NATIONAL CONFERENCE
Tentative plans have been made to hold a national conference of radical women and women's liberation groups this Fall, near Xmas. This would commemorate the 120th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention which began the first women's movement in addition to giving us a chance to get together. For more information, write Laya Firestone and Marilyn Webb, c/o The Institute for Policy Studies
ATLANTIC CITY IS A TOWN WITH CLASS
THEY RAISE YOUR MORALS WHILE THEY
JUDGE YOUR ASS
--by
Judith Duffett, New York
On Sept.7, nearly 150 women committed to women's liberation from New York, New Jersey, Washington D.C, Florida, Boston and Detroit, converged on Atlantic City to protest the degrading image of women perpetuated by the Miss America Pageant.
Our goal was: No more Miss America'! Our objections to the Pageant: its racism (there's never been a black contestant); its use of Miss America as a military mascot to entertain the troops abroad and symbolize the it unstained, patriotic American womanhood our boys are fighting for"; the degrading Mindless-Boob-Girlie symbol which puts women on a pedestal/auction block to compete for male approval; the consumer con-game which makes Miss America a walking commercial and oppresses all women into commodity roles; the cult of youth and the American institution of planned obsolescence which makes last year's Miss America as stale as yesterday's news and makes all women "useless"
when they are no longer ripe for exploitation as sex objects; the Madonna Whore image of womanhood which means that Miss America must be--seductive in a bathing suit and at the same time be pure and untouched; and the whole idea of beauty contests, which create one "winner" and (Continued on p.5)
REALWOMEN CHAINED TO AMERIKA-DOLLY In guerilla theater skit In Atlantic City.
Page 2
by Florika, New York
What strategies do radical women, in groups and individually, consider necessary for female human social liberation?
This is one of the questions that brought twenty women from different groups across the country together at Sandy Spring Friend School in Maryland for the weekend of August 2-4. While the group developed no definite answers either for a strategy of liberation or for with the system, they did raise and examine some very crucial questions.
We began by discussing the purpose of the individual groups, their members, activities, and political orientation. Two basic positions prevailed. One view feels that women's liberation leads logically and necessarily to the destruction of capitalism The other believes that the existing system, with its technological sophistication, might be able to absorb and accommodate new social patterns and should therefore be attacked directly.
It is important to stress here that the issue was not whether women's liberation should be separate from the struggle against capitalism or the latter undertaken at the exclusion of our own liberation. It was a matter of emphasis. We realized that before we can come up with a long-range strategy we must first know our enemy.
The women who view women 's liberation as leading directly to an anti-capitalist stance tend to define men and the system as an interconnected enemy (the dominators). Men are controlled through their jobs by the system, but women, in addition to being subject to the same domination by the system, are also under the direct domination of men.
Implied in this analysis is the feeling that despite the diffusion and impersonalization of is not undergoing fundamental' changes. Accordingly, male chauvinism and its counterpart, white racism, are not of only interrelated and supportive of each other but may also be considered to be two of the underlying roots of capitalism.
The other position raises doubts about the intrinsically revolutionary nature of the woman issue. It begins by locating certain key sources of power in the system and examining their contemporary tools of expression.
To say that people are controlled or manipulated by the system means that the corporation is the institution which dominates our lives. It is an all-pervasive social, cultural and political force. For the majority of people in this country, it has superseded the "free enterprise" system.
Woman is directly oppressed and subjugated by the corporation whenever she functions as a consumer. Her mind is saturated with ads, products and gadgets at all times, She is not only projected by the mass media as an object and a commodity for consumption----she has in fact emulated and reinforced that image by becoming a self-conscious, self-acting commodity.
Under modern capitalism there are two main kinds of exploitation. One is the blatant oppression of the non-consumer, and the other is the invisible control of the consumer, For the middle-class woman, consumption and the mass media have totally obliterated her sense of reality. Nothing but a full-fledged attack by women on these"invisible" powers of manipulation is going to put her back in touch with reality.
