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colador.
hasta
que espese.)
ypiel
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Agregue
la hasta
sal.
Enharine
losdorados.
Muela
las
pasas,
almendras,
jengibres
ypor
chiles.
Agregue
a los

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4

-

—-

Emparedado de Jalea y

grande de leche.

The book has a list of phrases in English and Spanish, like:
There was a lot to do, with three kids messy like pigs, the huge
It tells how to make things for the bosses’ parties, like Caviar

supermarket? Ha ido usted al super-mercado?
cooking
the
boring
American
foods
or the tacos once a
plained.
So
I much
made
tacos.
I tamales.
don't
which
Ithey
disliked
more,
pretend
Itowhen
didn’t
understand.
I to
didn't
want
to
make
them.
|if loved
didn’t
expect
to do
so
buttamales
I know
would
not
last
I comdish,
I The
was
going
ask
to
make
meto
chile
was
going
which
to
make
isn't
them
acooking,
Mexican
some
l’d for
many
parties
understand
to clean
her.
up
after.
The
señor
señora
hardly
tried
spoke
me Iatcon
all,carne,
except
ask
etcetera,
etcetera,
andelWill
itdesahas
phrase
I heard
often:
to
mealguna
in Spanish,
butme
herwhen
accent
wasor
sotobad
that
I speak
could
hardly
youa cook
Nos cocina
a that
Mexican
una
dinner
comida
for
mexicana
us house,
sometime?
para and
nosotros
vez?
We like
served
..….…… Nos
nosv sirva
Have you
ever atshopped
in a gusta
yunoaque
las...
wax Barra
and polish
saquebreakfast
brillo
(diagonal).
Sirva
unla vaso
Sweep
themitad
kitchen
floor.
el pisoencere
de lay cocina.
ofwith
bread;
inrebanada
half.
glasslunch.
ofcon
withfora
jalea.y
hearty
Cúbrala
_con
banada
con
la de
otrapan
re-y corte
a la
scrub Estregue
butter
and jelly.
top with
Cover
layer
remaining
ofacut
una
slice
_Serve
demilk,
cacahuate
mantequilla
luegocon
2 were
slices
of bread.
Unte
con amantequilla
2large
rebanaPeanut
Butter
& JellyButter
Sandwich
Mantequilla
de Spread
Cacahuate
Martinis
and to
Old
Fashioneds.
in the kitchen.
To doalso
things
O U everything
Rfor
way.”
The
book
hasSpanish.
drawings
an American
kitchen
givesY recipes
with
typical
named
American
Crackers,
in
foods,
and
This
like
alsoofHamburger
how
book
make
Sanddrinks.
My
favorites
wiches,
Hot
Dogs,
Tuna
Casserole,
Steak,
Meat
Loaf,
and
Apple
Pie. bosses’

I was terrified —I was sure I'd be caught, and I was also very

The men got me a job with a very rich family; the boss was a

I first came across when | was 22. It was 6 months since I came to

perfection
without
ourthe
help.
We
want
to can
havedoher
Book.
said,
“Our
aimHome
isand
not
to
teach
Mexican
or She
Spanishspeaking
how
make
her
own
native
dishes.
thathelp
to YO U
about
Rosita
and
gave
amaid
day
and
half
off.
The
astay
job.
They
expected
woman
me
to
gave
work
me
7 they
days
aThe
book
abook
tome
study
but
when
I atotold
Maid
them
Spanish
Cook
get
office
job.
I was
sodress
surprised!
IJuanito
waslong
just
thanking
God
to called
have
howthen
things
worked
inwas
enough
her
that
house
to
I would
learn
andanonly
English
helped
me
and
about
with
how
8English.
tomonths
She
and
with
said
doher,
my
hair,
so
I week,
could
But
anyway,
men
border,
saiddo
Iday
with
could
jaguars;
its
only
inspectors,
they
get
sudden
alet
jobyou
every
they
pass
day.
take
inevery
They
with
your
day,
aare
card
every
unpredictable,
away.
business
week, executive.
and
like
The
all she
of
patrona
aexpected
kind,
really.
She
showed
me
family.
It
would
pay
but
at families
least
I living
wouldn't
have
to
pass
the
hound
got
be
the
with
court
tobus
kids
stop
them.
night,
If
but
I went
thethe
across
ones
who
every
that
|less
are
could
always
tired
—
working
for
the
patrona
all
day
and
caring
for
their
at
night.
that
the
city
wanted
to
have
a$1.
to at
the
border
for
25¢,
but
GreyI'd be,
especially
without
to
The
downtown
Greyhound
kids!
San
is
Many
Diego
very
women
and
expensive,
then
cross
take
almost
a my
city
I heard
to
work.
someone
say
afraid to goHow
to alonely
foreign
every
country.
dayGreyhound
withI the
knew
mica,
only
a my
a pass
few
only
words
for
ofshopping.
English.
They
take
thebus
this
then.
are
men
with
beautiful,
shiny
American
waiting,
promising
for
3signed
months,
They
and
they
take usually
hundreds,
took
me
across.
thousands
All cars,
of
over
women
Tijuana
there
every jobs.
year. I didn’t
past
inspectors.
|they
aBut
paper
saying
Iknow
would
give
half
my across
card.
They
wanted
$350
for
aThere
fake
one,
but
don’t
get them
menfind
whooutdemanded
get
metothe
a aget
job
lot
right
of
money
and
from
a salary
me,
green
but
card
later.
promised
| those
to
never
got
the
a job.
i'd me
rather
discuss
details
ofaway
howthe
I got
here.
were
and to
she
would
help
how
would
beworking
easy
leavenot
Rosita
who
were
asarrange—I
maids and
in would
San
and
wasJuanito
sureacross
itwiththeherborder and get
Tijuana fromfriends
my village.
There
was
little
work
my Diego,
sister
had sheand

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7

-

N

Stuffed Chili Peppers with Sauce for a party

My next job was also in La Jolla, with a doctor and his family, for

But 6 weeks ago the señor came into our room while we were

Broil the peppers over the fire until the skin blisters. Wrap them

because they
lotsaid
of they
bills.
I got
angry
them
I was
going
were
going
to and
call told
immigration.
I$55
was
and to
left
to had
call athe
police,
which
the
was
job.
ridiculous
because
they
got
angry
and
I 7heard
ofa take
aweek,
Mr.
So-and-so
would
pay
$35
week
for
someone
to
live
there
days
athe
week.
Heall
hired
2
us
and
made
anhe
arrangement
a terrified
week!
had
cook
all
the
meals,
care
of
the
kids,
up
doafter
all
him
hiswith
friends,
and
let who
making
usaretake
good
other
ing
Mexican
jobs
for
people.
during
food
for
parties,
soa hotel
Iand
didstarted
that ferent
asgetting
well
asfresh,
cleantheI cleaning,
spent
and so
stay
much
days
money
calling
so
them
I5
couldn't
on who
see
phone!
my
kids.
After
I and
almost
are
asome
year
worse,
the
ones
are
real
demanding
or
the
undressing
kind
ones
who
downtown.
I people,
make
hard.
$100
so
aweI'm
week
independent.
cooking
andThat’s
moved
and
to
cleaning
aof cheap
for dif1 sauce
pound
1 yellow
dozen
eggs,
cheese
1 cup
separated
1 of
pound
raisins
1⁄2
of 23raisins
pound
cloves
of
of almonds,
garlic
1 onion,
chopped
1of pound
of sauce
sugar
where
we
bought
day.
the
food
Ia of
met
ourawfully
salaries,
think
mean
they
we
fed
people
and
giving
that
cleaned
way.
you
charity.
I don’t
know
Bythe
then
which
I had
reputation
for
in a cloth and
for veins.
10 minutes,
then
peel until
them.
Slit
one
side,
remove
seeds
6 And
days
a left
week.
a lot
money,
30
butgreen
I work
chilis
3 pounds
very
tomato
of
cream of
cheese
6 pounds
of
tomatoes
oil for
frying
1blanched
ounce
of dried,
oregano,
ground
salt
chilisand
pepper
flour
ounces
of
ginger
8 cups
tomato
1 quart
of salt
vinegar
Leaveegg
the
stems.
Stuff
them
with
and
raisins.
Beatbeat
the
whites
they
are
fluffy.
egg.
they
Fry
are
Add
them
thick.
thecheese
until
salt.
Add
Dredge
the
they
yolks
are
thegolden.
and
chilis
and
Fryagain
dip
the until
them
onion in
andthe
add the tomato

5

Well, my patrones let me eat what I wanted when they
were into a routine and I finished paying the men. It was
We settled

Since that incident I have met four women who were raped by
After a while I went back to San Diego with my mica. This time I

These people were very bad about paying me. Once they got

week. My sister
to Laguna
told they
me
Beach
about
had
by her
aMexican
couple
girl
cooking
from
to
dishes
and
care
ourfor
cleaning.
for
village
their
their
English.
who
They
friends,
children,
was
She
had
committed
and
her
butthen
cook
alldone,
they
day
suicide
very
would
spicy
—she
bring
killed
of ate
ither
went
herself.
to
to the
men,
my
tiny
and
badly
lit,were
but
I reading
had
show
to
the
guests.
Shetaken
was
very
young
and
alone
and
couldn't
I the
pulled
away
and
ran
bathroom
and
the
door.
Heand
and
Ihalf
never
soout
much
meat
ineating
my room
life!
I was
made
$30and
a few
week,
work,
and
Ispeak
was
regularly.
spring
the
kids
camp
onbut
thein
and
hedoor.
came
thegrabbed
I patrona
in
toldanyway
him
went
toand
on
wait
leaned
a bed.
because
visit
over
for
Iripped
me.
had
a pounded,
Ito
tried
get
almost
dressed
totoescape,
breaking
he
the
door
because
and
Iroom.
began
was
illegal
cry.
because
after
that
he
of
guy
has
money
days.
Iknocked
was in
my
room
one
me
onto
night
and
the
we
when
struggled.
He
patron
He
was
my
trying
underwear.
stopped
tothe
kiss
IHe
was
somewhere
me
began
afraid
and to
shove
to
force
inlocked
open
the
meme
the
but
I to
knew
thinking
and
I Even
had
drive
heno
could
away.
hope
be
Iof
ran
hidden
help
from
my downtown
room.
the enough
police
I gathered
all
my
things
to door
get
himself
off.
Finally
off.
I type
Itook
heard
the
ato bus
the
border.
front
door
and
close,
their
spent
the
bosses;
the
car night
one
startofwaiting
upand
themran
for
was the
made
bus
pregnant.
to look
So
I wife
was
lucky
st
knew
to
and in
histhe
newspaper
in
La after
Jolla.
before
toand
find
They
thea rugs
paid
job.
TV.
Ime
and
got
only
much
one
were
with
tomany
adust
week
aappreciated
statues
professor
and
but
vacuum.
and
the
paintings
house
They
me
had
and
aa lot,
beautiful
lot
but
offood
she
pottery
spoke
to
andthe
me
though
I were
a when
child
very them
stupid.
statues
made
by
the
Indians
mytheir
Mexican
oftime
Mexico.
food,
The
and
soold
Ialso
was
didn’t
better,
mind
they
cooking
5as
weeks
sobehind
much.
and
asked
to pay they said they couldn’t
was
smaller
there
wereThere
only
2 $25
kids,
who
spent
all
All
these
gringos
want
They
to
eat
the
had
food
all
of
“Spanish
the
poor.
Maid”
The
wife
books.
smiledIorat

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—-

postage $300.

wW

miscellaneous: $5.

printing: $20.

TITLE: Tijuana
COST: Maid
postcards:
food novel
paper 3$10.77

—cooks
Mexican
saying,
quoted
in Elena’s
Mexican
Bien Cocina
(Thela maid
moza,
pero
well,
mejor
but
la bolsa.
the
pocketbook
cooks
better.)Cookbook

11 units, run of approx. 350; originally
printedWomen’s
by the stories
artist on
SOURCES:
as represented in articles by Laurie

theNorma
Chicano movement, like gringos, want
HomageStorm
to Ousmane
Sembene’s
filmOscar
Black
Girl “Recent
(Senegal,
1966). toand
Translated
Victor converts
Zamudio,
ATTRIBUTIONS: Margaret
& Elsie
Ginnett, with
Home
Maid Chavez,

Esther
Guerrero-Catarrivas.
to learnAlda
tortilla
Angel
Gutierrez,
making
from
Gringo
aand
cookbook
Manual onrecipe.
How Impossible!”
to Handle Mexicans.
— Jose
Blanco
& some
others
both can’t
sides
of named;
Burt's
the
Home
Olla
Maid
Podrida;
Spanish
relationship,
Spanish
Cook
of couse,
Book.
Cook
Home
Book,
Apron
Spanish
Pocket
Press,
Quintero-Peters;
La Jolla,
1968.
and
Cecilia Duarte,
Blanco,
Iris Blanco
Becklund
in
thewith
San
Diego
Evening
Tribune
ofElinor
Oct.
10
& mistress-servant
11,
1973;
ElectroGestetner
and by Moonlite Blueprint,
La talks
Jolla.
Orig.
cost,
ofon
Americans,
whom
among
be
them
many
George
“Mexican”
Booth’s
Food
cookbooks
&
Drink
for
of Maid
Mexico
and and
about $1/set.
Josefina
Foulks,
Laurie
Becklund,
Cecilia
Duarte,
Iris and

9

(To make the tomato sauce, cut up the tomatoes, addThere
a little
is a woman in La Jolla who tried to organize the maids,

colonization
Inc.,
York.
*The third part of
a trilogy by
sentPrinted
out asMatter
postcard
that
also
a budding
lower-middle-class
in
California.
larly
milieu.
on
Much
Iincludes
how
have
of
consciousness
my
lived
looking
work
in
at
centers
and
the
language
producers
on
women’s
for
reflect
as
well
roles
social
as
of
and
the
the
circumstance.
occupations,
consumers.
past
8 affluent
years,
Iteach
have
work
paid
with and
video,
photos,
texts,
special
attention
to
and
the
film;
use
I grew
of
do food
some
in
the
context
writing
IIparticubourgeois
movie
culture,
photo
criticism.”
Martha
Rosler
is novels,
anNew
artist
living
in
Encinitas.
SheManhattan
writes:
“I and,
up most
incritical
Brooklyn,
inofaand

sh

10

Now that I’m independent I could have spent more time with my

Now I'm looking for a job with a family that will let me bring my

in
English
and
sometimes
in
Spanish,
to
many
snakes
that
thought
l’d
bitten
I of
know
before
marrying
l'Il
make
I made
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Eva Cockcroft

14

Women’s role in the community mural move-

ment is much greater than is generally recognized. Major city-sponsored mural programs in
Boston (Adele Seronde and Summerthing), New
York (Susan Shapiro-Kiok and Cityarts), and Los
Angeles (Judy Baca and Citywide) have been
initiated and directed by women artists, who
have given these programs much of their char-

acter and philosophy. Women have led school
mural projects, mural collectives, and muralwork with street youth. Whether working as
individual muralists, members of coalitions, or
in collectives, women have increasingly dom-

(1970) served as the token of women’s participa-

tion in the Chicago mural movement. Green
was 17, a high school dropout, when she saw
William Walker painting the Peace and Salvation Wall of Understanding near the CabriniGreen projects where she lived. After watching
for a time, she asked Walker for paints and
brushes and on a storage shed nearby painted
portraits of famous Black women from Aunt
Jemima to Angela Davis. Almost immediately
afterwards, the wall was defaced with large
splashes of white paint, practically the only de-

facement in Chicago up to that time. When

inated the mural movement as a force for non-

Green saw what the vandals had done, she com-

elitism, collectivity, and the practice of social philosophies ranging from humanism to

but it says more now.” In general, though, dur-

Marxism.

ing those early years women found their place

Murals on urban walls reflecting the aspirations of neighborhood residents began as part of

the more general social upheaval of the 1960s.
Artists found themselves dragged into the social

mented, “Before, it was just a pretty picture,

largely as assistants and apprentices in one of
the two major community-based Chicago mural
groups: Public Art Workshop, led by Mark
Rogovin, and Chicago Mural Group, a multi-

arena and forced to consider questions beyond

ethnic coalition led by William Walker and John

those of pure form. By the late 1960s they could

Weber.

no longer avoid confronting questions concerning the relevance, audience, and uses of their

an important role in introducing the mural idea.

art. A number of movements arose that tried to

Boston artist Adele Seronde’s proposal calling

enlarge the audience and scope of contemporary art. Minority-group and politically active

for the use of neglected city sites to transform

In Boston, on the other hand, women played

the city into a museum was the start. Through

artists felt both a demand and an opportunity to

the collaboration of Kathy Kane of the Mayor's

create an art responsive to their special heritage

Office of Cultural Affairs, the Institute of Con-

and relevant to their own ethnic group, community, or movement. Mainstream artists at-

temporary Art, a number of Black artists, and

tempted to bring art out of the museums and

largest and most productive of the early mural

into the cities in the form of urban supergraphics, environmental sculptures, streetworks, and happenings. Out of the coincidence

programs, beginning in 1968 and peaking in
1970. The Summerthing program combined elements of three distinct phenomena which had
emerged the preceding year—the renaissance in

of these social and artistic forces the community mural movement began in 1967-68.
The mural movement took on different forms

Seronde, Summerthing was launched. It was the

Black culture (Wall of Respect), the “Summer in

the City Paint-in Festival” and various clean-up

in different locations, depending on which par-

programs, and the desire of environmental art-

ticular combination of social forces spurred its

ists to work in urban spaces. Summerthing
sponsored Black Power murals, children’s playground and pocket-park projects, and decora-

beginnings. The first mural in Chicago, the 1967
Wall of Respect, was painted by 21 Black artists

from the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC) and celebrated Black history and
culture. It was a political-art happening involv-

tive walls—all within a framework allowing for

neighborhood control. Under Seronde’s direction, the program emphasized the sociological

ing musicians and poets who played and read as

rather than the decorative aspect of public art.

the painting progressed. Although women artists participated in the Wall! of Respect, they
were not among those who continued the

to 1970, especially in the Black communities of

Many impressive walls were painted from 1968

movement in Chicago and went from the OBAC

Roxbury and South End—including the first
women’s wall, Sharon Dunn's Black Women,

wall to paint in Detroit.

painted in 1970.

For a long time Vanita Green’s Black Women

Seronde is only one of many women who

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15

have made important contributions as organizers and administrators. Judy Baca, a leading
Chicana muralist in Los Angeles, obtained City
funding for a similar neighborhood-oriented
large-scale mural program (Citywide Murals) in
1974. Shelly Killen heads a program for murals

work, although highly rewarding, requires a
certain kind of openness and great dedication.
It also demands physical labor, community organizing, going to meetings, and an ability to
deal with the great variety of people who come
up to talk or make comments. However, a num-

in prisons in Rhode Island, which has operated

ber of the women who did become involved in

in the correctional institutions there for the past

the early 1970s now identify themselves as mur-

two years. Sandy Rubin’s Alternate Graffiti
Workshop in Philadelphia pioneered techniques

alists and are recognized for their artistic contri-

for developing the artistic potential of graffiti

butions.

The development of Caryl Yasko, one of the

writers; several of her workshop graduates have

best muralists in the nation and a leader of the

become muralists in their own right. Ruth
Asawa and Nancy Thompson developed the Alvarado School-Community Program in San
Francisco, which brings community artists into
the public schools to enrich the school experi-

Chicago Mural Group, illustrates this process.
Like Green, Yasko was introduced to the mural

movement through William Walker when she
volunteered as a parent-assistant for a mural he
was directing with children at her neighborhood

ence and has helped to open the doors to Art-

school. After this experience, Yasko and her

ists in the Schools” programs around the coun-

partner in a small art enterprise, Kathy Judge, a

try. In fact, at the present time, the majority of

ceramicist, worked with small children to paint

the mural programs throughout the nation are
directed by women.

The major influx of women artists into the
mural movement did not take place until 1971-

73 when news about the community walls had
become better known outside the actual mural

Walls of Hope. Yasko and Judge were then in-

vited to join the Chicago Mural Group. In the
summer of 1972, Yasko directed her first major

project, Under City Stone, a mural that runs
throughout the 55th Street underpass in Hyde
Park. Painted from Yasko’s design with the help

women artists tried mural work, but not all of

of a team recruited from passers-by, it shows
hundreds of figures walking around and, above
them, the machinery, technology, and pollu-

them became muralists. Community mural

tion of today’s city. Yasko painted herself in the

communities. This was also a time of expansion

for the Women’s Liberation Movement. Many

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16

crowd —a slim young woman, paintbrushes in
hand, a baby on her back.

The following year, Yasko painted in the
heart of the Black-Belt South Side with a team

of young Black people. Located on a prenatal
clinic wall, this mural depicts statuesque,
larger-than-life women with their children. In
1974 Yasko broke new ground for the Chicago
muralists. Although murals had become commonplace in many areas of Chicago, certain
white working-class areas peopled by Polish and
other Middle-European immigrants remained
untouched. The question of whether murals

Marie Burton, director. Celebration of Cultures. 1975. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo: Weber.)

were valid only for minority-group ghetto areas
or would also be meaningful in white working-

class neighborhoods was in the air. In those
cities where the murals had begun with the
Black Power thrust of the late sixties, a move-

ment toward more general themes was beginning. In 1974 Yasko began a mammoth mural in

the Logan Square area of Chicago. The mural
uses symbolic figures and images to identify the

values of the largely Polish and Bielorussian
residents of the area and to depict them work-

ing together to maintain control in a highly
technical, mechanized world. This major wall
has opened the door for a number of other
murals in this and similar neighborhoods.
Yasko, however, is only one of many women

muralists who have made important artistic
contributions. Lucy Mahler's vivid mural at the
Wright Brothers School in New York is one of

the earliest murals on a public school building.
Astrid Fuller, with her distinctive combination

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Mujeres Muralistas. Latinoamerica. 1974. 25th and Mission
Streets, San Francisco, California. (Photo: Eva Cockcroft.)

17

of a primitive literalism with surrealist images,

has created a series of ambitious underpass
murals in the Hyde Park area of Chicago. Holly
Highfill, who painted an anti-war mural in the
Loop area of Chicago (1973), has gone on to do

artists’ collectives. A collective is a very difficult and highly unstable form of organization in

a society emphasizing individualism, and few
last longer than a year or two. Many women
muralists have come into the movement as organizers or members of a collective group. The
mutual support and shared responsibility the

several succeeding walls with gang youth.
Marie Burton, who with Highfill and Rogovin
co-authored the Mural Manual, works primarily

collective offers an individual is often necessary

with teenagers. Her Bored of Education in Chi-

to provide the courage to attempt a first mural

cago (1971) and the Celebration of Cultures in
Milwaukee (1975) are among the most impressive of the school murals. And these are just a

few of the women muralists working on community walls in a way that might be called the

(and some of the labor power to finish it). Especially in the case of women this factor can be
decisive.

Within the Latin culture, machismo often
reaches rather extreme forms, yet this is coun-

“Chicago model” (others are Justine DeVan,

tered by a strong communal tradition. It is not

Esther Charbit, Ruth Felton, and Celia Radek).

surprising therefore that in 1974 a group of Latin

In the Chicago model, the artist-leader of a
mural team, using community and youth input,
designs the wall and directs the painting of it.

The community participates as a new class of
patrons who help to pay for the mural and are
consulted on the design. In spite of the change

in patronage, and participation of community
people as team members, the Chicago models
emphasis on professionalism is fairly close to
the mural tradition through the ages. Murals,
after all, have rarely been painted by individuals; mostly they are done by a group of assistants working under a master.

This hierarchical process has been challenged
by several developments within the mural
movement. One is the experimentation with

American women muralists—Mujeres Muralistas—was formed in San Francisco. Most of the
women were students or recent graduates of the

San Francisco Art Institute and connected with
the Galeria de La Raza, the center for Chicano
artists in the Mission district. Their philosophy
was simple and very positive:

Our cultures, our images are strong. It is important that the atmosphere of the world be
plagued with color and life. Throughout History there have been very few women who
have figured in art. What you see is proof that
women, too, can work at this level. That we
can put together scaffolding and climb it. We
offer you the colors that we make.

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18

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Their two best-known walls, Latinoámerica
and the Paco's Tacos Stand mural were both
done in the spring and summer of 1974. They

celebrate the beauty and richness of the Latin
tradition. For Latinoámerica, the four women
comprising the original core of Mujeres Muralistas—Patricia Rodriguez, Consuelo Mendez
Castillo, Irene Perez, and Graciela Carrillo de
Lopez—worked together to create the design.

to say at the end of the project, “And this part is

mine.” While we did not wholly succeed in
eliminating our sense of personal ego, we did
find that by consciously emphasizing collectivity in our work we could overcome personal

insecurities and achieve stronger political and
artistic results. We went on to incorporate men

into our group and painted eight other murals
before agreeing to disperse in 1974, when some

Different parts of the mural are painted by each

of our members graduated and others decided

artist in her individual style; yet the mural suc-

to go on to other things.

ceeds as a unified work because of the clear
organization, and the distinctively bright, clear

co, a collective led by Jane Norling, see them-

color that is characteristic of the group. In the

selves as “anti-imperialist cultural workers.”
Their first mural, Rainbow People, was painted

Paco's Tacos mural the unity is more tenuous.
The wall divides into two distinctly different

in 1972 as part of a large anti-war demonstra-

halves reflecting the different artistic styles of

tion. A Haight landmark, Rainbow People was

Consuelo Mendez Castillo and Graciela Carrillo

repainted and updated in 1974. Unity Eye (1973)

de Lopez. In many ways Mujeres Muralistas
was never really a “collective”, but rather a

tionary culture in the United States. The mural

diagrams the ingredients for creating a revolu-

forced them into a prematurely formalized exis-

shows a revolution peopled and led by women,
and was painted by an all-female team. Most
recently, the Haight-Ashbury Muralists have

tence as a “collective group,” while leaving

been working on a 300-foot-long history of the

them little time to resolve differences in politi-

class struggle in San Francisco.

group of women who came together to work on
a particular wall mural. An almost instant fame

cal consciousness between members of the

The most radical and problematic challenge
to tradition has been the development of col-

group, or cultural differences between Chicana
and Latin American women. The problem of
individualism was never really tackled, al-

lective murals in which non-artist members of a

though there was an attempt to make decisions

helps them to create their own mural. While a

community work with an artist-facilitator who

in 1976. The women who comprised Mujeres
Muralistas are now working as individual

strong emphasis on community participation
characterizes all community mural projects,
this particular emphasis reflects an attempt to
create a “people's art” in every sense of the

muralists.

word. Simply providing paint and a wall to teen-

by a consensus of the group. Internal differences caused the group to dissolve formally early

Many mural-painting collectives, including

agers and young adults is not the answer. There

most of those that grew out of the largely white

must be a direction, a method for working co-

counterculture and anti-war movements, either

operatively, and a technique that makes it pos-

start with women who then invite male artists

sible to bypass the need for years of study of

in, or simply include both women and men.

drawing and design.

Often led by women with roots in Marxism and

The most complete method, and the model

feminism, these collectives tend to be strongly
anti-sexist, anti-imperialist, and to use overtly
political images in their artwork. One of these

for much related work elsewhere in the nation,

groups was the People’s Painters of New Jersey,

begins with a number of concept meetings dur-

who “muralized” Livingston College from 1972
to 1974. Modeled after the Ramona Parra Bri-

ing which the theme is discussed. In the early

gades of Allendes Chile, the People’s Painters
were concerned equally with the political effects of their murals and with trying to over-

come individualism and a sense of personal
ego. Their first wall was for the Livingston
Women’s Center, which was very appropriate
since the founders of the group—Julia Smith,
Kathy Jones, and myself —considered ourselves
activists in the Women’s Liberation Movement.
We worked on the design collectively, discussing ideas first and then finding the images. We

chose to work in a simple style, using heavy
black outlines and flat color, so that the women
at the Center could help us paint. We also con-

sciously worked over parts of the mural that
others had originated to combat the tendency

19

The Haight-Ashbury Muralists in San Francis-

was developed by Susan Shapiro-Kiok and the
Cityarts staff in New York City. This method

Cityarts Workshop murals, scenes were acted
out and developed, photographed, and then
projected and traced. When the mock-up was
complete, it was enlarged by an opaque projector and painted in. Black Women of Africa
Today (1971), designed and executed by teenage girls at “The Smith” housing project on the
Lower East Side, is typical of the early silhouette
style. Later murals became more complex as the

technique came to include the use of drawings
and slides as well as photographs and the
opaque projector. The Jewish ethnic mural at
the Bialystoker Old People’s Home is a collage
of images designed and painted by a group of
Jewish teenagers under the direction of Susan
Caruso-Green (current director of Cityarts
Workshop).

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Haight-Ashbury Muralists. Unity Eye. 1973.
Haight and Shrader Streets, San Francisco,
California. (Photo: Tim Drescher.)

Eva Cockcroft. Warrensburg. 1976.
Oddfellows Temple, Main Street,
Warrensburg, New York. (Photo: Oren Lane.)
20

Tomi Arai, director, with Lower East Side
women, Wall of Respect for Women. 1974.
East Broadway and Rutgers Street,
New York City. (Photo: Cami Homann,
Cityarts Workshop.)

Two other collective walls were painted in
1974 and 1975 by Lower East Side women under

male-female relationship for which they are
struggling:

the direction of Tomie Arai. The Wall of Respect for Women (1974) epitomizes the nonantagonistic type of feminism portrayed on
non-white community walls dealing with the
theme of woman. Rather than condemning
more traditional women’s roles (e.g., mother,
telephone operator), this mural celebrates all
the roles played by women. The second wall,
Women Hold Up Half the Sky (1975), painted
by many of the same women who worked on
the earlier wall, as well as some men, portrays

A la mujer me dirijo:
tu también debes luchar
para salir de una vez
de tu gran pasividad.
Al hombre le toca ahora:
entiende que la mujer
sabe pensar y sentir
y tiene derecho a ser.*
(To the woman I say

women’s oppression within the context of the

you must struggle to abandon

larger social struggle. Although most of the
images come from a generalized women’s ex-

your conditioned passivity
and to leave it behind.

perience, the figures breaking out of oppression

are of both sexes. In both walls women are
shown performing their traditional jobs and,
with few exceptions, this is the way women are
portrayed in community walls.

Some murals about women emphasize the
biological factor, and almost all include the
mother-child theme. Yet these would be con-

To the man I say
try to understand
that a woman can think and feel,
and has a right to exist.)

The mother in Latin culture is seen as the
moral leader of the household and the authority

in the education of her children. The forced

sidered highly conservative images by the
Women’s Liberation Movement. The use of

in Puerto Rico and other Latin American coun-

such stereotypical images of women is not the

tries (as well as the poor at home) has served to

sterilization of women by the U.S. government

result of ignorance on the part of women mural-

intensify the felt need for women to bear chil-

ists. In part it reflects the goals of Third World

dren in order to preserve their race. This creates

feminism, in which women’s rights are seen as

certain differences in attitude about population control and the family structure between
Third World feminism and the rest of the
Women’s Liberation Movement.

one part of the more general social struggle,
and great care is taken to keep feminism from
appearing to be a divisive force.

Within political organizations like the Puerto
Rican Socialist Party (PSP), political education
courses discuss the need to overcome machismo and the oppressive role definitions which
make it difficult for men and women to work

together as compañeros. Some of the verses
from the song “Quiero decirte” (I Want to Tell

You Something), written collectively by Suni
Paz, Juana Díaz, and other Puerto Rican sisters
in 1972 and often sung at political rallies and
community events, state the changes in the

Overtly feminist murals are found primarily
on Women’s Center walls, within the university

world, and in certain selected city neighborhoods—Haight-Ashbury, for example—where a
base of support exists. Most often, the feminist

consciousness of women muralists is expressed
by the substitution of female for male as a sym-

bolic or heroic figure, or even by the mere
inclusion of women as active figures in any

mural.

The problem of responsibility to the perma-

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21

LWwILUAMS

C.TAYLOR
P SEEBOL
N.JANNUZZI
A HERNANDEZ

E.GONG
H.DAVIS
M.COLON
T. ARAI

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nent audience, those who have to live with the
art, is one with which the community muralist is

Liberation Movement. The non-hierarchical

decisions and has been a direct part of my own

recent experience as a muralist. After several

The changes resulting from their individual ex-

ly at the cutting edge of issues—neither too far

ahead nor too far behind. This is a-continual
struggle involving a constant series of difficult

years of working in a relatively radicalized uni22

least in part from the influence of the Women’s

structures of the early women’s organizations,
as well as the direct experience of consciousness-raising groups, with the sisterhood and
support they provided, became a part of the
outlook of a number of the women muralists.

constantly faced. The ideal is to work constant-

versity setting, 1 undertook some murals in a
very different environment—a conservative
small town in the Adirondack mountains. My
problem was how to paint a bicentennial mural

periences with Women’s Liberation led them to
bring the same egalitarian and collective practices to the mural groups they joined or helped
found.

While ideas from feminism and Marxism are

that would be accepted by the permanent resi-

implicit in the attempt to create a people's art—

dents as their history and yet not violate my

especially in murals by women—the level of
politicization and consciousness among muralists varies greatly. Most community muralists,

convictions, or the truth. Just as I began work in
early 1976, the very town authorities who were

my sponsors whitewashed a youth mural on

however, if they were familiar with Mao’s words

ecology I had directed in 1974, which was criti-

at the Yenan Forum, would agree that:

cal of the town’s dumping sewage into the
Schroon River. I conceived my design as a com-

In the world today all culture, all literature and

promise: the ancestors of the present residents

art belong to definite classes and are geared to

are shown as workers in the logging industry,
the saw mill, and the textile factories—a work-

ing-class history, but one with only positive
images. I began painting the wall with great
misgivings. It was the reaction of the “locals,”
and their enthusiastic hunger for their own his-

tory, that made me realize that it is not just
minority-group people or urban ghetto residents

who have been deprived of their history and
their right to their own art expression, but every
segment of America’s working people.

