WSW EDITORIAL
Sóciety cares about the individual only insofar as [s]he is profitable. The young know this. Their anxiety as they enter in upon social life matches the anguish of the old as they are excluded from it. Be-
Features
Menopause....
tween these two ages, the problem is hidden by routine.
CONTENTS
-Simone de Beauvoir The Coming of Age
Census Bureau Wants Lesbian and Gay Workers.... 5 Women's Group Urges Anti-Draft Effort.
S
6
The Myths of Aging...
.7
Letters.....
2
0 D
News
Viewpoint...
12
Local
Free Clinic: Afternoon Clinic for Women...
3
Poetry and Photographs.
8-9
Inside Cleveland Politics: lone Biggs...
3
Network.....
14
Senior Citizens Coalition: Older Activists....
3
Bits & Pieces.
S
Updates
Cleveland Rape Crisis Center.
10
Classified Ads.
15
GEAR Foundation....
11
Find It Fastest..
back cover
National
McCrae v. Harris: Abortion Rights Victory........4
What's Happening.
What She Wants
14-15
What She Wants goes to production the first of the month. Copy should be submitted the third week of the month so that we can discuss it and edit collectively at our editorial meetings. Contact us for specific deadlines. Please print or type articles. Mail material to WSW, P. O. Box 18465, Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44118.
WHAT SHE WANTS IS:
A MONTHLY NEWS JOURNAL PRODUCED FOR ALL WOMEN. We always like input from our readers in the form of articles, personal experiences, poetry, art, announcements, and letters. We welcome women who are willing to help us in specific areas of the paper (writing, lay-out, advertising, distribution, publicity, etc.) and/or who are interested in our collective.
WHAT SHE WANTS ADVOCATES:
...equal and civil rights
...the right to earnings based on our need, merit, and interest ...access to job training, salaries, and promotions we choose
...the right to organize in unions and coalitions to advance our cause ...the right to decent health care and health information
...the right to safe, effective birth control and to safe, legal abortions ...the right to accept or reject motherhood
...the right to choose and express sexual preference without harassment ...access to quality education and freedom from prejudice in learning materials
SUBSCRIPTIONS:
A one-year subscription to WSW includes
12 regular monthly issues
Individual
Contributing
$6.00
$15.00
Sustaining $25.00
Non-Profit Org. $10.00
-
-
For Profit Org. $15.00
DISTRIBUTION OUTLETS:
East: Appletree Books, Coventry Books, CWRU Bookstore, CWRU Women's Center, Food Communities, Food Project, Genesis, Hemming & Hulbert Booksellers
Central: Barnes & Noble, Publix Book Mart, Rape Crisis Center, WomenSpace
West: CCC Bookstore, Six Steps Down, Tish's Shoe Repair & Emporium
Akron: Nature's Way
Kent: Kent Natural Foods Store
Columbus: Fan the Flames Bookstore
Boston, MA: New Words Bookstore
WE ARE:
Terry Bullen, Carol Epstein, Linda Jane, Marycatherine Krause, Gail Powers, Mary Walsh
CONTRIBUTORS (articles, poetry, graphics):
Laura Arabian, M. B. Camp, Janet Century, Mary Sue Convery, Marian Epstein, Andrea Gundersen, Ellie King, Julia Koover, Melinda McGeorge, Mary Murrey, Theresa Paulfranz, Jeri Zauder
4
FRIENDS OF THIS ISSUE (production):
Carol Braund, Jean Loria, Pat O'Malley, Nancy Reger, Michelle Vanderlip
ADVERTISING, DISTRIBUTION:
. Alana Clampitt, Dianne Fishman, Marcia Manwaring, Pat O'Malley
copyright © 1979
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11031X CA ANT
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The lifelong process of aging, particularly for the woman-her health, life expectancy, reproductive changes, and changes in family relationshipsdepends greatly upon the social context. The notion of aging as a period of decline takes on an exact meaning within the social context; here we can see what matters in this society and what role "humanism" actually plays in our concern for society's members.
To a young child an hour seems to last an instant or an eternity. As we learn "to tell time" and enter school, our mental clocks shift, following rhythmic episodes of play, work, meals and sleep: As we participate in the workforce, whether it be in the home or in the marketplace, we are reminded daily of how. little time we have for personal activities and how important work becomes. The economy needs us and we need to earn money in order to live. But when our working days are numbered and we suddenly cease being important, the cultural fact of aging strikes hard.
In 1973 Simone de Beauvoir published her manifesto on the aging process. One of her main themes throughout speaks to our own agism-how we perceive the elderly person as someone who is different, as "another being": "If old people show the same desires, the same feelings and the same requirements as the young, the world looks upon them with disgust....They are required to be a standing example of all the virtues. Above all they are called upon to display serenity: the world asserts that they possess it, and this assertion allows the world to ignore their unhappiness." This ostracism is carried to extremes, to the point of turning it against ourselves: "...for in the old person that we must become, we refuse to recognize ourselves."
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Biologically the human organism tends to sustain itself. To survive, it must restore itself to equilibrium each time a trauma occurs. Irreversible changes in vision, memory, and hearing do occur as early as adolescence. But the body continues to compensate for loss and to adjust to change throughout its lifetime. For de Beauvoir, the point of decline comes uniquely for cach individual: "The word aging does not apply so long as these deficiencies occur only now and then and so long as they are easily mitigated. When they assume considerable proportions and become incurable, then the body grows fragile and more or less decrepit: at this point it is possible to state unequivocally that it is declining.”
Yet culturally the aging process corresponds much more closely to a person's ability to maintain economic survival. One of the reasons, explains de Beauvoir, that bourgeois thought can sustain this relationship lies in the fact that older people do not constitute a group with any economic strength. They have little means of enforcing their rights: “.....it is to the interest of the exploiting class to destroy the solidarity between the workers and the unproductive old so that there is no one at all to protect them.'
Although a privileged few can afford, as it's said, to "prepare for old age," older people as a group face a great number of obstacles which generally tend to transform the working person into an unimportant one. As a visiting nurse in the inner city, I knew that most of my elderly clients received a monthly Social Security check of $202. It may have increased in the past year and a half-but not by much.
Feminists have begun to face the divisive forces which separate older people from the rest of society. Women do share a common heritage of economic dependency with their elders; we understand how discrimination turns people into objects, setting them apart from the real world and mythicizing them into oblivion. The overall goals of feminism have centered on the concerns of women in their middle years and the legacy we will hand down to the young. But we are beginning to make the other necessary, direct link with our living sisters who not only share our past, but also the powerful connection to our future.
-Carol Epstein
February, 1980/What She Wants/Page 1
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