White racism and male chauvinism, two characteristics of capitalism, unquestionable exist. But they exist (Continued on P. 3)
Page 3
Towards Strategy (Continued from p.2)
White racism and male chauvinism, two characteristics of capitalism, unquestionable exist, but they exist as conservative leftovers from the era of industrial revolution, nationalism, the bosses and state power. We still must deal with them, but we must recognize the new forms of power that now prevail.
We must also question why the corporations --- business, not politics---seem to emerge as the power that can effectively circumvent the threat of black revolt by altering the slave economy that produces it. The way the corporations will go about managing and, therefore, neutralizing that threat should indicate the extent to which the system can absorb and control socio- -economic change
A similar pattern might develop if the dissatisfaction that women feel today becomes a political forc.e The dissolution of the family, legal and inexpensive abortions, day-care center for etc., would not be possible, for economic reasons alone, under present American capitalism,
The two positions outlined did not constitute a theoretical split; they actually tended to overlap. They also give a very narrow view of the range of ideas discussed at the conference.
We generally agreed on certain areas of weakness within the movement:
- the need to develop an analysis of contemporary capitalism;
- the need to define the enemy;
- the phenomenon of decentralization: does it imply an erosion of state power? Why are the corporations supporting it?
- how does technology control us? What is its potential as a liberating force?
- the need to reveal the subtle and often subliminal methods by which people are controlled,
We did agree that we all have a great deal more to discuss and that we should work to involve all concerned women.
The Radical Women of Seattle held a series of classes last summer on "The Women Question in America: the saga of a 3-century struggle for equality," which featured speakers on different aspects of the fight for women's liberation. The classes were open to men and were well-attended, Janet Hews of RWS reports that after the last lecture "a couple of male members of the audience... almost apologized for being members of such an oppressive sex." RWS has also written a very impressive eight-page Program and Structure covering the major areas of the women's struggle and how RWS is organizing to fight them.
Chicago women arranged a series of discussion sessions for women delegates to the Democratic Convention last August, intending to raise questions of concern to women. Although there were 1,300 delegates to the convention, their participation in decision-making was minimal. The elsewhere-discussed events of that week, though, prevented these sessions from taking place.
Women around the New York City Resistance group have recently formed a "women's independent caucus" to try to deal with the problems which are particular to resistance women.
A group called The Feminist Rebellion has been formed at UCLA. It is planning to organize a feminist union on the campus. They want the University to offer classes on feminine cultures, history, political forms and economic (continued on p.7)
Page 4
Page 5
ATLANTIC CITY (Continued from p.1)
millions of insecure, frustrated losers, who feel they must meet the imposed standards of beauty or face disaster -- "You won 't get a man,."
Our purpose was not to put down Miss America but to attack the male chauvinism, commercialization of beauty, racism and oppression of women symbolized by the Pageant.
We arrived on the Boardwalk at 2:00 p,m., Saturday, and began picketing in front of Convention Hall — Some of our signs read: "Everyone is Beautiful," "I am a Woman, Not a Toy, Pet or Mascot," "Who Dares to Judge Beauty," and "Welcome to the Miss America Cattle Auction".
Guerrilla theater was used to illustrate some of our points, A live sheep was crowned "Miss America" and paraded on the liberated area of the boardwalk to parody the way the contestants (all women) are appraised and judged like animals at a county fair.
" Women are enslaved by beauty standards" was the theme of another dramatic action — in which some of us chained ourselves to a life-size Miss America puppet. This was paraded and auctioned off by a woman dressed up as a male Wall Street financier. "Step right up, gentlemen, get your late model woman right here --- a
PEGGY DOBBINS FACES 2 to 3
YEARS IN JAIL
for her participation in the Miss America-Pageant protest. She is now out on $1,000 bail charged with disorderly conduct and "emitting a noxious odor."
SHE NEEDS YOUR HELP
lovely paper dolly to call your very own property .... She can push your product, push your ego, or push your lawnmower...,"
The highlight of the afternoon was the giant Freedom Trash Can. With elaborate ceremony and shouts of joy, we threw away instruments of torture to women -- highheeled shoes, Merry Widow corsets, girdles, padded bras, false eyelashes, curlers, copies of Playboy, Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home Journal, etc.