Communication between muralists around
the nation has increased greatly since 1974.
Three major mural conferences have occurred
and the exchange of information and techniques has furthered experimentation. Many
muralists who previously worked alone have
begun to experiment with collective techniques
and vice versa. In 1975, for example, five

definite political lines. There is in fact no such
thing as Art for art's sake, art that stands above
classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics.

If that is true, one must choose—and they
have chosen.
*From “Brotando del Silencio” (Breaking Out of the
Silence), songs by Suni Paz, Paredon P-1016, Paredon
Records, Box 889, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11202.
Eva Cockcroft is a muralist and co-author (with John Weber
and Jim Cockcroft) of the forthcoming book, Towards a
People’s Art: The Contemporary Mural Movement (E.P.
Dutton).

muralists from the Chicago Mural Group (Caryl

Yasko, Mitchell Caton, Celia Radek, Justine
DeVan, and Lucyna Radycki) worked on a collectively designed and painted wall. Prescription tor Good Health Care. The muralists were a
mixed group —racially, sexually, and in terms of

previous mural experience. This was their first
collectively designed wall, although they had
helped each other to paint on other walls. The
location at 57th and Kedzie is near the headquarters of the American Nazi Party in Chicago.
Initially, there was some fear that racial attacks

might prevent the group from working, but
there were no disturbances during the time the

mural was being painted. Acceptance in this
white working-class neighborhood of a racially
mixed group of muralists reflects the prestige
that murals have achieved in Chicago.

The continuing attempt at collectivity and
away from the individualistic “genius” concept
of the artist prevalent in the art world has been

one of the major distinctions pioneered by
women in the mural movement; it derives at

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Women and Honor:
Some Notes on Lying
Adrienne Rich

23

(These notes are concerned with relationships
between and among women. When “personal
relationship” is referred to, I mean a relationship between two women. It will be clear in

A subject is raised which the liar wishes buried.
She has to go downstairs, her parking-meter will

have run out. Or there is a telephone call she
ought to have made an hour ago.

what follows when I am talking about women’s
relationships with men.)

She is asked, point-blank, a question which may

The old, male idea of honor. A man’s “word”

what is happening between us?” Instead of try-

sufficed —to other men —without guarantee.

ing to describe her feelings in their ambiguity

lead into painful talk: “How do you feel about

“Our Land Free, Our Men Honest, Our Women

and confusion, she asks, “How do you feel?”
The other, because she is trying to establish a

Fruitful” —a popular colonial toast in America.

ground of openness and trust, begins describing

Male honor also having something to do with

she tells:

her own feelings. Thus the liar learns more than

killing: ! could not love thee, Dear, so much /

Lov‘d I not Honour more (“To Lucasta, On
Going to the Wars”). Male honor as something
needing to be avenged: hence, the duel.

Women’s honor, something altogether else: vir-

And she may also tell herself a lie: that she is

concerned with the other’s feelings, not with
her own.

But the liar is concerned with her own feelings.

ginity, chastity, fidelity to a husband. Honesty

in women has not been considered important.
We have been depicted as generically whimsical, deceitful, subtle, vacillating. And we have
been rewarded for lying.

The liar lives in fear of losing control. She can-

not even desire a relationship without manipulation, since to be vulnerable to another person
means for her the loss of control.

Men have been expected to tell the truth about

The liar has many friends, and leads an exis-

facts, not about feelings. They have not been

tence of great loneliness.

expected to talk about feelings at all.

Yet even about facts they have continually lied.

GELDIA OLOLLO LPLP LOLL
The liar often suffers from amnesia. Amnesia,is
the silence of the unconscious.

We assume that politicians are without honor.
We read their statements trying to crack the
code. The scandals of their politics: not that
men in high places lie, only that they do so with

such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting
to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.

GLAG G LLP LLG LDL LLG LD LLD GLD

To lie habitually, as a way of life, is to lose
contact with the unconscious. It is like taking
sleeping pills, which confer sleep but blot out
dreaming. The unconscious wants truth. It
ceases to speak to those who want something
else more than truth.

In speaking of lies, we come inevitably to the

To discover that one has been lied to in a per-

subject of truth. There is nothing simple or easy

sonal relationship, however, leads one to feel a

about this idea. There is no “the truth,” “a

little crazy.

truth” — truth is not one thing, or even a system.

GUILDA ALDALDALIGLALDLDL D LGLDLDD
Lying is done with words, and also with silence.

It is an increasing complexity. The pattern of
the carpet is a surface. When we look closely,
or when we become weavers, we learn of the
tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pat-

The woman who tells lies in her personal rela-

tern, the knots on the underside of the carpet.

tionships may or may not plan or invent her
lying. She may not even think of what she is
doing in a calculated way.

This is why the effort to speak honestly is so im-

portant. Lies are usually attempts to make

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everything simpler—for the liar—than it really

The lie of the “happy marriage,” of domesticity

is, or ought to be.

—we have been complicit, have acted out the
fiction of a well-lived life, until the day we

In lying to others we end up lying to ourselves.

testify in court of rapes, beatings, psychic cruel-

We deny the importance of an event, or a per-

ties, public and private humiliations.

son, and thus deprive ourselves of a part of our
lives. Or we use one piece of the past or present
to screen out another. Thus we lose faith even
with our own lives.

Patriarchal lying has manipulated women both
through falsehood and through silence. Facts
we needed have been withheld from us. False
witness has been borne against us.

24

The unconscious wants truth, as the body does.

The complexity and fecundity of dreams come
conscious struggling to fulfill that desire. The

And so we must take seriously the question
of truthfulness between women, truthfulness
among women. As we cease to lie with our

from the complexity and fecundity of the un-

complexity and fecundity of poetry come from

bodies, as we cease to take on faith what men

the same struggle.

have said about us, is a truly womanly idea of

An honorable human relationship —that is, one

GGD LP LLD LPLP ELLIO LLD GLOD

in which two people have the right to use the

Women have been forced to lie, for survival, to

word “love”—is a process, delicate, violent,

men. How to unlearn this among other women?

honor in the making?

often terrifying to both persons involved, a pro-

cess of refining the truths they can tell each
other.

“Women have always lied to each other.”
“Women have always whispered the truth
to each other.” Both of these axioms are

It is important to do this because it breaks down

true.

human self-delusion and isolation.
It is important to do this because in so doing we

“Women have always been divided against
each other.” “Women have always been in

do justice to our own complexity.

secret collusion.” Both of these axioms are
true.

It is important to do this because we can count
on so few people to go that hard way with us.

In the struggle for survival we tell lies. To bos-

OAG ADALDALDOLDLDALDALD EL LDLDELPLQPLDOLDULGD

ses, to prison guards, the police, men who have

I come back to the question of women’s honor.

Truthfulness has not been considered important

power over us, who legally own us and our
children, lovers who need us as proof of their
manhood.

for women, as long as we have remained physically faithful to a man, or chaste.

There is a danger run by all powerless people:
that we forget we are lying, or that lying be-

We have been expected to lie with our bodies:
to bleach, redden, unkink or curl our hair, pluck

comes a weapon we carry over into relationships with people who do not have power

eyebrows, shave armpits, wear padding in various places or lace ourselves, take little steps,
glaze finger and toe nails, wear clothes that
emphasize our helplessness.

Over Us.

We have been required to tell different lies at

speak within the context of male lying, the lies

I want to reiterate that when we talk about
women and honor, or women and lying, we

different times, depending on what the men of

of the powerful, the lie as a false source of

the time needed to hear. The Victorian wife or

power.

the white southern lady, who were expected to
have no sensuality, to “lie still”; the twentieth-

Women have to think whether we want, in our

century “free” woman who is expected to fake

relationships with each other, the kind of power

orgasms.

that can be obtained through lying.

We have had the truth of our bodies withheld

Women have been driven mad, “gaslighted,”

from us or distorted; we have been kept in
ignorance of our most intimate places. Our instincts have been punished: clitorectomies for
“lustful” nuns or for “difficult” wives. It has

for centuries by the refutation of our experience

been difficult, too, to know the lies of our complicity from the lies we believed.

and our instincts in a culture which validates
only male experience. The truth of our bodies
and our minds has been mystified to us. We
therefore have a primary obligation to each
other: not to undermine each other's sense of

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reality for the sake of expediency; not to gas-

The void is not something created by patriar-

light each other.

chy, or racism, or capitalism. It will not fade
away with any of them. It is part of every

Women have often felt insane when cleaving to

woman.

the truth of our experience. Our future depends

on the sanity of each of us, and we have a

“The dark core,” Virginia Woolf named it, writ-

profound stake, beyond the personal, in the

ing of her mother. The dark core. It is beyond

project of describing our reality as candidly and

personality; beyond who loves us or hates us.

fully as we can to each other.
We begin out of the void, out of darkness and

25

emptiness. It is part of the cycle understood by
There are phrases which help us not to admit we
are lying: “my privacy,” “nobody’s business but

my own.” The choices that underlie these
phrases may indeed be justified; but we ought
to think about the full meaning and consequences of such language.

Women’s love for women has been represented
almost entirely through silence and lies. The
institution of heterosexuality has forced the les-

bian to dissemble, or be labelled a pervert, a
criminal, a sick or dangerous woman, etc., etc.
The lesbian, then, has often been forced to lie,
like the prostitute or the married woman.

Does a life “in the closet”—lying, perhaps of
necessity, about ourselves to bosses, landlords,
clients, colleagues, family, because the law and
public opinion are founded on a lie—does this,
can it, spread into public life, so that lying
(described as discretion) becomes an easy way
to avoid conflict or complication? Can it become a strategy so ingrained that it is used even

the old pagan religions, that materialism denies. Out of death, rebirth; out of nothing,
something.
The void is the creatrix, the matrix. It is not
mere hollowness and anarchy. But in women it

has been identified with lovelessness, barrenness, sterility. We have been urged to fill our
“emptiness” with children. We are not supposed to go down into the darkness of the core.
Yet, if we can risk it, the something born of that
nothing is the beginning of our truth.
The liar in her terror wants to fill up the void,
with anything. Her lies are a denial of her fear; a
way of maintaining control.

DADGUDDIAD AGD

Why do we feel slightly crazy when we realize
we have been lied to in a relationship?

We take so much of the universe on trust. You

with close friends and lovers?

tell me: “In 1950 I lived on the north side of

Heterosexuality as an institution has also
drowned in silence the erotic feelings between

and I were lovers, but for months now we have

women. I myself lived half a lifetime in the lie

seventy degrees outside and the sun is shining.”

of that denial. That silence makes us all, to

Because I love you, because there is not even a

some degree, into liars.

question of lying between us, I take these accounts of the universe on trust: your address

Beacon Street in Somerville.” You tell me: “She
only been good friends.” You tell me: “It is

The liar leads an existence of unutterable loneli-

twenty-five years ago, your relationship with
someone I know only by sight, this morning's
weather. I fling unconscious tendrils of belief,
like slender green threads, across statements
such as these, statements made so unequivocal-

ness.

ly, which have no tone or shadow of tentative-

When a woman tells the truth she is creating the
possibility for more truth around her.

ADAGALA LLDD LOLL LVL LLLP ALL

ness. I build them into the mosaic of my world.
The liar is afraid.

I allow my universe to change in minute, significant ways, on the basis of things you have said

But we are all afraid: without fear we become

manic, hubristic, self-destructive. What is this
particular fear that possesses the liar?
She is afraid that her own truths are not good
enough.
She is afraid, not so much of prison guards or
bosses, but of something unnamed within her.
The liar fears the void.

to me, of my trust in you.
I also have faith that you are telling me things it

is important I should know; that you do not
conceal facts from me in an effort to spare me,
or yourself, pain.

Or, at the very least, that you will say, “There
are things I am not telling you.”
When we discover that someone we trusted can

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be trusted no longer, it forces us to re-examine

life. The liar is someone who keeps losing sight

the universe, to question the whole instinct and

of these possibilities.

concept of trust. For a while, we are thrust back

onto some bleak, jutting ledge, in a dark
pierced by sheets of fire, swept by sheets of

lation, by the need for control, they may pos-

rain, in a world before kinship, or naming, or

sess a dreary, bickering kind of drama, but they

tenderness exist; we are brought close to formlessness.

GAOL ILP ALD ULDALL ILDILID DG

When relationships are determined by manipu-

cease to be interesting. They are repetitious; the
shock of human possibility has ceased to reverberate through them.

26

The liar may resist confrontation, denying that

When someone tells me a piece of the truth

she lied. Or she may use other language: forget-

which has been withheld from me, and which I

fulness, privacy, the protection of someone

needed in order to see my life more clearly, it

else. Or she may bravely declare herself a cow-

may bring acute pain, but it can also flood me

ard. This allows her to go on lying, since that is

with a cold, sea-sharp wash of relief. Often such

what cowards do. She does not say, / was
afraid, since this would open the question of

truths come by accident, or from strangers.

other ways of handling her fear. It would open
the question of what is actually feared.

It isn't that to have an honorable relationship
with you, I have to understand everything, or
tell you everything at once, or that I can know,

She may say, / didn’t want to cause pain. What

beforehand, everything I need to tell you.

she really did not want is to have to deal with
the other's pain. The lie is a short-cut through

It means that most of the time I am eager,

another's personality.

longing for the possibility of telling you. That

Truthfulness, honor, is not something which
springs ablaze of itself; it has to be created
between people.

these possibilities may seem frightening, but
not destructive, to me. That I feel strong
enough to hear your tentative and groping
words. That we both know we are trying, all the

time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us.

This is true in political situations. The quality
and depth of the politics evolving from a group

The possibility of life between us.

depends in very large part on their understand-

WDIG ALP ILPILDILPILPEL ILDI L LLD G LDD

ing of honor.

Much of what is narrowly termed “politics”
seems to rest on a longing for certainty even at
the cost of honesty, for an analysis which, once

given, need not be re-examined. Such is the
dead-endedness—for women—of Marxism in
our time.

Truthfulness anywhere means a heightened
complexity. But it is a movement into evolu-

Adrienne Rich is a well-known poet and feminist who has
published 9 books. The most recent one, Of Woman Born:
Motherhood as Experience and Institution (W.W. Norton &
Company), she described as coming “from the double need
to survive and to work; and I wrote it in part for the young

woman | once was, divided between body and mind, wanting to give her the book she was seeking. ...”

tion. Women are only beginning to uncover our
own truths; many of us would be grateful for
some rest in that struggle, would be glad just to
lie down with the sherds we have painfully un-

earthed, and be satisfied with those. Often I
feel this like an exhaustion in my own body.

The politics worth having, the relationships
worth having, demand that we delve still
deeper.

PLDI LDDP DLG DIG

The possibilities that exist between two people,
or among a group of people, are a kind of
alchemy. They are the most interesting things in

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27

ithe
mouth,
/et’s
i good
do get
not
together
say,
there’s
soon
been been
a revolution
letting
tell
some
patent
thanks
me for
steak,
seeing
andyou
there
again
have
too Zucchini
many one
night stands
and
feelBarbie
i've
paid
enough
Poem
but i tohave
chewed you
and
that
sat
with
more
downcast
womanly
eyes
(sic)
than
your
ex-wife
you are curious
remember
how
it i'm
feels

imperialist are
tentacles
vinethe mine
patient
in her
takingofshouting
over
gardenmine
behind
a broad
green
leaf camouflage
the zucchini
crouches

ing,
teaching
creative
movement,
andand
trying
to understand
poems
in
completed
Womanspirit
book
and
the
about
13th
synthesis
an
Moon.
alternative
of
Sheanarchism
hasmarriage,
and
feminism.”
proud of her
covering
belly the
Elizabeth
Zelvin appearing
isrecently
a writer
and
living
among
inaher
New
other
York
interests
who
has
are
“singing
song-writthe zucchini
swollen
squatsin the sunlight
withearth
a yellow flower behind
her ear
falls infirst
the stealthy
night
like a woman
then triumphant like acome
coup morning
d'état
the zucchini bides herrain
time
for waiting
the revolution

steak
my steak

in the revolution

Elizabeth Zelvin

Adman

was before
usually
too revolution
much
to had
say bought
no
it
all and
soafter
long
agoso little twelve yearsit ago,
especially
when trouble
the man
you
meant
the
have
put
my
anything
nightgown
that
on was
happened
that
i took
myitthe
diaphragm
everywhere
but
ingo
i those
days
honestly,
sorry,
orflannel
i iboth
would
don't
never
remember
curious
remember
how
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idon’t
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ishadn't,
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do
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what
said
we've
been
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will be
but
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by
oncenext
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buy
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and
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ityour
over revolution
steakmine
at vegetarian
going
dutch
all this time
which
have
paid
for balks
in that slick
packagedyou
heaven
every
moment
where
admen
will go
play electric you
harphave remembered
i remember
before
you
inmad
glasses
avenue
andinto
bought
a bowtie
you have let updated
your hair
growgood
longer
twelve years
later, how
funny
running
youspace you are conscientiously

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v

4 CHANT I7

+ Mais aussi pardonnez, si, plein d;
w De tous vos pas fameux obke èle
~O Quelquefois du bon gf'je sépare le fa

O Et des auteurs j'attaq; ule;

&) Censeur un fâcheux, mai: vent ifécessai;

8 ” w à blâmer vant à bien gaire,

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28

o sA

H3
TD o

M

”

B

g

FH r
© d
H H
©
prison in urine on a page
isa of

~

'

i'r j

Secret letter tropflsa xem

L Dok of F:
E * g (O

Her cell at Wronke 1916-1917.

Secret letter to her friend, Fanny, written from

V v :
:l, 16 January 19, e (jdier at AMible (third Na left, with Y”

ing moustache) is Rosi [ uxembi [y 7 OA

t < r“ -

French poetry,
probably
Rosa Luxemburg.
mandated
in the
center 1917.
with the drooping moustache, at the Eden Hotel

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29

sA jail :

— Rosa Luxemburg’s corpse, March 1919. Probably an official photograph

1932 £

,

1/2., urA he bref ar
Éun

ut

Aea, [7 ars.

arate, Chat

die Dich Sheera tuth, bar fit till
Gardo Pa
Zlece Siten 2/0105 ige hk Coy Fet

Abice Die, csd

Bevan Davies.) :

May Stevens. Above: Two Women. 1976. Collage. 10⁄2 X 13⁄2. Left: Tribute to Rosa Luxemburg. 1976. Collage. 16⁄2” X 10”. (Photos:

May Stevens is a New York artist best known for her Big Daddy paintings, in which “the personal and the political are fused in autobiographical images which are also symbols of authority and patriarchy.”

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Carol Muske
Who the hell am I anyway
Not to bow?

(Assata Shakur/Joanne Chesimard)

30

In July 1973 I wrote an article for The Village

This was a milestone. I had been teaching

Voice about a hunger strike then taking place at

the class for about a year and felt that although

the Women’s House of Detention (New York
City Correctional Institution for Women, housing around 400 detention and sentenced wom-

the women’s response had been overwhelmingly enthusiastic, I was getting nowhere in the
actual teaching of writing. It wasn’t that the

en) on Riker’s Island. I used a pseudonym for

women were intimidated by the act of writing.

the article because I was working at the time at

Far from it. They wrote to keep mentally alive,

the prison as a mental health worker as well as

to keep sane. When | first suggested the idea of

teaching a poetry class, and I wanted to keep
both occupations. Many of the women in my

a writing workshop to the warden, she scoffed

class were involved in the strike and were em-

phatic about the significance of their stand,
although traditionally women at Riker’s were
notoriously apolitical, even downright reactionary. Strikes had taken place before, but on is-

sues such as cosmetics (the women had wanted
an Avon lady), more dances and recreation time
or flashier products in commissary.

This strike was different. The women were

at it. “These women don’t write,” she said.
“They don’t read. The overall educational level
is poor. Reading, writing, comprehension. .….all
very low.” At the first class, I learned that all the

women “wrote”—they came to class lugging
diaries, journals, manuscripts full of long
poems, ballads, stories. Everyone had a poem
to “tell”; poetry was a tradition; poems were
written, read, copied by hand, and passed
around —a publishing network. No one owned a

demanding, among other things, a legal library,

poem. Ail the poems rhymed, and all were

an end to massive and lax prescription of diag-

either sentimental love/religious verse or politi-

nostic” medication, decent food, and limitation
of solitary confinement to three days. At the
Women’s House, where an old adage ran “all
riots end at mealtime,” this was pretty heady

cal rhetoric. My failure had been the inability to

stuff.

The article in The Village Voice (July 26, 1973)
was supposed to get the world (or at least Man-

let them see alternatives: a poem was not
always an escape, a fantasy, or a slogan, but a

way into yourself, an illumination. Somehow
the article, which was about them, about their
very real lives in clear, simple language, did it.
Someone said that a poem could be like report-

hattan) listening and to familiarize people with

ing on your life, telling the story of your life—

a woman's situation in prison:

journalism of the soul.

They tried out this approach. Millie Moss,
. . incarceration for women is a somewhat

who sat all day in front of the television watch-

different experience than it is for men. Male

ing commercials about getting away from it all

prisoners are expected to be political in one

and listening to the planes (one every three

form or another, they are far better legally

minutes) take off from La Guardia a few hun-

informed, and an atmosphere of “bonding” is

dred yards across the water from the prison,
wrote the first. (Millie had been a “hearts and

prevalent. (They are also considered more
“trainable”—more vocational rehab programs
exist for men on Riker’s Island.)

The administration broke the back of the
strike in its sixth day by separating the ringlead-

ers, transferring them to different housing
areas, or locking them in the “bing” (solitary).
But it was too late. The article appeared and
provoked a reaction from the community: pressure was put on the warden. A few of the wom-

en’s demands were met: a legal library was established, kitchen conditions were improved,
and other steps were taken. Someone from the
class hand-prınted a sign and put it up in
the classroom: WORDS CAN TURN THEM
AROUND.

flowers” verse writer: her poems were filled with
“giggly sunsets”):

Fly Me, I'm Mildred

Finger my earring as I lean low
over your bomber cocktail
I've been known
to put you on a throne
send you off alone (not united)
through the tomb-boom roar
you get what you're asking for
when you fly me, honey,
I'm Mildred.

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Personally

So you spoke to me in silence
in the ice man’s choir
and I dangled all the while
You said (in silence)
live each day
spittin’ on Fifth Avenue
fox-trottin’ in hell...

So we ain't home —
we're together
Smile:
I take it personally

pending a hearing by the disciplinary board. |
was told that I would be allowed to continue
the poetry class for the time being, but that if
another incident like this took place, I would be
asked to leave the prison. The warden sincerely
hoped that I had “learned a lesson.”
I had. It was just as I had told them: a dramatic testimony to the power of words—and, I
thought, one of the stupidest things I have ever

done. It was easy for me to drop in and talk

31

about “getting it down right” and being honest
in writing—l went home every night. For me,
there was no danger of being thrown in solitary,

having my personal papers raided, or worse. It
occurred to me that even when I had written my

ever-so-honest article, I had used a pseudonym to protect myself. There were obviously
bigger risks than job loss at stake for women or

men who chose to write while incarcerated;
They were on fire. I told them about Mandel-

risks I had clearly not understood. Words could

stam, Dostoyevsky, the long tradition of writers

indeed turn around the authorities, but could

in prison. I read them poems. Another woman,

also turn them into the oppressors they actually

Elizabeth Powell, came to class with a poem
about homosexuality which was explicit, honest, and skillfully done. The class praised it—

were.

Elizabeth Powell was in the bing for three
weeks. When she came back to class, she was

Elizabeth left the class that night, made a sheaf

ready to go another round (she had written 25

of copies by hand, and passed it “on the vine.”

poems, all dealing with homosexuality, while in

The next time I arrived at the prison, I was
called into the warden’s office. A member of my

class, the warden said, had written a poem
about her “unique perversion” and had implied,
she said, that there were also correction officers who were homosexual, one in particular.
She spoke of libel, telling me that I should have

lock), but I had made a decision. I explained
how I felt as an outsider, with no right to tell
them how to write in this volatile situation, but

I asked that they make a distinction between
public and private poems to protect themselves
from exactly this kind of censorship/punishment. Private poems were, obviously, ones you

confiscated the poem immediately, or at least
made sure that it didn’t go beyond the class.
(Though homosexuality was indeed common —
the “only game” in the prison, the warden
steadfastly refused to admit that she had any

described the class as “therapy” and she agreed

more than -a few “deviants” on her hands, whom

that that was a good way of viewing it.

she described as hard-core —in other words, gay
even on the outside. Actually, as is the case in

most women’s prisons, homosexual relation-

could get thrown in the bing for; public poems
could be “published.” At this point, I also went
back to the warden and told her she should not

be surprised at some “emotional” poems; |

The class flourished. The women began to
express themselves, to find words underneath
and in the midst of the gloss of everyday lan-

simple reason that human beings need physical

guage. Some discovered (recovered?) a subterranean language like subway graffiti: the

intimacy and affection when they are confined

poem became a Kilroy, a zap: “I was here.”

ships were standard even for straights, for the

to correctional institutions and cut off from

I had quit my mental health worker job and

relationships available to them outside the walls.

was concentrating on expanding FREE SPACE,

Definitions of personal sexuality tend to
change behind bars. Upon release, some
women remain “changed,” while the majority

as the class had come to be called. The NEA had

of former prisoners return to heterosexual lifestyles. The warden deeply feared homosexuality;

any manifestation of “butch” conduct was
enough to tag an inmate a troublemaker and
“male attire” was expressly forbidden in the
rules guide. Correction officers were warned
not to wear pants to work, and thus their uni-

form remained skirted. (Although many C.O.’s

given us some funding, as did Poets & Writers

and some local banks. Linda Stewart of The
Book-of-the-Month Club mailed boxes of overstocked paperback books; we amassed our own
library and Ted Slate of Newsweek donated supplies and equipment.
Tom Weatherly taught a second poetry class,

Gail Rosenblum taught fiction, and Fannie
James, an ex-inmate, ex-student of the Space
whom the warden actually allowed to come

were, in fact, gay, the atmosphere reflected the

back to work with us, taught poetry and library

warden’s artificial notion of femininity.)

skills. Each teacher learned to cope in his or her

After this incident, I was informed that the

poem had been confiscated and that Elizabeth
Powell had been placed in solitary confinement

own way with the trials of trying to run a writing
class in a prison. Each class was like a hypothetical leap: it would take place 1) IF the officer in

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2) IF the women were there and not a) in court

to lose the writing program itself. I began to
fantasize about getting the word out: if people

b) in solitary c) in another part of the prison

could only hear some of this stuff, I thought, no

the housing area remembered to announce it;

d) watching television e) sleeping and/or

one would ever ask me again about either the

drugged f) transferred to another floor g) trans-

quality of prisoners’ writing or the reasons for

ferred to another prison h) out on bail (good
news); 3) IF the officer on hall duty okayed the

32

running workshops in prisons. We would have
evidence in writing. Best of all, the women

passes; 4) IF the warden had not scheduled
something else in your classroom (usually a

would have the audience they deserved. I began

course in etiquette); 5) IF there was no contra-

the poems.

band,” i.e., spiral notebooks (the wire is a
potential weapon), chewing gum (jams locks),
tweezers, or snap-top pens (another weapon —

went to Elmhurst Hospital to have her child and

only ball points or pencils allowed).

Somehow, the class took place and thrived.
Visitors came to read and comment on student

to draft a rough script, a framework for some of

What happened to Juanita Reedy made up
everybody's mind about publication. Juanita
was treated so inhumanely that she refused to
let prison doctors touch her upon her return.
She wrote a poem about her experience, which

work: poets Mae Jackson, Daniela Gioseffi,
Daniel Halpern, Audre Lorde. For a long time,
everyone learned. Information was taken in,
absorbed—classes were spent writing and re-

she developed into a longer “Birth Journal.” She

writing, letting off steam.

The issue began to circulate in the prison.

Almost four years later, most of the women

published it in Majority Report, the feminist
journal. Iri the same issue there was an article
about FREE SPACE and a poem by Carole Ramer.

Assata, inspired by Juanita, wrote her own

from the old class had been transferred or freed

“Birth Journal” and sent it to a major magazine.

(detention women often spend two years wait-

One night in class she read this poem:

ing for trial), but emphasis was still placed on
“getting along.” We all stressed writing as craft.
Classes were run as any outside workshop would
be, except no one ever published anything.

Butch

You should have told me

The poetry class at this time was full of
women who were considered potential security

About your dick

threats —in other words, intelligent, outspoken,

Stashed inside your bureau drawer

and funny. Some were “controversial” cases:
Juanita Reedy, about to have her first child
behind bars; Carole Ramer, who had been

I woulda believed you

busted with Abbie Hoffman and who had a lot

Ya say ya wanna be my daddy

to say about everything; Gloria Jensen, whose
imagination was like a vaudeville show; Assata
Shakur/Joanne Chesimard—alleged leader of
the Black Liberation Army, brilliant and talented, with a Cool-Hand Luke aura of insouciance, compassion, and tenacity. (Assata was
considered so dangerous that the prison required her to have a continual guard-escort.)
These women were all good writers. They had
learned craft and practiced it—and wanted
more. They wanted to go further than “therapeutic” writing or workshop poems. They were

Ya say ya wanna be my daddy

writing dynamite.

After four years, there was a huge pile of

Ya say ya wanna be my daddy

Yeah! Run it! I'm ready!
My mamma warned me about you
She taught me about you
She beat me about you
But I thought you were a man...

And I lower my eyes
And I lower my back
And I swivel my hips
And I lighten my voice
And I powder my nose

handwritten poems, Fannie’s log with the names

And I blue up my eyes

of every woman who had come to class, some

And I redden my cheeks

incredible memories, and that was all. We went

And I jump when you call

to the prison week after week and no one ever

And I cook and I knit

saw or heard what the women wrote: the voices

were never heard outside, and on the inside,

And I clean and I sew

only in class. I began to feel that something had

And it is all so cozy

to give—no matter what risks were involved for

You lying in my arms

the women (if they should decide to publish)—

(If I am not being too forward,

and for FREE SPACE as a writing program. It was

too unladylike)

Catch 22—we were losing either way. At this
stage, the women were denied the natural ful-

But who will know, anyway,

fillment of self-expression, which is publication.

That you were in my arms

If we published their writing, however, we stood

Not me in yours

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And if it comes to it

ings by Women in Prison. The anthology was

To save face

sold in New York bookstores and distributed to

You can lie

the women in the classes. It contained some of

I'll back you up

the best work done in the classes.

I've gotten very good at it lately

By now I had handed over a rough script to

the poetry class and an idea about doing some
You should have told me
About your status —
I would have bowed to you
What’s one more bow, anyway?

I bow to the dollar
I bow to the scholar
I bow to the white house
I bow to the church mouse
I bow to tradition
I bow to contrition
I bow to the butcher
I bow to the baker
I bow to the goddamn
lightbulb maker —

Who the hell am I anyway
Not to bow?

What else do I know how to do?

But you should have told me baby
You should have hipped me momma
I didn’t know you would pull it out
And strap it on

Fucking me mercilessly
Long stroking me
So that even my shadow is moaning
But damn baby
I didn't know
You coulda saved me the trip —
I thought I was on my way
To a garden
Where fruit ain't forbidden
Where snakes do not crawl to seduce
I thought for a second
That earth was a good thing
That acting had played out

And cotillions were outlawed

kind of theater piece. The women put together

a revue of loosely scripted poems, songs, and
vignettes called Next Time. They memorized
lines and improvised costumes. Karen Sanderson, a friend and videotape expert, arrived at
the prison one Sunday with a crew of women

33

(after endless haggling for permission; we told
the Corrections Department that we needed the

videotape as a rehearsal tool for a play) and
taped for nine hours straight. Finally, after
months of editing, a half-hour tape emerged
which documents the poems, songs, love, and
exasperation of some of these incredible women. (This tape is available to anyone interested.)
In September 1975, FREE SPACE merged with
ART WITHOUT WALLS, another arts project for

women in prison. Now we were able to offer
graphic arts and dance, in addition to having a

larger staff. The publishing idea had fulfilled
itself, a renaissance. Juanita had begun a book
about her experiences; another woman, Isabelle
Newton, was collecting her poems in manuscript. Then Assata, who had been held in solitary for one year in New Jersey, whose cell was
raided by guards every day in search of contra-

band, and who had been beaten by the prison
goon squad on numerous occasions, completed
her book of poems and wrote two chapters of a
book, an account of her arrest and life in prison.
The warden stopped me in the hall one day and
told me that she knew we were collaborating on
a book with Assata and Juanita. She told me she
hadn't forgotten the Elizabeth Powell case.
On November 26, 1975, Gail was preparing to
leave home to go to her fiction class (filled with
new students) when the phone rang. It was Dep-

uty Freeman, the WHD Program Director, who
advised her not to come to class: the program
had been cancelled. We were not allowed to do
anything after that except to pick up our books

and any program belongings; we couldn't say
good-bye to anyone or discuss plans for any of
their work.

That bingo was over
And ladies had drowned in their tea

But now that I'm hip momma
Come, fuck me.

