Going Too Far (24 page)

WOMEN'S SKILL SUMMER SESSIONS

(
Six Weeks Basic Training
)

CODES
: R =
Required

O =
Optional

TWO COMMON CRITICISMS

AND TWO ATTEMPTED REBUTTALS

I
HAVE SPOKEN
of the proposal to quite a few women, and the majority have reacted favorably and expressed excited interest in creating and attending such a session. Those who have opposed the idea have done so usually on one of two premises, which I would like to rebut here, if only to clarify what I
don't
mean by this proposal—and also to clear the path for more complicated criticisms which I hope will manifest themselves. Each criticism and reply follows.

1) “It sounds like an army camp. Discipline, getting up at dawn, studying and working all day. It's an authoritarian-sounding, cold, unsisterly, non-Women's-Movement, real male trip.”

I would venture in reply that discipline is not a male prerogative. There certainly have been male ways of using discipline as a sadistic means to grasp and hold power, to whip others into line, to create patterns of submission and dominance. But a sense of structure, form, or cooperation that doesn't trample over others out of (an equally oppressive) pretended spontaneity—in fact, form which reflects our own radical feminist content—that kind of form is necessary to any people who are serious about seizing power in order to become free, to free others, and ultimately, to destroy the notion of power itself. We women have been capable of discipline for millennia—about our children, about not
forgetting to take the roast out of the oven, about remembering to get to the laundromat before it closes,
ad infinitum
. What about putting it to use for once in our own behalf, for our own survival and struggle? Yes, we must create new ways—collective, collaborative, egalitarian disciplines, but to fear the word “discipline” itself is tantamount to accepting for women conditions that we oppose: dependency and powerlessness.

2) “The idea sounds good, but why the preparation for violence? Doesn't that make violence an inevitability? What do you want—a women's army? We should concentrate on survival and service skills. Violence is a male trip.”

My answer is that violence is no more a solely male capability than is rage or anger, and it may turn out to
be
a survival or service skill. Men have used their rage in a murderous manner against women for centuries. Does that mean that we now have no right to our own healthy, revolutionary rage against
them?
On the contrary, feminists have affirmed that rage in us as the first step toward freeing ourselves. We may or may not need to use violence in our revolution. I myself do not believe that men as a class will cede their vast power for the mere asking. The “normal,” everyday violence of that class directed against women is staggering (rape, wife-beating, institutionalized violence such as birth-control and abortion statutes and legal discrimination, not to speak of the psychic violence done to females from the birth moment on). What then can we expect in reprisal to our demanding better treatment, equality, power, freedom? Further, I believe that the “violence” of the oppressed is inherently a form of extended self-defense—that is, a desperate response to the older violence of the oppressor. (This is not meant as an attempt to escape blame or responsibility, but merely as recognition of a fact. It is not a chicken-or-egg business of which came first; clearly oppression predates revolution. Without the former there would be no need for the latter.)

Yes, I have thought about a feminist army, more than once. And yes, I feel stronger and more committed and even happier with every skill I learn to further defend myself and my sisters.
Competence feels good
. But that is, in a sense, beside the point. One wants to learn how to swim even if one doesn't plan a career as a deep-sea diver. Only when you have access to the tools can you make a fair choice between which ones you will want to use at any given time. If, then, we find that we are ever forced into using “violent” means to survive or fight, it is then contingent on us to avoid that very same violence-for-its-own-sake attitude that men are into (including Leftist men). We must be sneakier, wittier, and more efficient—as our foremothers were. The witches, the gypsies, the Amazons, the Turkish harem rebels were into no “male trips” but freedom. We have a long and militant, if buried, herstory of our own. But
we must know what we are doing
—know as many options
as we can learn. We can no longer limit ourselves through ignorance. We must be able to choose.

This, then, would be the reason for the Summer Skill Sessions. There are other times and places where we can share other tools for change: poetry, music, child care, dance, rapping, on and on. But we have neglected certain tools too long. These skills are
only
tools; they have proven murderous or at least exclusive options in the hands of men; they could be liberating in the hands of women. Not all—perhaps even not many, at first—will want to attend the sessions. Many of those who do attend may never pick up any weapon of force again. Instead, they may return to their communities to do paraprofessional abortion work, or teach other sisters auto mechanics, or even just be better able to cope with leaks, wiring, first aid, etc., in their own lives, instead of being dependent on men for help or instruction. Still others may use what they have learned in more explosive ways.

The sessions themselves, like this initial proposal, would have to be open to ongoing criticism and revision. No one can imagine what forms they will ultimately take, or what our People—Women—will do in making use of those forms. I trust the buried rage and wisdom of those people, and I believe that if we begin to provide the skills, to each other and to other women, together we will all find that we know how to use them.

TEACH EACH OTHER TO TEACH EACH OTHER TO TEACH EACH OTHER.