Throughout the afternoon activities, we were observed by some five or six hundred onlookers, mostly men, who were by turns amused, perplexed, and mostly enraged by our presence. The heckling was led by two young men: "You're just jealous --- you couldn't be Miss America if you were the last man(?) on earth',," "Get back on your broom"' "Why, don't you go back to Russia?". "Which one of your girlfriends is your husband?". The women in the mainly lower middle class crowd by and large agreed with them. One woman, however, crossed the police line with her three children and joined us.
We generally ignored their jeers, but in the evening (we stayed until midnight), when the crowd was somewhat less hostile we changed our tactics, Many of us put down our signs and went right up to the police line and began engaging in dialogue with the people. Two more women crossed the line to our side, thought we did not make many noticeable conversions.
But a dialogue was established, and women who had felt confused and hurt by the signs and leaflets which they didn't understand and demonstrators with whom they could not identify, began to go through some changes in their heads when we began to talk to them personally. Proving what many of us have felt for a long time — women who are unreachable on most radical issues can be reached on this one, since it involves their daily lives.
Sixteen of us purchased tickets to the Pageant and, from seats in the balcony near the stage, began a disruption as the outgoing Miss America was making her farewell speech. Although there was no (continued on p. 7)
Page 6
Tune "Ain't She Sweet")
Ain't she sweet
makin' profit off her meat,
Beauty sells she's told so she's out pluggin' it.
ain't she sweet.
Ain't she quaint
with her face all full of paint.
After all how can she face reality.
ain't she sweet.
Chorus: Just cast an eye
in her direction.
She has to buy--
It's her oppression.
(Tune "A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody")
A pretty girl Is a commodity
with stock to buy and sell.
When the market is high,
and you see her pass by,
count up your shares
in what she wears that pay you dividends.
A pretty girl in this society
is judged by looks alone.
What you see on her face
is often the waste
of chemicals developed for the War.
WOMEN MILITANT
IN WEST GERMANY
Leftists Throw Tomatoes in Drive for Wider Rights
By DAVID BINDER
Special to The New York Times
BONN , Sept. 14— Shouting "counterrevolutionary agent of the class enemy," a young woman threw two tomatoes at the left-wing student leader Hans Krahl in Frankfurt last night — and hit him.
It was the high point of a struggle for women's rights in the radical socialist German Students League at its 23d annual conference.
The unidentified suffragette rose amid a stormy controversy over a proposal to establish an "action council for the liberation of woman." The proposal was put forth by the fiery delegate from West Berlin, Heike Sanders, who cried to the predominantly male student gathering:
"We don't want to put up with your repressions any longer. We must liberate ourselves from your oppressions."
She was laughed at by the men. Then the tomatoes flew.
Last year eight West Berlin students invited three girls to join them in forming a utopian commune to experiment in practical socialism. It ended up with the girls doing all the cooking and most of the washing for their classmates, and after six months they withdrew.
During the summer more than a hundred students of West, Berlin's Free University decided they were not seeing enough of their female classmates and moved unopposed into the girls' dormitory at Schlachtensee.
According to reliable reports, the girls have since been burdened with housekeeping work, as in the unsuccessful 1967 commune.
The left-wing girls are understood to be rebelling against the inequalities of the arrangement They are part of a larger female uprising in West Germany
against the traditional domination of males.
According to Government statistics, 31.9 per cent of West Germany's women work full time for a living, carrying out household and family tasks as well. While refrigerators, washing machines and prepared foods have eased their obligations, they are still treated as second-class citizens.
Page 7
ATLANTIC CITY (Continued from p.4)
coverage of the disruption (we were told later that one of the cameramen was about to pan to the balcony when he was told that if he did he would lose his job), the cameras
and micro phones did record the visible turning of heads and the stuttering and trembling of Miss America as we shouted "Freedom for Women!" and "No More Miss America" and hung a banner from the balcony reading, "Women's Liberation."