(© Assata Shakur/Joanne Chesimard)
Some of Assata’s poems were accepted for
publication in,a literary magazine. Poets &
Writers gave us a grant to do an anthology of
students’ writing which Gail and I compiled. We
published it through the Print Center in Brooklyn and called it Songs from a Free Space: Writ-

Naturally, we are contesting this decision,
but there isn't much hope in appealing a warden’s whim. It is, after all, her turf. Official
reasons for the cancellation were said to be
duplication of services (they stated that the
public school provided the same type of classes)
and irregularity of classes. The warden refused,
however, to put these reasons in writing for us.
It is clear that the writing classes were taken
seriously only when the women wrote seriously

about their lives and published those writings.
Poetry is safe, women are safe until they begin

to make sense and communicate. Still, ART

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recognizes the possibilities of self-expression,

Ladies. I had nowhere to take myself tonight

perhaps the walls crack a little. Perhaps. Words

Except to myself

can, indeed, turn them around, but sometimes
having all the right words is small change.
“Before despairing, speak of it,” said a wom-

34

To my own face
Reflected in yours
And my own voice

an one day in class. Even when writing of
despair, there's the fact—named and held to
the light for a moment—maybe even under-

telling me

stood.

Just the husbands and families waiting

WITHOUT WALLS/FREE SPACE is continuing to
work at a children’s center, a drug clinic, and

Just the habits and fast money waiting

another women’s prison. It’s important to main-

THERE IS NO NEXT TIME FOR ANY OF US

The kids in the street

tain the lifelines between people on the outside

The kids in strangers’ homes

and those inside.

The kids in our bellies

But what happened at the Women’s House of

Detention can easily happen again. Especially if
publishing is, as it should be, part of the writing
project. Prison writers have a right to be heard
as does any writer. Their voices are too important to be missed. Publishing is part of the art of

The kids we are inside

And the lies we tell ourselves
To go on living
LISTEN

not bowing. Each time a man or woman in a cell
No one got over on you tonight
No one lied here tonight
Next Time
(group poem from the videotape
of the same name)

We told the truth
And the truth is what you see before
your eyes

You don't hear me

Ladies

You don't see me

Before you forget, ladies,
Till the “next time”...
My best.

Carol Muske is a New York poet and assistant editor of
Anteus. Her book, Camouflage, was published in 1975
(University of Pittsburgh Press). She directs the prison
program Art Without Walls/Free Space at Bedford Hills
Correctional Facility for Women.

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Songs from a Free Space*

Astrology Hype

Ten Ways of Looking at Prison Lunch 35

Carole Ramer

Gloria Jensen
(With apologies to Wallace Stevens)

While in prison six months

1. With both hands over your eyes, releasing

my horoscope predicted:

one hand slowly to peep.

“Travel to exciting places.

2. Through the eyes of a friend you have by

New career opportunities.

the hand —who reads braille.

Romance and adventure:”
to have the thing brought in at all and just lie
So far—l've traveled from jail
to Manhattan Supreme Court.

there and sleep.

4. From across the steam line, where people
marvel at your petite body (if only they knew

Numerous other inmates have made
overtly sexual advances to me
in vacant stairwells.
Honey,
that’s not my idea of a rising sign.

it's not by choice you prefer to remain frail and
cautious).
5. From a prison visitor's point of view—when
suddenly, miraculously, all one sees is steak,
greens and potatoes.
6. From your window late at night as you
watch one man run with a rake, followed by
another with a sack, followed by a corrections
officer, followed by a ruckus you've not seen
but heard — then all three returning, dragging
a heavy sack.

7. Witnessing something come ashore in the
bay and thinking: my, but it gave up a great

Alone
Deborah Hiller

fight.

8. Wondering why they have signs saying DO
NOT PEE ON THE GRASS. Then seeing the
kitchen girls go out, mow it down and bringitin.
9. “Good Friday” —when all the world’s
generous and the relief truck pulls up to the

She who walks alone and dreams
will remain lonely.
She who sleeps with her pillow
only dreams of her pillow as partner.

kitchen door to drop off loads of potatoes they

couldn't unload anywhere else.
10. Seeing more clearly the lunch of steak,
greens and potatoes —as you attack the steak
first and realize the fight you witnessed (#6) is
not yet over, for the beast is biting you now too.

But she who sits in her cell,
and writes
will master this world.

*From Songs From a Free Space/Writings by Women in
Prison, edited by Carol Muske and Gail Rosenblum, New
York, n.d.

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36

it

D

La Roquette, Women’s Prison
Groupe de Cinq

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wW N

Sometimes fights started over cigarettes. For example, I got into

But hall,
therein was
alsoofa the
feeling of solidarity among the inmates. One
Another time there was a fight in the mess
front

We also
Or one day a girl gave me a little piece of candle about
twomanaged to pass notes from cell to cell by what we

in the
when
we to
were
inthat
the
yard.
Weandwould
send were
them a note
called
Youcooler
adidpiece
offor
string
inches
long.of
We
were
forbidden
to
because
have
she
candles,
knew
but
that
there
I liked
were
todidn’t
a “yoyo”
you
read.
lot
put
it
the
window.
certain
girls who
got
it;
was
the
sort
of
question
you
ask.system.
Shethrough
gave
ittied
to the
me note We
things
like
that
that
went
around
the
prison.
I the
don’t
know
how
she
if
she
lock
really
up
like
anything;
that.
So,
inup
any
with
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my
itfriend,
for
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anyway
Iknow
climbed
but
unjust
because
we
onto
didn’t
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it
thewas
get
ledge
anything.
unjust.
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would
done
it
mess
hallathem
toilets.
Ihad
didn't
know
over
what
she
mess
had
they
done,
hall
let
this
Icooler
don't
girl
and
even
out.
we that,
said
Normally
that
we
we
would
should
stay
have
there
done
until
two
weeks
inhave
thethat
nun.
There
was
blood
picked
on
the
up
floor:
some
one
drops
girl
ofhad
hadexample,
and
a nosebleed,
put
on
my
drawing.
time,
for
girland
had
been
punished
andthe
locked
indoor
the
her.
When
I the
saw
that,
Iher
stood
up
for
her,
because
other
Ihad
don’t
like
hurt
to
elsewhere.
take
Iblood
was
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with
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finger
|herdone
sides.
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hit
but
Ithe
didn’t
have
a been
grudge
against
her.
askmenight
me
for
money.
Afterwards—it’s
that
from
her.
stupid,
When
she
other
was
a when
girls
coward—she
saw
that,
they
all
turned
against
have
made
eight
for
the
week.
up.
She
The
bought
week
after
theher.
cigarettes,
bought
but
me
cigarettes,
and
she
didn’t
even
another
girl
didn’t
told
her
to
refuse.
give
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weak
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and
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and
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beat
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I!a little,
really
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expect
acharge.
with
four
a girl
packs
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of
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that.
my
Every
with
at her
Wednesday
the
I had
money,
canteen.
bought
we
was
This
had
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the
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to
didn’t
right
buy
smoke,
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medare
buy
needed,
four
so,
more
andThat
packs,
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would
butanother,
of intellect.
or
feel
...Soinsulted,
sometimes
one
there
girlbe
would
would
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insult
a was
fight.
We
were
acould
class.
girls
felt
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others:
gang;
itityou
wasn't
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aquestion
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respected.
to
ofThere
And
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if
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fight,
it.
just because
the Some
girlsmoney,
felt like
fighting.
Sometimes
wasand
a had
otin

The Group of Five is a Paris-based collective consisting of

The other women were mostly in the prison for bad checks,

These women came from all classes. In general, relations be-

But still there were lots of fights, sometimes for no reason at all,

English
girl
who
was
the
favorite
of
aIbuy
nun
who
like
not our
have
known
it There
was about
too
obvious.
it.
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As
girls
forhid
me,
itthe
Iayou
was
little—and
not
a have
lesbian,
even
a Itlot—but
but
I you.
nevertheless
nuns’
attitudes
toward
them
was
to
atages:
blind
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things
They
at
couldn't
canteen
from
for
that
Or,
day
favors
at
on,one
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shouldn't
time,
nun
was
went
havevery
out
had.didn’t
nice
with toan
me,me,
andand
| got certain
painting.
first
days
we some
askedyou
each
other,
but
afterwards
wegood.
flirted
here
and
when
there
to
pass
didn’t
the
time.
any
money,
could
have
your
certain
friends
advancould
tween
inmates
were
pretty
were
a turn
lot
of
lesbians;
prostitution, or, like ing
me, afor
robbery.
didn’t The
really
There
friends.
say
were
“What
also
are
murderdoing
here?”
except
to
best
most
of the
images
are
the
workof means
itself,
connected
resulting
in
to
the
each
other
by
mutual
of level
apparently
understanding
disparate
within the
consciousness
constantly
of of
thethe
meaning
confirmed,
played
Mimi’s
the
story:
group.”
most
“Bonds
The
cohesive
following
ofcombination
friendship,
role
on
narrative
the
accompanies
of taken.
a videotape
from which ers; I knew one in my workshop. Another had been accused of stealexperiences
of
many
women,
centered
thethe
group’s
increasing
concentrated
on
theinesthetic/sociological
research.
Martine,
whose
writing
iselaboration
based
onwhile
her
own
The
memories
result
is and
ausevisual
dreams,
representation
of
the
prisonaround
and
of
personal
Paris’
20day-care
for
which
the
prison
had
been
salize
suggested
the out,
narrative
to
elements,
collaboration
with
Nicole,
who
detained
there,
and her
she
alsoMimi,
offered
joined
the
an
project,
of her
Nil
experiences.
offered
her
of video
toaspects
univercollaboration
with
Nilarrondissements,
represent
on
the
theme
the
11th
of Mimi
living
arrondissement.
conditions
in
each
it
of
turned
had
been
through
their
children
at drawing,
abegan
center.
Judy
mentioned
Martine Aballea,
who include
Judy and
Blum,
among
Nicole
their
Croiset,
skills
video,
Mimi,
painting,
and
sculpture,
Yalter,
poetry;
American.
and
among
This
their
work
nationalities
onNilLa
Roquette
French,
Turkish,
when
Canadian,
Judy
and
met

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wW œ

IN ER, IL NE FALLAIT Y

The money that you made working, making key rings, was only

The money that you had on you on entering the prison was kept;

myself all
with),
they
weren’t
resourceful,
if
they
get
some
Instead,
Ibut
spent
my
days
reading.
could
do
this
Iread
was
not
really
fast
managed
toyelled
make
two
hundred.
I and
working
sanitary napkins;
friends
theyif gave
to me
ten
help
when
days
them,
before
| came
they having
in
couldn't
was
justenough
amake
enough
ragdidn’t
to
money
it.
to
wash
You
buy
to
had
cigarettes.
buy
to things
work
about
second
at
were
the day
canteen.
paid
after
centimes
my
arrival,
cents)
Istarted
lost
the
tool
I the
had
given.
Iso
got
me
to
go of
out
into
the
yard
when
the
nun
looking.
for
one
hundred
keyYou
rings,
about
a80day’s
at
by
work.
the(15
Those
nun,
sentenced
who
I worked
saw
yet,
from
that
while
the
it
was
those
library
twoIbeen
badly
books
who
was
paid,
some
were
a passed
week;
for
had
in
Ibecause
I me.
stopped.
to
also
would
thework.
|spent
workshop
ask
The
aseat
everything—Pearl
some
lot
catalogue
and
of
girls
we
time
who
had
drawing,
didn’t
the
Buck,
right
read
books
and
to
sometimes
on
order
explorations.
Inear
would
| use
godoor,
out.
was
at
the
end
the
workshop,
orders;
the
many
soMy
ofthe
itthem,
was
easy
actually,
for
money.
As formoney
me, my brother
you
could
only
it wasn’t
in
canteen.
Somegot
inmates
received

As for the nuns, apart from some who were especially mean,

Down in the cooler you were isolated fromGenerally
everybody.
You gotit took a certain amount of time to make
speaking,

Itmostly
was like
aindifferent.
question
personality:
they
liked
the
docile
In
the
people
there
no
whom
soap,
knew
handkerchiefs
when there
I arrived.
(the
But
for
gavetwo
the
youothers
nothing,
who not
had even
beginning
they
didn’t
being
like
with
not
the
get
English
I punished.
was
stubborn
girl,
Iupcould
and
do
rude
for
things
to
example,
were
I girls
would
forbidden
go
into
no
or
visits.
You
never
left
your
except
acell.
day
when
tothat
therecess.
cooler
cooler,
there
because
wasIand
had
athe
ayard
of
friend
echo.
who
But
sang
despite
inyou
all
church
Icould
did
Iwalk,
never
in the
gotbrought
sent,
from their best friends
theyor were
something
that. of But
them.
they
Afterwards,
had,
of me
course,
I because
sometimes
their
favorites.
behaved
toinmates.
pick Sometimes,
better.
that
butts
But
other
that
ingo
than
any
the
at
case,
richer
Or
had
I while
tried
left;
some
doing
welotweren’t
girls
all
kinds
did
allowed
nothing
of mail
things
to do
at
so
all
I and
had
got
aand
which
sent
alone,
was
right
in
away.
thecell,
to
yard.
friends.
you
You
in I once
your
only
didn’t
had
have
one
this
meal
problem
a Ino
day
because
wereprison
already

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w

About twice a week we could bring back up to the cells the rice

©

On our beds we had the right to three blankets—and no more—

and
sheets.
Inanother
summer
it might
enough,
in December
put
us to
all
in
the
cooler;
contented
themselves
found
with
blanket
yelling
into
whenbeone
of thebutgirls
in my cell| left, but it was
the
time
wethis
went
upoften
and
the
time
wetalked,
went
to
bed
there
was
.herself,
..who
closed,
Italso
was
but
forbidden
weabout
did
it
sing
anyway.
the
in
void.
the
We
cells
allthey
sang
once
together.
theintwo
doors
The
werenuns
couldn't
songs,
also
some
she
had
like
one
the
nuns
wechanged
had
hadtwo
for
dessert
at
supper.
about
Ithe
loved
half
toast
an
and
hour,
pieces
when
very
of until
exbread.
we
well,
had
and
We
the
webut
right
gathered
or
to
we
stay
around
sang;
near
the
hadwritten
She
aLatin.
friend
sang
and
some
of
sang
Adamo’s
silently.
cigarettes
If Between
for
talked,
a bowl.
Wenun
went
made
up
us
two
stop
by
two,
we
and
were
silent
to
the
again.
tune
years
ofIher.
Morpionibus.
in
a stove
religious
She
boarding
sang
school
in
church;
and
she
she
knew
had
the
spent
whole
mass
where withwater.
us, and
To we
wipein....
went
them,
in Ilittle
used groups
thepudding
ragto they
wash
had
them
given
with
me
cold
when
Iwe
came

P a

FEUA SES
CARTONS POUR AVOIR
PEW WIES,
DE CHALEY
QUELQUE TEMPS GA MİS
LUI LE
SERYAIT
DE PLACARDS-PUIS,UN
SOIR, UN
QUAND
MNIE N sas ai e SA

At the canteen you could buy pencils, letter paper, envelopes,

At that
the meals we got mostly starchy food—potatoes, beans, or
About these magazines—we bought them for the recipes

did
cutlery
to
own
the
dishes.
mess
We
hall
had
inbeen
the
brought
cardboard
boxes and
thatour
we took everyour
teeth.
Atwith
end
ofitour
the
meal—which
had
by bowls
incauliflower;
there
was
fact
alsobought
webread.
cut
gave
itmates—we
usthe
meat,
but
blunt
it
children’s
was
very
knives
that
chicken,
cakes,the
orof
things
like
that.
we
atThey
the
canteen.
Wethe
ate
with
our
hands,
tearing
itserved
withour
France.
salad,
you
eat with
pictures
salad. so
Wewetough.
also
ateIn
pictures
ofcouldn't
puddings
and
couldn't
prepared
newspapers,
but
could
webuy
were
could
have
in buy
on
them.
Sundays.
magazines
Often We
there
like Jours
werewould
de
pictures
recipe,
would
sary
if
you
didn’t
have
anythe
clothes.
Youthat
could
french
fries,
a book francs
atonly
my(20
mother’s.
for
those
articles,
who or
had
wool.
no
money
Someleft
knitted;
at
all,
ithave
wasdishes
winter
andyou
italso
was
necesway
to getBut
anytoilet
to money
work.
sent me a inhundred
dollars)
and
a was
little
that
I had
` tear them from the magazine and eat them. For example, if you liked

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>

a]

The cells were searched pretty often, sometimes when we were

Everything we received from the outside was also searched. We

We were also searched when we left the prison. You couldn't

It was on the eve of my departure that they told me
that Iwere
was different from other days. In the morning, some
Sundays

could
go on
into
our
friends’
Afterwards we did the cleaning up
normally
Ime,
wouldn't
have
been
allowed
coming
toout.
take
keep
Until
out.
me.
then
II condition
just
could
I had
left
have
no
that
them
gone
idea
they
outtell
on
long
my
probation
they
mother.
were
before,
Itogoing
preferred
but
to only
that
they
didn’t.
Oncecells.
you
often
really
into
hide
the
anything,
girls’
vaginas
and
what
was
see
least
they
likely
had
hidden
letters
than
in
out,
I how
didn’t
have
thewent
right
tochurch
write
to
my
inmate
friends
who stayed.
take
out went
anything
example,
that
had
to might
made
offer
a searches
drawing
doe;
a souvenir.
they
ofto
didn’t
a couldn't
One
be
little
found
let
ofgirl
her
mywas
taking
take
friends,
what
her
water
the
wasn't
for
drawing
luggage.
in hidden.
her
out.
As
hand
for
Intothe
these
with
end
Iif
my
had
things
certain
looked
and
drawings
more
they
weren’t
and
papers
even
which
seen.
and
the
others
stayed
locked
up in their cells, but we
liked
her
and
that
she
would
like
to
have
a from
closer
relationship
with
long.
People
wrote
towe
large
us sent.
with
letters,
the
didn’t.
smallest
As
writing
for
the
possible
letters
because
we what
wrote,
everything
life
that
Ihad
hador
them,
so... me.
for
knives
candles
we
love
had
letters.
gotten
Once
by
one
exchange,
ofwrite
the
her.
ornuns—a
The
letter
young
was
one
found
who
must
and
received
have
nun
our
read,
question
packages
those
was
nothing
all
that
expelled.
cutweup
ingot
them,
and
This
as opened.
well
but one
as
they
All
those
our
couldn't
letters
go
were
through
Some
had
because
practically
they
were
too
between
inmates;
we
had
been
the
under
right
thirty—wrote
to
letters
to
one
to
sort
ofeach
my
of
other,
thing
friends.
but
happened
She the
told
her in
time
that
to
she
time.
concerning
could
prison
talk
life,
about
the
nuns,
the
books
or
we
shouldn't
we
read,
ate,
was
have
and censored.
agone
minimum
through
We
what
anyway,
viceabe
versa.
said, “If you
that washed
she had
every
surely
day...”
them
something
before
there,
like
but nuns
It
that.
mostly
waslooked
I the
during
toldother
first
herthe
things
time
day
inand
we
when
my
weren’t
wenotwere
allowed
in
the
to
have.
workshop.
They
The
also
looked
for
mail
page,
written
very
small,
went
through,
but
2that
depended
pages,
written
onhad
the
in
person
who
read
the about
mail.
Some
we
did,
but
that
was
all.
In
general,
what
went
through
or letters
notandthat

It wouldn't stick: I was all alone with the other girl and I was Every week there was a shower session. It was in cubicles that

As for clothes, pants were forbidden. Men were banished from

During my stay there was an epidemic of lice. The nuns told us

like
that
for
three
days.
If
had
lice our
ita was
bad and
I didn’t
have
ideas
The
other
girl
did
two
weeks
in
month;
itto
was
farthose
from
when
there
were
lice.
lated
several
cardboard
lights
boxes;
turned
for
a out,
while
she
she
sethall;
used
fire
them
to
her
as
storage
boxes
to
warm.
A
nun
at athem.
We(men’s
had
to
wear
or
skirts.
I aarrived,
Idress.
was
lated.
sheets
and
which
had
been
given
us
were
goideal
to
the
kitchen
and
ask
one
approached
andpowder,
you
weyou
put
anyand
it
more.
on
One
heads.
of considered
thewenuns
made
fun no
of me; she
but
in
the
anything,
end
I was
lifted
that
my
I get
hadn't
head
seen
told
anything,
therealized
nun
and
that
I said
Ididn’t
couldn't
know
tell
her
had
to
besometimes
nothing
through,
and
could
even
do
if water
your
about
head
it.water
You
was ran
had
full
toof
find
soap,
awhen
there
way
towas
rinse
yourself
before
they
realized
what
she
had
done.itin
I was
meals,
don’t
know
were
where
inmates
she
who
had
been
there
atolong
time
When
and
who
it was
had
dry
wefor
put
on some
then
scarf;
stayed
taken away there
in a was
search.
one The
stove
heat
for
space.
was
forty
Then
provided
cells.
one
by
One
night
a girl
this
stove
when
in
and
in
my
all
came
the
the
cell
to
doors
had
ask
accumuhad
what
been
locked
anything
going
and
on.
else.
the
Weand
both
pretended
saying
that
tothat
Isleep,
hadn't
seen
The
next
thethat.
girl
I me
was
friends
sometimes
too
hot,
too
cold.
When
it
stopped,
everyone
beginning
Idresses
couldn't
didn’t
have
wash
any
it gave
and
other
clothes;
Ito
got
Ihad
other
wore
clothes,
itIn
night
and
dress
day.
stayed
I ...The
with
that
Ianything.
couldn't
the bizarre
have
cooler,
done
thing....
butday
it.
Ilike
could
She
knew
have
gone
didn’t
and
tooshe
close,
because
knew
and
I that
hadn't
there
said
were
anythree
of us you
in
with
each
cold
cubicle.
to
do
The
afterwards;
it,
your
head
sometimes
was
our
already
environment
saw
half
you
workers
dry.
finally
and look
the
from
got
nuns
Fresnes
chance
would
say
“Stop
prison).
wriggling!”
weren't
when
dirty.
supposed
we
.When
. to
.until
went
One
girl
the
cooler.
made
Itherself
found
wasmy
athe
a beautiful
skirt
needle
from
and
skirt
washed
athread;
and
blanket,
they
the
sorags
were
she
a linen
long
among
room.
time
the
The
things
linen
that
circulike
who
served
the
wearing
pants,
so
to We
replace
it
they
me
burlap
the
won
the
trust
ofmaids,
the
nuns.
The
sheets
were
changed
about
once
a vinegar,

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At Christmas the Salvation Army came. We got together in the

For the meal, we put all the tables together to be the most

me
some
cigarettes.
really
give
giving
each
other
anything,
presents.
except
We
cigarettes.
didn’t
have
Thethe
girl
possibility
I was going
of out with gave
things
was
were
painful.
trying
The
to
monotony
It
was
of
the
nice,
other
this
days
party,
was
butbetter.
actually
We
itdidn’t
any
money,
but
I awas
had
that
a little
day
and
depressed
offor
everything
weexample,
could
that
go
like
day;
toweeverybody
all
midnight
this
reminded
mass.
else.
On
A forget.
us
lot
ofof
our
people
families
were
and
of
all
the
part
of
the
prison,
there
was
nothing,
except
that
we
didn’t
work
received
the
In
the
endbut
thought
together
itwell
possible.
was
tries,
but
Those
nice
who
of
everything
hadthe
saved
little
shared.
money
I,
bought
pasdidn’t
have
pack
of
candy.
We
auscarols.
lota by
of
fun inmates.
because
we
weren't
used
to
seeing
mess
hall
listened
to
sing
sort
Christmas
of
Everybody
them
These
women
trouble
wastouched.
laughing,
themselves
they
us.were
I think
a really
lot
ofalmost
the
girls
were
have
time
to| get
out
and
was
killed
inside
the
garbage
truck.
were
very
nice.
They
gave
eachhad
ofwoman.
towel,
ato
handkerchief,
and
awefor
girl there
hanged
herself.
Sometimes
there
were
also
attempts
at
l them
arrived
here
and
whoher.
their
looked
completely
outside;
was
for
Iherself
told
went
them
that
to
it see
one
was
her,
inmate
harder.
hid
I was
herself
told
in
thata and
once
garbage
aescape;
can,
but
shethis
didn’t
overcome their
distress.
talked
I wouldn't
to
leave
Ofchildren
course
a poor
girllost.
were
by
those
who
had
their
husbands
and

Some girls reacted badly to prison lite, but we tried to help them,
Some girls tattooed themselves. They would take ink from ball

We wrote all over ourselves with pens, and there were ways of

polish
that
some
we
got
girls
atfelt
put
the pens
brown
canteen.
We
around
made
their
lips.
eyes
up, but
making
up
your
face.
asWith
eyeliner,
ashes
but
from
it
the
was
stove
hard
to
in
the
take
hall
off and
andpencil
water
we
usually
did
with
shoe
“Alone
Between
Four
Walls.”
It
was
we
could
the
emblem
make
mascara.
of
prison.
There
were
black
that
we mostly
could
use
inkhad
between
them.
as they
with
the
projecting
They
made
needle
snakes,
they
hearts,
made
the
names,
but
mostly
just
and
they
managed
toit our
make
friends,
to find people who helped them
three
points,
which
means
“Death
to
Pigs,”
or
five
points—
point
pens
make
and
mix
an with
ink
ittwo
with
which
cigarette
was
pretty
ash.
drop
indelible
This
way
slip
—blue-black.
into
they
the
managed
hole.
Then
This
to
they
made
took
a point;
they
made
as the
many
points
needles,
one
projecting
in Then,
front
of wanted.
the
other,
and
put
a drop
of
real
cards
that
been
some
made
girls
with
had
empty
packs
to
of
smuggle
Gitanes
in.
on
which
The
others
we
had
drawn.
pastime
was
cards—
Tarot,
Belote.
Some
ofmanaged
them
were
played
we
played
truth
managed
games.
couldn't
We
find
asked
out
lie
the
questions
in
that
truth.
game,
about
The
otherwise
girls
incidents
were
generally
didn’t
honest;
play.
But
you
the
biggest
as soon
on
thecould
innews
theput
came
outside
world.
They
that
To
didn’t
had
pass
happened
let
theus
time
know
atofew
we
days
played
was
before
games.
going
and
For
about
which
weyou
hadn't
That day we
didn’t work,
andasThe
we
sitinstance,
where
we
liked
in
the
workshop-mess
hall.
nuns
the on.
radio
on,
but
they
turned
itwhat
off

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All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Fays, Floozies and
Philosophical Flaws

things on it, such as phlegm, or spittle, you
cannot bear to touch it even with the tips of
your fingers. . . . Are you in a flutter of excite-

ment about the storehouses and depositories of
these things?”1

Arlene Ladden

Woman was so many layers of mucous membrane. And writings from 6 and 7 centuries later

attest to the muddy strides saints and clerics
had taken in the interim: “If her bowels and
flesh were cut open, you would see what filth is

42

covered by her white skin. If a fine crimson
cloth covered a pile of foul dung, would anyone

be foolish enough to love the dung because of
it?” Now, woman was simply so much manure
smattered across the coprophagous pages of
Christian doctrine.

The wheels of progress kept on turning. A
13th-century work addressed itself specifically
to women —three worthy recluses: “What fruit

does your flesh yield from all its openings?”
began their catechism. “Between the taste of
mouth and smell of nose, aren't there holes like
two privy holes? Aren't you born of foul slime?

Aren't you worm-food?? To the Church, woman was simply full of shit. Yet this was the
legacy bequeathed to the Middle Ages, where
the love of woman was a cult—an absolute prerequisite for respectability. And love flourished.

Of course, misogyny continued to flourish
too. Woman would still be called “a stinking
rose” and “glittering mud” and “a temple built
over a sewer.”^ But, as sister to Mary, she was
also the mystical elevator of the masculine soul
which, by its nature, gravitated toward perfec-

tion. By merely contemplating woman in her
golden radiance, man could rise to spiritual
heights in a kind of “gilt” by association. For
somewhere between the muddy slime and the
hazy castle spire, a new woman had been
spawned. Like the enchanted fay (fairy) of Celtic lore, she moved softly, gliding over but never

touching terra firma, surrounded by auras so
fragile that they were better left unpenetrated.
But these were beautiful, mysterious and prom-

ising auras, and scribes feverishly copied down
the formulas for keeping them intact: “If you
have ugly teeth, don’t laugh with your mouth
open.” “Practice making pretty speeches.” “Dye
your hair; wear false hair if you have lost your

own...”5

The attitudes in True Romances (and in most
of our pasts) originally shone forth from 12thcentury troubadour poetry, and even then they

were a little tarnished. Chaste, idealistic and
upper-class, medieval troubadour poetry supposedly countered a strong tradition of misogyny. It also supposedly elevated woman by up-

Andreas Capellanus, Jacques D'Amiens, Robert le Blois, Garin le Brun, Drouart la Vache,
Ermangau and de Fournival—all added their
instructions to the heap: Lie. Cheat. Drop
names, if you have to. Drop dead, if you have
to. Anything.

holding that same feminine mystique which, for

Maintaining the mystique was the important
thing, and that meant keeping the distance. It

centuries, the Christian fathers had diligently

meant the ecstasy was in the wooing while sex

tried to demolish: “Corporeal beauty is nothing
else but phlegm, and blood, and humor, and
bile, and the fluid of masticated food...”
said John Chrysostom, a saint, in the 4th cen-

tury. “When you see a rag with any of these

lay in the winding down. Even the ladies under-

stood that attainment decreased their value,
and many who loftily kept their suitors well
below thigh level would rather have had it
otherwise. After all, as even the ladies knew: a

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and blood is flesh and blood...and phlegm and

Maybe he just got sick. Or maybe, as his
biographers prefer to believe, the anticipation

dung and mucous and bile and etc.

of seeing her was too much for his little heart to

lover is a vision surrounded by auras. But flesh

became a person, a passion, a robber of reason

bear. In any case, as the boat was approaching
Tripoli, he apparently expired. But only appar-

—a literal and metaphorical scum-bag.

Once woman ceased to be a symbol, she

ently. For as the countess rushed to his side, her

No wonder the ladies were afraid to submit.

presence revived him and he pronounced him-

With submission, love and its raison d'être became the discarded backdrop for a fait accom-

self fulfilled at last and died again in her arms—

pli. The love was no longer ennobling (ergo: the

orgasm, but which Jaufre seems to have taken

a self-extinction metaphorically equivalent to

animal soul pawed and dragged down its ration-

much too literally, since Petrarch and other

al counterpart), and the woman was no longer

chroniclers affirm that this time he actually did

mounted on a pedestal (ergo: with the man on

die, and in all probability with his pants on.”

top, she was mounted, period). And man’s desire—well, that often died along with his
suffering.

It’s natural, then, that the really legendary
lovers chose the most distant and unattainable
objects they could conceive of. Guilhem de la
Tour, for instance, loved the woman he lived

True, Jaufre was a strange and nearly legend-

ary breed. But while to him sex must have
seemed an unspeakable defilement, most were
not so theoretical. Even troubadours who constantly reminded women that sex was debasing
and honor was all had an ultimately sensual
physicality in mind. Woman was like a fine

with.6 Now, such women were worn on every-

wine. A man twirls it about, observes its color,

day occasions and were inevitably mundane.
she was dead. On the eve of her burial, Guilhem

its clarity, savoring its bouquet and rolling it
around on his languishing taste-buds. And
though the swallow is only the means to the

visited her grave and, after ten days of morbid

end, the end is still very definitely in view. Most

But Guilhem’s enamorata was unearthly; in fact,

a good listener), he went home firm in the belief

pleas for chastity were only lip-service. Even
Sordello, a troubadour who repeatedly swore

that she would rise from her tomb and come

he'd rather die than see a lady even taint her

embracing and poignant conversation (she was

back to him. She didn’t. But for years, it was

honor, happened to kidnap a Veronese countess

only Beatrix he longed for. She was the perfect

and that didn’t help her honor a bit. Nor did it

lover—mystical, ethereal and unobtrusive. It

discredit his poetry. Such scandal was irrele-

was a passion that rivaled even Jaufre Rudels.

vant. In fact, women were irrelevant. Love was

Jaufre Rudel was ingenious. In an age which

valued prolonged desire, he contrived a wonderful device. He fell in love with the Countess

of Tripoli—a woman he had never seen but
whose beauty had filled his imagination so enchantingly that southern France became a glorious vantage point. And so it remained for
several years until, despite the protests of his
friends and patron, he resolved at last to cross
the ocean to be near her.

43

the important thing and the trick was to keep it

alive as long as possible, feeding it little by
ever-so-little in an extended and delicious
tease. Men could nudge at the gates to the
ovarian fortress, but entrance, they knew,
should be delayed. The ultimate object was sex;
men wanted what they waited for. They just
didn’t want it right away. And this largely ex-

plains why other men’s wives proved such
suitable candidates for adoration. Forbidden,
illicit, deliciously dangerous—yet slightly
damaged, they promised all the more to be
ultimately affordable. They were perfectly
fashioned for desire.

Desire is a tricky business. In Greece, Plutarch had admired Spartan marriages where, for
years, man approached his wife in darkness, in

secret and in haste “so as not to be satiated...
there was still place for unextinguished desire.”
It was a useful formula and was later picked up
in the Middle Ages when the notion of infre-

quent and clandestine meetings was embraced
a lot more than the ladies were. The medieval
magic of love was uncertainty. Even the romances preserved this ideal. The lady could
be snatched away at any moment by a darken-

ing scandal or a jealous husband, or be absorbed into the ethers which spawned her, disappearing into the mist on a white palfrey. The
knight wanted her like that: distant, pure, mys-

terious, virginal—a blonde Mary ascending into

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ual prowess when the real thing was maybe limp

by comparison. Love by its very nature was a
test, and knights were afraid to take the exam.
Or sometimes, it was better to put it off than to
putitin.
o;

Love became formalized. The knight waxed
and grew pale, and waxed, and waxed, and
waxed. It was blissful and aggrandizing anticipation. Too bad if a lady sometimes felt cheated—if watching her knight charging and gleam-

44

ing, she secretly wished he’d get off his high
horse and get down to business. What could the

women do? Their iron-clad men performed in
the tournaments. Ramming, sweating, thrusting
and galloping. . . . Ah, those impervious men in
the metal suits.
. . . The only things naked wère their swords.

