OPE

off my breast (1

Before I even decided to have a baby, I decided that if and when, I would use a prepared childbirth method. I wasn't scared of pregnancy, or having a baby, or being a mother, or raising a child. I was only afraid of the monsters at the hospital.

Now that I am pregnant, I've discovered why I had that gut feeling. I've also discovered that they don't wait until you're in the hospital to treat you like an imbecile. It all has to do with dignity. I'm finding out that if in today's society, a woman unfortunately is treated like a sex object, it is doubly so for a pregnant woman.

People talk about you in your presence as if you're not there. As I was walking into a drugstore, a man and a woman were leaving. He looked straight at me and said, "Oops, Somebody goofed!"

Now in this day of umpteen methods of birth control, I resent the insult, that at 25, I'm stupid enough to make a mistake. But secondly, I feel sorry for a person who is such a cynic, he thinks all babies are mistakes. I wonder if he thinks he was a mistake. Personally, I have no doubts.

Women are also guilty of regarding you as a specimen with no ears. "She's small for seven months, wouldn't you say?" "Oh, I don't know; I wasn't much bigger."

Because I think and move a little slower lately, suddenly I'm considered brainless and doomed to stay that way. When I mention the course at college I want to take next, I get: "But you're pregnant.' As if I'd signed my own death sentence.

The point, I guess, is that a pregnant woman is thought to be the victim of a terrible mistake. Not to

be pitied, mind you, but laughed at, because of her stupidity. This, I suppose, is where they got the

drawing by Susan Abbott

notion that in delivery, a woman should be knocked out and the baby forcefully taken--in about the

WOMEN'S CULTURE AT ITS BEST

I think that the Women's Musical Festival in Michigan this year brought home some facts that have helped me realize where women's culture is at. The first, and most striking, fact is the willingness of close to 5,000 women to travel long distances and pay out good money to hear four days of women's music. For me, the music festival itself was an opportunity to listen to women musicians I had not heard before, but even more than that, the festival was part of a fantasy that many women share what would it be like to live in a woman-claimed space, a truly woman-identified environment? We had the use of 180 acres of land, rather than just a church hall or university campus, fueling our fantasies to include access to large spaces of our own that we have the right to control. The collective that planned the festival deserves only praise for their attention to the realities of a gathering of this scope security, food, health care, child care, and workshops. The workshops, especially, helped me get some important needs met, mostly to share ideas and information about women's land.

The most important part of the music this year, to me, was the much broader representation of Third World women. Again, the planning collective did a tremendous job in their efforts to find and insure the participation of such performers as Sweet Honey in the Rock, Izquierda, Carlotta Hernandez, and Gwen

Avery. I have felt for a long time that the upswing. of women's culture in the early 1970's could never claim truly to represent the alternative to white male cultural standards and values until Third World women took the opportunity to define that alternative as well. My greatest hope is that Oven Productions can swing it so that we can produce at least one of these performers in Cleveland this year.

Any comments I would make on the music festival would have to include something about Rita Coriell. Rita is a musician who has performed several times in Cleveland, and in Michigan I had the opportunity to see her perform in the context of other women's music. The clearest statement Rita made at the festival was her inclusion of other musicians from Cleveland in her set, and her wonderful rendition of the Edgewater Park song with the Cleveland Chorus, composed of about 20 Cleveland women. This kind of acknowledgment of the support and solidarity of a women's community in relationship to its artists is one of the strongest statements that women's culture is making, and Rita said it loud and strong to the audience there.

Women's culture can help unite and strengthen us, as well as entertain. Anyone who would like to help with time, money, or any creative talents, please contact Oven Productions (321-0692).

-Susan Woodworth

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same manner it was supposedly given to her--while she was completely senseless.

I think women who want to be awake during delivery are saying, "Hey! I was awake before conception, during conception, during pregnancy, during labor and delivery, and I will be awake after. wards. Do not write me off!"

I'm looking forward to seeing who this little person will be. If it's a girl, I hope I can teach her to have enough guts to enjoy being a woman. If it's a boy, I hope I can teach him that he has intrinsically no less or no more worth than a female of the species.

In connection with the above, read Janice Lee Smith's excellent article "On Juggling a Family, A Home And A College Education" told with a sense of humor. (Mademoiselle, August '77, p. 32)

by Victoria Lee

a fable

by Victoria Lee

Not too long ago I was thinking about men and women and a story I'd seen on TV came to mind. It was a horror story, meant to scare, about a fisherman who had the luck to pull up a mermaid in his net. She was so beautiful--her face, her hair, her breasts--that he couldn't keep his eyes off her. But there was a problem. He longed to make love to her and he couldn't, because the bottom half of her was a fish.

So he sought out a man who had a potion that he said would turn a mermaid into a woman. In the morning the fisherman started from the bottom, lifted the blanket off toes, yes, and legs, beautiful legs, and yes, he had a woman, up to the waist. From there on up he had a fish. The ugliest, scaliest fish. He ran from the room, screaming, horrified. There are so many men in our society still like the

fisherman. They find a woman who sparkles. She is active, always doing something. She always has new ideas and new projects to talk about. She is never boring. This makes her beautiful, exciting, attractive, desirable.

So a man falls in love with her and must have this treasure for himself. He cuts her off from the outside world, her contacts, her job, her art, her interests, whatever helped her to express herself, to be unique. He marries her and puts her in a house. He demands that she keep his house sparkling, that she wait on him as if he was suddenly a cripple, bear his children and take full responsibility for their care. If she wants to read a book, paint a picture or get a job, he warns her that a good and decent wife should be vacuuming or taking the kids to the zoo instead.

One morning he wakes up, and lying beside him, is not the mermaid, but a fish.

Page 6/What She Wants/October, 1977