The sixteen were quickly hustled out, and five were arrested, charges against them later dropped, Earlier Peggy Dobbins had been arrested and held on $1,000 bail, She was charged with disorderly conduct and "emanating a noxious odor" for spraying a can of Toni home permanent throughout the audience.
The Pageant and city officials were undoubtedly. sensitive on this area of commercial products. We had already a declared a boycott of the products sponsoring the Pageant which Toni is one (the others are Pepsi-Cola and Oldsmobile).
We expected that they would sweep Peggy's case under the rug. Instead the charges against her were escalated to an indictable offense, with a possible sentence of two to three years.
All in all, the day was a tremendous success, We intend to be back in Atlantic City next year and every year until Miss America Pageant is closed down. It may not take too long. There have been rumors that because of the disturbance, the Pageant next year may be taped with no studio audience.
We have also been in contact with a former Miss America who is on our side, and have heard from a women who was asked to be a judge but declined, partly, because she heard of our plans. I suppose it's possible to have the Pageant without an audience, but you can hardly have one without contestants or judges.
NATIONAL NEWS (Continued from p.3)
needs, Ann Herschfang reports that many of small, isolated, feminist groups are springing up spontaneously from Berkeley to San Diego "
It has been suggested that each newsletter contain names of chapter contacts to help local recruiting in various areas. Chapters that would like to be listed should select contact women and send the particulars to VWLM. If you live in an area where there is no chapter and would like to start one, write us for the names of other interested people.
NOTES FROM THE FIRST YEAR, a 34-page booklet of writings by New York women put out last June received favorable reviews in The Guardian and the Village Voice Copies are selling for 50 cents to women and $1.00 to men and are available from Marion Davidson. Cindy Cisler reports that distribution in bookstores and word-of-mouth publicity has brought in many new members, New chapters have started in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New Haven. Contact Devra Weber in L.A., Pam Allen in S.F. or Harriet Wolff in New Haven.
A Cambridge chapter has published a literary journal on women's liberation with poems, essays, graphics and photograph collages. It is nameless --- can be purchased from $1.25 from Roxanne Dunbar.
The State College, Pennsylvania chapter is fighting to get equal representation on the Town Independent Men's Council, the civic governing body. The council has offered to give women two of its twenty-six seats.
The Women's Radical Action Project in Chicago (WRAP) held its first meeting open to men. Of the nearly 80 people attending the meeting, over half were men, Out of a discussion of the mutually dehumanizing roles imposed on men and women developed plans for a men's liberation group. The general tone of the meeting was one of openness and sympathy.
Page 8
by Sara Heslep, Chicago
Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890-1920 Columbia University Press, New York, 1965,
Few of us have ever felt indebted to Wyoming, We should: in 1869, fully a generation before any other state, Wyoming granted full franchise to women. The suffrage movement did not cross the critical geographical social frontier of the Mississippi until 1913 when Illinois adopted a presidential franchise for wome. Seven years later the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified.
Altogether, the campaign for the vote spanned 75 years; it was shoved to the periphery of three reform movements and drew in 2,000,000 000 before the 19th amendment passed
History of the woman suffrage movement is not the subject of Aileen Kraditor's book. Nor is the struggle for legal and economic rights. She deals with the ideology and tactics of the fight for the vote. Between 1890, when the two suffrage groups with national followings merged into the National America Woman Suffrage Association, and the post-war amendment of 1919-20, women fought the prejudices of fathers, husbands and brothers. They antagonized Congressmen and clergy. They cajoled the doubtful of their own sex. They spoke, they wrote, they met with whoever would listen. They had against them the "objective truths" of the theology, biology, and sociology of their times.
Is it any wonder that woman suffrage took three generations to achieve?
The original suffragists (not suffragettes--their British counterparts) were abolitionists. Their
movement grew from the same reform impulse as the anti-slavery movement and based its arguments, similarly
on natural rights.
First-generation suffragists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B, Anthony, and Lucy Blackwell Stone appealed to the Declaration of Independence. They set out to convince the country that women were created equal to men and merited the same political responsibilities
Early ideology assumed and articulated progress of civilization from government by force to government by consent of the governed. The colonial analogy and bywords, "no taxation without representation," had fresh relevance for the generation of women who had recently achieved the right to own property after marriage and who were gaining education and working in, significant numbers.