1. “An Exhortation to Theodore after His Fall,” in A Select
Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip
Schaff et al. (New York, 1889), IX, 103-104.
2. From the Carmen de Mundi contemptu, quoted in Not in
God's Image, ed. J. O'Faolain and L. Martines (New
York, Harper and Row, 1973), p. xiii. St. Odo of Cluny
had earlier phrased this with almost identical wording in
his Collationes, lib. 2, cap. 9 (in J. P. Migne’s Patrologia
Latina (Paris, 1844-82), CXXXIII, 556), while Ancrene
Riwle (below) directly refers to a similar expression in
St. Bernard's Meditationes Piissimae de Cognitione
Humanae Conditionis, cap. 3 (Migne, op. cit., CLXXXIV,
489). The key phrases are “stercoris saccum” and
Never mind that the only pure-white creature

was the post-menopausal albino rabbit—or that
even the ladies depicted in romance were
potentially swivers of heroic proportions. Since
sex distinguished the distant fay from the dung-

filled floozy, relatively sexless love became
prevalent, and many women—whether they
liked it or not—played along.

There were advantages, of course. Love became a rare delicacy whereas before it had been

something like yesterday’s leftovers. As Ovid’s
classical formula goes: “Pleasure coming slow is
the best”;? meaning, the longer the foreplay the

better the orgasm; meaning, some courtly
couples, when they finally did come, must very
nearly have blown their brains out.
But some, for sure, were disappointed. Women were dropped, men bumbled like Perceval or

—like some knights in the bawdier tales—
they'd win their ladies with lots of pomp and
peter out before they could even open the package, their worlds ending not with a bang but a

“saccus stercorum” — literally, a bag of shit.
3. The Early English Text Society's Ancrene Riwle, ed. E. J.
Dobson (London, 1972), pp. 202-203; author's translation.

4. Salimbene, in From St. Francis to Dante: Translations
from the Chronicle of the Franciscan Salimbene (12211288), 2nd ed., ed. and trans. G.G. Coulton (London,
1907), p. 97; and Tertullian, quoted in G.L. Simons’ A History of Sex (London, New English Library, 1970), p. 71.
5. From La Clef d'amor and La Cour d'aimer in Nina Epton’s
Love and the French (London, 1959), pp. 30ff.
6. For troubadour biographies, I have consulted Jehan de
Nostredame, Les Vies des Plus Célèbres et Anciens
Poètes Provencaux, ed. Camille Chabaneau (1913; rpt.
Geneve, 1970—first published in 1575); La Curne de
Sainte-Pelaye, Histoire Littéraire des Troubadours (1774;
rpt. 3 vols. in 1, Genève, 1967); and Victor Balaguer, Los
Trovadores, 2nd ed. (Madrid, 1883), 4 vols.
7. Jaufre was not the only fatality of romance. Andrieu of
France—eulogized by at least six troubadours—also fell
victim to “too much love” and he'd never set eyes on his
lady either. See Jehan de Nostredame, op. cit., pp. 166,
180.

8. Plutarch's Lives, trans. Langhorne (London, Frederick
Warne, n.d.), IV, 37.
9. Ovids Remedia Amoris, line 405; Rolfe Humphries’
translation in The Art of Love (Bloomington, 1957),
`p: 193.

whimper. These were particularly grateful for
courtly love.

Courtly love was a game of foreplay whose
rule was often touch and go; it was an answer

(and a spur) to impotence. Some knights were
barely post-pubescent and many were sexually
insecure, preferring rich expectations to poor
reputations and one-night stands. Better to tilt
about the countryside, flaunting a passion and
flailing a sword (the sword had always been a
metaphor for penis—”vagina” is merely Latin

Arlene Ladden is a poet, scholar and medievalist who
teaches at LaGuardia Community College in New York. She
is interested in “the forces motivating culture—especially
the more absurd ones,” and in this spirit is now working on
a cultural history of sex and power. She is also co-authoring
a textbook series on literature and creative writing for
children.

for “sheath”), imagining a truly magnificent sex-

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Attributed to Margaret van Eyck. 15th century.

45

s 2

YOOCGOCS

OON
SS i
ni

“SE

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Carol Duncan

46

In this essay, I am using the term erotic not

as a self-evident, universal category, but as a
culturally defined concept that is ideological in
nature. More specifically, I am arguing that the

modern art that we have learned to recognize
and respond to as erotic is frequently about the

power and supremacy of men over women.
Indeed, once one begins to subject erotic art to

modern era. In the 20th century, the theory and

practice of psychology has given new rationalizations to the same underlying thesis.

The visual arts are crowded with images of
suffering, exposed heroines—slaves, murder
victims, women in terror, under attack, betrayed, in chains, abandoned or abducted.
Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapalus (1827), in-

critical analysis, to examine the male-female
relationships it implies, one is struck with the

spired by a poem by Byron, is a tour de force of

repetitiousness with which the issue of power is

also depicts woman as victim. Here, an endangered and helpless heroine—naked, hairless
and swooning—is chained to a large, phallicshaped rock, immediately below which appear

treated. The erotic imaginations of modern
male artists—the famous and the forgotten, the

formal innovators and the followers —re-enact

erotic cruelty. Ingres’ Roger and Angelica (1867)

in hundreds of particular variations a remarkably limited set of fantasies. Time and again,
the male confronts the female nude as an ad-

the snake-like forms of a dragon. This fantastic

versary whose independent existence as a physi-

artist-hero (he is Ingres-Roger) masters the situ-

cal or spiritual being must be assimilated to
male needs, converted to abstractions, enfeebled or destroyed. So often do such works
invite fantasies of male conquest (or fantasies
that justify male domination) that the subjuga-

her to an unconscious mass of closed and bone-

but deadly serious statement documents a common case of male castration anxiety. But the
ation: he conquers the dangerous female genitals. First he desexualizes Angelica—reduces

tion of the female will appear to be one of the

less flesh; then he thrusts his lance into the
toothy opening of the serpent—Angelica’s
vagina transposed. Given the fears such an

primary motives of modern erotic art.

image reveals, it is no wonder that Ingres ideal-

In Delacroixs Woman in White Stockings
(1832), for example, an artist's model (i.e., a
sexually available woman) reclines invitingly on

ideal woman were unique to him.

a silken mattress. The deep red drapery behind

her forms a shadowy and suggestive opening.
The image evokes a basic male fantasy of sexual

ized helpless, passive women. The point here,
however, is that neither Ingres’ fears nor his
Americans, too, thrilled to images of female
victims. Hiram Power’s The Greek Slave (1843)
was probably the most famous and celebrated
American sculpture in the mid-19th century.
Overtly, the viewer could admire the virtuous

confrontation, but the model does not appear
to anticipate pleasure. On the contrary, she
appears to be in pain, and the signs of her

modesty with which Powers endowed the young

distress are depicted as carefully as her alluring

slave girl, as did critics in the 19th century; but

flesh. Her face, partly averted, appears disturbed, her torso is uncomfortably twisted, and

covertly, Powers invites the viewer to imagine
himself as the potential oriental buyer of a

the position of her arms suggests surrender and

beautiful, naked, humiliated girl who is literally

powerlessness. But this distress does not contra-

for sale (he specified that she is on the auction

dict the promise of male gratification. Rather, it
pleasure—the artist's and the viewer's.

block). The narrative content of this sculpture
supports the same underlying thesis we saw in
the Delacroix: for women, the sexual encounter

The equation of female sexual experience
with surrender and victimization is so familiar

jugation is a condition of male gratification. But

is offered as an explicit condition of male

must entail pain and subjugation, and that sub-

in what our culture designates as erotic art and

even in paintings where nudes are not literally

so sanctioned by both popular and high cultural

victims, female allure is treated in terms related

traditions, that one hardly stops to think it odd.

to victimization. For Ingres, Courbet, Renoir,
Matisse and scores of other modern artists,
weakness, mindlessness and indolence are attributes of female ‘sexiness. Germaine Greer’s

The Victorian myth that women experience sex
as a violation of body or spirit or both, and that

those who actively seek gratification are perverse (and hence deserving of degradation), is
but one of many ideological justifications of the

description of the female ideal that informs
modern advertising could as well have been

sexual victimization of women devised by the

drawn from modern nudes:

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Left to right: Eugene Delacroix. Woman in
White Stockings. c. 1832. The Louvre; J.D.
Ingres. Roger and Angelica. 1867. The National Gallery, London; Hiram Powers. The Greek
Slave. 1843. Marble. Whitney Museum of
American Art, New York.

Her essential quality is castratedness. She absolutely must be young, her body hairless, her
flesh buoyant, and she must not have a sexual
organ!

That is, in the modern era, woman's desirability

increases as her humanity and health (relative
to male norms) are diminished.

The need to see women as weak, vapid,
unhealthy objects—while not unique to the
modern era—is evidently felt with unusual
intensity and frequency in bourgeois civilization, whose technical advances so favor the
idea of sexual equality. Indeed, as women’s
claims to full humanity grew, the more relent-

I try to paint with my heart and my loins, not
bothering with style (Vlaminck).4
Thus I learned to battle the canvas, to come to
know it as a being resisting my wish (dream),
and to bend it forcibly to this wish. At first
it stands there like a pure chaste virgin...and
then comes the willful brush which first here,
then there, gradually conquers it with all the
energy peculiar to it, like a European colonist.
. . (Kandinsky).

lessly would art rationalize their inferior status.
For while literature and the theatre could give

expression to feminist voices, the art world
acknowledged only male views of human sexual
experience. In that arena, men alone were free
to grapple with their sexual aspirations, fanta-

The kind of nudes that prevail in the modern

era do not merely reflect a collective male
psyche. They actively promote the relationships
they portray, not only expressing but also shap-

ing sexual consciousness. For the nude, in her

sies and fears. Increasingly in the modern era,

passivity and impotence, is addressed to women

artists and their audiences agreed that serious

as much as to men. Far from being merely an

and profound art is likely to be about what men

entertainment for males, the nude, as a genre,

think of women. In fact, the defense of male
supremacy must be recognized as a central
theme in modern art. Gauguin, Munch, Rodin,
Matisse, Picasso and scores of other artists,
consciously or unconsciously, identified some

is one of many cultural phenomena that teaches

women to see themselves through male eyes
and in terms of dominating male interests.
While it sanctions and reinforces in men the

aspect of the sexist cause with all or part of their

identification of virility with domination, it
holds up to women self-images in which even

own artistic missions. Art celebrating sexist

sexual self-expression is prohibited. As ideology,

experience was accorded the greatest prestige,
given the most pretentious esthetic rationales,
and identified with the highest and deepest of

the nude shapes our awareness of our deepest
human instincts in terms of domination and

human aspirations.

Nudes and whores—women with no identity

submission so that the supremacy of the male
“1” prevails on that most fundamental level of
experience.

significant statements. In literature as in art, the

Twentieth-century art has equally urged
the victimization and spiritual diminution of
women, shedding, however, the narrative trap-

image of the whore even came to stand for

pings and much of the illusionism of the 19th

beyond their existence as sex objects—were
made to embody transcendent, “universally”

woman in her purest, most concentrated form,

just as the brothel became the ultimate classroom, the temple in which men only might
glimpse life's deepest mysteries: “A Henry
Miller, going to bed with a prostitute [in Tropic
of Cancer}, feels that he sounds the very depths

of life, death and the cosmos.”? Picasso's famous brothel scene, the Demoiselles d'Avignon
(1907), where the viewer is cast as the male

century. The abandoned Ariadnes, endangered
captives and cloistered harem women of 19thcentury art become simply naked models and
mistresses in the studio or whores in the broth-

el. In nudes by Matisse, Vlaminck, Kirchner,
Van Dongen and others, the demonstration of
male control and the suppression of female subjectivity is more emphatic and more frequently

customer, makes similar claims —claims that art

asserted than in 19th-century ones. Their faces
are more frequently concealed, blank or mask-

historians advocate as “humanistic” and universal.3 Art-making itself is analogous to the
sexual domination of whores. The metaphor of

and the artist manipulates their passive bodies
with more liberty and “artistic” bravado than

like (that is, when they are not put to sleep),

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Left to right: Edvard Munch. Madonna.
1849-95. Nasjonal Gallieret, Oslo; Willem de Kooning. Untitled Drawing.
1969; Joan Miro. Woman's Head. 1938.
Private Collection; Pablo Picasso. Seated Bather. 1929. Museum of Modern
Art, New York; Maurice Vlaminck.
Bathers. 1907 Private Collection. Kees van
Dongen. Reclining Nude. 1904. Private
Collection.

48

gerous-looking bodies. Picasso ambivalently
The image of the femme fatale, especially
popular at the turn of the century, would seem

to contradict the image of woman as victim.

presents them with sham and real reverence in

the form of a desecrated, burlesque icon, already slashed to bits. De Kooning, in his contin-

ing him with a mysterious gaze and rendering

uing Woman series, ritually invokes, objectifies
and obliterates the same species of goddess-

him will-less. Yet she is born of the same set of

whore. Here too a similar ambivalence finds its

underlying fears as her powerless, victimized
sisters, as the depictions often reveal. Munch’s

gence and destruction are accepted in the criti-

Madonna (1893-94), a femme fatale par excel-

cal literature as the conscious “esthetic” pretext

lence, visually hints at the imagery of victimiza-

for his work. The pose his figures usually take —

Typically, she looms over the male viewer, fix-

voice in shifting, unstable forms whose emer-

behind the head) and captivity (the arm behind

a frontal crouch with thighs open to expose
the vulva—also appears in the Demoiselles

the back, as if bound) are clearly if softly stated.

d'Avignon (in the lower right figure), which, in

These gestures have a long history in Western

tion. The familiar gestures of surrender (the arm

its exactly this pose. The raised arm is also seen

turn, derives from primitive art. Like Picasso's
figures, de Kooning’s women are simultaneously inviting and repelling, above and below the
viewer, obscene modern whores and terrifying

in numerous 5th-century statues of dying Ama-

primitive deities.

zons and sleeping Ariadnes, where it conveys

The pronounced teeth in de Kooning’s Woman and Bicycle (1950)—the figure actually has a
second set around her throat—also speak of

art. The dying Daughter of Niobe, a well-known
Greek sculpture of the 5th century B.C., exhib-

death, sleep or an overwhelming of the will. It
may’also convey the idea of lost struggle, as in

the Amazon statues or in Michaelangelo’s
Dying Captive (The Louvre), themselves masterpieces of victim imagery with strong sexual
overtones. But in the modern era, the raised
arm (or arms) is emptied of its classical conno-

tation of defeat with dignity and becomes
almost exclusively a female gesture—a signal of
sexual surrender and physical availability.
Munch used it in his Madonna to mitigate his

primitive and modern neurotic fears of the fe-

male genitals. The vagina dentata, an ancient
fantasy into which males project their terror of

castration —of being swallowed up or devoured
in their partner's sexual organs—is commonly
represented as a toothed mouth. The image,
which appears frequently in modern art, is a
striking feature of Mirô’s Woman’s Head (1938).

subtly checks the dark, overpowering force of
Woman. The same ambivalence can also be seen

The savage creature in this painting has open
alligator jaws protruding from a large, black
head. The red eye, bristling hairs and exaggerated palpable nipples, in combination with the

in the spatial relationship between the figure

thin weak arms, help give it that same mixture

and the viewer: the woman can be read as rising

of comic improbability and terribleness that
characterize Picasso's Demoiselles and de

assertion of female power; the gesture of defeat

upright before him or as lying beneath him.

However lethal to the male, the late 19thcentury femme fatale of Munch, Klimt and
Moreau ensnares by her physical beauty and
sexual allure. In the 20th century, she becomes bestial, carnivorous and visibly grotesque. In images of monstrous females by
Picasso, Rouault, the Surrealists and de Kooning, the dread of woman and male feelings of
inferiority are projected, objectified and univer-

Kooning’s Women. But in addition—and true to
Miró’s love of metamorphosing forms—the
image can be read literally as the lower part of a

woman's body, seen partly as if through an X
ray. Inverted, the arms become open legs, the
dark, massive head a uterus, and the long, dan-

gerous jaws a toothed vaginal canal. The predatory creature in Picasso's Seated Bather (1929)
not only has saw-toothed jaws, but several fea-

salized. Yet here too the devouring woman implies her opposite, combining features of both
the powerless and the threatening. The women
in Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon, although
physically mutilated and naked (vulnerable),

tures of the praying mantis.

aggressively stare down the viewer, are impene-

this insect become a metaphor for the human
sexual relationship, and the female of the spe-

trably masked, and display sharp-edged, dan-

The praying mantis, who supposedly devours
her mate, was a favorite theme in Surrealist art

and literature. In paintings by Masson, Labisse,
Ernst and others, the cannibalistic sexual rites of

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49

cies becomes the Surrealistic version of the
femme fatale. More subhuman and brutal than
her 19th-century predecessors, she testifies to
the higher level of sexual anxiety and hostility

experienced by the 20th-century male. For as
women increasingly demanded a share of the
world, the defense of male authority became
more desperate:

Now become a fellow being, woman seems as
formidable as when she faced man as a part of

—Romantic, Symbolist or Expressionist—female nudes in outdoor settings are treated as
natural inhabitants of the landscape. Although
modern artists have characterized it differently,
they agree that this woman-nature realm is an

inviting but alien mode of experience. |t both
attracts and repels the male. It beckons him to

step out of rationalized, bourgeois society and
to enter a world where men might live through

their senses, instincts or imaginations. But the
condition of entry —shedding the social identity

alien Nature. In place of the myth of the la-

of the bourgeois male—also entails loss of au-

borious honeybee or the mother hen is substi-

tonomy and of the power to shape and control

tuted the myth of the devouring female insect:

one's world. The male artist longs to join those

the praying mantis, the spider. No longer is the
female she who nurses the little ones, but

naked beings in that other imagined realm, but

rather she who eats the male.

he cannot because he fails to imagine their full
humanity —or his own. While he values his own
instincts, or that part of himself that responds to

Pictures of nudes in nature also affirm the
supremacy of the male consciousness even
while they ostensibly venerate or pay tribute to
women as freer or more in harmony with nature

than men. From the Bathers of Delacroix to
those of Renoir and Picasso, nude-in-nature
pictures almost always ascribe to women a
mode of existence that is categorically different
from man’s. Woman is seen as more of nature

than man, less in opposition to it both physically and mentally. Implicitly, the male is seen

as more closely identified with culture, “the
means by which humanity transcends the givens of natural existence, bends them to its purposes, controls them in its interests.”

This woman/nature-man/culture dichotomy
is one of the most ancient and universal ideas
ever devised by man and is hardly new to
modern Western culture. However, in Western
bourgeois culture, the real and important role
of women in domestic, economic and social life

becomes ever more recognized: increasinglļy,
the bourgeoisie educates its daughters, depends upon their social and economic cooperation and values their human companionship.
Above all, the idea that women belong to the
same order of being as men is more articulated

than ever before. In this context, to cling to
ancient notions of women as a race apart from
men —as creatures of nature rather than of culture—is to defend blatantly an ideology that is

everywhere contested and contradicted by experience. Nevertheless, the majority of nude-in-

nature, he regards this portion of his nature as

“feminine,” antagonistic to his socialized masculine ego, and belonging to that other, “natural” order. Nor can he acknowledge in women a

“masculine principle’—an autonomous self
that knows itself as separate from and opposed

to the natural, biological world. Like Munch
before his Madonna, he hovers before his
dream in ambivalent desire.
Rarely do modern artists imagine naked men
in that other realm. When they do, as in works
by Cézanne or Kirchner, the male figures tend

to look uncomfortable or self-conscious. More
often, the male in nature is clothed—both in
the literal sense or metaphorically —with a social identity and a social or cultural project. He
is a shepherd, a hunter, an artist. Matisse’s BOy

With Butterfly Net (1907) is a magnificent
image of a male in nature (or rather a male
acting against nature), highly individualized
and properly equipped for a specific purpose. In

beach scenes by the Fauves and the Kirchner
circle, males—when they are present—are not
“bathers,” i.e., placid creatures of the water,
but modern men going swimming in bathing
suits or in the raw. They are active, engaged in a

culturally defined recreation, located in historical time and space. The female bather, who has
no counterpart in modern art, is a naked exis-

tence, outside of culture. Michelet, the 19thcentury historian, poetically expressed the ideas
implicit in the genre: man, he wrote, creates
history, while woman:

nature pictures state just this thesis.
In countless 19th- and 20th-century paintings

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follows the noble and serene epic that Nature
chants in her harmonious cycles, repeating
herself with a touching grace of constancy and
fidelity. . . . Nature is a woman. History, which
we very foolishly put in the feminine gender,
is a rude, savage male, a sun-burnt, dusty
traveller. . . .8

Even in Matisse’s Joy of Living (1906), where
50

men and women share an Arcadian life, cultural

activities (music-making, animal husbandry)
are male endeavors while women exist merely
as sensual beings or abandon themselves to
emotionally expressive but artless and sponta-

neous dance.

How we relate to these works becomes a
compelling issue once their sexual-political
content is apparent. The issue, however, is diffi-

“good” art, is never bad for anyone, never has
anything to do with the oppression of the powerless, and never imposes on us values that are
not universally beneficial.
The modern masterpieces of erotic art that I

have been discussing enjoy this ideological protection even while they affirm the ideals of
male domination and female subjugation. Once
admitted to that high category of Art, they ac-

quire an invisible authority that silently acts
upon the consciousness, confirming from on
high what social customs and law enforce from

below. In their invisible and hence unquestioned authority, they proclaim—vwithout acknowledging it—what men and women can be
to themselves and to each other. But once that

authority is made visible, we can see what is
before us: art and artists are made on earth, in

cult to grasp without first coming to terms with

history, in organized society. And in the mod-

the ideological character of our received no-

ern era as in the past, what has been sanctified

tions of art. For in our society, art—along with

all high culture—has replaced religion (that is,
among the educated) as the repository of what
we are taught to regard as our highest, most
enduring values. As sanctified a category as any
our society offers, art silently but ritually validates and invests with mystifying authority the

ideals that sustain existing social relations. In
art, those ideals are given to us as general,
universal values, collective cultural experience,
“our” heritage, or as some other abstraction
removed from concrete experience. Physically
and ideologically, art is isolated from the rest of
life, surrounded with solemnity, protected from

moral judgement. Our very encounters with it
in museums, galleries and art books are structured to create the illusion that the significance
of art has little or nothing to do with the con-

flicts and problems that touch common experience. Established art ideologies reinforce this
illusion. According to both popular and scholar-

ly literature, true artistic imaginations transcend the ordinary fantasies, the class and sex
prejudices and the bad faith that beset other
human minds. Indeed, most of us believe that
art, by definition, is always good—because it is

of purely esthetic significance (and the purely
esthetic is thought to be good), or because it
confirms the existence of the imagination and
of individualism, or because it reveals other
“timeless” values or truths. Most of us have
been schooled to believe that art, qua art, if it is

as high art and called True, Good and Beautiful
is born of the aspirations of those who are empowered to shape culture.

My gratitude to Flavia Alaya and Joan Kelly-Gadol, whose
own work and conversation have enriched and clarified my
thinking.

1. The Female Eunuch (New York, 1972), p. 57.
2. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York, 1961)

,

p. 181.

3. Leo Steinberg, “The Philosophical Brothel, Part 1,” Art
News (Sept., 1972), pp. 20-29; and Gert Schiff, “Picasso's
Suite 347, or Painting as an Act of Love,” in Woman as
Sex Object, ed. Thomas B. Hess and Linda Nochlin (New
York, 1972), pp. 238-253.
4. In Herschel B. Chipp, Theories of Modern Art (Berkeley,
1970), p. 144.

5. Quoted in Max Kozloff, “The Authoritarian Personality
in Modern Art,” Artforum (May, 1974), p. 46. Schiff, op.
cit., actually advocates the penis-as-paintbrush metaphor.

6. De Beauvoir, op. cit., p. 179.
7. Sherry Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?” Feminist Studies, 1, No. 2 (Fall, 1972), p. 10.
8. Jules Michelet, Woman (La Femme), trans. J. W. Palmer
(New York, 1860), pp. 104-105.

*An excerpt from the forthcoming book, The New Eros,
ed., Joan Semmel, to be published by Hacker Art Books,
New York.

Carol Duncan is an art historian who teaches at Ramapo
College. She has published in Artforum and The Art Bulletin and her essay “Teaching the Rich” appears in the anthology New Ideas in Art Education (edited by Gregory
Battcock). She is also on the “anti-catalogue” committee of
Artists Meeting for Cultural Change.

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51

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Ann Leda Shapiro. Making Love to a Man Who Isn't All There.

1973. Watercolor. 22” X 30” Below: Dotty Attie. Details from Pierre and Lady Holland.

*

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-

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Kai

4a >

Piei K
SeA

AA
PRs
a
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AT ”

4,

*-.,

M B w
The result was
curious and
unexpected

This was indeed |
a singular revelation

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It conveyed something
at which she could

hardly have guessed |
è : l x` $ |

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Joan Semmel. Mythology and Me. 1976. Oil on canvas. 60” X
150”. (Photo: John Kasparian.)

53

Anita Steckel. The Subway. 1974. Collage. 3' X 4.

mammata N

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ABCS
Susan Yankowitz

tions! But Manuelo Manchik was not a man to
hang fire. With a gesture of magnificent unconcern, he wiped his chin and continued
eating.

CHYME

Olympia had accepted that name, accepted too
the play of tongue and teeth, accepted even the

54

AN APPLE

discomfort of her body crushed beneath him
when poing! she was punctured. Too late to cry

Manuelo Manchik admires the apple before devouring it. He cups the thing in the palm of his

hand, turning it this way and that; the light
bounces off the curves of its golden skin. O
golden delicious, you make a mouth water! The
fruit is round and firm and fully packed; unlike
the mealy banana, it will resist his teeth just a
little. Again his mouth waters as he delays the
coming pleasure. He cups the thing in the palm
of one hand, stroking it with the other; it is

smooth and cool beneath his fingers. O golden
delicious, you do tempt a man! Yes there is no

doubt, you were made to be eaten. He opens
his mouth wide and chomps through to the core
in a single bite. Two black seeds slither in a rill
of juice down his chin.

BREASTS

At a gathering of talents, artistic and profane,

foul! she fell, undone by mastication. Softened
by saliva she travelled in mouthfuls through his
gullet and into the fat sac of his stomach. There
she lodges, divided against herself.

Fool, she chides herself, to have come to
chyme!
Her head is separated from her body. Her legs,

each in one long piece, are severed from her
crotch and from each other, Her two loose
breasts bounce from wall to wall, free-floating,

as his stomach contracts and dilates in digestion. Pressed against the locked pyloric door
she is grateful at least that she will not be further

fractured by the cleaving peristaltic actions of
his intestine. There is no disguising the situation: she is split, sundered, she is not in one
piece. If she does not want to sour in his belly

(and why would she desire such a fate?) she
must somehow (but how?) reverse the process
herself. But herself is not. From deep inside
Manuelo’s stomach, she surveys the chaos of
her members and thinks: I must pull myself

MM had spotted across the crowded room his

together!

own dreamed-of Olympia, half-reclining on a
fat settee. The exquisite naturalness of her
Manet pose enchanted him no less than her

DREAM?

near nudity. Under her see-through blouse her
breasts were classic. O wonder. O no wonder
that they pushed out the silk (or was it cheap

nylon?) of her blouse exactly like breasts; that
to exploring hands (at other hours of course for
now she was half-reclining naturally alone) they
were as round and firm and full as round firm

full breasts; and that the nipples which tipped
these breasts resembled nothing so much as the
nipples which tip such breasts. In short and in
sum, her breasts were truly like breasts. But MM
had no interest in the obvious. He was a man of

Maybe it’s all a dream, she reasons reasonably
enough, and when I wake up VIl find myself me

again, just me, no one’s Olympia, in toto. And
so she falls to sleep so she can fall awake. This is

the dream she finds: she is standing in water
being fucked in the ass by the shameless beak of
a crane. His long legs pinion her hips. He wades
and fishes, taking his time. It hurts. What can
she do but submit? Her name is not Leda; the
power is all his.

imagination, of poetry even. The excesses of
similitude multiplied by their exact number his

ESCAPE

pleasures. He saw what he saw: Olympia with
breasts which were breasts and at the same time

various other roundnesses not breasts. And
roundness was all, preferable even to that com-

monplace of literature, ripeness. Only one fact
was crucial and he had ascertained it, subtly
brushing his fingers against her shoulders: she
was not made of wax. So when MM opened his

She wakes up gagging with her left foot in her
mouth. No use sucking on the toes, they're not

sour balls, they won't dissolve or sweeten her
palate. Her mouth is dry with sleep and anxiety;

she could have suffocated during that nighttime shift. There is no escaping the fact now:
she must escape! But how? She wags her head a

mouth wide one night days later and bit with
gusto into the breast on the left, that same

few times to float the foot free as she ponders

breast bled. Damn, he had erred in his distinc-

Can she deliver herself through there? MM is

the ins and outs. The nearest exit is the rear.

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notoriously tight-assed. She experiments, jamming her foot in the door; MM jumps. Assured
of the flexibility of that aperture, she glances
upward to the other hole, further away but far

his intestine with her teeth. MM howls then
doubles over, squeezing her (according to plan)
more closely together; his cramp adheres her.
When he straightens up she delights to see the

less foul. Keeping her foot wedged in the crack

connections: her legs secured to her groin and

she sticks a finger up his throat; MM gags.

her groin to her torso, o classic venus though

Both routes are open to her.

still not Olympia for her breasts and arms are

Which out should she take?

still somewhere adrift. And her head, that ob-

stinate be-bumped ball, is lying slightly offcourse, planning the next shot.

55

FLATULENCE

MM ejects a fart and holds his nose in indignation. The cream of the art world thins around

him. Many noses are held. How could she, the
bitch, upset him so? He excuses himself gracefully from the room, leaving his smell behind. Is
he stuck with her forever? Must he pay with his

immaculate reputation for one night's overindulgence? O she is lodged there in his gut,
forcing him to take strong measures.

KIDDING

When she reached twenty-five, her psychiatrist
had said (though gently): “All kidding aside, my
dear, you are no longer a child prodigy.”
She had run home crying to her mother, blurting the tragic news. “So? What are you going to
do with yourself?” mother had asked, heart-toheart.

“I gotta grow up sometime, ma. He's right. So
here's what: I'm gonna have a baby!”

GLUTTONY

“I'd like to eat you up,” he had said. She had
been enthusiastic. Whose sin was it then? Definitely food for thought, his and hers.

“What? What?” disbelieving ma had hollered,
flinging her daughter from her sacked-out
breast. “I'm going to have a bastard?”

“No, ma, no,” she calmed her mother. “Im
gonna have the bastard.”
The child was born crying and one gulp of air
later, died. The bereaved not yet a mother in-

vited her psychiatrist to the funeral and told
HIS AND HERS

him then and there that they were quits. That

was how he would remember her: standing
HIS: She tempted me.

gravely at the grave, dressed all in black, a

HERS: He ate.

grown-up color.

INDIGESTION

LIKE

“I'm carrying her around. She weighs me down.

“I like you,” MM had said (as had others), think-

Really, I’m not a free man anymore,” Manuelo
confided to his friend the doctor, picking his

ing to flatter.

teeth with an indigestible sliver of fingernail.

angry almost. “You're not like me at all.”

“No you're not,” she retorted almost at once,

“You must get her out of your system,” replied
the learned doc. “May I prescribe a laxative?”
MILK OF MAGNESIA

JUSTICE MORE OR LESS POETIC

She hadn't cared who drove into her. iHe had
had a full set. It was good sport yes. And what

a ball! He had swung hard, lifted high and,
rimming the cup first with a brilliant display of

control, had dropped right in: hole in one.
Manuelo Manchik was not the sort to putter
around. Well, neither was she.
“You're a real swinger,” he complimented her.
“Just par for the course,” she replied, refering
of course to her life.

Now she was teed-off, finding herself in the
trap. O she had been green in those green days,

but she would lie in the roughage no longer.
With a method to her madness she slices into

He takes the prescribed dosage and waits.

NO ANSWERS

In the park, Abigale is lying on her belly, wait-

ing as pre-arranged for her best friend, the
putative Olympia. She pokes with a spring twig
at the underside of a caterpillar, trying to hurry
it out of its skin.

“Where are your wings, caterpillar?” she asks.
“And where was I before I was born?”
“And where, sky, do you get off, looking down
on me?”

Everything is mute. The silence is its own
question.

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OSCILLATIONS

TRANSLATION (AFTER RILKE)

Suddenly everything starts churning. Using all
anchored organs for ballast, she holds herself

Manuelo has thrown caution to the winds. “Do

together; he will not shake her up, will not fragment her. His belly bloats with gases, goes into
a rumble. So! He is trying to purge himself by

purging her. The rejection infuriates her. She

something,” he pleads. “I need help.”
“Yes,” agrees the doctor, “you must change
your life.”

O but it hurts! His eyes are blind with tears.
Manuelo weeps with the effort to.restrain them.

will come out when she is good and ready, and
56

she will use the exit of her choice. Tough shit,

Manuelo! She braces herself against his spasms.

