advertisements

•

Complete Printing Services

LETTERHEADS BUSINESS CARDS ENVELOPES BUSINESS FORMS' WEDDING ANNOUNCEMENTS ADVERTISING MAILERS LABELS PRICE LISTS • CATALOGUES

KOPY ARTIST

Printing and Lithographic Service 1017 EDDY ROAD CLEVELAND, OHIO 44108

216-268-2179

Food coo

ADDRESS:

11628 Euclid Avenue PHONE: 721-3047 OUR HOURS:

Mon thru Fri 10am-7:30pm Saturday 10am-4pm.

OWNED AND OPERATED BY ITS MEMBERS

Bill French Color Lab

Serving the professional & free lance photographers

• Color Film Processing • Automated Print Services C-41 Vericolor II Kodacolor II Economy-Candids

• Portrait Packages

• Commercial Services

• Prom Packages

• Color Print Service 30"x40"

For Information or Price Quotations Contact Joye Gulley or Bill French

T-SHIRTS As Seen in

Photo Silk Screen

our specialty 15617 St. Clair

What She Wants

BE761-4000

ST.CLAI

earth april

Superlative

arian Cuisine

WE'RE NOW OPEN between LUNCH and DINNER serving

SOUP and SALAD

and cocktails EVERYDAY BUT MON.

2151 LEE ROAD AT CEDAR IN CLEVELAND HEIGHTS FOR RESERVATIONS 371-1438

Page 6/What She Wants/September, 1981

VIEW

POINTS Little Little Guns, Little Gains

By Susan Jacoby

"It is difficult to see how the male legal establishment can seriously recognize the rights of lesbian mothers when such recognition would amount to a stab in the back of the very patriarchal heterosexual system they are designed to protect.'

-Jill Johnston, "The Return of the Amazon. Mother" from Amazon Expedition (Times Change Press, 1973). (Emphasis mine.)

Click! That's it!

Changes cannot ultimately benefit women when they come from within a system designed to be antithetical to woman identification.

Suddenly, all my fear and secret guilt, my intense dislike of politicking, begin to make sense to me. I recall what was said at the radical women's conference about issues such as ERA being potentially dangerous to our movement if we consent to focusing all our energies upon them. It is as if these are the things the boys are permitting us to do: as Ronnie does Nancy, they are letting us play with "little guns' in order to divert us from the explosives.

What are these "little guns" then, this "pseudofeminism," this "I'm a feminist as long as my husband (boyfriend, father, even woman-friend, grandmother) doesn't get angry"?

We still, it seems, walk a tightrope. They have consented to make the rope a little wider, but woe betide us if we step too far from our newly established limits. Work, as long as you don't stop being a "good mother" in fine old nuclear-family style; be a lesbian, but don't dare be a separatist; divorce the first husband, but quickly find another-the children need a father; give up your children, but don't expect to carry on an open relationship/dialogue with them, etc., etc.

Within such a system, even our most heartfelt, hard-fought battles can be distorted into another patriarchal chess game. They have the power to focus us on certain of the "least threatening" issues, opposing us as a matter of course. Such battles, at a certain point, cease to be energizing and life-sustaining for us, and become instead energy drains and instruments of division among women. (I am speaking here of many important battles, both within and emanating outward from our movement, from the battle for our reproductive rights, to what has been called the "lesbian/straight split". Patriarchy nullifies the potentially unifying effects of the outer battles, for example, by fostering and encouraging internal battles which still revolve around men, thus tying up energy that could be used in dis-covering our Selves.)

The political systems within which we live are designed to protect that which women, for our sanity and being (and that of our children) seek to destroy. I have long felt an uneasy guilt about not voting, not taking a more vocal stand on ERA or pro-choice issues, etc. I have come to realize that these things are important; I need to become more knowledgeable about candidates in my district, the Reagan administration and what it means for women and minorities, opposition to ERA, the "Pro-Life" movement and the "Moral Majority". This information I will begin to gather, but in a New Spirit. I will speak my piece on these things, not apologetically (please, daddy, just one more piece of candy?), but in the spirit of Subversion, subversion of their "order" which is, in reality, chaos.

Click. The reality is that who is elected and whether or not this or that amendment passes has bearing upon our lives, or the lives of sisters. However, we must recognize this reality as brutal and intolerable. We must look beyond the surfaces of those things we oppose, to their deeper meanings. We must begin to make distinctions between their politics and our own, to realize the differences. It has hurt

and confused me greatly to be accused of being "apolitical" because 1. have not yet exercised my "right to vote". I have struggled and struggled with this issue (which is symbolic of other issues of participation vs. non-participation, of "separatism") in the two and a half years since I have been "of legal age," and it is only now that I begin to grasp what this struggle has been about, a tolerable resolution of this struggle and a self-affirming realization that I have been very political all along: that to vote (or to take vocal and public stands on ERA, etc.) is the very least of what makes me "political".

Torn and distracted by such a struggle, my courage has often been taken from me, and my Self severed again from the very movement, the very women, who

Notes From A.

By Leslie Jacobs

The world can be extremely lonely for a feminist in rural America. A newcomer to country living, I have found no organizations to provide programs, support and leadership. I have had to accept a new approach as I join the ranks of isolated feminists coping in rural areas.

Five years ago I lived in a college town where the alternative culture attracted my attention and energies. I swiftly became immersed in scores of activities involving women's rights, abortion rights,

Harrican

and women's health. I spent the next 5 years defining feminism and fighting its enemies. I dealt with campus opposition and I participated in national events and election campaigns to promote the struggle to end sexism. I spoke out againt the opposition. Yet in those 5 years, I was always able to leave the public form of the struggle, to go home and talk it out with women friends, or to find solace at one of my organization meetings. But today, as I sit quietly in an upstairs bedroom, I realize I cannot now leave the struggle. Today I live with "those enemies"; they are my neighbors, local merchants, my main contact with society. It is as though the struggles of the past era have not permeated this area. To expect change here is to experience years of individual hard work. People here fear change, and have not been exposed to new ideas and mounting social pressure to reform. While I was a college student I knew on an intellectual level that discrimination and injustice to women occur. I saw sexism in the socialization of people and in the massive power imbalance on all levels of the economic and social strata. I also encountered people who recognized sexism and knew what feminism was even if they didn't join the feminist movement. In my new town, people know very little about feminism, if they even know what the word itself