June
1970–
June
1971

¹
On August 4, 1970, in New York City, Arbitrator Knowlton sustained the contention that Grove Press had illegally discharged employees “solely for union activities,” and ordered our reinstatement with full back pay. I could never go back, but the extra money came in handy; it was split between baby needs and
Rat
needs—it paid the pediatrician, and it paid the printer for two issues of the paper.

²
Oglesby's long resignation letter appeared in full in
Evergreen Review
No. 8o, July 1970.

A COUNTRY WEEKEND: THREE PROSE POEMS

Rat
, while it had become a women's paper, had never become a feminist one. The ongoing and intense struggles within the
Rat
collective always came down to a Marxist analysis (which in practice meant Women Should Wait Until After the Revolution),
versus
a feminist analysis. During the summer of 1970 these differences reached a crisis point, and the sense of sisterhood was so depleted that we all decided to go on a “retreat” together in an attempt to recapture some solidarity. One woman knew of a friend's house in the country which would be available, and the entire collective, including children, went up there for almost a week. Those days and nights were one long consciousness-raising session, and the results were most encouraging. Regrettably, upon our return to the city and the pressures of deadlines (not to speak of the pressures from men and their politics), much of the good feeling melted away again. It would have required more than emotional solidarity; it would have required a political understanding of the real imperative of feminism, to have transformed
Rat
. That transformation, sadly, never occurred.

At the end of five days, most of the women returned home, but six of us remained behind for the weekend, to be joined by the men with whom we were each involved, for a brief (we thought) vacation. The weekend was to turn out otherwise, however, with more struggle and still more consciousness-raising.

1

T
WELVE WOMEN
in a circle, dancing to a recording of sister Aretha's version of “Respect”—and my body is eleven others and our one voice and the power of my own blood makes me blind to this century and we are all suddenly old, older than all the myths.

We
are
the myths. We are the Amazons, the Furies, the witches. We have never not been here, this exact sliver of time, this precise place.

There is something utterly familiar about us.

We have been ourselves before.

2

L.'
S STORY
of her little black baby girl being murdered by the hospital, taken out of the incubator too early because the parents couldn't pay for an extra day, taken out on purpose, even though the doctors knew it would suffocate the child eventually.

And my own baby playing on the grass meanwhile, in the sunshine: white male, sunburned and sunblond, strong, healthy, giggling at the clover-chain garland one of my sisters wove for him.

Dear god who I would hate if I believed in, what have they done to us, that my white male blond baby's tiny hands already are stained with the delicate blood of his little black sister!

How have they managed to make the
air
a commodity so that his small breaths deprive some little black girl's lungs? Why was the only ointment available for his special infant skin infection manufactured by the same petroleum-chemical company that also produces Napalm Baby Lotion for other babies, of a different shaded skin?

How can we learn to avenge our unborn and undead children, our children, our children, as well as ourselves?

3

S
O THE MEN
came up to the country after most of the collective had left. We were stunned by the contrast. Even the most well-meaning brothers who are struggling with their own sexism still carry the arrogance of power and “leadership” crap in their brains and guts. Collectivity is a concept to them, not a reality. And they fucked things up within fifteen minutes after setting foot in the house and we (the six women who had stayed on) had a long confrontation session with them and while it was exhilarating to feel each other's support and shared consciousness, it was still a drag to have to go through it all again. And I had a spill-over confrontation with my man, and we went for a walk to try to heal it but couldn't.

So I went up to bed and he stayed downstairs reading underground papers. And I lay under the eaves trying to fall asleep, thinking the thoughts I've thought a hundred times before, about sisters, about the men we love and hate and are committed to and oppressed by. And then I heard B. and her man in the next room, talking softly.

I knew that she'd been going through the same pain, groping toward the same consciousness, as I had, and I thought for a minute that they were crying together on the other side of that wall. It was a few minutes before I realized that they weren't crying; they were making love. And I went through lightning-fast, acid-like changes.

Envy
. They had battled and struggled and now at least were fucking and here I was in bed alone and my man downstairs alone and the taste of struggle still bitter in our mouths.

Guilt
. I was being too hard on my man. I was driving him into a corner, demanding too much, too fast; not being grateful enough, understanding enough, gradual enough. It was my own fault that I did not have what B. had in the next room.

Contempt
. I was right—and B. was too “easy.” It was she who wasn't really committed, really struggling. She who was ready to risk, for a moment of compromised closeness, her human freedom.

Fear
. At my own readiness to be divided from that sister, from any sister—and fear at the specter of more permanent aloneness; fear
at risking everything, anything, including the familiarity of my own oppression.

Desire
. If he would only come upstairs and lie down beside me and it could be beautiful and tender and fiery and perfect and totally devoid of memories and roles and mechanics.

Despair
. Because even if he were to appear at that very moment and we were to go through all the motions, it would not be beautiful and perfect, but rather a charade of what we both wished desperately it might be.