Later strategy allied the suffrage question with various reform goals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many women were also temperance unionists; many fought for good municipal government; some worked for Americanization of immigrant groups.
There were distasteful alliances in this period also. Exclusionist sentiments, anti-immigrant (primarily in cities) and anti-Negro (particularly in the South) strongly influenced suffragist reasoning. In all alliances the appeal to expediency-we can help you, Mister, if you give us the means--dominated over the earlier appeal to natural right.
For most of Miss Kraditor's period, suffragists were persuaders, not activists in a contemporary sense. Particularly after 1900, when their issue became "respectable," NAWSA rank and file were conservative and apolitical. The apolitical character also had (Continued on p.9)
Page 9
(Continued from p. 8)
deep roots in the events of Reconstruction. Republican leaders had welcomed the talents of feminist abolitionists and then deserted them after the war on the grounds that the enfranchisement of the Southern black male was more important than women's issues. They would have to wait.
NAWSA itself was a league of voluntarily affiliated local groups. It found resources and set priorities through conventions, elected leaders, and publications. Shortly before World War 1, tactical militants organized by Alice Paul broke with the parent organization.
From the beginning suffragists had to tilt at the social windmill of the "place" of women. Anti-suffragist arguments that women were not rational, that they belonged at home raising children, that the Bible sanctified an inferior role for them, were essentially defensive measures used to fortify an image of male dominance in times of change. As economic structures of male domination sagged, fortification of traditional sex roles proceeded at a desperate pace. Attributes of femininity were at stake. Women could not be ladies and be political animals too. Both politics and motherhood would suffer.
The religious argument was far weightier than it is today, (it's been replaced by psychology) but other objections of men, and women, opponents have a startling contemporaneity. To learn how the suffrage movement grew out of dissatisfaction with middle class life styles created by increased economic and educational mobility gives us a new understanding of great-grandmother.
Restricted in tactics, disillusioned with male politicians whose priorities spelled betrayal, at war with the moral foundations of their society, these women met, wrote , spoke, sweated, and finally won--a paper victory, To read this book is to realize how little has happened in 120 years.
NATIONAL NEWS (continued from p. 7)
The National Organization of Women (NOW) is sponsoring a boycott of all Colgate-Palmolive products to protest the company's long-standing flagrant discrimination against female employees, In addition to the usual separate seniority lists, unequal pay rates, and exclusion from promotion to better jobs on the grounds of "state protective legislation," the company has been laying off women with more than twenty years seniority to hire men with no seniority in their places. Everyone is urged not to buy any Colgate products. Let's not contribute to our own oppression.
WOMEN:_A Quarterly of Women's Liberation is soliciting articles, poems, and short stories. Material and contributions should be sent to Dee Ann Pappas.
The Albina Art Center in Portland, Oregon, is looking for "political art" for like some relevant pieces on women's liberation, Contact and send ~photographs of your work to Damrosch MacKurray, Albina Art Center, Inc.
WLM women in New York who are also members of the Newsreel Project are making a documentary film of footage they shot at Atlantic City during the Miss America Pageant. It should be ready soon and will be distributed by the VWLM for local programs.
The Women's Radical Action Project at the University of Chicago is organizing to demand that the University finance a day-care center for children of students, faculty and employees. The idea has received strong support from many of the University's female employees who frequently have to spend most of their salary on babysitters, Nearly fifty women attended WRAP's first organizing meeting this fall.
(Continued on p. 11)
The Nitty Gritty On
The Woman Question
(From the San Francisco Express Times, 8-28-68)
Lenny Heller's article on Anne Scheer in the August 14 issue of the Express Times is a prototype of the chauvinistic and condescending attitude male radicals have toward their female counterparts. The article purports to be an interview of Anne Scheer's experiences in the Democratic Republic of North Vietnam. But Heller was not interested in anything she had to SAY and apparently thought it inconceivable that she could say anything: "I can't seem to find a woman to suit me-so I went to look at somebody else's. And again.. "I went back to talk with her again ... to watch her more closely."
