House of Hospitality
The House of Hospitality, located on the near west side, has since last October offered shelter to women who are homeless for any reason. Among the 170 women and their children who have lived in the House of Hospitality for periods of up to two weeks have been battered wives, women evicted from their homes, and women recently released from state institutions.
Besides temporary shelter, the House of Hospitality attempts to guide its residents to develop alternatives for themselves and gain self-confidence by connecting them with various community resources
from which they can receive counseling, get training for jobs, etc.
The House of Hospitality needs volunteers in many areas, including house coverage, counseling, fund raising, writing for a newsletter, helping with research, follow-up care, child care, and advocacy. Especially needed are representatives of minority groups. The House of Hospitality is seeking selfmotivated women, preferably over age 21, who can give at least five hours per week, plus attend training sessions and staff meetings.
If you wish further information or wish to make a tax-exempt donation, call Bernadette Boyce at the House of Hospitality, 631-2275.
Patriarchy and Nuclear Power (continued from page 10)
they become more rigid and blind as the public becomes reluctant to let them risk our lives. The dream is dying. Man is not lord of the universe. But Men will never believe it.
Future Markings: The Anti-Nuke Movement
I believe that the forces supporting nuclear power are grounded not only in the drive for profit and political power, but in the psyche of this culture. The anti-nuke movement must recognize Man's ultimately irrational and desperate nature-that it is the imminence of death itself that stops Man from admitting failure. This society is rooted in a duaļ separation from nature and the need to overcome it. It is built on exploiting the earth and based on domination over women and minorities. It prefers the power to hurt over the power to love and create, chooses competition over harmony, and values things rather than people. It is patriarchy, using capitalism as the economic system that both expresses and enforces its values. We need openly to confront it. Rational arguments will not suffice. The spirit of our culture, that is in all of us, denies death as it moves us toward mass suicide.
The only answer is a total revolution of politics, economics, culture, and spirit. We must step outside the death culture in every way we can and create nurturing, life-giving ways of working and living with each other. We need to fight nuclear power in a way that awakens people's love of life and accepts our mortality. This must be a feminist revolution that ends patriarchy's rule of death, competition, and individualism, and replaces it with love of life, harmony with the earth and each other, and joy in creativity. It is hard to believe such a world is possible, but we no longer have a choice.
Epilogue
To many of the feminists I know, nothing I've written here is new. Women can feel the absurdity and the male irrationality that has created the nuclear industry. We know it comes from disharmony, from
Letters (continued from page 2)
tion!" As with the overthrow of the Shah, although there were massive mobilizations of anti-Shah demonstrators (under the leadershp of the mullahs), it was the decisive power of the "westernized" oil workers, women textile workers and steel workers that finally stopped the economy and forced the Shah to flee. It is the same powerful force leading all oppressed sectors of society that can overthrow Khomeini and what is more essential, under revolutionary leadership, overthrow capitalism and socialize the means of production. One of the props of capitalism is the nuclear family, the key institution of the oppression of women whether in Iran or the U.S. The material basis for the liberation of women will be laid through the socialization of the means of production which will provide in particular jobs for all, child care and decent health care including birth control and abortion.
What She Wants gets to a central question with its remark that the veil was "worn voluntarily by feminists before the Shah's overthrow,...now the veil has become the visible sign of women's
man's need to conquer nature because they cannot join her. But as women, we have a great deal to gain by creating an explicitly feminist anti-nuclear presence.
I see nuclear power as an issue by which radical feminism can openly confront the patriarchy, placing it in a position of weakness. Nuclear power is slipping economically: the public is widely critical of its health consequences and safety hazards; and the greed and irresponsibility of its owners are becoming common knowledge. More than ever before, we can be heard when we point to patriarchy as the death culture. We are the only ones with an adequate explanation of what's happening, that doesn't fall back on "bad guys" and "crazy" to explain their behavior. This is a time when feminists can contradict the media-created images of us as "lunatic fringe", "baby-killers", or "men in women's bodies", by openly and obviously showing people who is really for life and who is for death. We can take the nurture we've been putting into helping people to survive the ravages of patriarchy and channel it into helping people to defy patriarchy. Long enough, we've criticized the destruction Men have created without letting anyone but ourselves experience what we can do. Now is the time: I challenge feminists to dare to show the world the loving, life-giving power of women's energy. -Jan (Dickey) Spring References and Resources for Further Reading:
About nuclear power:
The Poverty of Power, by Barry Commoner Nuclear Madness, by Helen Caldicott
About this culture:
Earthwalk, by Philip Slater
Patriarchy, women and the earth: Woman and Nature, by Susan Griffin Gyn/Ecology, by Mary Daly (especially Part 2)
enslavement...." But the veil has always been the symbol of women's oppression under Islam. Who said otherwise? Not Khomeini. He made clear from the beginning his program of returning Iran to the social mores of the 7th Century A.D. It was the opportunist left, more than willing to capitulate to the wearing of the veil in the name of opposing the Shah, which misled people to believe that once the mullahs came to power it would be easy to take off. In contrast the international Spartacist tendency alone on the left raised the slogans, "Down with the Shah! Down with the Mullahs!" before Khomeini came to power.
On July 14, the Spartacist League will be sponsoring a videotape of one of Fatima Khalil's forums on Iran. We urge everyone who sides with the courageous protestors for women's rights in Iran to attend, discuss and debate the road forward for the Iranian masses, and, in general, the liberation of
women.
Lisa Mandel
for the Spartacist League
101
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July, 1979/What She Wants/Page 13