UNITED SHE CAN

He falls back into his chair, trying to relax, inadP'S & Q'S
“Mind them!” her mother had warned. But what

were they? She had learned the alphabet thoroughly but the deeper meanings of p’s and q's

vertently giving her the room she needs to ma-

neuver. She holds herself snugly in her own
arms; they mate with their respective sockets,
home at last. Now, able to manipulate with her
hands, the rest is easy. She catches her drifting

had eluded her. If she had gone further in her

breasts and fixes them onto her chest. She knows

study of letters, would she have led a simpler

which is which, having observed in moments of

life?

self-criticism that the left is slightly larger than
the right. It occurs to her at this juncture that
nature is purposive in all plans. Nothing is very

REFLECTION

MM strains.
O resists.
The battle is in earnest. Some old words rise to

the occasion. “The man who hates you and the
woman who is hated are probably one and the
same,” her psychiatrist had suggested, madden-

much like anything else, each thing is essentially

itself and under no compulsion to be other.
Goodbye then, Manuelo’s Olympia! Goodbye
velvet settee and languid pose! MM’s ass presses

down into the seat, squeezing her upward. Her
body rises toward her head and miraculously
naturally unites with it. He cannot keep her
down. He does not want to. She is on her way.

ing her (at the time) into silence.
Was he speaking of suicide?
Hers?

VOYAGING

The thought sobers her and sheds light. After
all, it is almost spring out there. The crocuses are

already beginning their day-open night-close
ritual. She could if she chose walk outside with-

out a coat, breathing sunlight. Someone, also
without a coat, might be coming round the corner, fated to bump chests with her. Her mind
too, she realizes, can turn corners. And certainly
Abigale, her old friend, must be waiting for her in
the park this very moment.

Still afraid that she will fall apart— these connections are so tenuous, so untested—she kicks her
feet, gingerly at first, then with increasing vigor
as she finds to her elation that they will move
her. She paddles upward toward his heart. O the
current there is strong; she struggles bravely; she
falters, sucked into its vortex; she kicks, she flails

and manages, through stratagems newly known
to science, to bypass the whole throbbing mass.
The worst is over. She catches her breath at his
lungs and then, with a great final spurt, dives

SURE IS

through his esophagus.

His stomach is storming around her witha vengeance. She holds on for dear life. O yes, it is so

so dear, good old life. It is indeed of the es-

WHOOPS!

sence, hers in particular. Her imagination has
never yet failed her. She will live! Out of the

darkness, the closet, the belly of this male

She spills out of his mouth.

“Hi, Manuelo.”

whale. The way is lighted by divine coincidence

“Olympia!”

as MM opens his mouth widely to expel a belch.

They stand gaping at each other, both of them

The light rays down his throat, a sign. Her route

messy with blood and other slime. She sets him

has been decided. Really, there are possibilities

straight at once. “My real name’s Claire. Can I

in everything, even a belch, she concludes.

take a shower?”

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x=

Do You Think

Claire, not Olympia then. He looks at her in this

Jayne Cortez

new light as he scrubs her back. How could he

not have noticed those pimples on her shoulders? Perhaps that is why he was unable to
stomach her. But no, no, the mystery is more
than skin deep.

“Scrub harder, Manuelo.”
57

He does, marveling at the dead skin which peels
Do you think this is a sad day

off, flake by flake. How many layers are there?

He stares into the skin, lost in ponderings

a sad night
full of tequila full of el dorado

beneath the surface and then, with a wild cry of

full of banana solitudes

exultation, realizes that he has found his calling.

Dermatology will teach him the topography of

And my chorizo face a holiday for knives

the flesh. Through that mundane profession he

and my arching lips a savannah for cuchifritos

will explore the twin mysteries of desire and

and my spit curls a symbol for you

disgust.

to overcharge overbill oversell me
these saints these candles

“You're breaking the skin again!” shouts Claire.
“Enough!”

these dented cars loud pipes
no insurance and no place to park
because my last name is Cortez

YOU

Do you think this is a sad night

“You have helped me to find myself,” they ad-

a sad day

mit simultaneously and, with a tender embrace,

And on this elevator

part forever.

between my rubber shoes
in the creme de menthe of my youth
the silver tooth of my age

ZOON

the gullah speech of my one trembling tit
Shining in the sunlight which is shining too, she

full of tequila full of el dorado
full of banana solitudes you tell me

runs to the park. Abigale is asleep; a caterpillar
is making a moustache on her upper lip. Claire

i use more lights more gas

picks it off and tosses it carelessly into the grass.

more telephones more sequins more feathers
more iridescent head-stones

It slithers away as Abigale wakes.

“Where have you been?” drowsy A asks. Claire
hesitates. What words could convey the ab-

you think i accept this pentecostal church
in exchange for the lands you stole

surdity, the enormity of her adventure? An
attempt is necessary. She begins to stammer a
reply but her stomach, miraculously to the

And because my name is Cortez

rescue, speaks first: loudly it rumbles, fiercely it

of flesh studded with rivets

do you think this is a revision

growls. Both women laugh. The noise suffices

my wardrobe clean

for response.

the pick in my hair

Claire stretches out her hands to Abigale and,

the pomegranate in my hand

with a little tug, pulles her to her feet.

14th street delancey street 103rd street

“It’s time for another beginning,” Claire says.

reservation where i lay my skull

“It always was,” Abigale grins.

the barrio of need

And off they go, old friends hand in hand, in

the police state in ashes

search of apples.

drums full of tequila full of el dorado
full of banana solitudes say:
Do you really think time speaks english
in the mens room
LSLS

Jayne Cortez was born in Arizona and grew up in the Watts
Community of Los Angeles. She is the author of three

Susan Yankowitz’s first novel, Silent Witness, was published
by Knopf in May. Her play, Still Life, will be produced in
January at the Women's Interarts Theatre, and her published plays include Slaughterhouse Play, Terminal, Boxes,
and The Prison Game, among others.

LLL L LZZ

LZ,

books of poetry— Pissstained Stairs and the Monkey Man’s
Wares (1969), Festivals and Funerals (1971), Scarifications
(1973), from which this poem is reprinted, and a recording
— Celebrations and Solitudes (Strata East Records, 1975).

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Nancy Spero.

Below: Bomb Shitting. 1966. Painting on paper. 36” X 24”. Right: Torture in Chile. 1976.

58

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59

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Jan Clausen

60

Anastasia was long rumored

whole hams in her suit-

to be the only member of

case the good bitter

in the mountains

the Russian imperial family

taste of real coffee

the jungles covered

to escape execution

in her mouth she roamed

ho chi minh

streets freely

and mao is whispered

the soldiers never

change from out of the north

by the Bolsheviks.

(and castro hid

and lenin rode east

caught her the jews
1.

in a sealed train

trooped off to treblinka

and iskra means

it has begun
the rain

a single spark

9.

can start a prairie fire)

in viet nam arthritis

the rain-

is common due to

shaped sleep
of women who nod in doorways

and we came

months years spent crouched

unto neon

in damp bomb shelters

dollar signed

dreaming of good times

miami

bars and indian

and i remember my
mother’s soft

summer

face skin with the

7.

fallout scare

2.

the years

shelter with the
in the dream

shelves lined with

her mother singing
in her hair

picture it is

canned peaches

august i am

jugs of water

standing on the grass

the nuclear family

empress

in the atomic age and

anastasia

beside blue water
i am sixteen

you are the rightful

SAC is in the air

full of zen and

but she wakes in nightmare

existentialism

the bay of pigs cuban

acid lust wearing

missile crisis got stuck in my childhood

a two piece

throat my mother

bathing suit i
had my body then

screaming this word
“pretender”

moved the iron

mother

back and forth she

what really happened
in that cellar

listened about suez

browned, frowning

on the radio

bored as havana
before the revolution

8.

and mother still writes how she
hopes, keeps her shelves

the streets get colder

3.

stocked, how she helps
in my mother’s house there are

these expatriate vietnamese

shelves well stocked with

who can’t find jobs

cans, mixes, paper products.

in their adopted country

she grows more weary
of lies, potatoes,
her mother
still mourning the tsar.

dreams of land. dreams
of flight to the country.

her room looks out

6.

on an airshaft. the carpet

these white-skinned dreams
of cities without color,
catastrophes we do not name,
these dreams of dreamless sleep,
remembering nothing.

please give me a little piece

is worn. the bronx

of meat for

is burning. she never saw the neva.

i cannot eat your bread
she pawns the last

your unhulled rice

of the icons.
for i am a princess

4.

in my own right

she hid joints of mutton
beneath her skirt

country

9.

my grandmother's face

in spring she crosses

her pockets bulged

was famous

over, joins

pounds of butter

in the nineties

the resistance.

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Dead in Bloody Snow
Meridel LeSueur

I am an Indian woman

10.

Witness to my earth
this november

Witness for my people. 61

city is up

I am the nocturnal door,

tight. in midtown

The hidden cave of your sorrow,

the ibm selectrics

Like you hidden deep in furrow

have been bolted

and dung

to the desks
of secretaries

of the charnel mound,
I heard the craven passing of the
white soldiers

who are afraid, now
to change jobs.

And saw them shoot at Wounded Knee

the druggists refuse

upon the sleeping village,

to fill medicaid

And ran with the guns at my back

prescriptions.

Until we froze in our blood on the snow

a man has been shot
for going
over the turnstiles.

I speak from old portages
Where they pursued and shot into the river crossing
All the grandmothers of Black Hawk.

we slept overnight
on long island,

I speak from the smoke of grief,
from the broken stone,

all the way out.

And cry with the women crying from the marsh

i saw each grain

Trail and tears of drouthed women,
O bitter barren!

of sand a different

O barren bitter!

color, stuffed shells
in my coat. i walked

I run, homeless,

as before toward rain

| arrive

down a beach shining

in the gun sight,
beside the white square houses

white through the storm,
of abundance.

watched the tide
turn once.

My people starve
In the time of the bitter moon.

locked into the city,

I hear my ghostly people crying

i plan to quit my job.

A hey a hey a hey.

i must get a jacket
with a working
zipper, call
the exterminator,

Rising from our dusty dead the sweet grass,
The skull marking the place of loss and flight.
I sing holding my severed head,

have a gate installed
on the fire escape
access window.

to my dismembered child,
A people's dream that died in bloody snow.

(Thanksgiving, 1975)

Meridel LeSueur defines herself as “a 76-year-old Midwestern writer,” something of an understatement since she
has published 12 books and innumerable stories, articles
and poems. “Dead in Bloody Snow” is reprinted from Rites
of Ancient Ripening (Vanilla Press, Minneapolis, 1975) in
which she says, “Slogan for 76: Survival is a form of resistance.”

phasis on work by lesbians.

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Notes From the First Year
(for my sisters, a trilogy of revolution)

Susan Saxe

62
l

IlI

Patience

There is no need now to rush about my life,
I have time, each day, to unfold

I Argue My Case
Gentlemen of the Jury:
I have had the time and opportunity to appear

carefully, my rage —

before you in the guise

no longer impotent,

(disguise) of every woman:

But the most powerful force in the universe.

to you, sir, I was the dumb hand

(Do you hear me, Mother?)

that wiped your

Slowly like a sunflower, like a tree,

table,

Revolution unfolds before me:

to you, sir, a flimsy black

Newspaper pages beginning with world news,

skirt on legs,

and ending with the comics,

to you, some hard

and classified ads announcing the end

down-on-me woman who might

of things as we know them.

(or might not) yet

Inevitably the world, the nation, the city,

be downed again.

the arts, society, sports
and personals

To him, an ass,
to him, a breast, a leg

will be recycled

to him.

By patient origamists, armed with love.

To that one, just another working bitch.
To each, another history, to each

lI

Questionnaire

another (partial) lie.
We women are liars, you say.
(It is written.)

There is unfeminine (but oh, so Female)
sureness in my hands,
checking “No.” to every question
in the Harris poll, Reader's Digest,

Mademoiselle,
l am an outlaw, so none of that applies to me:
I do not vote in primaries, do not wish to increase

But you have made us so.
We are too much caught up in cycles, you say.
But your gods cannot prevent that.
So we act out our cycles,
one or many,
in the rhythm of what has to be *
(because we say so)

my spending power, do not take birth control

our common destiny.

pills.

And so, before you are taken in by one of our

I do not have a legal residence, cannot tell you
my given name or how (sometimes very) old
I really am.
I do not travel abroad, see no humor in uniforms,
and my lips are good enough for my lover
as they are.
Beyond that, no one heads my household, I would not
save my marriage if I had one, or anybody else’s
if I could.

perfect circles,
remember also that we are in perfect
motion.
And when you (and you will)
run counter to the flow of revolution,
the wheel of women will continue to turn,
and grind you
so fine.

I do not believe that politicians need me, that Jesus
Nor do I want a penis.
What else do you have to offer?

Susan Saxe wrote this and other poems while she was living
underground as a fugitive for 41⁄2 years, during which time
she was on the F.B.l.’s Ten Most Wanted List for “overall
radical activities.” On March 27, 1975, she was arrested in
Philadelphia and since then has been tried for allegedly
taking part in a Boston bank robbery 7 years ago in which a
policeman was killed. Saxe became “a feminist, a lesbian, a
woman-identified woman” while underground. She is now
in prison awaiting sentence.
Reprinted from Ta/k Among the Womenfolk, Susan Saxe,
Philadelphia, Pa., 1976. ©Susan Saxe.

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Posters from the People’s Republic of China

63

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64

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65

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Harmony Hammond

66

There are many articles written on feminist
art which try to pinpoint and define a feminist
sensibility. Few of these articles go beyond the

recognition that feminist art is based on the

thering the myth of artist as alienated and
isolated genius, abstract art has offered an illu-

sion of objectivity. Such notions suggest that
the content of one’s work can be separated from

question its larger political implications and the

one’s political beliefs. By sponsoring international exhibitions showing apolitical abstract

role it plays in feminist revolution. Most articles

paintings by former Communist Party members,

originating from the art world tend to be formal

the C.I.A. (via the Museum of Modern Art) has

descriptive attempts at documenting what
women are doing, and do not attempt a femi-

sought to impress other nations with the cultur-

personal experiences òf women by beginning to

nist analysis of function and meaning.
In a reactionary escape from formalist criti-

al freedom of the U.S.A. The way in which
Abstract Expressionist art was defined and developed by the artists and then used by others

cism, most movement writing on feminist art
deals with political issues, but lacks any reał
understanding of the creative process, how it

to further cold war politics in the fifties is only

functions for the artist and how it affects form

tics.2 Thus when women continue to respond to

one example of the manipulation of abstract art
to create the illusory separation of art and poli-

and content. Without such an understanding it

abstract art as “apolitical,” they are reinforc-

is impossible to evaluate the work as art. While

ing and maintaining myths established by men.

feminist poets and writers comment on each
other's work and write of their own processes,

we visual artists tend to remain silent and let
others do the writing for us. Our silence contri-

butes to a lack of dialogue between artist and
audience, to the lack of criticism from a feminist perspective, and ultimately to the misinterpretation of our work.
In this article I wish to focus on abstract art
and show that it can have a feminist basis and

The Freeman/MacMillan article is typical in
its analysis of art and politics. Abstract art has

become taboo for most artists who consider
themselves political feminists. Because of the
history outlined above, it is difficult to determine abstract painting’s relationship to feminist

ideology. There are radical feminists who are
making abstract art. Radical feminism operates
from the belief that women as a class are op-

but because certain ideas and issues occur over

pressed, and that a mass political women’s
movement is necessary to overthrow male supremacy.3 Therefore, we might ask, how are
the visions of radical feminists analyzed and

and over, they are of interest to us and worth

portrayed in this art?

therefore be political. Feminists are not only
people to attempt political or revolutionary art,

exploring. I will focus on one area of abstract
art by discussing concepts of marking and lan-

guage in feminist drawing and painting—to
show its origin, meaning, and political potential.
In “Prime Time: Art and Politics” Alexa Free-

man and Jackie MacMillan look at how art is

It is necessary to break down the myths and

fears surrounding abstract art and make it
understandable. Women — artists and nonartists—need to talk about art, and talking
about abstract art need not be more difficult
than discussing portraits, nudes, vaginas, or
whatever. Every work of art is understandable

viewed in this capitalist, patriarchal society
and criticize activists for reacting too quickly
and overlooking the revolutionary potential of

on many different levels. It is by talking about

art. However, they in turn react to male estab-

only begin to develop a new language for inter-

lishment myths about abstract (non-representational) art and exclude it from feminist and
political potential. They view abstract art as
private expression which is not understandable

preting abstract art, but also to integrate this
work with society. This language, which I see
evolving from consciousness-raising techniques,
will be able to be shared with any woman,

or analyzable to the audience, and therefore
irrelevant to feminist political goals. Thus they
incorrectly see elitism as a pre-condition of
abstract art, rather than realizing that this is
how abstract art has been used by men as a
defense mechanism against the alienation of
their own capitalist system; that as well as fur-

our work and work processes that we will not

regardless of class background. For artists, such

a dialogue with the audience is essential, as it
offers valuable feedback for the development
of our art.

I want to reclaim abstract art for women and
transform it on our own terms. It is interesting
to note that much of women’s past creativity, as

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well as the art by women of non-western cul-

ing art. Sewing techniques and materials as

tures, has been abstract. I'm thinking of the
incredible baskets, pottery, quilts, afghans, lace
and needlework women have created. Many of

of ways in the abstract works of Sarah Draney,

both process and content are used in a variety

Pat Lasch,Nina Yankowitz, Paula Tavins, Patsy

the motifs used were based on “the stitch” it-

Norvell, Rosemary Mayer, and many other wom-

self. The repetition and continuity of the stitch

en. Barbara Kruger says that she first learned to

or weaver formed the individual shape and also
the pattern resulting from its repetition. Usually

crochet and sew when she decided that these
techniques could be used to make art.6 For

these motifs and patterns were abstract and
geometric. Patricia Mainardi points out that

women, the meaning of sewing and knotting is

they had specific meaning for the women who

life, and connecting to other women — creating

made them, and in a sense formed a visual
language in themselves:

In designing their quilts, women not only made
beautiful and functional objects, but expressed

“connecting” —connecting the parts of one’s

and craft. Miriam Schapiro utilizes remnants of

fabric, lace, and ribbon along with handker-

their own convictions on a wide variety of sub-

chiefs and aprons in large collages, thus making

jects in a language for the most part compre-

the very material of women’s lives the subject of

hensible only to other women. In a sense, this

her art. Joyce Kozloff and Mary Gregoriadis ex-

was a secret language among women, for as
the story goes, there was more than one man of
Tory political persuasion who slept unknowingly under his wife's ‘Whig Rose’ quilt. Women
named quilts for their religious beliefs...or
their politics—at a time when women were not

plore decoration as fine art, basing their paintings on the abstract patterning of Islamic archi-

tecture and tiles, Tantric art, Caucasian rugs,
and Navaho weaving.
The way many women ta/k about their work is

allowed to vote. The ‘Radical Rose’ design,

revealing, in that it often denies formal art rhet-

which women made during the Civil War, had

oric. Women tend to talk first about their per-

a black center for each rose and was an expres-

sonal associations with the piece, and then
about how these are implemented through visual means; in other words, how successful the

sion of sympathy with the slaves.4

As we examine some contemporary abstract

piece is in its own terms.. This approach to art

of identity and connection with our own past

and to discussing art has developed from the
consciousness-raising experience. It deals pri-

creativity rather than that of the oppressor who

marily with the work itself, what it says and how

art by women, it is important to develop a sense

has claimed “fine art” and “abstract art” for

it says it—rather than with an imposed set of

himself. In fact, the patriarchal putdown of

esthetic beliefs.

“decorative” traditional art and “craft” has outright racist, classist, and sexist overtones. Elizabeth Weatherford states:

Art history assigns creative products to two
categories—fine arts and crafts—and then certifies as legitimate only the fine arts, thereby

67

a sense of community and wholeness. Other
women, drawing on women’s traditional arts,
make specific painterly reference to decoration

In her excellent catalogue introduction to
“Changes,” an exhibition by Betsy Damon and
Carole Fisher, Kathryn C. Johnson comments
that “intent” is most important when defining
feminist art. She states that it is “a powerful
oneness of subject and content” that makes
certain work feminist:

excluding those creative traditions of primitive

people, peasants, women, and many other

. . Their work both is and tells about the pain

groups outside the mainstream of Western

of their life experiences. It is about pain and is

history.5

painful, but does not present woman as passive
victim. The pain is presented with deep understanding of its sources and effects, and the

Until recently, decorative art, or craft tech-

niques and materials, have been valid only as
sources for contemporary male artists. While
women working with these ideas, techniques,
and materials have been ignored (Ann Wilson

anger which follows confrontation with the
hurt.”

Fisher writes:

first painted on quilts in 1958) or put down for

doing “women’s work,” men like Shields,
Oldenburg, Stella, and Noland are hailed as
innovative. But times have changed. Today
many female artists are connecting to a long
line of creativity by proudly referring to women’s traditional arts in their own work. They are

Betsy looked at the work and recognized the
fact that I worked to survive, to keep from
growing crazy, and to keep the pain from becoming too great. She recognized the pain in
my work instantly! This was something I had
only come to recently recognize and acknowledge in my work. Like many women in our

recording the ritual of women’s artmaking both

culture, I had become adept at hiding and

in the past and the present, thereby reflecting a

covering my pain. I had gotten all the messages
that to be vulnerable in our culture is to be

feminist concern not only with the end product
but with the daily process and function of mak-

weak and despised.®

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It is this “oneness of subject and content”
that carries their work through feminist consciousness beyond the personal to the political.
It is also present in abstract paintings that seem
superficially more related to the male modernist
tradition than to women’s creativity in that they

involve the physically expressive manipulation
of paint on a two-dimensional surface.
In much of this work the reoccurring stitch of
68

women’s traditional artmaking becomes the repetitive mark, taking on a new form as a “visual
diary.” Such works are daily records of thoughts
and are used as such by the artists. Just as the

weaver continues from day to day, from one
physical and psychic location to another, materials and dyes changing slightly, irregularities
and tension showing, the painted marks also
reveal daily emotional changes and tensions.
They are a record of present feeling, a ritual
giving in to the repetitive gesture, a language to
reveal self —a woman’s mantra.

Jenny Snider’s nervous lines recall ancient
Chinese calligraphy, which has both a letter/
character reference and a body/figure reference. Her drawings are made with and are
about her nervousness and vulnerability. She
“is” the mark, the line. As the marks are repeat-

ed and contained in different spaces (usually
grids or rectangles suggesting fabric, rooms and

houses), the quality and feeling of the line
changes and she becomes more comfortable in

within the confines of a “particular felt shape”
(a circle or a piece of irregularly cut masonite).

The marks of paint, layered on top of each
other, lead eventually to a rich sensuous surface. The top layer usually consists of strong
marks holding the partially revealed undermarks to the painting surface—feelings revealed and hidden. Fishman has always talked
about her work in terms of hiding, guilt, vul-

nerability, anger, and personal individuation.
In a seven-panel reversible painting on unstretched canvas, Fishman deals with her feelings about her mother, also an artist. One side

of each canvas is painted with calm strokes,
while on the other side the marks explode into

intensely scrawled letters reading “A letter to
my mother about painting.” Another canvas has
the star of David and the words “I am a Jewish

working-class dyke” scratched into the surface.
Just as consciousness raising leads to political
awareness, this work moves from the personal
into the political. Titled Angry Jill, Angry Djuna,

Angry Paula, Angry Sarah, and so on...they
seem to be painted with the anger. When she
made these “angry paintings” Fishman said that

all she could feel was her rage. When she
looked around at other women, she saw that
they were crippled by their anger too. These
paintings were made to force women to confront it rather than letting it turn inward and

some spaces than in others. She explores her

become self-destructive. Grouped together as a
wall of women’s anger, the paintings show a

self-image and feelings about her body in rela-

tremendous amount of energy that can now be

tionship to other people and spaces. Snider de-

redirected towards feminist creativity and

scribes these works as “figurative.” To me, it is

revolution.

the mark and its repetition that is most impor-

These women as well as others (Joan Snyder,

tant. Her works are figurative in the sense that

Carla Tardi, and Pat Steir, to name a few) have

Chinese calligraphy is figurative—in having a
direct body reference. Works are sometimes
combined or used interchangeably with the
markings, reinforcing Snider's commitment to

used words and marks fairly interchangeably as

the diaristic mode. As she says, “The words and

monologue but also a dialogue with other wom-

lines come from the same psychological place

en. Like Damon and Fisher, these artists make
individual feeling and experience the subject of
their work, while the content deals with the
difficulties and ambiguities of being a feminist

and gesture and are not intended to describe or

explain what the drawings are in terms of
images—but rather express the fact that they
come from a nervous hand and a yakking
heart.” Phrases such as “little sounds arose (and
it showed)”; “Well, for one thing, never step on

broken glass”; and “Remember when we saw
the ocean? It was just like this, wasn’t it?” tell

abstract gestures with concrete feminist meanings. Words are marks and marks are words;
their repetition becomes not only an interior

artist in a patriarchal society.

Their painting surfaces are often violated or
mutilated; cut, gouged, ripped, scratched, or
torn. The reversal of the usual additive process
of painting refers to the violation of the tradi-

where the drawing is coming from and what the

tional painting surface and also to the physical

drawing is about.

and psychic violation of women. The thick paint

Louise Fishman’s paintings also function as a

applied with a palette knife in Fishman’s work,

ment directed towards other women. Earlier,

for instance, acts both as poultice for wounds
and cement for holding self together. In Joan

Fishman ripped up her old paintings and recon-

Snyder's recent work the marks, cuts and burning

nected them by sewing and knotting them to-

place for personal confrontation and as a state-

and connecting thread formed loose grids,

combine with words and color to make a passionate statement about sexuality.
This work is certainly political. Yet Freeman
and MacMillan, in their attempt to distinguish

transformed in later work to a series of strokes

protest from political art, to show that specific

or marks repeated across the page or canvas or

forms are more conducive to one or another,

gether with fragile thread. Her past was used to
make a statement about her present. The strips

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69

Above: Jenny Snider. Split Scribble. 1972. Pencil on paper.
24” X 38”. (Photo: Jenny Snider.)

Below: Louise Fishman. Angry Harmony. 1970. Acrylic and
pastel on paper. 30” X 40”. (Photo: Sarah Whitworth.)

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still ignore the political potential of abstraction.?

As abstract artists, we need to develop new

They accept male definitions of what art is, and

abstract forms for revolutionary art.

do not deal with the evolution of a feminist

include my own, is moving in this direction. We

reformist approach to a revolutionary endeavor.

are not yet there. Hopefully, as we create art
within the context of other women’s art, and

I am reminded of Andrea Dworkin’s “after-

70

The women’s work I've discussed here, and |

creative process or feminist art forms. Theirs is a

word”—”The Great Punctuation Typography
Struggle” —in her book Woman Hating, where
she explains how the text was altered against

within the context of evolving feminist theory,

her will by the publisher’s insistence on upper-

ment and describes our development. In a sense

we will develop a new visual language. Art in
transition is political, for it both is our develop-

case letters and standard punctuation. She had

we are coming out through our art, and the

wanted the book to be as empty of convention

work itself is a record of the ongoing process of

as possible, to create a new form that would

developing a feminist esthetic ideology.

merge with the content.
reading a text which violates standard form

1. Alexa Freeman and Jackie MacMillan, “Prime Time: Art
and Politics,” Quest: A Feminist Quarterly (Summer,
1975).

forces one to change mental sets in order to

2. Eva Cockcroft, “Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the

read. there is no distance. the new form, which

Cold War,” Artforum (June, 1974).
3. Brooke, “The Retreat to Cultural Feminism,” in Femi,

is in some ways unfamiliar, forces one to read
differently—not to read about different things,
but to read in different ways.
to permit writers to use forms which violate
convention just might permit writers to develop forms which would teach people to think
differently: not to think about different things,
but to think in different ways. that work is not
permitted.10

nist Revolution, ed. Redstockings (New York, 1975).
4. Patricia Mainardi, “Quilts: The Great American Art,”
The Feminist Art Journal (Winter, 1973).
5. Elizabeth Weatherford, “Craft for Arts Sake,” Ms.
Magazine (May, 1973).
6. Ibid.

7. Kathryn C. Johnson, catalogue introduction to
“Changes,” exhibition by Betsy Damon and Carole
Fisher at the College of St. Catherine (St. Paul, Minn.,
1976).
8. Ibid.

The fact that innovative form is so feared by

the male establishment shows that like content
it has a power of its own. If our lives and our art

are connected, and if “the personal is political”
in the radical sense, then we cannot separate
the content of our work from the form it takes.

9. Freeman and MacMillan, op. cit.
10. Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating (New York, 1974).
Harmony Hammond is an artist living in New York who
teaches, gives workshops, and has shown her work here
and elsewhere. She has also studied martial arts, Tai Chi
Chuan and Aikido.

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“Female Experience in Art”:
Ruth E. Iskin

71

In early summer of 1975 I was asked by the

Women’s Committee and the Office of Equal
Opportunity of Aerospace Corporation to cu-

tarial positions; only a few rank among the engi-

neers, scientists, or chief administrators. The
company was, no doubt, hoping that the art ex-

rate an exhibition of women’s art on the subject

hibition and the activities of Women’s Week

of female experience. This seemed to me to

would go on record as testimony to their new-

offer the potential of reaching a broad audience

found good will toward women. Much to my

and avoiding the defensive reactions often at-

surprise, and to the dismay of the sponsors, the

tached to “feminist art” or “female sensibility”

exhibition became the focal point of hot de-

in the art world.! This art has been at the heart

has clouded the issues and obstructed direct

support quickly assumed the dimensions of a
local scandal and echoed for months in letters

perception of the work.

to the editor in The Orbiter, the company’s

of an ongoing, often heated controversy which

Female experience has been the starting point
for the new art created by feminists since 1969.

newspaper.
The art in the exhibition offered a feminist

Consciousness raising and other forms of wom-

point of view on subject matter usually treated

en's communication, sharing and group action,
made female experience a rich source of subject

from a male perspective. Though one might
assume that the controversial responses arose
out of an alienation from contemporary art

matter and sparked the fresh energy with which

forms, it seems that the conflict stemmed pri-

initiated as a result of the women’s movement,

women are making art. For the show I selected
the work of 15 L.A. artists? to represent both a

marily from feminist content. None of the
works included were blatantly political protest

broad scope of women’s experiences and a diversity of media, ranging from large environmental pieces to paintings, drawings, photography, prints, collage, assemblage, and artists’

art, yet they all reflected, to varying degrees, a

books. In an attempt to build a bridge between

and threatening.

the art and the creators’ intentions, | request-

new feminist consciousness. It was this consciousness —judging from the reactions of many

of the female viewers—that was unfamiliar
We are accustomed to think of political art as

along with biographical information, were

crude, illustrative, or plainly propagandistic, in
contrast to “good/serious/modernist” art. It has

available in a folder in the exhibition area.

of course been pointed out that no art is entirely

ed written statements from the artists, which,

The exhibition was on view from August 18th
through September 5th in the Cafeteria Confer-

ence Dining Rooms of the Aerospace Corporation. It was the first exhibition of professional
art on the company’s grounds, preceded only by

disconnected from its historical, political, cultural, and geographical environment, and that
therefore any art reflects these conditions.
However, feminist art is often labeled political
art because the consciousness it reflects is held

shows of art by employees. Although sponsored

by a minority, and it is at odds with the tacit

and funded by the corporation, the show was
initiated by feminist employees who conceived

art” is used to demean the work rather than to

it to offer “insight into the emotional aspects of

evaluate its artistic significance.

contemporary women.”3 They scheduled it to
coincide with Women’s Week, a program featuring prominent speakers and entertainers.

The management of Aerospace Corporation
(“a non-profit research and development corporation which provides technical direction of
general systems of engineering, primarily for
the Air Force”^) had been forced to develop
new policies for hiring women in order to meet

affirmative-action requirements for receiving
government funds. Women are in the minority,

constituting only 25% of the roughly 3,200
Aerospace employees. Most of them (80%85%) are in lower-echelon clerical and secre-

beliefs of those in power. The label “political

In a recent interview with Judy Chicago, the

artist articulated her thoughts and feelings
about these issues:

The issue of politics for me arises at the point
where my work interfaces with culture; it does
not arise at the point of origin in my studio. |
never think about politics when I make my art;
rather I think about being true to my own impulses, and for a woman to be true to her own
impulses is, at this point in history, a political
act. . . . What ! challenge is the idea that masculinity is inherently better than femininity;
that hardness is better than softness, that defensiveness is better than vulnerability, and

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72

Sherie Sheer. Putti. From the series Heavenly Visions. 1975.
Silver print with oil paint and acrylic.

Nancy Youdelman. An Homage to Lily Bart, from Edith Wharton’s
“House of Mirth.” 1974. Tableau with life-cast figure. 6’ X 9 X 12’.

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that violence is better than sharing. The asser-

Faith Wilding. Chrysalis II. 1974. Graphite and watercolor.

tion of womanhood is a challenge to all these

42" X 38”.

values that allow war, dehumanization, rape,
and art that lacks relationship with reality to
continue.6

Faith Wilding elaborated on the relation between personal and political change:
73

It has always been a tenet of the feminist
movement that the personal is political. It is

political because when a person becomes
transformed, enters into public experience,
and infuses her own experience into the public,
the world becomes transformed for her, but in
addition she then has the possibility of transforming the world. ...We have witnessed too
many people who are in politics who have
never experienced any kind of personal change
or real vision. ...

