Oven productions

politics of

by Rita E. Coriell

This article is for men, men who care about the struggles of women and are willing to support them. There is a recurring problem we (Oven) keep running into that I'll bet is common to many women's groups: finding adequate childcare for our events. This article is a request to sympathetic men to help us out. If you're a woman who knows such men, please pass this on.

I spend several hours of time before each event trying to find people to do childcare and then organizing the necessary materials (food, games, place, etc.). It's a frustrating job, because it's hard to find willing and able people. I keep wondering if this happens because the need for childcare is not known. If so, then perhaps a simple request is all it will take. On the other hand, I sometimes think the reason is because the politics of childcare are not yet widely enough discussed and understood. If that's the case, I'd like to offer an analysis of the situation.

My feminist analysis of the way things work in this society is that one of the primary ways that women have been oppressed has been through the enforcement of sex-typed role definitions which say it is the duty of women to take care of the men and the kids, for free, while the men go about running the business of the world and get paid. Women have been conditioned to believe that, in fact, this is the way things are "supposed to be", that it's a part of their "nature", their "moral” obligation, and that if they don't enjoy it, there's something wrong with them. Meanwhile, men have enjoyed the privilege of, on the one hand, having women available to them to satisfy their sexual needs and/or desires for immortality (through a system of patriarchal lineage), while at the same time escaping by-and-large from the day-to-day drudgery of taking care of their offspring.

Of course, there are some exceptions to this generalization, and some other factors are involved. Some heterosexual couples are actively working at sharing the responsibility for both raising the children and "bringing home the bread". Many others (gay men, lesbian women, childless couples) are exploring lifestyles that do not include children at all. And "men's work", because it is organized hierarchically, is also oppressive to all those not on the "top". Nevertheless, running the business of the world, for all its negative aspects, still contains rewards: money, status, mobility, recognition, respect, and all the other trappings of power. "Women's work" is still devalued, unpaid, unrecognized, and devoid of power. And regardless of anything else that's changed, it is still considered almost a crime for a woman to "leave" her children for a life of her own, and men still have an option about whether or not they will assume any responsibility for children.

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child care

That option is male privilege. That's the crucial point. The unwillingness to give up privilege (race, class, heterosexual, or male privilege) is what keeps this oppressive system intact. Giving up and/or sharing privilege is a revolutionary act.

It's time for things to change. It's time for women to start (and we already have) running the business of the world, too, exercising our intellectual and visioning capacities. For men who wish to support women in this endeavor, the answer to the question "Who's going to help take care of the kids in the meantime?" should be ob vious: the men are. It's time for men to change, too, and start exploring their long-repressed capacities for nurturance and support.

The only way women can tell whether or not men are sincere when they say they support women Is by what they do: funding women's projects,

76-77

doing childcare, starting men's groups, and challenging male supremacist attitudes and institutions are just a few of the many ways men can show that they mean what they say.

What I'd like to see happen at the very least is a lot of men volunteering their names for a resource list for childcare. Better yet, I'd like to see a group of men take the initiative and organize a quality childcare service and offer it to women's groups. We would even pay you for it, which is something we sure never got.

It seems critical to me that we all start taking a long, hard look at our oppression and the ways we maintain that oppression through our privilege, instead of being bought off with surface changes that do nothing to get at the roots. I'm offering this arti cle in the hopes that it will spur some real changes in our behavior toward each other.

SEASON ENDS

Oven Productions ends its 1976-77 production season with the Be Be K'Roche dance on June 3. The 1977-78 season will begin in early October.

Though we won't be doing any productions, we will be busy. We've found that it's necessary to take a long break from production once a year in order to catch up on and have time for all the

"behind-the-scenes" work that's involved in building women's culture. Here are some of the things we'll be doing: In mid June we will be having a 3day retreat to evaluate the past year's work and to decide what we will offer next year. In June, we will also be ending our financial year, and filling out tax and legal information. In mid-July we will be having a meeting in Columbus with other production groups in the area (Ann Arbor, Columbus,

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Cincinnati, Louisville and others) to share information, problems, and decide what ways we will try to collaborate in scheduling. At the end of August, we will, of course, be heading to the Michigan Women's Music Festival, and some of us will be helping with the planning and work for that. In September we'll be back into the actual work of production. Also during the summer, we will be figuring out ways to make ourselves more stable financially, and working on ways to better hook up with other women's efforts in the community and make our publicity more widespread and effective, increase audience feedback and participation at events. We'll be taking a long look at where we're heading, trying to be more creative about making women's cultural events responsive to and reflective of the real struggles of women to change things for themselves. And somewhere in there, we will rest and rejuvenate ourselves a little.

We will continue to present articles in What She Wants over the summer. The July issue will contain our 76-77 financial statement, and we are planning articles that explain the actual work that goes into productions.

Hopefully, there will be some local artists performing at the Three of Cups over the summer, and we'll be helping out with that.

We want to thank all of you who have supported Oven in any way during the past year. We hope that that work has paid off for everyone the way it has for us: by making us feel that we have been part of something that has been meaningful. Have a good summer. See you next fall.

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