Heller and the other male ''radicals" find it impossible to see women as competent individuals. Rather they are sexual objects, entities that exist to please men, and decorative items to garnish in their mint-skirts. Indeed Heller feels emasculated at the thought that women have much to say and contribute to the left. He finds women tough when they refuse to come on with sexual games. It Is a sad commentary on men who call themselves radicals to feel threatened by women who assert their creative powers as individuals.
The male chauvinism In the movement goes much further than Lenny Heller's article. It is evident In a newspaper which would print such an interview. Chauvinism toward women is so commonplace that Marvin Garson, "didn't see how hurtful (the article) would be." Garson continues, "I have discovered, in the last few days, that my own casual callousness was no personal eccentricity; almost without exception, every woman I've talked to has found the interview objectionable while every man has wondered what the fuss was about.,, (EXPRESS TIMES, August 21).
Indeed viewing women as sexual appendages of the left is much like racism-it Is an unconscious attitude which those having It find nearly impossible to recognize. Yet male chauvinism is an element on the left, reflected in the structure of radical organizations from the EXPRESS TIMES to the and-draft groups. Movement women are predominately relegated to movement shitwork; movement men make the decisions. Women are rarely listened to in meetings. Even if they manage to make themselves heard above what are often ego-involved powers struggles of male radicals, their -words go unheeded as the audience takes in their appearances. It is no wonder that many radical women find it impossible to function within existing male-dominated attitudes about women permeate the left and be almost imperceptible to it Is that the movement has failed to create and even more to accept a radical analysis of the problems of woman. It is for this purpose-among others that radical women all over the country are forming groups for the discussion and implementation of womens liberation. Our discussions have led us to the beginnings of both theory and perspectives for action. Clearly the attitudes toward women on the left are the same (though sometimes expressed in more subtle forms) as those In the society as a whole. It is Important to understand that the social ethos creating role-definitions for both men and women Is crucial to the maintenance of the authoritarian, repressive society under which capitalism functions.
Men in this society are taught that In order to be masculine they must actively create; and dominate sexually, physically, and morally. Women are taught to be subservient and easily manipulated. Though child-rearing and housekeeping takes up less and less of their time women are told with Increasing vigor that their only creative roles are as wife and mother. This forces women to see their children as extensions of themselves because they are the only concrete products of their working lives. Hence dependent, guilty and confused children. It is in the face of the importance of domination to the male self-concept that men feel threatened by women who attempt to break out of their socially defined roles. Women, denied the possibility of direct self-expression, must often rely on coquettishness and manipulation to overcome subservience. The results of these social roles are numerous, one of them being that sex becomes an act ox mutual exploitation rather than an affirmation of one's humanity.
These same repressive roles which create sexual exploitation and male chauvinism on the left have important functions in Western capitalism. One of the products of the social ethos of roles is the housewife: a bored, uncreative and frustrated woman. Women control 75% of the purchasing power of consumer goods in America. It did not take industries and advertisers long to figure out that women will buy more when they are told that happiness is in having and not in being. The housewife is assured that she will become fulfilled by having a refrigerator to match her kitchen floor. Women's role as sexual object is exploited by the market of women's products: cosmetics and fashionable clothing. Indeed, it is highly profitable to maintain woman's role as object rather than subject and the social attitudes that go along with it.
The institutionalized forms of discrimination against women are supported by repressive role-definitions. In production women earn lower wages and more importantly find many professions virtually closed to them. The types of jobs open to women are extensions of their role as mother and helper. Thus women are predominately nurses, teachers and secretaries. The oppression of women is integral to every aspect of Western Institutions. It can be seen in woman's role in the family, her legal position (especially as related to abortion laws) and her opportunities for higher education.
Our goal is to end not only the institutional oppression of women but also to destroy the repressive social ethos creating the basis for its continuation. Clearly neither men nor women will be psychologically free and unalienated without basic changes In the structure of society. However it is crucial that the movement give a radical analysis of every aspect of our exploitative society. It is inconceivable that this analysts could stop short of recognizing the systematic oppression of women. The radical movement must begin the task of creating relationships based on mutual respect. Marvin Garson says that he may be a male chauvinist but that's all right because most other males on the left are also. We can only say that he and others should think twice about calling themselves radical.
