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Woman Changed by War Works for Freeze

By Eleanor Deyo

Excerpts from a housewife's diary:

Tuesday, January 9, 1979:

My friend....I wonder if her own personality is becoming submerged beneath the needs of her children and her husband? I certainly feel this has happened to me and I must fight it, fight it and get some fresti air. I still feel guilty at times and more often a battle within me on tny needs vs, their needs. Wonder if I've become super-selfish-or have I just changed to the way a typical man would approach -child-rearing?

Tuesday, July 24, 1979:

We're hard into summer and yesterday I felt that hopeless, discouraged feeling begin and seemed to see my energies, interests, exploding in all directions like brilliant fireworks, only to disappear into dark space. I began to lose faith in my own ability to hold and sustain an interest, or even to choose among them which is most important to me. Maybe this is something that fills me and shouldn't be changed because it's unique. Or maybe it must be controlled-or nothing is accomplished.

I must get away from the house regularly and duily. Jim (my husband) seems to understand, but can he tolerate handling every evening and on weekends, the uncertainties and frustrations to one's own plans that are part of daily being a parent? Will he unconsciously resent me if his free time disappeurs entirely?

Looking Backwards:

During the first year and a half of our marriage, 1 worked full time teaching and doing other paid work. Then, for many years, I tried to make my life's major -"job" focus Marriage, Motherhood and Maintaining appearances. I worked at this trio so hard 1 burned out and then gradually began to break out from the cozy cage I'd formed around myself with these three M's.

I always left some time for volunteer work, however, I first volunteered in traditional women's areas, such as the PTA and the church. I was also involved in desegregation efforts, not the most popular activity in Parma Heights. Later I joined the League . of Women Voters and got involved in political work. My involvement grew from my concern for others and a desire to help people-and a desire to be active in "the world".

The Vietnam War changed me. Before Vietnam, 1 trusted our leaders' judgments without reading or thinking about what was really happening in the U.S. and throughout the rest of the world. I didn't focus on the interconnections between human beings and their countries' politics and history.

I began to read newspapers more thoroughly then. One day, something clicked in my head. Our firstborn baby boy was moving from toddler to the preschool stage and I was teaching him to read. Our second child, a girl, was still a baby. One day, when the constant chores and interruptions of mother and wifehood subsided and a quiet thinking time opened up, I realized what our country had in store for our son. He would serve as cannon fodder, as warfighting material easily replaced by future. pregnant women. His life could be wasted, in the name of patriotism, in another futile mistake like Vietnam. That was the motivation for my interest in national.

and world politics. I got involved in the League of Women Voters and worked for anti-war candidates. I learned through my political, involvement that I wanted to go out into "the world" more. So I got myself ready. I enrolled in courses at CCC and other places. As a family, to escape the feeling of being "different," we tried self-sufficiency experiments on land we'd bought in the country, and tried to become more self-sufficient in the city.

At first I didn't want a paying job. I let my husband be concerned with putting bread on the table. I was willing to work diligently at home, raising a good deal of our food (instead of only a small portion as I do now), drying food, canning, sewing, painting, keeping books and banking, shopping for the entire family's needs, doing maintenance work in the house and yard, and show, item per item, the money 1 saved-and thus "earned". I could stay at home and do all this-if I was willing to accept and ignore the low status bestowed upon me by doing these things and to accept the ever-widening intellectual gulf 1 felt between myself and my husband and children while doing them.

But in the last few years I began to understand-almost too late-that this arrangement wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to my husband-he couldn't take risks or change jobs. It wasn't fair to our three children—I didn't make a good role model, or encourage their independence. Most of all, it wasn't fair to me. I like to do housework in moderation, but didn't want to make a career of it. I believe the work should be shared by all family members, so that all family members have the chance to get out into the world and live, grow and learn. (Ideally, I would like to see if a family could be mostly selfsufficient on a few acres of land-by sharing household jobs and each family member working part-time outside the homestead.)

It's difficult to make yourself look for paid work after many years away from the workplace, but I found many resources to help me. There are good

books to read in the library, programs like Project Eve at Cuyahoga Community College, women to support you (like the WomenSpace Hotline), and a myriad of exciting volunteer work that may eventually prepare you for a paid job. I volunteered at a hospital and ended up being hired. But I wasn't satisfied by what I was doing. I decided to look for something else.

Working for the Freeze:

I heard about the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign in late August of 1981 in an American Friends Service Committee newsletter. I had been on their mailing list for over 10 years, since my involvement in anti-war activism. I was impressed and interested because the Freeze concentrated on one step at a time. Although i personally am inclined toward total disarmament, including all conventional weapons, 1 feel you have to start somewhere. The Freeze made sense-it was bilateral and called for a halt on the testing, production and deployment of nuclear weapons and the systems that deliver them. Also, 1 felt it could include many, many people who were turned off by the hippie, confrontațional media image of Vietnam peace people (often unfair and untrue) and, unlike the peace movement of the 1960's, spoke to the U.S.S.R. as well as the U.S. The Freeze issue was focused and narrow so it could include people who disagreed on every issue but the Freeze. I liked the idea of this great diversity of people working on one common goal.

I called the Freeze a few weeks later. Through various delays, both by the Freeze in replying to my written inquiry and phone calls, and by me in putting off involvement, I still wasn't volunteering by March of 1982.

Again a click of recognition led to commitment, and again it was connected to my children. Taking

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The following material is excerpted from an essay by Kathy Bickmore, radical feminist and peace activist from Cleveland, in her essay "Feminism and Peace: The Issues We Work On". This essay appears in the recently-released collection Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence (Pam McAllister, ed., New Society Publishers). "The leadership of feminist women is essential to making peace," Bickmore says. "And making peace is essential to human survival.”

Feminists are challenged to deal with these peace issues: •Funding for human needs will be available when and if national priorities are changed and the funding now wasted on military is spent for life-supporting goods and services. Local peace conversion efforts need feminist leadership and support.

⚫Our children will continue to grow up violent and be victims of violence until forces of militarist/macho socialization are eliminated. This means combating militarism in school texts and teaching methods, military recruitment in schools, and lack of funding for education. And there will be an economic "draft" into the mili tary until full, useful employment for all is available. •Women can take the lead in "peace education," teaching the skills which will enable people to choose viable nonviolent solutions in their own lives. •Women must continue their unrelenting resistance to the nuclear annihilation which is now believed by many to be "likely."

The peace movement is challenged to work for peace-bydealing with these issues:

•Hierarchy, male-identification, and power-tripping within the movement must be stopped. This might, for example, entail putting some of the effort which now goes into centralized rallies and media events into locally initiated education, outreach, and action projects. The people in the peace movement can provide child care and be sensitive to the special needs of women and poor people in determining time and place of meetings. The movement should actively support liberation struggles within the U.S., including those of lesbians and gays, women, and people of color. Don't expect 'help from a group or community you will not support. The peace movement must speak out and act against violence against women: rape, incest, battering, sexual harassment, and the pornography which encourages it. Peace activists can develop and provide feminist nonviolent training.

Reweaving the Web of Life is available for $8.95 plus $1.00 postage and handling from New Society Publishers, 4722 Baltimore Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19143 or can be borrowed from the Cleveland Feminist Lending Library (448 pp, softbound).

December, 1982/What She Wants/Page 7