What specifically triggered the controversy?
The art in the exhibition included a wide range
of feminist work: parodies on public images of

women (Helen Alm Roth and Carole Caroompas); private images of women and interior
spaces (Margaret Neilson); women’s self-images
integrated with their historical and mythological references (Judy Chicago and Faith Wilding);

references to women’s vulnerability, powerlessness, and. powerfulness (Astrid Preston); relics
of admired female figures as magic talismans
(Hazel Slawson); communal efforts (Maria
Karras); and the quilt/grid pattern and color
pink seen as tributes to women’s collaborative

Youdelman treads on precarious ground in pre-

forms (Sheila de Bretteville).

senting the passive female figure, lying uncon-

In her tableau environment Remnants in
Homage to Lily Bart from Edith Wharton’s
House of Mirth, Nancy Youdelman “recon-

scious, as horizontal female figures have so
often been used in the history of (male) art to

structed” a scene from the book with theatrical

entice the spectator by reminding him of his
vertical superiority. However, Youdelman’s tab-

grandeur and presence. The tableau represents

leau successfully evokes the solemn empathy of

the climax of Wharton’s novel, when Lily Bart,

the viewer, who is confronted with the victim’s

having lost her wealth and status, kills herself.
Hauntinglļly life-like, her full-size figure, bearing

the artist's own features, reclines in bed. Her
skin tone is grayish and the sleeping drops that
caused her death are by the side of her bed. The

tloor is cluttered with remnants of her life:
letters, photographs, delicate laces, dresses,
corsets, and veils. Youdelman creates metaphors
(sleep, passivity, death) for what have been
essential aspects of female experience: economic dependence on others, lack of ultimate
control over one’s own life, victimization by
circumstances. In the guise of a 19th-century
tragedy, Lily Bart's story is emblematic for
women who have remained powerless in
society.

In Youdelman’s photographic series Leaves: A
Self Portrait, the artist is lying on the ground,

feelings about her powerlessness.

In Jan Lester's tableau environment— Cats
Enamoured Kits: Helpless Tom and Merciless
Sex Kitten (1974)—two cats are anthropomorphized to enact a sexual-encounter scene. The
human environment, dress, and behavior patterns throw into relief the stereotyped patterns
of men and women, only the roles are reversed.
The female cat plays the determined “attacker,”
the seducer, while the male cat withdraws with

some apprehension. At the same time, Lester
sees her work as a manifestation of how women
are perceived when they take an active role in a
situation:

The tableau had to do with sexual politics
and with the female taking power. It goes farther than just one sexual encounter, it goes out

gradually being covered with leaves (from pho-

into the world in general. It is one situation like

tograph to photograph) until she is entirely

a snapshot that makes it clear that this goes on

buried:

in all situations in society.

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74

Sherie Scheer’s series—Heavenly Visions—
depicts Fragonard-inspired images of her own
baby as a cherub floating in an infinite blue
California sky. “Wherever they go, they have no

choice in it. . .. The heavenly vision in which
they appear is both ideal and it is limbo.” This

The shape and color of food itself was so completely right and ripe for my own feelings that
it became a symbol for me; especially the
tomato, strawberry, and egg became symbols
for myself. These are expressed in scale and
potency; it is a strange word to use in relation-

reflects Scheer’s own experience as a first-time

ship to an egg, a potent egg. . ..The strawberry
is one of the few fruits that carries its seed on

mother:

the outside, it is a vulnerable fruit; it is juicy
and has strength and vulnerability at the same

I found the child very sensual. It was unexpected to me what a strong female biological
experience it was to have a child, and then to be
absolutely in love with the child. In the course
of using her as model, however, I made her

time. ... Rather than feminist, these paintings
are, I think, more expressive of femaleness. It

was a personal statement for me... can't
separate my experience from a female experience; I feel powers in me, very specifically in
certain centers in me.

cry, sometimes neglected her, and in a way I
used her, both as a model and as inspiration.
. . Twas aware that the art that makes it in
L.A., or made it at the time (two years ago) was

non-image-oriented and | am very imageoriented. I was also entirely aware that show-

Suzanne Lacy’s book Rape Is (1972) has a
white cover which becomes bloody red on the
inside. To open the book one must tear apart a

ing babies in one’s art was really outrageous,

red sticker labeled “rape.”7 Lacy’s book names

and it gave me a devilish pleasure, because |

21 instances of rape—not only as a sexual viola-

think that a lot of art that makes it is empty

tion but also as a series of psychological as-

formula and doesn’t have any blood in it; it is

saults:

not daring and it is not a turn-on either. So it
was like breaking a taboo, and especially for a
woman artist.

Rape is when you are skipping home from
school, and are surrounded suddenly by a gang

Like Scheer, Gilah Hirsch deals with female
power within its traditional domain. She uses
the imagery of food as “a secret biography, a
metaphorical code.”

of large boys. Rape is when the man next door
exposes himself and you feel guilty for having
looked. Rape is when you're walking alone,
thinking your own thoughts and a man driving
by shouts “HI SWEETIE!”

Left to right: Karen Carson. Edge of Night. 1975. Pastel and
Charcoal. 36” X 22”; Cracking Up. 1975. Paster and charcoal.
36” X 24”; Shattered Dreams. 1975. Pencil. 36” X 24”.

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Suzanne Lacy. Rape Is. 1972. Printed book. 6” square.

75

The traditional representation of rape in art
(with the exception of Kollwitz8) represents the

experience of the rapist by focusing on his
strength, activity and beauty, and further removes rape from a realistic experience through

mythological disguise. Lacy first forces the
viewer to enact a metaphorical rape (“deflower-

often the starting points for the drawings. The

series began as a macabre though humorous
comment on popular sexist consumerism. What
emerges is a violent denunciation of sexual
roles, until finally the bed—former haven of
consumer pleasure—disintegrates from within
(Cracking Up and Shattered Dreams), smashing

ing” the book by tearing the sticker) and then

any illusions we might still have about bed and

confronts the viewer with what rape means to

woman. In these most recent drawings the for-

its victim.

In Karen Carson’s drawings of beds (1971-75)
woman is the bed. The drawings are expressionistic in style and imagery, powerful as well as

satirical statements about the myth of happiness in sexual relationships. In this case, too,
the “disturbing” feminist content of Carson’s
drawings arises from the art-historical tradition

of reclining female figures on beds and sofas.
Many of these women become an integral part
of the inanimate, passive, yet sexually inviting
surface on which they are reclining. Unlike
males, Carson identifies with the oppressed—
the woman/bed—and at the same time, as artist, she takes active charge of that surface, penetrates it with a giant screw (Screw), converts it
into a carton of eggs (Easy Lay), severs it with a

merly inanimate object erupts uncontrollably,
and its fragments fly into space. What is commonly labeled Women’s Liberation is in fact, as

Carson expresses it, an excruciatingly painful
process beginning with the recognition of exte-

rior oppression, leading to the experience of
oppression from within, and finally building
toward a complex re-integration —represented
by the artist's new work—collages in which the
torn and mutilated fragments are reunited on a
cohesive surface.

I would say that these drawings were intentionally propagandistic. ..….thad to do with con-

sumer and sexual politics. ...The frame of

mind that I was in when I did these drawings
was severe frustration over treatment by men.

saw blade (Edge of Night), or crowns it with a

. . . The drawings were also politically charged
for me because I talked about them to all kinds

giant camera (Easy Shot).

of groups from Valley housewives to a con-

These surreal visualizations are take-offs on

popular puns, which function as titles and were

tinuation high school culture-hour class; |
thought people would be bored by these draw-

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ings and they weren't. They seemed to have a
good time, and related to the drawings im-

In another letter, signed by 36 people—
almost a petition —the art was called:

mediately. Now, it is not necessary to have a
good time when viewing art, but there was
blanket recognition of the issues.

infringement on the rights of all women and
men who give sex the dignity, respect and
honor that was intended for the human race.

indirectly, to almost every image in the advertisement world; every image implies sexual

76

. . . in poor taste, bad character, and a definite

When I looked in the newspaper I noticed
that you could apply sexual politics, directly or

The Aerospace Corporation has drastically

promises. My original fantasy was that I would

changed its practices since the 1960s to allow

have enough money to take out a full page ad

this type of “smut” to be exhibited, and the

in the L.A. Times, and just change the images

employees were encouraged through desk-to-

a little bit. Obviously the most political thing

desk distribution and advertising to view the
exhibition.

about that was my fantasy about how many
people I could reach that way. It is the nature

We are sure that with much less expense to

of good political art to be recognizable and

the Company, the representatives...could

understandable by a lot of people and maybe
at a visceral level too. ..…. Political art is often

have arranged for a display of pornography,

satirical, and probably most effective at that

level. :

pictures and books from one of the adult bookstores in the Los Angeles Area, and at a lower
insurance premium. ..….The Aerospace Women's Committee does not speak for all of the
female'employees, as there are those of us who

The exhibition provided an opportunity to
witness the heightened impact of contemporary
feminist art when viewed by a “non-art” audience—a cross-section of middle America that
normally would not encounter art, and specifically by a female audience alienated from femi-

nism. (The negative response came primarily

still adhere to the old principle that we were
liberated immediately when we were born in
America, we enjoy being treated as a woman,
and we are definitely Miss or Mrs. and not Ms.12

Clearly these female viewers at Aerospace
“saw” in the art their own worst fears of femi-

from women ?) It can also be seen as a test case

nism. Their objections, though focused on the

for implementing a long-desired goal—bringing

exhibition, were rooted in their alienation from

art into a public daily work environment.
Had the show at Aerospace been exhibited in
any number of established or alternative gallery

spaces, it probably would not have caused unusual debate, and certainly it would not have

the organized women’s movement. Confronted
by art that dealt with an oppression familiar in

most of their lives, real images that did not
correspond to the illusion of the American
dream presented a powerful threat.

male environment that ordinarily would not dis-

The art was perceived as offensive precisely
because it was not placed in a neutralizing environment like a gallery, where viewers can
easily hide behind anonymity. The art invaded

play women’s work made from a feminist per-

their own daily working sphere where it threat-

spective and certainly would not give it public
acclaim. The work was predominantly considered scandalous; it engendered passionate ob-

ened how they were viewed in their professional

prompted any doubt about the artistic merit of

the work.!0 In the Cafeteria Conference Rooms
of Aerospace, however, the exhibit infiltrated a

jections and firm negative judgments. The show

was labeled pornography rather than art by
people who were unlikely ever to have considered what is or isn’t art.
This disclaimer was the protesters’ attempt to

dismiss such threatening and upsetting material. Casting it as pornography implied that the
art lacked any real esthetic value and therefore
need not be taken seriously. The level of naive-

té of the critical responses—when opposed to
the more sophisticated criticism to which we
are accustomed from much of the art world —

was refreshing in its directness. One letter of
protest stated:

positions. Brought into the work context, the art
reflected more directly upon them. The height-

ened emotional reactions caused a strong need
to disassociate themselves verbally from the
picture of womanhood presented in the show.
While identification with female experiences
and values is threatening in any situation in a
patriarchal society, such identification may be
virtually impossible when introduced into a
work environment dominated by male values
and power. Such an environment, by implication, and as a condition for the possibility of
working there, demands a woman's identification with patriarchy over a recognition of her
own oppression. To admit that what was expressed in the art is real—women’s powerlessness and powerfulness, their sexual feelings and

and immoral. Since when did good taste and

experiences, and the fact that women are rape
victims—is to shatter the very myth that has
sustained traditional womanhood all along. It is
admitting publicly to an embarrassing, private
part of woman’s experience, which she has
attempted to conceal even from herself in an

modesty go out-of-style?11

effort to preserve the “human dignity” of which

I object to the Art Exhibition. ...1 find it degrading. As a woman, and hopefully a lady, I
find it extremely offensive. ..….1 am unable to
lower my sights to the gutter level of this exhibit. In my opinion, it is lewd, vulgar, obscene

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she is robbed daily. This response is one we all

agement of our corporations, in our personal

felt during initial stages of our feminism, when

relationships.15

we first became conscious of the shame and
self-dislike we had buried for so long, before we

were ready to reshape our own feelings by

In her review of the exhibition Melinda Worz

concluded:

taking pride in ourselves, other women, and art
that dealt with these subjects.
The reactions of the women at Aerospace are

not, I suspect, uncommon. I doubt very much
that a minority of Black workers in a predomi-

nantly white work environment would find it
any easier to respond to an exhibition of art
exposing painful aspects of the experience of

The Female Experience in Art offers a wide
panorama of contemporary women’s attitudes.
.. It is gratifying to see such a high quality
show outside the established sacred halls of art,

In thinking now about this exhibition, I realize

being Black in American society; or that Detroit

that it was unrealistic to expect an enthusiastic

factory workers, for example, readily identify

reception, or even acceptance, for art like this

with the realistic presentation in Rivera's mural

among female viewers who were not already
feminists, or somewhat sympathetic to femi-

of the hardships of factory work. There is,
however, an important difference between the

nism. It might have seemed that the work was

situation of women and other workers. Regard-

not perceived for what it was—but on the con-

less of their status, women are subject to their

trary it was in fact accurately perceived, and
found objectionable. Such response is typical
when feminism is introduced into a male-

oppression as women which crosses class
boundaries. In âddition to their job or profession—whether factory worker, teacher, nurse,
doctor, engineer, or scientist—women still do
the unpaid, endless, menial labor of housework,
bear children and carry the sole responsibility of

raising them. All women are potential rape
victims, and all women live in a male-dominated

dominated culture.

For those women at Aerospace who were
sympathetic to feminism, the exhibition was a
positive experience providing a new awareness
of the existence of women’s culture created by

contemporary feminists. In that sense the exhibition did broaden the audience for contem-

society which is based on various cultural versions of enslavement and denies women’s

porary feminist art. For some of these women

culture.14

who previously had no particular interest in art,

Those women who had not attempted to step
out of female role-conditioning in their jobs at

Aerospace were more ọppressed than other
workers because they received lower wages and
had lower professional status. They were the
most offended by the show. The middle-class
women who rebelled against female roleconditioning in their jobs at Aerospace (the
engineers, programmers, scientists) were the
only ones who had developed a feminist consciousness and reacted favorably to the exhibition. For example, in a letter of support, one
woman expressed her response to the exhibition
and the protesters’ views:

That women have suffered personally and professionally from conditions ranging from lack of
opportunity to manipulation and even exploit-

the exhibition was a beginning of what has since

become an ongoing interest and commitment to women’s art.

I am still thinking about one piece in the show,
which I would like to own if I had money. |
decided that if I bought art, it would be women’s art because of my commitment to feminist
artists.17

Earlier that same summer, my colleagues and

I in the Feminist Studio Workshop1 had come
to a collective definition of feminist art based
on our goals, experiences, and observation of
our students’ work. We defined the function of

feminist art as raising consciousness, inviting
dialogue, and transforming culture. It became
clear to me that both the individual art exhibited

ation on the basis that they are women is un-

at Aerospace and the exhibition as a whole in

comfortable to face.

fact realized these goals to the extent that was

The Art Exhibition, a high quality collection

77

as part of a working environment.1

possible in that time and space.

of some very honest and courageous works, was
unusually rich in content for those of us who in
some way or another have “been there.” Although there was a deliberate intent to shock, it
was as a means to focus emotionally on the art;
it was not propagandistic. These are personal
and esthetic interpretations of some of the hard
truths encountered by women, and the obscen-

1. The exhibition also provided a good starting point for
sorting out my own views on the more complex issues
of feminist content and female sensibility in art, though

ity lies in the fact that these wrongs arise because of wide-range departure from good hu-

I prefer the term “female form language” to “female
sensibility” or “female imagery” because the latter have
come to be identified with one specific, biologically

man values.

oriented theory.

Those who want to oppose smut should look
for it in our politics, in our mores, in the man-

2. Funding limitations did not permit the inclusion of
works by artists who reside outside of the L.A. area.

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mural portrayed those; but when she commented on
editor by the Women’s Week Planning Committee.
Opportunity and Women’s Planning Committee) in
conversation with the author.
with contemporary art forms did not share the protesters’ offense, it is very unlikely that a “neutral” exhibit of contemporary art would have caused similar

78

negative reactions. In addition, none of the protesters
mentioned any criticism of art forms; all their comments tended to focus on content, and most of them
made reference to a general distaste for feminism.
views conducted for this article.

that to her fellow workers they negated or at least minimized their own experience of oppression compared
to its heightened portrayal in the mural. The similarity
to women's situation is that workers who (consciously
or unconsciously) feel powerless in their jobs deny the
pain of their experiences if its expression would jeopardize the only wage-earning option available to
them. It is no accident that women all over the country
first explored their oppression in the private, safe, and
supportive context of consciousness-raising groups,
removed from the institutions in which they experienced that oppression in their daily lives.
It is for this reason that feminism and feminist art have
validity for all women. For the same reason, the Marxist
model of workers’ oppression does not ultimately address itself to women’s oppression, beyond that of

Susana Torre's exhibition catalogue for “Twenty-Six
Contemporary Women Artists” (Aldrich Museum,
Ridgefield, Conn., April, 1971), in which tearing the
seal implied not only physical violation in order to

working-class women. For an extensive analysis of
these issues see “The Fourth World Manifesto,” reprinted in: Radical Feminism, Anng Koedt, Ellen

“enter” the long-hidden works of women artists, but
also the destruction of a square cold black seal on a

322-357.

white cover, which represented the prevalent Minimal
Art, to reach the warm inside covers, colored red.

Levine, Anita Rapone, eds. (New York, 1973), pp.
Orbiter, Vol. 15, No. 20 (1975), p. 2.
Glenda Madrid, in a recent conversation with the au-

focus on the experience of the raped woman: she is
lying on the ground, dead or unconscious. Neither the

thor. Madrid was also a major source of information for
the responses to the exhibition and the statistics and

rapist nor his act are in the picture.

position of women employees at Aerospace.
The Feminist Studio Workshop is the first alternative

ably because the art did not expose their experience,
and possibly, as was suggested to me by Glenda
Madrid, because they are more prone to intellectualize
and thus more removed from the level of emotional

institution for women in the arts and humanities; it is

response the show raised for women.
When I curated the Aerospace exhibition I did censor
myself at one point: I did not include Chicago's Red
Flag lithograph even though, dealing with menstruation, it would have fit well into an exhibit on female

housed in the unique context of the Woman’s Building
in Los Angeles. Since it was founded in 1973, over 100
women have received their education at the Feminist
Studio Workshop, and several thousand students have
participated in the Extension Program at the Woman’s
Building.

experience in art. Its literal character prevented me
from exhibiting it in that context, as I anticipated that
it would be shocking to the audience.
Orbiter, Vol. 15, No. 17 (1975), p. 2.
Ibid.

Joanne Parent (one of the authors of “The Fourth World
Manifesto”) told me the following incident. While she
was working in a factory, experiencing first-hand the
hardships involved, she understood how well Rivera's

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79

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81

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The Pink Glass Swan:

Lucy R. Lippard

82

The general alienation of contemporary
avant-garde art from any broad audience has
been crystallized in the women’s movement.
From the beginning, both liberal feminists con-

cerned with changing women’s personal lives
and socialist feminists concerned with overthrowing the classist/racist/sexist foundations
of society have agreed that “fine” art is more or

less irrelevant, though holding out the hope
that feminist art could and should be different.

The American women artists’ movement has

conflict is augmented by the fact that most
artists are originally from the middle class, and

their approach to the bourgeoisie includes a
touch of adolescent rebellion against authority.
Those few who have actually emerged from the

working class sometimes use this—their very
lack of background privilege—as privilege in
itself, while playing the same schizophrenic
foreground role as their solidly middle-class
colleagues.
Artists, then, are workers or at least producers

concentrated its efforts on gaining power within

even when they don’t know it. Yet artists

its own interest group—the art world, in itself

dressed in work clothes (or expensive imitations

an incestuous network of relationships between
artists and art on the one hand and dealers,
publishers, buyers on the other. The “public,”
the “masses,” or the “audience” is hardly
considered.

thereof) and producing a commodity accessible
only to the rich differ drastically from the real
working class in that artists control their pro-

duction and their product—or could if they
realized it and if they had the strength to main-

The art world has evolved its own curious

tain that control. In the studio, at least, unlike

class system. Externally this is a microcosm of
capitalist society, but it maintains an internal
dialectic (or just plain contradiction) that attempts to reverse or ignore that parallel. Fame

the farm, the factory, and the mine, the unor-

may be a higher currency than mere money, but

ganized worker is in superficial control and can,
if s/he dares, talk down to or tell off the boss —

the collector, the curator, etc. For years now,
with little effect, it has been pointed out to
artists that the art-world superstructure cannot

the two tend to go together. Since the buying
and selling of art and artists is done by the
ruling classes or by those chummy with them

on which all the money is made and the power

and their institutions, all artists or producers, no

based.

matter what their individual economic backgrounds, are dependent on the owners and
forced into a proletarian role—just as women,

run without them. Art, after all, is the product

During the 1950s and 1960s most American
artists were unaware that they did not control
their art, that their art could be used not only

ruler across all class boundaries. Looking at and

for esthetic pleasure or decoration or status
symbols, but also as an educational weapon. In

“appreciating” art in this century has been

the late 1960s, between the Black, the student,

in Engels’ analysis, play proletarian to the male

understood as an instrument (or at best a result)

the anti-war and the women’s movements, the
facts of the exploitation of art in and out of the

the ultimate step. Making art is at the bottom of

art world emerged. Most artists and artworkers

the scale. This is the only legitimate reason to

still ignore these issues because they make us
feel too uncomfortable and helpless. Yet if
there were a strike against museums and gal-

see artists as so many artists see themselves —as

“workers.” At the same time, artists/makers
tend to feel misunderstood and, as creators,
innately superior to the buyers/owners. The
innermost circle of the art-world class system
thereby replaces the rulers with the creators,
and the contemporary artist in the big city (read

New York) is a schizophrenic creature. S/he is
persistently working “up” to be accepted, not
only by other artists, but also by the hierarchy

leries to allow artists control of their work, the

scabs would be out immediately in full force,
with reasons ranging from self-interest to total

lack of political awareness to a genuine belief
that society would crumble without art, that
art is “above it all.” Or is it in fact below it all,
as most political activists seem to think?
Another aspect of this conflict surfaces in dis-

that exhibits, writes about, and buys her/his

cussions around who gets a “piece of the pie” —

work. At the same time s/he is often ideologically working “down” in an attempt to identify

a phrase which has become the scornful designation for what is actually most people’s goal.

with the workers outside of the art context, and

(Why shouldn't artists be able to make a living

to overthrow the rulers in the name of art. This

in this society like everybody else? Well, a/most

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everybody else.) Those working for “cultural
change” through political theorizing and occasional actions are opposed to anybody getting a

piece of the pie, though politics appears to be
getting fashionable again in the art world and
may itself provide a vehicle for internal success;

today one can refuse a piece of the pie and
simultaneously be getting a chance at it. Still,
the pie is very small and there are a lot of
hungry people circling it. Things were bad
enough when only men were allowed to take a

bite. Since “aggressive women” have gotten in
there too, competition, always at the heart of
the art-world class system, has peaked.
Attendance at any large art school in the U.S.
takes students from all classes and trains them

for artists’ schizophrenia. While being cool and
chicly grubby (in the “uniform” of mass produc-

nobled and acceptable only when the artists
were men.) Then came Process Art—a rebellion
against the “precious object” traditionally desired and bought by the rich. Here another kind

of co-optation took place, when temporary
piles of dirt, oil, rags and filthy rubber began to

grace carpeted living rooms. The Italian branch
was even called Arte Povera. Then came the rise

of a third-stream medium called “conceptual
art” which offered “anti-objects” in the form of

graphs with no inherent physical or monetary
value (until they got on the market, that is).
Conceptual art seemed politically viable because of its notion that the use of ordinary,
inexpensive, unbulky media would lead to a
kind of socialization (or at least democratization) of art as opposed to gigantic canvases and

tion), and knowing what's the latest in taste and

huge chrome sculptures costing five figures and

what's the kind of art to make and the right
names to drop is clearly “upward mobility” —
from school into teaching jobs and/or the art
world —the lifestyle accompanying these habits
is heavily weighted “downward.” The working-

filling the world with more consumer fetishes.

class girl who has had to work for nice clothes
must drop into frayed jeans to make it into the
art middle class, which in turn considers itself
both upper and lower class. Choosing poverty is

a confusing experience for a child whose
parents (or more likely mother) have tried desperately against great odds to keep a clean and

pleasant home!
The artist who feels superior to the rich be-

cause s/he is disguised as someone who is poor
provides a puzzle for the truly deprived. A par-

allel notion, rarely admitted but pervasive, is
that a person can’t understand “art” if their
house is full of pink glass swans or their lawn is
inhabited by gnomes and flamingos, or if they
even care about house and clothes at all. This is
particularly ridiculous now, when art itself uses

so much of this paraphernalia (and not always
satirically); or, from another angle, when even
artists who have no visible means of professional support live in palatial lofts and sport
beat-up $100 boots while looking down on the
“tourists” who come to SoHo to see art on
Saturdays; SoHo is, in fact, the new suburbia.
One reason for such callousness is a hangover
from the 1950s, when artists really were poor
and proud of being poor because their art, the
argument went, must be good if the bad guys—
the rich and the masses —didn’t like it.

In the 1960s the choice of poverty, often
excused as anti-consumerism, even infiltrated
the esthetics of art.2 First there was Pop Art,

modeled on kitsch, on advertising and consumerism, and equally successful on its own level.

(Women, incidentally, participated little in Pop
Art, partly because of its blatant sexism, some-

times presented as a parody of the image of
woman in the media—and partly because the
subject matter was often “women’s work,” en-

83

ideas —books or simple xeroxed texts and photo-

Yet the trip from oil on canvas to ideas on
xerox was, in retrospect, yet another instance of

“downward mobility” or middle-class guilt. It
was no accident that conceptual art appeared at
the height of the social movements of the late
1960s nor that the artists were sympathetic to

those movements (with the qualified exception
of the women’s movement). All of the esthetic

tendencies listed above were genuinely instigated as rebellions by the artists themselves, yet
the fact remains that only rich people can afford
to 1) spend money on art that won't last; 2) live

with “ugly art” or art that is not decorative,
because the rest of their surroundings are beau-

tiful and comfortable; 3) like “non-object art”
which is only handy if you already have too
many possessions —when it becomes a reactionary commentary: art for the overprivileged in a
consumer society.
As a child, I was accused by my parents of

being an “anti-snob snob” and I'm only beginning to see the limitations of such a rebellion.
Years later I was an early supporter of and pros-

elytizer for conceptual art as escape from the
commodity orientation of the art world, a way

of communicating with a broader audience via
inexpensive media. Though I was bitterly disappointed (with the social, not the esthetic
achievements) when I found that this work
could be so easily absorbed into the system, it is
only now that I've realized why the absorption

took place. Conceptual art's democratic efforts
and physical vehicles were cancelled out by its
neutral, elitist content and its patronizing approach. From around 1967 to 1971, most of us

involved in conceptual art saw that content as
pretty revolutionary and thought of ourselves as

rebels against the cool, hostile artifacts of the
prevailing formalist and minimal art. But we
were so totally enveloped in the middle-class
approach to everything we did and saw, we
couldn't perceive how that pseudo-academic
narrative piece or that art-world-oriented action

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in the streets was deprived of any revolutionary

Minneapolis worker interviewed by students of

content by the fact that it was usually incom-

artist Don Celender said he liked “old art works

prehensible arıd alienating to the people “out
there,” no matter how fashionably downwardly

seem to be what the traditional notion of art is

mobile it might be in the art world. The idea

all about. Yet contemporary avant-garde art, for

that if art is subversive in the art world it will

84

because they're more classy,”^ and class does

all its attempts to break out of that gold frame, is

automatically appeal to a general audience now

equàlly class-bound, and even the artist aware

seems absurd.

of these contradictions in her/his own life and

The whole evolutionary basis of modernist
innovation, the idea of esthetic “progress,” the

work is hard-put to resolve them. It’s a vicious

“I-did-it-first” and “”it’s-been-done-already” syn-

dromes which pervade contemporary avantgarde art and criticism, are also blatantly classist, and have more to do with technology than
with art. To be “avant-garde” is inevitably to be

circle. If the artist/producer is upper-middleclass, and our standards of art as taught in
schools are persistently upper-middle-class,
how do we escape making art only for the
upper-middle-class?
The alternatives to “quality,” to the “high” art

on top or to become upper-middle-class, because such innovations take place in a context
accessible only to the educated elite. Thus
socially conscious artists working in or with
community groups and muralists try to disassociate themselves from the art world, even
though its values (“quality”) remain to haunt

though playing in the famous “gap between art

them personally.

and life,” moved far enough out of the art con-

The value systems are different in and out of

shown in art-world galleries and magazines
have been few, and for the most part unsatis-

fying, although well-intended. Even when
kitsch, politics or housework are absorbed into
art, contact with the real world is not necessarily made. At no time has the avant garde,

text to attract a broad audience—that audience

the art world, and anyone attempting to strad-

which has, ironically, been trained to think of

dle the two develops another kind of schizophrenia. For instance, in the inner-city com-

art as something that has nothing to do with life

munity murals, as Eva Cockcroft points out else-

which means something in terms of its own life,

and, at the same time, tends only to like that art

where in this publication, the images of woman

or fantasies. The dilemma for the leftist artist in

are the traditional ones—a beautiful, noble
mother and housewife or worker, and a rebellious young woman striving to change her
world—both of them celebrated for their cour-

the middle class is that her/his standards seem

age to be and to stay the way they are and to

support their men in the face of horrendous

to have been set irremediably. No matter how
much we know about what the broader public
wants, or needs, it is very difficult to break
social conditioning and cultural habits. Hopefully, a truly feminist art will provide other
standards.

“radical” view of future feminism, nor is it one

which radical feminists hoping to “reach out”
across the classes can easily espouse. Here, in
the realm of aspirations, is where upward and
downward mobility and status quo clash, where
the economic class barriers are established. As
Michele Russell has noted,? the Third-World
woman is not attracted to the “Utopian experimentation” of the left (in the art world, the
would-be Marxist avant-garde) or to the pragmatic opportunism” of the right (in the art
world, those who reform and co-opt the
“radicals”).

Many of the subjects touched on here come
back to Taste. To a poor woman, art, or a beautiful object, might be defined as something she

cannot have. Beauty and art have been defined
before as the desirable. In a consumer society,
art too becomes a commodity rather than a life-

enhancing experience. Yet the Van Gogh reproduction or the pink glass swan—the same
beautiful objects that may be “below” a middle-

To understand the woman artist's position in
this complex situation between the art world
and the real world, class and gender, it is necessary to know that in America artists are rarely
respected unless they are stars or rich or mad or

dead. Being an artist is not being “somebody.”
Middle-class families are happy to pay lip service to art but god forbid their own children
take it so seriously as to consider it a profession.

Thus a man who becomes an artist is asked
when he is going to “go to work,” and he is not-

so-covertly considered a child, a sissy (a woman), someone who has a hobby rather than a
vocation, someone who can't make money and
therefore cannot hold his head up in the real
world of men—at least until his work sells, at
which point he may be welcomed back. Male
artists, bending over backward to rid themselves of this stigma, tend to be particularly
susceptible to insecurity and machismo. So
women daring to insist on their place in the

class woman (because she has, in moving upward, acquired upper-class taste, or would like
to think she has)—may be “above” or inacces-

primary rank—as art makers rather than as art

sible to a welfare mother. The phrase “to dictate

trons”)—inherit a heavy burden of male fears in

taste” has its own political connotations. A

addition to the economic and psychological

housekeepers (curators, critics, dealers, pa-

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discrimination still rampant in a patriarchal,
money-oriented society.
Most art being shown now has little to do
with any woman’s experience, in part because
women—rich ones as “patrons,” others as
decorators and “home-makers”—are in charge
of the private sphere, while men identify more

easily with public art—art that has become
public through economic validation (the million-dollar Rembrandt). Private art is often seen
as mere ornament; public art is associated with

monuments and money, with “high” art and
its containers, including unwelcoming whitewalled galleries and museums with classical
courthouse architecture. Even the graffiti artists, whose work was unsuccessfully transferred

from subways to art galleries, were all men,
concerned with facades, with having their
names in spray paint, in lights, in museums. ...
Private art is visible only to intimates. l sus-

pect the reason so few women “folk” artists
work outdoors in large scale (like Simon Rodia’s
Watts Towers and other “naives and visionaries”

with their cement and bottles) is not only because men aspire to erections and know how to

use the necessary tools, but because women
can and must assuage these same creative urges
inside the house, with the pink glass swan as an

element in their own works of art—the living
room or kitchen. In the art world the situation is

doubly paralleled. Women’s art until recently
was rarely seen in public and all artists are
voluntarily “women” because of the social attitudes mentioned above; the art world is so small
that it is “private.”

Just as the living room is enclosed by the
building it is in, art and artist are firmly im-

prisoned by the culture which supports them.
Artists claiming to work for themselves alone,
and not for any audience at all, are passively
accepting the upper-middle-class audience of
the internal art world. This is compounded by
the fact that to be middle-class is to be passive,
to live with the expectation of being taken care

of and entertained. But art should be a consciousness-raiser; it partakes of and should fuse
the private and the public spheres. It should be

able to reintegrate the personal without being
satisfied by the merely personal. One good test
is whether or not it communicates, and then, of

course, what and how it communicates. If it
doesn't communicate it may just not be very

about those of the audience, any audience.
Work that communicates to a dangerous number of people is derogatorily called a “crowd
pleaser.” This is a blatantly classist attitude,
taking for granted that most people are by na-

ture incapable of understanding good art (i.e.,
upper-class or quality art). At the same time,
much ado is made about art-educational theories that claim to “teach people to see” (consider the political implications of this notion)
ity” of great art.
It may be that at the moment the possibilities

are slim for a middle-class art world’s understanding or criticism of the little art we see that

reflects working-class cultural values. Perhaps
our current responsibility lies in humanizing our

own activities so that they will communicate
more effectively with all women. Hopefully we

will aspire to more than women’s art flooding
the museum ànd gallery circuit. Perhaps a feminist art will only emerge when we become wholly responsible for our own work, for what becomes of it, who sees it, and who is nourished
by it. For a feminist artist, whatever her style,
the prime audience at this time is other women.
So far, we have tended to be satisfied with com-

municating with those women whose social
experience is close to ours. This is natural
enough, since this is where we will get our
greatest support, and we need support in taking

this risk of trying to please women, knowing
that we are almost certain to displease men in

the process. In addition, it is embarrassing to
talk openly about the class system which divides
us, hard to do so without sounding more bourgeois than ever in the'implications of superiority

and inferiority inherent in such discussions
(where the working class is as often considered
superior as the middle class).

