THE

PORTER

Italian director, Liliana Cavani, has created an intensely degrading situation in the Night Porter. Degrading to the audience, perhaps, for they are witnesses to the long lasting sadomasochistic relationship between two people who truly feed off of one another. It is shocking and sickening to watch the deep emotion that can grow out of perversity, but if two people together can thrive without harming anyone else shouldn't they be left alone?

The night porter is played by Dirk Bogarde, a former Nazi prison guard who meets up with Charlotte Rampling, his concentration camp victim-lover, fifteen years later in the hotel where he is employed. Various flash-backs show us the atrocities he subjected Ms. Ramp. ling to while she was his prisoner and even in the present she thrives on broken glass and chains. Eventually they choose to remain together in his apartment where they are pursued by an organization of war criminals who eventually shoot them.

The entire relationship between the pair is grotesque and effectively turned my stomach, but it was a relationship based on equal terms – she chose to remain at the hotel so the relation. ship could be resumed. She is not a victim at this point, but has made the decision to return to the man who showed her attention during the lonely war years. As brutal and sick as the relationship is, it gave her some sense of being cared for.

Ms. Cavani, the writer-director, seems to think no more of women than most male directors. While she gives her female character exposure (plenty of it) she doesn't allow her any depth or independence, but focuses on the theme that women, be they whores or be they virgins, need a man to survive. Ms. Rampling is addicted to her lover. She needs him so much so that she is willing to succumb to anything just for his approval, i.e. love. For him she gives up her life, and becomes an animal able to respond only to his anger or his affection.

I wouldn't desire this kind of treatment for myself, but The Night Porter is an interesting picture when viewed as an example of how adoration can grow out of mistreatment and violation.

Good drinks at reasonable prices BOB'S PLACE

Honest Bartender Guaranteed!

2911 Mayfield Rd.

Adele's Pizzeria

321-6626

The Best Italian Pizza You'll Ever Eat

CARRY-OUT ONLY:

321-2160

Fri, & Sat. 11 to 1

Sun. & Mon, 4 to 12

Oth. Weekdays 11 to 12 2909 Mayfield Rd.

Two friendly places, side by side!

410T V600 B/Wh She Wants/May, 1975 page

Dear Sisters at What She Wants,

LETTERS

In your "feminist survival kit for women", which was a damn good article, we did not see any mention of the fact that silbesterol can cause the daughters of the women who take it to develop cervical cancer.

We hope you will mention this additional danger of silbesterol which has been documented in Senate hearings by our s'sters. One of the sisters in our group who was given silbesterol to prevent miscarriage now finds her three teenage daughters are throwing off abnormal cervical cells. They are high cancer risks.

We believe also that Masters and Johnson suggested abstaining from intercourse if a specific pregnancy threatens early delivery, but that in normal pregnancies intercourse is healthy as long as it is mutually comfortable (and as long as the bag of waters hasn't broken), and will only possibly trigger labor if the cervix is ripe and labor ready to begin anyway. In fact, Sheila Kitzinger (Experience of Childbirth) when she was in Cleveland last spring, suggested that intercourse was a splendid way to pass the time and might just start labor if it is time. Yours in Sisterhood,

Nancy, Betsy, Carolyn, Margaret, Sue Geauga Women's Center

Sisters:

CWC commends you on the pregr.ancy series you've been doing. The information is very important and useful. We've incorporated a lot of it into our referral file so women calling us who haven't yet seen the paper will have access to the info.

We'd like to draw your attention to the fact that we do make referrals to MD's and to other women in the community who know a lot about t! e MD's (particularly OB-GYN's) who are into prepared childbirth. That was one of the things suggested in the last issue, so we just wanted to let you know we do have some of that information already.

We've been getting a lot of calls from women want. ing to have their babies at home and we have a little information on that but feel that is an area that needs more research. Keep up the good work. Betsy

MORE MYTHS

Strange myths have been rumored widely about black working women which have absolutely no basis in fact. Their only basis has been a need on the part of those who enjoy power and status in our society to keep others from enjoying any economic security or selfdetermination.

The men of power have always feared and respected the strength, determination and loyalty of black women to their fellow human beings. So special effort is made to divide them from black men and white women. Su far there is little need to worry about divid. ing them from white men.

Now research has exposed these myths for what they are and hopefully we sisters, black and white, will cease to suffer from some of our delusions.

Obviously, the best attitude here is that the more and better jobs any black workers, regardless of sex, can obtain the better for the progress of the race,

MYTH: Black women prefer to work outside the home and white women work for the "fun" of it.

FACT: Women work to support themselves and often their families too. Black women do not prefer cleaning someone else's home to cleaning their own, White and black women do not have "fun" scrubbing floors, gutting chickens, sweating in laundries and hot kitchens, sewing in factories or standing on their feet all day waiting on rude impatient people or banging typewriters. These are the realities.

MYTH: Black women have better jobs than black men (also, white women have better jobs than black men)

FACT: Black women earn less than black men in the same occupations whether high, middle or low-paying jobs. 75.5% of all black working women are in the unskilled work categories (US. Dept. of Labor).

Cleveland Women's Counseling

WSW is proud that various people and agencies have responded so positively to our pregnancy series We hear that the Free Clinic, CSU's Counseling service, LaMaze instructors, and Welfare agencies have found it helpful.

Black Working

Women

"In 1969 more than half of all employed black women still earned less than $3,000

a year (the official poverty level), while this was true of only 20% of the employed black males in that year." (The Black Scholar, March 1975).

MYTH: More black men are unemployed than black women

FACT: Black women have higher unemployment than black men at every level of educational attainment. MYTH: Black women take “Black men's jobs" FACT: There have never been jobs especially reserved for black males-not since the days Sojourner Truth plowed and picked and not now. Today there are only jobs especially reserved for women low and no paying do. mestic labor and those we would be only too happy to share. As Marcia Ann Gillespie, Editor of Essence magazine (March, 1975) puts it: "I even have a smile for those of the folks who need to see me as usurper taker of Black men's jobs and tell them that the only work I could then do that wouldn't infringe on their supposed territory would be working in a women's rest room, and Black women have been cleaning up America's swill too long for me to jump into it for the sake of their Western ego trip."

PEACE HOUSE

10912 Magnolia (rear) 231-4245 and 231-4246 American Friend's Service Committee Clergy and Laity Concerned Indochina Peace Campaign Project on National Priorities

United Farmworkers

What She Wants

Women Speak Out for Peace and Justice