Susan Lydon
Lisa Mandel
Consle Miller
Suzy Nelson
Anne Scheer
Anne Bernstein
Liz Bunding
Elaine Greenberg
Sydney Halpern
Zoe Isonn
Page 11
Letters
Dear Voice,
I'm delighted with the uniform proposal. The sooner the better. Could it have pockets please? And be comfortable without restricting movement? I like to look fairly presentable at the institution where I work when I interview parents, but I also like to be able to run freely with the children. I wonder if culottes that look like a dress is the answer? Also, could the summer uniform be sleeveless, for greater comfort?
I'm eagerly awaiting for the day the uniforms go on sale.
Helen Story
Berkeley
Sisters,
A uniform for the women in WLM would simply be substituting one restriction for another. The problem is not current fashion per se, it's the rigidity with; which it is prescribed by the fashion industry. We are not liberated unless we can choose freely between hair shirt and a sequined dress. We must fight conformity, not-develop our own.
Toby Silvey
Chicago
Sisters, (?????),
Please send my wife stuff you....might have which approaches the political through the domestic--hangups of women. I've tried but I think other women can do it best. Thanks.
Fraternally,
Paul Resstucia,
Quebec
Dear Paul,
We will gladly send your wife some "stuff" as soon as you send us her name.
---Ed.
NATIONAL NEWS (Continued from p.9)
Radical Women in Boston, New York and other cities joined with NOW and a Boston Welfare Mothers' group in a demonstration of support for Bill Baird on October 18 in Boston. Baird is director and founder of Parents' Aid Society, a Long Island birth-control clinic and abortion referral service. He faces a possible 10 years in jail for displaying publicly a birth-control device and distributing foam to unmarried women at a 1967 Boston University lecture (Doctors' prescriptions for married women are the only legal source for contraceptives in Mass.) His case is currently on appeal before the Mass. Supreme Court.
After years of resistance, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission has finally ruled that in at least some areas women are entitled to the same rights as blacks under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. As of November 30, 1968, the EEOC has ruled that newspapers can no longer list job offers separately by sex. We'll be eager to see how vigorously this is enforced..
Rosalyn Baxandall and Cindy Cisler join a Parents' Aid picket of St. Patricks Cathedral to protest the Pope's ban on birth control. The sign says: "Why Should Male Clerics Rule Female Bodies?"
Page 12
Readings
Up From Ridicule: A Position Paper
On Radical Women/ Marlene Dixon
Towards a Radical Women's Movement/
Marilyn Webb
Women in the Radical Movement: A Reply to Ramparts/ Evelyn Goldfield, Heather Booth, Sue Munaker
The Look is You: Towards a Strategy
for Radical Women/Naomi Jaffe and Bernadine Dohrn
A Call for Women"s Liberation/
Sue Munaker
Women: An Essential Force for Change/
Sue Munaker
The Sexual Caste System: On Passing
Two whores and a nun/Heather Dean
Sisters, Brothers, Lovers...Listen/Judi
Bernstein Peggy Morton, Linda
Seese. Myrna Wood
An Introduction to the Boston Regional Meeting/
Nancy Hawley
Excerpts from an Interview with
Pam Allen and Julius Lester
Some Proposals for Radical women/
Sue Cloke (free)
RECOMMENDED:
Towards a Female Liberation Movement/'
Beverly Jones and Judith Brown (50 cents)
Kinder, Kuche, Kirche,as scientific law:
Psychology constructs the female/
Naomi Weisstein-,.(35 cents)
The Voice of the Women's Liberation Movement is a national newsletter printed as often as time and money permit. Subscriptions are $3.00 per year. Bulk rates are available to women's liberation groups. Permission is granted to reprint any of the material provided all credit is given to source and author and at least four copies are sent to VWLM. Unsolicited articles, news, drawings, stories, letters, jokes and cartoons are warmly received.
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