A book of essays called Class and Feminism
written by The Furies, a lesbian feminist collective, makes clear that from the point of view of

working-class women, class is a definite problem within the women’s movement. As Nancy
Myron observes, middle-class women:
can intellectualize, politicize, accuse, abuse
and contribute money in order not to deal with
their own classism. Even if they admit that
class exists, they are not likely to admit that
their behavior is a product of it. They will go
through every painful detail of their lives to

good art from anyone's point of view; or it may

prove to me or another working-class woman

be that the artist is not even aware of the needs

that they really didn’t have any privilege, that

of others, or simply doesn’t care.

their family was exceptional, that they actually
did have an uncle who worked in a factory. To

For there is a need out there, a need vaguely

satisfied at the moment by “schlock.” And it
seems that one of the basic tenets of the feminist arts should be a reaching out from the private
sphere to transform that “artificial art” and to
more fully satisfy that need. For the art-world

artist has come to consider her/his private
needs paramount, and has too often forgotten

85

and muffle all issues by stressing the “universal-

ease anyone's guilt is not the point of talking
about class. . . . You don't get rid of oppression

MNN

just by talking about it.

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Women are more strenuously conditioned
toward upward cultural mobility or “gentility”
than men, which often results in the woman
consciously betraying her class origins as a mat-

86

to our own organizations, or directly to the
public by means of picketing and protests.
While a few men supported these, and most
politically conscious male artists now claim to

ter of course. The hierarchies within the whole

be feminists to some degree, the political and

span of the middle class are most easily demar-

apolitical art world goes on as though feminism

cated by lifestyle and dress. For instance, the
much-scorned “Queens housewife” may have
enough to eat, may have learned to consume
the unnecessities, and may have made it to a
desired social bracket in her community, but if
she ventures to make art (not just own 1t), she
will find herself back at the bottom in the art
world, looking wistfully up to the plateau where

the male, the young, the bejeaned seem so at

ease.

For middle-class women in the art world not
only dress “down,” but dress like working-class

men. They do so because housedresses, pedal
pushers, polyester pantsuits, permanents, the
wrong accents are not such acceptable disguises for women as the boots, overalls and windbreaker syndromes are for men. Thus young
middle-class women tend to deny their female
counterparts and take on “male” (unisex) attire.
It may at times have been chic to dress like
a native American or a Bedouin woman, but it
has never been chic to dress like a workingclass woman, even if she’s trying to look like
Jackie Kennedy. Young working-class women
(and men) spend a large amount of available
money on clothes; it’s a way to forget the rats

and roaches by which even the cleanest tene-

didn’t exist—the presence of a few vociferous
feminist artists and critics notwithstanding. And
in the art world, as in the real world, political

commitment frequently means total disregard
for feminist priorities. Even the increasingly
Marxist group ironically calling itself ArtLanguage is unwilling to stop the exclusive use
of the male pronoun in its theoretical publications.6

Experiences like this one and dissatisfaction
with Marxism’s lack of interest in “the woman

question” make me wary of merging Marxism
and feminism. The notion of the non-economic
or “vertical” class is anathema to Marxists and
confusion is rampant around the chicken-egg
question of whether women can be equal before the establishment of a classless society or
whether a classless society can be established
before women are liberated. As Sheila Rowbotham says of her own Marxism and feminism:
They are at once incompatible and in real need
of one another. As a feminist and a Marxist I
carry their contradictions within me and it is
tempting to opt for one or the other in an effort
to produce a tidy resolution of the commotion
generated by the antagonism between them.
But to do that would mean evading the social

ment-dwellers are blessed, or the mortgages by
which even the hardest-working homeowners
are blessed, and to present a classy facade.
Artists dressing and talking “down” insult the

more strongly our own sense of community, so

hardhat much as rich kids in rags do; they insult

that all our arts will be enjoyed by all women in

people whose notion of art is something to work
for—the pink glass swan.
Yet women, as evidenced by the Furies’ publi-

reality which gives rise to the antagonism.”
As women, therefore, we need to establish far

all economic circumstances. This will happen
only when women artists make conscious efforts to cross class barriers, to consider their

cation, and as pointed out elsewhere (most not-

audience, to see, respect, work with the women

ably by Bebel), have a unique chance to communicate with women across the boundaries of
economic class because as a “vertical class” we
share the majority of our most fundamental
experiences —emotionally, even when econom-

or in community workshops. The current femi-

ically we are divided. Thus an economic analysis does not adequately explore the psychological and esthetic ramifications of the need for
change within a sexually oppressed group. Nor
does it take into consideration that women’s

who create outside the art world—whether in
suburban crafts guilds or in offices and factories

nist passion for women’s traditional arts, which

influences a great many women artists, should
make this road much easier, unless it too becomes another commercialized rip-off. Despite
the very real class obstacles, I feel strongly that
women are in a privileged position to satisfy the

goal of an art which would communicate the

needs are different from men’s—or so it seems

needs of all classes and sexes to each other, and

at this still unequal point in history. The vertical

get rid of the we/they dichotomy to as great an

class cuts across the horizontal economic classes in a column of injustices. While heightened

extent as is possible in a capitalist framework.
Our sex, our oppression and our female experi-

see the world, and all clarification is for the

ence—our female culture, just being explored
—offer access to all of us by these common

better, I can’t bring myself to trust hard lines

threads.

class consciousness can only clarify the way we

and categories where fledgling feminism is

concerned.

Even in the art world, the issue of feminism
has barely been raised in mixed political groups.
In 1970, women took our rage and our energies

1. Class and Feminism, ed. Charlotte Bunch and Nancy
Myron (Baltimore, 1974). This book contains some excrutiating insights for the middle-class feminist; it raised
my consciousness and inspired this essay (along with
other recent experiences and conversations).

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. Actually nothing new; the history of modern art demonthe clear, the “poor,” the noble naif, etc.
. Michele Russell, “Woman and Third World,” New American Movement (June, 1973).
. Opinions of Working People Concerning the Arts, ed.
Don Celender (New York, 1975).
. Bernard Kirchenbaum, in correspondence. Celender,
op. cit., offers proof of this need and of the huge (and
amazing) interest in art expressed by the working class,
though it should be said that much of what is called art
would not be agreed upon by the taste dictators.

6. This despite their publication of and apparent endorsement of Carolee Schneemann’s “The Pronoun Tyranny”
in The Fox, 3 (1976).

7. Sheila Rowbotham, Women: Resistance and Revolution,
(London, 1972).
Lucy R. Lippard is a feminist art critic, writes fiction too,
and has been active politically. She is co-founder of several
women artists’ groups and has published 10 books on contemporary art, the two most recent ones being From the
Center: Feminist Essays on Women’s Art (E.P. Dutton) and
Eva Hesse (N.Y.U. Press).
87

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Juggling Contradictions:

Joan Braderman

88

In this essay, I would like to suggest where
feminism can lead us and what myths must
finally be left behind to get there. The nature of

these myths—the myths of equality, individualism and democratic liberalism—which underwrite our humanist heritage, account for the
weakest elements of feminist ideology. The
recognition that feminism is an ideology, like
Marx's recognition that humanism is an ideology (i.e., not a discourse whose “truth” was inseparable from the world it described) is a nec-

essary step in re-examining what feminism is
and what it can do.
I will use as a conceit the form of “the contra-

diction” —that underlying, dynamic mechanism
of history—in a way that is sometimes more

By 1976, the women’s movement seems to
have nearly as many political lines as there are
women in it. This partly healthy, partly disturb-

ing fact reflects with painful clarity both the
strengths and implicit weaknesses of the feminist critique of society. What is feminist practice? What is it to be a feminist in 1976? Is it to
be an individual woman “making it” in a man’s

world? Is it to recognize woman’s historical
oppression and, released from individual frustration and guilt, to take on collective responsibility? What is the nature of such a responsibility? Is it restricted to oneself? To oneself and the
women one sees every week? Is this a responsibility to oneself, to women, to men, to history?

In short, is feminism, as an ideology, funda-

metaphorical than concrete. I take the liberty of

mentally dangerous to the sexism it despises? If

using this model rhetorically at times to begin

so, how?

to establish a series of interrelationships between ideologies and their culture. I use it to
suggest the many ways the several spheres of
interest to Heresies readers—art, feminism
and their political context—are subject to a set
of analogous and mutually reinforcing ideological myths. Most feminists and artists alike are
still held captive by the power of these seduc-

tive belief systems, although they threaten the
coherence of our arguments, threaten our interests and threaten the very survival of the ideal
of freedom.

A confrontation between the facts and fictions which surround us becomes inevitable
within an escalating spiral of contradictions.

To many women, enmeshed in the growing
contradictions of late capitalist society, feminism, by 1976, has proven as much a trap as a

liberation. What seemed to so many of us as
little as five years ago a potentially revolutionary force now appears to be virtually co-opted.

The great capitalist commodity machine has
produced a whole new catalogue of cultural
commodities: the feminist writer, artist, poet;
the teminist academic, professional, journalist, TV persona; the feminist token with that
“feminist mystique.” She is for sale in the cul-

tural marketplace. She is tough, durable, tireless. She is “sexually liberated” (a great lay). She
works harder than a man. She has to. She is still

The first group to experience directly the essen-

a woman in a world that calls people “man-

tial contradictions of the society we live in is, of

kind.” That is, “equality” for women still equals

course, the lowest class: the unemployed, the
poorest, least skilled, most exploited working
people. Next, the marginal groups, in North
America: people of color, immigrants, the elderly, etc. Artists are marginal too. They feel
the economic squeeze in recessions, may even
become politicized as a result. And across all
these groups are women. As groups, then, women and artists have a low priority in the hierarchy of capital.

To give up the humanist myths, those most
cherished ideals of our own class, the bourgeoisie, which were forged when it was the revolutionary class, is difficult indeed. But give them
up we must, for in the face of heightening con-

tradictions—economic, biological, ideological
—we have no choice.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

inequality for women. This is a contradiction.
What kind of contradiction? It is a contradic-

tion between the ideology of bourgeois feminism and economic and biological fact. The
economic facts of life for the great majority of

women remain the same: unpaid domestic
labor, ill-paid labor in the work force. Biological

fact (which is gender difference along with its
cultural baggage) proposes a contradiction,
even for those of us who are female tokens of

one sort or another, who are members of the
bourgeoisie.

Our psycho-sexual behavior, like our economic roles, is wholly determined by an inherited system of power relations, not only in
the public sector, but at deeper levels, in the
formation—within the family—of the psyche
itself. Hence, as Juliet Mitchell so carefully

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describes! itis the concept of equality which

What kind of contradiction? It is a contra-

is invalid within our system. The abstract ideal

diction between an ideology and a system; an

of equality, she demonstrates, provides the
philosophical basis for our laws. Our legal sys-

ideology which has placed its profoundly humanist hope in individual consciousness as

tem, at its best, functions as if each of its in-

somehow separable from the structures in which

dividual constituents were equal. If some

that consciousness is created. Demystifying the

labor produces more value than it returns to the

contradictory elements of traditional feminism
itself, then, is part of our task. In capitalist

laborer, an unequal exchange has taken place.

society, the process through which human labor

people have only their labor to sell, and this

The laborer, then, and the owner of the means
to produce that “surplus value” are not equal. If
some people are denied, by virtue of their color,

is translated into commodity, then capital, is a

access even to the skills of labor, to whom are

tion of ideology. This process puts intellectual

they equal? If half of all people have babies and

labor, like esthetic labor, like factory labor, like

half do not, are they all “equal”? Logical in-

reproductive labor, in the service of a system

compatabilities arise: what is different is not the

which generates a surplus of wealth for the few

same, and gender (among other things) means
difference.

Radical feminism has tried to take on this
contradiction, indeed proclaimed it the essential contradiction in our form of social organiza-

tion. Between biology and destiny, it proposes,
stands consciousness. Woman's oppression
vertically crosses class lines, crosses race lines;
women, armed with “consciousness,” would
speak to each other across a history of divisions

and subsistence for the many. This contradiction—between the forces of production (labor)
and the property relations of production (ownership) is the contradiction which Marxists
claim moves history, because it produces class
struggle: the power of masses of people to labor
becomes the power to revolt.

This contradiction has moved history. But,
feminists ask, has it altered the basic relation
between woman and man, woman and child-

not only clarify the areas of shared experience

rearing, woman and psycho-sexual slavery? For
the hypocrisy of bourgeois ideology in relation

which foster that consciousness, but would

to bourgeois practice is paradigmatic within the

and change the world. Women’s groups would

for strength, women would hit male supremacy

structure of the family. Marriage, ostensibly a
contractual agreement between consenting

where it lived: at home. Yet what, after all, has

equals, is in fact a property relation between an

serve as support communities. With sisterhood

changed? The quality of life for a few privileged
women —a small step. Was all that fervor, sisterhood and revolutionary idealism that was meant

owner and an exploited, isolated and powerless
worker.
It is the belief in the illusion that such social

easily engorged, packaged and recycled?
For radical feminism too has been partially

contracts can be fulfilled that has hung feminists on the horns of contradiction. Feminism
was born in the 17th century along with the

co-opted. Since it had already dropped out of
the broader (sexist) political arena, it provided

concept of equality of individuals. It was, as
Sheila Rowbotham has documented, heated in

to reinvent the terms for a mass movement so

support systems for women, but toward an un-

the cauldron of bourgeois revolution and sim-

certain end. Seeing few alternatives and tanta-

mered in the idealism of 19th-century Utopian-

lized by a taste of power, women often used

ism à la Fourier, who claimed that “the change

that strength to re-enter the dominant culture to

in historical epoch can always be determined by

become as competitive, as “good” as men. Has
the women’s movement had so little concrete

the progress of women toward freedom.”3

impact on most women’s lives?

history of leaps and starts, to identify and attack

Certainly the patriarchy was sufficiently
threatened to let the feminist token into the

its sexist enemy, and taken a few long strides

limelight. (Why co-opt without advertising the
co-opted product?) But she did not make it into
the statistics. The economic facts so far as most

Bourgeois feminism has begun, then, in its

away from female feudalism for the benefit of

some bourgeois women. But the heart of the
problem remains. Feminists from Tennessee
Claflin to Isadora Duncan have scored high in

women are concerned remain unchanged: un-

locating it. “At the ballot box is not where the

paid domestic labor; ill-paid labor in the work
force. The wage differential between men and

band is the supreme ruler that the little difficul-

women in fact is now greater than it was ten

years ago. Even the hard-won victory of abortion (for a price), even the possibility of “equal
rights” before the very laws which uphold a system of inequality, are a slap in the face to an
ideology which aimed to alter the very “nature”

of human relationships. This too is a contradiction.

89

process necessarily affecting not only the production of tractors and bombs but the produc-

shoe pinches...lt is at home where the husty arises; he will not surrender this absolute
power unless he is compelled,” wrote Claflin in

1871.4 Duncan, in her 1927 autobiography said,
“Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage
contract and then goes into it, deserves all the

consequences.” Here is the confounding point.
Monogamy asserts a situation in which one
individual “owns” another. It is not ownership

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per se that is in question now, but again, the
mystification of what the individual is and can

control. In participating in the compromised
“equality” of marriage, each individual agrees
to propagate the species in the context of the
values of patriarchy. Values are learned, sexuality is formed, ideology is maintained —within
the family.

When feminists claim that “the personal is
90

political” they refer, in a sense, to this problem.
Their hypothesis is that one can generalize from
the individual, internal dynamics of sexist Ooppression, to a general rule. Freuds revelation of
the structures of the unconscious confirms to an
extent the validity of that enterprise. But up to

now feminists have not taken it far enough.
Having accepted the existence of subconscious
structural analogues which mirror the differences between the sexes in the world, we can
now proceed with the knowledge that, as a
group, we are bound not only by the manifest

political forms of our oppression but by these
internal psychic monsters. In attempting to
combat these monsters, however, feminists

feminists, especially in England and France,
have thus been drawn to that tradition as height-

ened contradictions impel them to seek out
means for their resolution. The main tendency
in this area is necessarily phallocentric: it is still

being written largely through the cipher of a
male experience of the world. But if we as wom-

en don't begin to write ourselves into history,
who will? For so far, compared to the scope of

the theoretical, strategic and practical task
ahead, the “woman question” has really only
been given lip service by the most advanced
intellectual sciences —not surprising since they
are “man-made.”
Engels, Marx and others have, of course,
identified the monogamous, patriarchal family
as the central prison for woman. Mechanistic
Marxists therefore claim that releasing her from
this singular prison into the work force (under
socialism) must guarantee her freedom. Does it?
Has it?

Not significantly; not yet. The major 20thcentury socialist revolutions have made some
progress, removing, as in China, the most bar-

have often mistaken the cart for the horse. The

baric manifestations of sexist domination. Im-

personal is political —but with few exceptions,
this invocation has simply generated a longer

mediately following the Soviet revolution,
Lenin’s program included not only the training

list of symptoms of the sexist disease. We must

of women to join the work force at all levels,

cure it. We must exploit Freuds science of the

but the legalization of abortion, free, accessible
divorce, communal daycare, etc. Within ten

mind, but only insofar as it is conjoined with

years, however, Stalinist backlash hit these fam-

locate the causes of this disease if we are ever to

ily issues hardest; much harder, predictably,

the science of history; that is to say out of the
context of individualism.

than the building of an extra-domestic women’s

Sisterhood is really powerful only insofar as it

work force. In China, with the Cultural Revolu-

is armed with a coherent theory and a mass

tion and before, ideological struggle against the

strategy. We are in and of our culture; so is the

values of patriarchy has at least begun. But in

feminist ideal. We must pursue, with maximum

the U.S.S.R., in the context of their drive to
quickly meet economic priorites which created

scientific rigor, the vanguard theories of culture

which culture has produced. We must use the
best available tools to locate the incoherence —
the contradictions—in extant phallocentric
models and generate predictive models based in
the experience of both halves of the human
race. Feminists who wish to throw Freud out the

window because of simplistic readings of “penis
envy” current in popular psychology might well

take a look at Mitchell's Feminism and Psychoanalysis for a re-examination of the usefulness
of psychoanalysis to feminist analysis. Her effort there is exemplary. We cannot just look
back nostalgically to ancient matriarchies. Indeed, fantasies about matriarchy in our era are
pure science fiction. But their existence does
suggest that alternate models for culture can
exist.

Recent controversy over Mitchells book,
among feminists and male psychoanalytic theorists here and abroad, suggests the “hotness”
of this issue. Interestingly, this relation of sexuality to political economy is also being strongly

the bastard known as “state capitalism,” it was
easier to fall back on the ingrained behaviors of

the traditional family unit for free work by
women in the home.

The American Communist Party reflects this
tendency, still defending the “fighting family
unit” as a revolutionary force—in America, a
reactionary notion. In fact, mothers have been
strong revolutionaries. The strength of the wom-

en of Viet Nam in the long battle to defeat
American imperialism is a case in point. But, as
in Algeria, where fighting European imperialism
also meant the reassertion of the heavily patriarchal values of Arab and Islamic culture, wom-

en's fate has most often been: off the battlefield and back to the kitchen. The contradictions of the double standard apparently are
so heightened during periods of revolution that,

as with Bolsheviks like Alexandra Kollontai, the
preaching and practice of “free love” (and all it

implies) becomes acceptable—for a brief time.
Despite Lenin’s great sympathy and work for

developed outside a feminist context, most
prominently on a major intellectual front—in

women, his Victorianism won out in the area of

the tradition of French structuralism. European

home to work that is still hers, and still never

sex. Even the Soviet woman engineer comes

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to change the world, all you really must do is

done.

In the U.S., too, anti-feminist backlash,
somewhat reminiscent of the Stalinist attack on

women’s freedom, splits American feminism
down its uncertain center. Though reformists
suggest that there is room in a liberal America
to heal the wounds of women, liberalism is par-

ticularly dangerous since it cleverly masks its
own conservatism, its own investment in the
status quo. Liberal ideology neatly instantiates
the two-part form of the contradiction. “Its
progressive side provides a rationale for defending the rights of individuals against the state. Its

reactionary side emphasized that capitalism is
not a system where one class exploits another
but is rather a collection of individuals, any
one of whom can succeed if he or she so
decides.” 6

I hope it is becoming clear how ideologically
messy liberalism really is from a post-humanist

perspective in which the individual can no
longer be seen as the subject of history. Liberalism is seen by leftists as a joke because it bears
so tenuously the wan hopes of a bankrupt hu-

manism and is, ultimately, untenable. Even
hard-core conservatism is more internally coherent. Conservatives and Marxists alike might
describe capitalism as a system in which the
“stronger” individuals make out. The difference,

of course, is that conservatives say so approvingly, grounding their argument in the old dogeat-dog theory of what they call human nature.
Marxists have favored the idea that the industrial capitalist system tends to pervert or alienate
what is potentially, or at a given historical moment “good” in human beings. Stated so simply,

both are inadequate readings but at least they
rehearse the consistency of these positions.

The liberal wants to enjoy the fruits of his
class privilege while salving his guilty conscience with a quasi-philosophic posture proposing that every individual (being protected by

‘equality’ before the law, by ‘equal’ opportunity
measures, etc.) could theoretically be enjoying
this same privilege if he or she were as hardworking and dauntless as him/herself. Thus the
liberal buys off with a little charity or minimal

social welfare all those who, by some extreme
individual misfortune, can’t quite cut it.
Here we return to the underbelly of co-opta-

tion. While a bill assuring equal rights before
unequal laws is flung in our faces, and even
defeated (adding insult to injury), the dominant

media simultaneously declare the women’s
movement to be “over” or somehow “won” because of the presence of one and a half news
anchor-women on TV or the financial viability
of Ms. Magazine. Capitalist propaganda demonstrates before our eyes that by inference, if one
woman can do work that one man can do, wom-

en are the achieved “equals” of men. The responsibility for change is thus cleverly switched

back onto the shoulders of individual women;

change yourself. And the mapping of contradictions comes full circle.

The liberal feminist, like the liberal social
democrat, learns to sate herself on the token
goodies she is tendered. Or the radical feminist
(who, lacking a viable mass strategy, is a liberal
in disguise) tries to build a separatist island on
which she and her sisters can be “free.” It’s a
dilemma. I was, and in some ways still am, such

91

a radical feminist. After all, I am a member of

the women’s group which publishes this magazine. We try to experiment with anti-oligarchic
forms, collective practice. But what is an egalitarian island in a sea of capitalist contradictions

but something doomed, as it were, to sinking?
Witness a little linguistic contradiction and
the issues it raises for us in Heresies. We are
constituted as a collective. Adopting one of the

stronger aspects of feminist practice, we attempt to chip away at the hierarchical authority

structures of The System on a micro level by
attempting to produce a theoretical magazine
on a collective basis. The assumption here is
that theory and practice must develop together

in a dialectical relationship. But in order to
function as a legal entity, we are transformed to

Heresies Collective, Inc.: an incorporated collective. This is either redundant or ironic. The
fact is, we don’t even aspire to making profits

but are completely dependent on the legal and
business structures around us. This dependence
relation, the impossibility of autonomy within a

given economic structure, has meant about a
two-year life-span for most American collectives before us, according to popular lore.

This dependence also means that artists, particularly those artists being forced by heightened economic contradictions to face political
realities, must re-examine their place in our
culture. The feminist filmmaker, for example,
has had to confront this issue head on. Film,
more than any other artform, requires the mas-

tery of machine technology. For women, that
technology and the authority it connotes has
been historically taboo. There are exceptions in
the history of film” but the percentage of wom-

en filmmakers is dramatically low for a 20thcentury art. Feminists with the energy and support of their sisters in the movement have begun
to break that taboo. But in doing so, they have

been thrown against a major contradiction
facing all “independent” filmmakers: the problem of capital. For to make films requires large

amounts of capital, capital which is controlled
by the ruling classes, middle-class liberals
included.

Advocates of independent filmmaking from
Maya Deren in the 1940s (implicitly) to Annette
Michelson in the 1960s (explicitly in her article

“Film and the Radical Aspiration”) have proposed that a stance outside of the commercial
market is itself a “political” gesture. It is—to the

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92

31

This is a still from Julia Reichert’s new film, Union Maids, in which she makes the necessary connections (through the editing of contemporary interviews with historical footage) of sexism with racism with classism. Union Maids is distributed by the New Day Film Collective.

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extent that money can be garnered from liberals
to make “art” as long as it is not fundamentally

dangerous. But can any political art which
attempts to attack the assumptions of The Sys-

tem from within patriarchal capitalism actually
threaten it? This has been and will be an area of

debate for many political estheticians and artists and can hardly be answered here.
But we can and must confront the question.

From what is the “independent” filmmaker or
artist independent? She is not independent from
the need to make a living. She is not independ-

ent from the need for capital—money which
gives the power to make her films and distribute
her films within a tight commercial media mo-

nopoly. When a feminist wonders why capitalists won't hand over the money to make anti-

sexist films, she, like her “independent” male
counterpart, must face the terms of her depend-

ence. She has begun to beg, borrow or steal
(translated as win grants, go into debt, etc.) the
capital to write herself into visual history, mak-

ing films about the experience of women; viz:
the films of Julia Reichert, Yvonne Rainer,
Barbara Kopple, Chantal Ackerman, and many
others. But who actually sees these films? They

are shown in women’s festivals, in avant-garde
and political forums in a few major cities. She
is, in short, caught in that same economic trap.

Cooperatives for pooling resources and sharing
distribution efforts, such as New Day Films,
are beginning to form; they are collectives like

Heresies. But the absolute dependence on the
inconsistent, discrimate charity of liberals is the

underside of that ultimately romantic hope for
“independence.” The terms for independence,
then, among artists and feminists, are the very

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I would like to convince all feminists that it is
time to realign with the Left. Current economic

realities, heightening contradictions, and the
topography of world imperialism reaching its
limits, are forcing many groups in America to
confront their need for unity. The traditionally

sectarian American Left itself is beginning to
move toward coalition and alliance, toward
unity across color lines, across race lines, across

class lines and across gender lines. Within such

a potential configuration women could speak to
other women. We are beginning to recognize
that al! oppressed peoples within capitalism
must come together if we are even to begin to

be able to defend ourselves against the attacks
and backlash of this system, much less to build
93

a new one.
Several feminist strategies for such a realignment of women with the broader struggle for
freedom are presented in this issue of Heresies

(see “Toward Socialist-Feminism” and “Wages
for Housework”). This does not mean that women will not have to continue to force the priority
of their own demands in relation to the needs of

others. Women will need autonomy to develop
theory and strategy accountable to our own
needs within a broad movement, to avoid the
failures of socialist experiments in the past.
Thus, we must make our fight in the context ofa
movement we help to define and build, a movement that can take on the class contradiction as

well as the racial and sexual contradictions implicit in the structures of the larger society. For,
on these structures, the fate of all women, like

it or not, is inextricably dependent. To wed
feminism to the myths and false hopes of liberal

idealism is to contribute to the systematic
liquidation of its potential power.

1. Mitchell, Juliet, “Women and Equality,” in Partisan
Review (Summer, 1975).
2. Rowbotham, Sheila, Women, Resistance and Revolution, Vintage Books (New York, 1974).
3. Ibid., p.51.
4. Schneir, Miriam, ed., Feminism: The Essential Historical
Writings, Vintage Books (New York, 1972), p. xviii.
5. Ibid., p. xv.

6. Guettel, Charnie, Marxism and Feminism, Women’s
Educational Press (Ontario, Canada, 1974), p. 2.
7. I and others have written elsewhere about the history of
women directors. See my article in Artforum (Sept. 1972)
and Sharon Smith's Women Who Make Movies, Hopkinson and Blake (New York, 1975).
8. In Film Culture Reader, ed., P. Adams Sitney, Praeger
(New York, 1970).
Joan Braderman is completing her doctorate in film and
political theory at N.Y.U., writes theory and criticism and
makes 16mm films. She teaches film at The School of
Visual Arts in New York City, is a political activist and likes
to sing.

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Posters from Australia

STATUD

, m a: VVA
Giris on the move:
| travelling tips we know

NN
SESS

Numark, 75

Ann Newmarch. Look Rich. (Photo: eeva-inkeri.)

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95

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96

inequities toward women are grounded.
A woman's menstruation is a sign of her ability to bear children.

Ann Newmarch and Mandy Martin are Australian artists
living in Adelaide. Their posters were made while both
were working with the Progressive Art Movement—a leftist
group working with prisons, labor unions, etc. Newmarch
is a member of P.A.M.’s Visual Group and the organization
also has other groups working in other cultural areas. Toni
Robertson lives in Sydney. She teaches screen-printing in
workshops at Sydney University and works with the Earthworks Poster group. Sometimes We Do Offend, Girls is
numbered 4/28 “as tampon came from day 4 of my period
and 28 days is another myth”; it was sold at $4.00 to the
rich, $2.00 to those earning less than $100 per week.

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Kate Jennings

watch out! you may meet a real
castrating female

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

Or

97

centres, because they're women’s matters, and
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. I 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 thén join the ladies liberation auxiliary
if we have any time left over. lve 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. |
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

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 faint.” This “biography” appears on the
jacket of Jennings’ book of poems (from which “Moratorium” is reprinted)— Come to Me Mv Melancholy Baby.
published in 1975 by Outback Press, Fitzroy (Victoria), in
her native Australia.

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98

Suellen Snyder. Puerto Rican Day Parade, New York City, 1975.

Suellen Snyder began photographing in 1972, studied with Larry Fink and Lisette Model, and has published photos in Ms. Magazine,
Majority Report, Fiction and The Columbian.

Su Friedrich is a former member of the Women’s Graphics Collective (Chicago) who now lives in New York and devotes her camera, pen
and soul to a feminist future.

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We are a group of women who have organized to study, work and fight for our liberation,
and especially to work with and for our sisters
who suffer a double oppression: in being women and in belonging to a social sector which has

been historically dominated and exploited.

We believe our liberation is inseparable from
that of other oppressed groups—workers and
peasants. The liberation of our brothers will
never be realized while their women —workers

99

and peasants too—are second-class citizens,
and while prostitution is seen as a “necessary
and insuperable evil.”

Consequently we do not believe in individual
The struggle of women is integrally bound to
the struggle of working-class women.
No! to Mother's Day.
Yes! to Peruvian Woman's Day.
Less homage, more rights.

liberation. The fact that some of our sisters are

being promoted to important public positions
or are gaining access to professional and technical careers in increasingly greater numbers
has nothing to do with liberation. We believe
that only structural change will produce real
“women’s liberation.”

out euphemisms or timidity—in short, without
masks or half-measures. It is correct to call
actions which are destined to radically change

So our position, our actions, are aimed at
contributing to the process of transformation
taking place in our country, at helping it
strengthen and advance without obstacles. We
support this Revolution because it is antiimperialist and anti-oligarchic, and because it

our condition by their rightful name: liberation.

makes possible our own liberation.

Why are we named Action for the Liberation
of Peruvian Women?
Because we want to carry out our work with-

Ours is simultaneously a study-group and an
action-group. We are by no means a political

What do we call Cultural Revolution?
The process by which the old system is entire-

party. We do not aspire to be an institution with

ly questioned and revised: its values, behavior,

traditional hierarchic structure. We reject ver-

habits, customs, institutions and forms of com-

ticalism, dogmatism and leadership positions.
Ideologically, we align ourselves within free
Humanist Socialism and adopt the best of its
tenets conducive to female emancipation.

Without national liberation, there can be no
women’s liberation. Fight!
Only reactionary men are our enemies!
Sisters, Unite with us!
Liberation is action!

munication. A Cultural Revolution must reject
all individualism, engendering a collective way
of life harmonious with group ideals, while re-

sistant to group egoism. A Cultural Revolution
must combat stereotypical attitudes like “maleism” (machismo) and “femaleism” (hembrismo)
—brute maleness and coy femaleness. A Cultural Revolution must change patriarchal institutions like bourgeois marriage and the nuclear
family—two characteristic expressions of capitalism and the division of labor. Finally, a
Cultural Revolution’s ultimate goal must be to
change life, to culminate in a free and humane

Because we cannot separate our specific
problems from our socio-economic context, all
our work strategies are adapted to the actual
conditions of our country. We do not copy

socialism.

Wanting to shape your own destiny is wanting

foreign movements because we are aware of

to transform injustice.

living in a Third-World Society where imperial-

Wanting to transform injustice is being political.

ism is our most powerful enemy. Therefore we
express solidarity with other liberation struggles
on this continent, as well as with other women
and men fighting for national liberation in their
respective countries.

What do we want to be liberated from?

From the social, economic, political, cultural
and moral conditions imposed by a patriarchal
capitalist society which assigns us secondary
roles, condemning us to live as marginal beings

To analyze the historic and social origins of our

condition is to revolutionize our understanding
of the world!

passively supporting and “servicing” men.
From reformist paternalism which perpetually

treats us as legal minors, because it reduces

\

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everything to the creation or amplification of
protectionary laws that are pretexts to mask our

real situation of dependence on men and
second-class citizenship.
From all kinds of ideological pressure, expressed in the terror most of us feel about join-

ing feminist organizations, under the assump-

wars and massacres; a system which transforms
woman into a beast of burden (if she is proletarian), or into a luxury sex-object (if she is bour-

geois). Capitalism has also reviled love, reducing male-female relationships to economic
factors or to mere social appearances. It is a
system in which children are the responsibility

tion that if we do so, we must be “against men.”

of individual couples and, in actual practice, of

From the fear of being ridiculed or insulted as

the women alone.

“tomboys,” “whores,” or “dykes.”
100

Against all sexist ideology which gains by reinforcing our situation as “different” and which
is expressed in the cult of “femininity” —sweet-

Statistics affirm that few women are workers.

ness, weakness, virginity and motherhood as

Out of the home and onto the production lines!

woman's only aim and destiny.

Working women also carry the burden of the
home!

Communal eating-places, day-care centers and
laundries—to create new jobs and lessen the
load of unpaid workers in the home.
Being a mother and being fulfilled shouldn't be
a contradiction.

We want family planning in hospitals, accessible to everyone.

And finally, against all threats to the liberation front whose ultimate goal is the Monolithic

Unity of Revolutionary Women, and of those
men who integrally support the cause of our
liberation.
*Excerpts (slightly rearranged) from the booklet of this
name distributed by “Accion para la Liberacion de la Mujer
Peruana,” April 15, 1975, Lima, Peru. This text was taken
from the first half of the booklet; the second half deals with
a specific program for practical revolutionary work. The
following are listed as the group’s coordinators and “hon-

Against whom must we struggle?

Against the Patriarchal-Capitalist System
which determines an unjust society, fostering
exploitation, abuse, discrimination, hunger,

orary members”: Cristina Portocarrero Rey, Ana María
Portugal, Amor Arguedas, Dorelly Castañeda, Beatriz
Ramos, Lucía Parra, Margot Loayza, Edith Alva, Carmela
Bravo, Dora Ponce, Flor Herrera, Leo Arteaga, Diana
Arteaga, Dora Guerrero, Bertha Vargas, Inés Pratt, Adela
Montesinos, Estela Luna López.

Rivolta Femminile

Rivolta Femminile is an Italian group of radical
feminists founded in Rome in July 1970, now
associated with other feminist groups in Milan,
Turin, Genoa and Florence. They have consistently resisted hierarchal structures and male-

dominated institutions and their development

of creativity is the prerogative of men. Woman—in so many ways a subsidiary being—is
denied every role which could effect á recogni-

tion of these inequities. For her, there is no
prospect of liberation.
The creativity of men speaks to the creativity

of feminist theory has been detailed in publica-

of other men while woman, as client and spec-

tions such as Carla Lonzi’s Sputiamo su Hegel
(1970) and La Donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale (1971), the collective’s Sessualita femminile e aborto (1971) and Carla Accardi’s Su-

tator of that dialogue, is assigned a status which

excludes competition. Woman is locked into a
role which, a priori, assures the male artist an

audience. While creating art is seen to have a

periore e inferiore (1972). The latter records the

liberating function, art as an institution insists

author's dismissal from her job after discussing
the Rivolta Femminile manifesto with her fe-

that woman be the neutral witness to the work

male high school students. All publications are
available from Rivolta Femminile, Via del
Babuino 16, Rome, Italy.

of others. Man’s energy, even in art, is spent by

competing with other men. Only the contemplation of art invites woman’s involvement.
This is the nature of patriarchal creativity: to

the patriarchal world—that is, in a world made

depend upon aggressive competition with male
rivals and on the passive appreciation of women. Man, the artist, feels abandoned by woman
as soon as she abandons her archetypal specta-

by men and for men—even the liberating force

tor’s role; their mutual solidarity rests solely on

We in Rivolta Femminile refuse to pay tribute
to male creativity because we are aware that in

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е сопмісііоп аї, аѕ а ѕресіаѓог вгаќїеа Ьу
сгеаќіуіку, мотап геасһеѕ Ке һівһезѕі роѕѕіЫІе
роіпі іп һе еуоІиііоп ої һег ѕресіез.
Виќ, оп ќе сопігагу, мотап іѕ О(іѕсомегіпе

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Аѕѕаѓќа Ѕһакиуг

аќ Һе раїгіагсһа| могіа пееа һег— іһаі

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һег ехсІиѕіме!Іу гесерііме гоіе.

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орќіоп — ої 4іѕкіпеціѕһіпе һегѕе міһіп е сгеакме Һіегагсһу ҺіѕкогісаПу аеѓіпеф Бу теп
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іпе һег омип сгеаііміу, поигіѕһед Бу һег амагепеѕѕ оѓ раѕї орргеѕ5іоп.

То сеІеЬгаѓе таіІе сгеаѓіуіїу із иКітаіеІу ќо
ѕиЬтіє ќо ќе һіѕіогіс ѕоуегеівпіу ої теп, їо
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тап Іогаіпе іє оуег мотап, Биі тегеіу а ѕігиввІе Беѓмееп іпаіміфцаЇ теп.
Ву геѓиѕіпе, їо сеІеБгаќе таіе сгеайіуісу, ме
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іё. Ваіһег, мікһ оиг аЬѕепсе, ме аге геїиѕіпе ќо
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іп а геігасіед Пегайоп, ме аге ипІеаѕһіпе

ГОСК ОР5

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*Техі мгіеп Бу Вімока Ғеттіпііе, Магсһ 1971; ігее
ігапзІаїйоп Ьу Агіепе Гаддеп ігот Сагіа опгі, Ѕриїіато
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ѕсгікі, $сгікбі аі Вімоћа Ғеттіпііе, 1,2,3, МііІап, 1974.

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хх ж жж х ж ж ж Ж Ж Ж ж ж ж ж х ж ж Ж ж Ж

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Аѕѕаќа Ѕһакиг (Јоаппе Сһеѕітага) һаѕ Бееп аѕѕосіаіей
мік е ВІаск Рапіһег Рагіу апа оіһег роїіќіса| вгоирз,
іпсІиаіпре іе ВіасК ГіБегайоп Агту, миһісһ ѕһе һаѕ ѕаіа “іѕ
пої ап ограпіхаќіоп. І із а сопсері. А реоріе'ѕ тоуетепі,
ап ііеа” етегвіпд гот сопаійопз іп Ње ВіІасК соттипіёу. Ѕһе іѕ сиггепііу а роїіісаі ргіѕопег Беіпе һеіа іп Мем
Јегѕеу, оѕіепѕіЫІу оп сһагреѕ оѓ Балк гоЬЫегу.

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©Аѕѕаќа Ѕһакиг/ Јоаппе Сһеѕітага; соигіеѕу ої Аѕѕаѓа
Ѕһакиг Оеѓепѕе Соттіќќее.

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102

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103

(photo: Libby Turnock)

i tell
you for
what,
i'll of
trade
we
yougot.
some
of my
fear with what
some
your—no?
so ok.
we stick
igot
LESBIAN..
LOVE..
-and
uh...A
cards)
onefor
MONEY.
forme.
you.
.me.
.ULCERS.
onelet's
for
.me.
.and
one
a you
PENIS.
how
‘boutTERRIBLE
that— FEAR
for one
you.
one
for
see
what
got?
one for me. imaginary
one for you.
(dealing

prumrk,

own
reflection
hands atand
stare
on chin
repeat and place
both drop
fingers
across
repeat left
and cheek
draw aforehead
line
repeat
and paint
cheek
and down
slowlyright
paint
lines
up as mirror
if in the
minds
take
and
dip
fingers
inlook
blood
eyes offocus
alwaystwo
on right
action
left stopping
wrist
flow
blood
with right upon
fingers
into left
pressure/release
apply
handpour
almost
fullfrom
blood
righthand
hand pressure/release
catch
in right
hand
wrist blood
over when
rightcut
thigh
holding
leftput
knife
stillblade
away against
closingturn
cut lightly/
carefully
3 arm
times
hold
knife turn
in right
left hand
forearm
palm
up
take small knife
open out
bladeof
pause
pocket

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Pat Sweeney

104

Many “feminist” writers have contributed to
the ideology of housework. Radical-feminists,
while recognizing the identification of housework with our female nature, have proposed
sharing this work with a man and leaving the
home for outside work. Socialist-feminists, describing housework as precapitalist, have proclaimed that our goal should be toward “”indus-

trialization,” which would liberate our time for
more work—but in a factory, if not a collective

kitchen. Liberal feminists have defined our
problem as “lack of consciousness,” describing
women as dupes of Madison Avenue ad-men.
Finally, there are those feminists who, much to

home is produce and reproduce workers: every
day we create and restore the capacity of others
(and ourselves) to work, and to be exploited. It

is ironic that as houseworkers we are not included in the nation’s labor force, for without
this work the workforce would not exist. The
lack of a wage obscures the indispensability of
our work to the functioning of this society.
Housework makes every other work possible.
No car could be produced, no coal could be
dug, no office could be run, if there were not

women at home servicing and reproducing
those who make the cars, those who dig the
coal, those who run the offices. This is the

capitalists’ rejoicing, have glorified our forced
labor in the home as the embodiment of the

sexual division of labor: workers make cars, and

best human potentials: our capacity to nurture
and care, our very capacity to love. One thing

And to make a worker is a much more time- and

they all agree on is that women should not be

only do we “reproduce” them physically—
cooking their dinners, doing the shopping
(shopping is work, not consumption as some
“feminists” would have us believe). We also
service workers emotionally—taking the brunt

paid for this work, because this presumably
extend the control of the state to “the one area
of freedom we have in our lives.”

Contrary to these criticisms, the Wages for
Housework Committee’s perspective is based on
the fact that housework is a/ready controlled
and institutionalized (Mother's Day is nothing
less than the celebration of this institutionaliza-

tion!) precisely because this work is unwaged.
Society is organized to force us into this job,
and the fact that we don’t receive a wage for the

refuse it. ,

work continuously undermines our power to
That housework is unwaged means first of all

women make the workers who make the cars.
energy-consuming job than to make a car! Not

of their tiredness and frustration day after day.
And we service workers sexually —the Saturday-

night screw keeps them going for yet another
week at the assembly line or desk.
It appears that we freely donate all this work
to our husbands and children out of our love for

them. In reality we are working for the same
bosses, who are getting two workers for the price
of one. Our lives are governed by the same work

schedule as those we serve. When we cook
dinner or when we “make love” is determined

that it appears not as work, but as part of our

by the factory time-clock. Not only the quan-

female nature. Thus, when we refuse part of this

tity, bút also the quality of workers we repro-

work—as, for example, lesbian women do in
refusing to provide sexual services to men—we
are branded as perverts, as if we were breaking

duce is controlled. If they don’t need many
workers, we are sterilized; if they need more
workers we are denied access to contraceptives

some law of nature. We are divided into “good”

and are forced to resort to backstreet butchers

and “bad” women depending on whether or not

(the right to life is never claimed for women).

it for free. In this society to be a good woman —

Likewise, if we are on welfare or we tend to
produce “troublemakers,” we are again steril-

or just to be a woman —is to be a good servant

ized.

at everyone's disposal 24 hours a day; it means
accepting that this work should not be paid
because it supposedly fulfills our nature, and

under control to make sure that we use it pro-

we do the housework and whether or not we do

thus contains its own reward.

Housework is not just washing dishes, scrubbing floors, or raising babies. What we do at

In every case, our sexuality is continuously
ductively. Lesbianism and teenage sex are illegal, and rape in the family (or the battered
wife) is not a crime since readily available
sexual service is part of our job. It is the lack of

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money of our own that creates the battered wife

tion in the home. We certainly aspire to a social

or the closet lesbian and forces so many of us to

life better than the one provided by an assembly

remain in unwanted family situations. With

line. But going out of the home is not much of a

money in our hands, we would have the power

relief if we don’t have any money in our hands,

to walk out whenever we wanted. Men would

or if we go out just for more work.

certainly think twice before raising their hands

We also reject the idea that sharing our ex-

to us if they knew that we could leave any

ploitation in the home with a man can be a

minute, without the prospect of starving.

strategy for liberation. “Sharing the housework”

Our wageless condition in the home is the
material basis of our dependence on men. This
weakness in the community, as wageless house-

is not an invention of the Women’s Movement.

workers, is ultimately the weakness of the entire

Women have continuously tried to get men to
share this work. Despite some victories, we
have discovered that this battle also has many

class. Capitalism takes away from us in the
community (through inflation—price hikes,
rent increases, fare increases, etc.) what we

the time. If he brings in the money, and we are

have gained through our power in the factory.

the power to force him to do housework. In fact

Women pay a double price for this defeat.
Higher prices mean an intensification of our

share the work than do it ourselves. Most im-

work, since we are expected to absorb the cost
of inflation with extra work.

The struggle for wages for housework is a

limitations. First, the man is not home most of

it is often more work for us to get the man to

portantly, this strategy confines us to an individual struggle which does not give us the
power (or the protection) of a mass struggle.

struggle for social power—for women first, but

And it assumes that every woman has (or wants)

ultimately for the entire working class. In fact,

a man with whom to share the work.

by demanding wages for the work we already
do, instead of demanding more work, we are

work, we must immediately say that we are not

As for a possible rationalization of house-

posing the question of the immediate reappropriation of the wealth we have produced. Exploitation is the enforcement of unpaid labor,
the only source of capitalist profits. Thus, to
attack our wagelessness is to attack capitalism

interested in making our work more efficient or

at its roots, for capital is precisely the accumu-

how hard we work. For capital only introduces

lated labor that has been robbed from workers

advanced technology to cut its costs of produc-

generation after generation.

tion after wage gains by the working class. Only

In contrast, the strategy that has been offered

more productive for capital. We are interested
in reducing our work, and ultimately refusing it
altogether. But as long as we work in the home

for nothing, no one really cares how long or

if we make our work cost (i.e., only if we make

obtain more work—would only mean further

it uneconomical) will capital “discover” the
technology to reduce it. At present, we often

enslavement to the present system. It is capital

have to go out for a second shift of work to

to us by “feminists” and the left—the strategy to

that poses work as the only natural destiny in
our lives, not the working class, whose struggles
are always directed toward gaining more money
and less work. To pose the “right to work” as our

afford the dishwasher that should cut down our
housework!
Who will pay for this work?

We demand wages for housework from the

road to liberation ignores that we are already
working, and that housework does not wither

government for two major reasons. First, every

away when we go out for a paid job. Our work

we don’t work for one boss, we work for all the

at home simply intensifies: we do it at night
when everybody is already asleep, or in the
morning before everyone awakes, or on weekends. Our wages remain low—and they quickly
disappear in paying for day-care centers,
lunches, carfare, etc. Furthermore, with two
jobs we have even less time to organize with
other women. Unions have long accused women of being backward. But when did unions
consider that we are not free to attend meetings

after our second job is over because we must
hurry to report back to our first one—picking up
the kids at the day-care center or babysitter’s,

sector of the economy benefits from our work—

bosses. Consequently we demand the money
from the state. Second, the government already
is our boss. In every country the government is

responsible for guaranteeing an adequate labor
force to industry. This means that the govern-

ment directly regulates and controls our work
through the family, world population control,
immigration laws, and finally by entering the
community whenever we refuse to perform our
work.
The question “who will pay?” is usually posed
so as to subvert the cause. It is assumed that the
government is broke, and that our demand will

ing dinner for the men who expect it to be ready

only divide the working class by forcing the
government to tax other workers to pay us a

when they come home from work?

wage. In reality, by getting more power for our-

getting to the supermarket before it closes, fix-

Another illusion is that to go “out to work” is
to break our isolation and gain the possibility of
a social life. Very often the isolation of a typing

pool or a secretarial office matches our isola-

105

economically dependent on him, we don’t have

selves, we will be giving more power not only to
men (power not over us but with respect to their

bosses) but to every sector (the young, the
elderly, and the wageless in general). We will

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begin to break the power relations which so far

women with children, and the number of young

women who have been able to set up indepen-

have kept us divided. Through a united working

class we can force the government to tax the

dent households. This is not to glorify welfare.

corporations, not other workers.

Welfare does not even begin to pay for all our
work—we need much more and we need it for

A posture of defeat also ignores the struggles

women have made against housework and what
we have been able to win in relation to this
work. It is no accident that after the massive

all of us. But it is to recognize how even a little

struggles welfare mothers waged in the 1960s

traditionally have kept us in line.

money has begun to break down some of the
most powerful mechanisms of discipline which

for more money from the government—the first
106

money we have won for housework—the number of female-headed families has dramatically
increased (doubling every decade) along with
the number of divorces, particularly among

Pat Sweeney is an active member of the Wages For Housework Committee (288-B 8th Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11215)
and one of the founders of the Nassau County Womens
Liberation Center.

THE WOMEN

LI f

S

OF THE WORID

ARE SERVING

d

NOTICE!
WE WANT WAGES FOR
EVERY DIRTY TOILET
EVERY INDECENT ASSAULT
EVERY PAINFUL CHILDBIRTH
EVERY CUP OF COFFEE
AND EVERY SMILE
AND IF WE DON'T GET
WHAT WE WANT WE
WILL SIMPLY REFUSE
TO WORK ANY LONGER!

< i ye

S Kam
Ka

WAGES FOR HOUSEWORK
CAiPAIGN OFFICE * 288 B EIGTH STREET (OFF F

IFTH AVENUE) BROOKLYN, N.Y.

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This bibliography is in no way compre-

Jenness, Linda, ed., Feminism and Social-

hensive, nor does it include the many
books and publications already well

ism, Pathfinder Press (New York, 1972).

known to feminists. Instead, we have tried
to present lesser-known articles and pamph-

lets along with works that we feel are
essential to an understanding of the relationship of feminism, art and politics.

Kearns, Martha, Kathe Kollwitz: Woman
and Artist, The Feminist Press (Old West-

Kollontai, Alexandra, The Autobiography
of a Sexually Emancipated Communist
Kozloff, Max, “American Painting During

Program, California Institute of the Arts
(Valencia, Ca., 1975).

the Cold War,” Artforum (May 1973).

Art: A Woman’s Sensibility, Feminist Art

Larguia, Isabel, and Dumoulin, John,
“Towards a Science of ‘Women’s Libera-

Program, California Institute of the Arts
(Valencia, Ca., 1974).
Baxandall, Lee, Ed., Radical Perspectives
in the Arts, Pelican (Baltimore, 1972).

(Feb., 1975).
Braderman, Joan, “Report: The First Festi-

Everywoman, special issue on women artists
Lippard, Lucy R., From the Center: Feminist
Essays on Women’s Art, Dutton (New York,

Looker, Robert, ed., Rosa Luxemburg,
Selected Political Writings, Grove Press,

from California (May, 1971).

Film Library Quarterly, special issue on
“Women in Film” (Winter 1971-72).
The Feminist Art Journal (Brooklyn, New

Inc. (New York, 1974).

York).

Lopate, Carol, “Women and Pay for House-

The Fox, nos. 1, 2, 3 (New York, 1975-76);

work,” Liberation (May-June, 1974).

Mitchell, Juliet, Psychoanalysis and Feminism, Pantheon (New York, 1974).

val of Women’s Films,” Artforum (Sept.,

Mitchell, Juliet, “Women and Equality,”
Partisan Review (Summer, 1975).

Bunch, Charlotte and Myron, Nancy, ed.,

Mitchell, Juliet, Woman's Estate, Vintage

Class and Feminism: A Collection of Essays

(New York, 1971).

from The Furies, Diana Press (Baltimore,

PERIODICALS
Arts in Society, special issue on “Women
and the Arts” (Fall, 1974).

1972).

1974).

“More on Women’s Art: An Exchange,”
Diane Burko, Mary Beth Edelson, Harmony

especially articles by Sarah Charlesworth,
Elizabeth Hess and Ginny Reath, Carolee
Schneemann, and May Stevens.
Green Mountain Quarterly (Feb., 1976). Art-

icles by Eleanor Marx on “The Woman
Question,” Henriette Rolan-Holst on
“Feminism, Working Women, and Social
Democracy,” Tiresias on “Reviewing
Feminist Revolution Today.”
Left Curve: Art and Revolution (San

Chicago, Judy, Through the Flower: My

Hammond, Miriam Schapiro, Benson

Struggle as a Woman Artist, Doubleday

Woodroofe, Saribenne Stone, and Dona

Francisco).

(Garden City, N.J., 1975).

Nelson, Art in America (Nov.-Dec. 1976).

Quest: A Feminist Quarterly (Washington,
D.C.); especially the following issues and
articles: Charlotte Bunch, “Reform Tool

Cockcroft, Eva, “Abstract Expressionism —

Weapon of the Cold War,” Artforum
(vol. 12, no. 10, June, 1974).

Women’s responses and Lawrence Alloway's reply to his article “Women’s Art
in the 1970's,” Art in America (May-June,
1976).

Davis, Angela, ed., !f They Come in the
Morning: Voices of the Resistance, New
American Library (New York, 1971); includes
writings by Bettina Aptheker, Erika Huggins,
Margaret Burnham, Fania Davis, and others.

Deming, Barbara, “Two Perspectives on
Women’s Struggle,” Liberation (June, 1973).

Deren, Maya, “Writings on Film by Maya
Deren,” Film Culture (no. 39, Winter, 1965).

Duncan, Carol, “Male Domination and
Virility in 20th Century Art,” Artforum,
(Dec., 1973).

Duncan, Carol, “When Greatness is a Box
of Wheaties,” Artforum (Oct., 1976).

Eber, Irene, “Images of Women in Recent
Chinese Fiction: Do Women Hold Up Half

Nochlin, Linda, “Why Are There No Great

Women Artists?,” Art News (Jan. 1971).
O'Neill, William L. ed., Women at Work,
Quadrangle (New York, 1972); comprised

Figes, Eva, Patriarchal Attitudes: The Case
for Women in Revolt, Fawcett (Greenwich,

Gluck, Sherna, ed., From Parlor to Prison,
Vintage (New York, 1976).

Guettel, Charnie, Marxism and Feminism,
Women’s Educational Press (Ontario,
Canada, 1974).

Alexa Freeman and Jackie MacMillan,
“Prime Time: Art and Politics,” in Future

Visions and Fantasies (Summer, 1975);
Jackie St. Joan, “Who Was Rembrandt's
Mother?,” Charlotte Bunch and Beverly
Fisher, “What Future for Leadership,” and

Raven, Arlene, “Women’s Art: The Develop-

maker, The Leader,” in Leadership (Spring,

ment of a Theoretical Perspective,”
Womanspace Journal (no. 1, 1973).

Redstockings, ed., Feminist Revolution

Bertha Harris, “The Lesbian: The Work1976); Charlotte Bunch, “Beyond Either/
Or: Feminist Options,” and Jane Flax,
“Do Feminists Need Marxism?” in Kaleidoscope (Summer, 1976).

(New York, 1975).

Rich, Adrienne, “The Kingdom of the
Fathers,” Partisan Review (vol. 43, no. 1,
1976).

Rowbotham, Sheila, Hidden From History,
Random House (New Yóòrk, 1974).

Rowbotham, Sheila, Woman's Consciousness, Man’s World, Penguin (Baltimore,
1973).

Socialist Revolution, “Socialism and Feminism,” articles by Easton, Berkely, Oakland Women’s Union, and Eli Zaretsky
(Jan.-March, 1974); “The National Conference on Socialist Feminism: Speeches and
Report (no. 26, Oct.-Dec., 1975).
Sparerib (London, England).
Take One, special issue on “Women in
Film” (vol. 3, no. 2, 1972).

Rowbotham, Sheila, Women, Resistance,

Toward Revolutionary Art (San Francisco,

and Revolution, Vintage Books (New York,

Ca).

1974); extensive bibliography.
Sontag, Susan, “The Third World of
Women,” Partisan Review (vol. 40, no. 2,

The School of Visual Arts (New York,

1973).

1975, 1976).

1974); Karen Kollias, “Class Realities:

Company” by Elinor Langer.

1 and 2), Women in the Arts Publication,

Interviews With Women in the Arts (part

Kit,” in Processes of Change (Summer,
1974); Money, Fame, and Power (Fall,
Create A New Power Base”; (Winter, 1975);

and “Inside the New York Telephone

of “The Long Day” by Dorothy Richardson

the Sky?,” Signs (Autumn, 1976).

Conn., 1971).

107

Working Papers on Socialist Feminism,
New American Movement (Chicago, 1972).

Books (New York, 1972); especially “The

1976).

in the Women’s Movement,” Liberation,

Vogel, Lise, “Fine Arts and Feminism,”
Feminist Studies (vol. 2, no. 1, 1974).

Maid,” “The Waitress,” and “The Telephone
Operator.”

Blumenfeld, Gina, “What Is to Be Undone

1971); especially the section on “”ideo-

Lasson, Kenneth, The Workers, Bantam

Bebel, August, Woman Under Socialism,
Schocken Books (New York, 1971).

(New York, 1972).

Thompson, Mary Lou, ed., Voices of the
New Feminism, Beacon Press (Boston,
logy”

tion,” NACLA Newsletter (no. 10, 1972).

Beauvoir, Simone de, “Simone de Beauvoir
et la Lutte de Femmes,” special issue of
D'Arc, no. 61,1975.

Berger, John, Ways of Seeing, Viking Press

Politics of Culture: An Interview with
Susan Sontag,” by Robert Bayers and
Maxine Bernstein, Sa/magundi (Fall 1975Winter 1976).

bury, 1976).

Woman, Schocken Books (New York, 1975).

Anonymous Was A Woman, Feminist Art

Sontag, Susan, “Women, the Arts, and the

Womanart (Brooklyn, N.Y).
Women Artists Newsletter (New York).

Women and Film (Santa Monica, Ca.,
1972-75).

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in entirety. Thanks:

Virginia Admiral

Liza Cowan

Joyce Aiken

Aline Dallier

Shirley Kassman

Susan Sollins

Betsy Damon
Nancy B. Davidson
Marsha Drebelbis
Donald Droll
Carol Duncan

Jeanette Wong Ming

Janis Alley

Jane Kaufman

Christian Miss

Helen Soreff

Terry L. Kelly

Nicholasa Mohr

Marion Klapper

Maud Cabot Morgan
Caryn McTighe Musil

Patricia Ferrero

Janet Kraften

Linda Nochlin

Carole Fisher

Bea Kreloff

Mary K. Stoppert
Marcia L. Storch

Michele Amateau
and/or

Ida Applebroog
108

Phyllis Arlow

Artemesia Fund
Barbara Aubin
Dee Axelrod

Kitty Krupat
Judith Kuspit

Ellen Oppler

Suzanne Lacy
Carolyn Lanchner

Gloria Orenstein

Helene Aylon

Suzanne Frank
Joanna Frueh

Elaine Galen

Rudolf Baranik

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Carolyn Becker

Ann Snitow

Athena Tacha Spear
Nancy Spero
Ann Sperry

Diane Spinrad

Sylvia P. Nelson

Peter Frank

Sally Banes

Colette A. Bangert

Sylvia Kleinman
Arlene Kozloff

LeeAnne Miller

Paula Nordwind
Barbara Novak

Marilyn Baker

Anne Banks

Vaughan Kaprow

Benjamin Spock
Saribenne Stone

Sandra Straus

Jean Streathearn

Daisy Paradis

Eunice Golden

Sandra L. Langer

Carol de Pasquale

Marjorie Strider

Mary Gordon

Ellen Lanyon

Barbara Suter

Shirley Gorelick
Nancy Graves

Trustees of Phillips

Ruth Fine Lehrer

Academy
Nan Rosenthal Piene

Adele Tardi

Ora Lerman

Rita Taub

Donovan Michael Gray

Connie Lewallen

Betsy Griffin

Sol LeWitt

Barbara Price

Mollie Bergman
Jacqueline Bernard

Sandra Gross

Margaret Lippard

Alicia Torregosa

Carol Rabel

Selina Trieff

Eunice Lipton

Arlene Raven

Leonard Bernheim Jr

Jo Hanson

Roberta Loach

Stephanie Bernheim

Adrienne Rich

Paula Harper
Ann Sutherland Harris
Jean Ross Heilbrun
Lori Heineman

Helene Valentin
Adele Wailand
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Susan Hall

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Ruth Bocour
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Elsie Maclay
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Louise Manueïi
janet Marqusee

Ronni Pitt

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Joan Rosenbaum
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Joan Kathryn Weaver
West-East Bag Chicago
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Anna Canepa
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Circle of the Witch
S. De Renne Coerr

75-64

Ruth Jacobs _

Frances Metzger
Nan U. Meyer

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Noma Copley

Eve Merriam

Rosemary Wright
Jasinkowski

Syma C. Cohn

Richard Martin

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Amy L. Williams
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Ronald Slowinski
Jenny Snider

92

o4
BT

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109

they 1:6

` g
Wos they lied
Woa they kied

Ån l still aint

And 1 still ain't

And 1 still aint

And | still ain't satisfied

and | stil ain't satisÝied.
Gut 1 still ain't satistied
and | st Il ain't satisfied.
J did decide that half way won't do.
I got some pride, and | went be lied to.
but l stiil ain't satisfied

LPSE aivt satisfied

I still ain't satistied

| ain't askin for crumbs, | want the whole meal.
I don't plead guilt, I don't want no bum deol

no of
retorm
is gonna
I'm singin about Ånd
control
my own
wombchange my tune,

They liberalized abortion

With so many st ill behind bars
Well they act women pri d

brainwash
our wages
kids at tender ages,
And while They
we work
at slave
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Ad I stil ain't sati Stied.

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but I still amit A kaiuh They call me
still aint satistied ‘cause co opt ation's all I see

3

Ms., they sell me blue jeans. T héy, call it

= t

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women's lib, they make it sound obscene.

still ain't (won they lied) and I still amt

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tua they fied) and I still amt wea they lied)

Pe

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5
Paredon Rëžords. Bonnie Lockhart is now with the Berkeley Women’s Collective.

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112

ART — FEMINISM — POLITICS

HERESIES Subscription Form

l am also enclosing a contribution:

1 $5.00 J $10.00 [J $25.00 J $50.00 1 $100 J other
Name

City State

Street

HERESIES Box 766 Canal Street Station New York, N.Y. 10013

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WE ARE SOLICITING MATERIAL FOR
THE NEXT THREE ISSUES OF HERESIES

Patterns of Communication and Space Among
Women: architectural, social and sexual networks; interactions (past and present) between
women— letters, diaries, conversations, groups;
the politics of fashion and the body; use and
experience of space, narrative, and art; women
as a politically demonstrative force; questioning
the public/private dichotomy; science fiction,
humor, photography, film...
Deadline: mid-February.
Lesbian Art and Artists: the political implications of lesbian art forms; the image of lesbians
in art; collectivity— getting rid of the male ego;

the relationship between eroticism and the
intellect; the lesbian as monster; androgyny;
passionate friendships; research, documentation and analysis of past lesbian artists and their

work; dialogue between contemporary lesbian
visual and literary artists; class analysis of lesbian models; lesbian art, form and content;
photography; creative writing....
Deadline: mid-April.
Women’s Traditional Arts and Artmaking: decoration, pattern, ritual, repetition, opulence,
self-ornamentation; arts of non-Western women; breaking down barriers between the fine
and the decorative arts; the effect of industrial-

ization on women’s work and work processes;
the exclusion of women’s traditional arts from
the mainstream of art history...….

mtt

Deadline: mid-October.

Guidelines for Prospective Contributors:
The HERESIES collective wishes to solicit material for
future issues. Themes and deadlines for these issues will be
announced well in advance. Manuscripts (1,000-5,000
words) should be typewritten, double spaced on 8⁄2 x 11”
paper, and submitted in duplicate. We welcome for consideration either outlines or descriptions of articles, or
finished manuscripts with bibliographic footnotes (if necessary) at the end of the paper in numerical order. Writers
should feel free to inquire about the possibilities of an
article. If you are submitting visual material, please send a
photograph, xerox, or description (please do not send the
original). All manuscripts and visual material must be
accompanied by a stamped self-addressed envelope.
HERESIES will pay a fee of $5-$50, as our budget allows, for
published material, and it is our hope to offer higher fees in
the future. There will be no commissioned articles and we
cannot guarantee acceptance of submitted material. We
will not include reviews or monographs on contemporary
women.

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sl we h fiaE x a
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Pat Sweeney

60

104

What is Left?
Assata Shakur

57

Bomb Shitting and Torture in Chile

Do You Think

Jayne Cortez

102
101

Marty Pottenger :
Around Coming Around —a performance

Selected Bibliography on Feminism, / Art and Politics

Still Ain't Satisfied |

Bonnie Lockhart

61

Nancy Spero

the empress anastasia in new york

Jan Clausen

Dead in Bloody Snow

Meridel Le Sueur

98

87

Who Are We? What Do We Want? What Do We Do?

98

36

97

and What's Left
Joan Braderman

Posters from Australia

34

94

88

82

Juggling Contradictions: Feminism, the individual

Ann Newmarch, Mandy Martin, Toni Robertson

in the Art World

Lucy R. Lippard

28

Adrienne Rich

80

79

Mary Beth Edelson

A Pink Strip

Amy Sillman_

Eva Cockcroft :

i `

66

Mandy Martin :

63

62

Traditional Status Vatue: sofie Vi À

From the First- Issue Collective:

Toward Socialist Feminism

Barbara Ehrenreich

Tijuana Maid
Martha Rosler

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Ruth E. Iskin `

Mural Movement

Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying

Adman and Zucchini Poem

Elizabeth ZelVin

Tribute to Rosa Luxemburg and Two Women

May Stevens

The Art of Not Bowing: Writing by Women in Prison

Carole Ramer, Deborah Hiller, Gloria Jensen

Moratorium: Front Lawn: 1970

Kate Jennings

Puerto Rican Day Parade

Suellen Snyder

42

Chicago Mannequin and Twins and Janet

Accion para la Liberacion de la Mujer Peruana

51

Louise Bourgeois, Marisol, Ann Leda Shapiro, Dotty Attie,

Carol Muske

Songs from a-Free Space

La Roquette, Women’s Prison

Groupe de Cinq

Fays, Floozies and Philosophical Flaws

Arlene Ladden

The Esthetics of Power in Modern Erotic Art

Caro! Duncan

Now Women Repossess Their Own Sexuality

Anita Steckel, Joan Semmel

Celebrate Male Creativity

Rivolta Femminile :

54

Susan Yankowitz

ABCS