'Mama's girl' in feminist front ranks

By Leslie Hansom

⚫ Newsday

NEW YORK To a reactionary male who expects a firebrand of radical feminism to resemble Alice the Goon in personal charm, it is a surprise to meet Robin Morgan.

Although Ms. Morgan is an eminent theologian of feminist thought and a propounder of high doctrine, she is petite and the austerity of her principles do not prevent her from topping off her trousers with a frilly blouse.

At one time, indeed long before she picked up her polemical bullhorn she was a frilly child actress. Television viewers who don't forget as quickly as is usually advisable may remember her as little Dagmar on the "I Remember Mama" show.

For seven years, back in TV's socalled golden age, she was a fixture of that sentimental sit-com series about a lovable ScandinavianAmerican family, doing most of her growing up at the same time. Some day, when the revolution is less in need of her pen, she plans to write about that experience.

So far, at the age of 36, she has

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published two books of poems, a feminist anthology and a large quantity of theoretical writings which have just been collected under the title of "Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist" (Random House, $10). It is a difficult book whose title some readers may consider all too apt.

In it, she attempts to raise the reader's consciousness, up to a stratosphere where the ether gives out. Concerned, with far more than the mere gripes of women, she seeks to shed light on such matters as paranoia as a means of perception, "the politics of sado-masochistic fantasties" and finally, "metaphysical feminism."

The book is a daunting exercise in feminist deep thought, lightened here and there with the author's personal

reminiscences of the struggle such as the time she and a band of confederates tried to break up a "bridal fair" in Madison Square. Garden by turning mice loose among the patrons.

These essays have an air of preaching to the converted, but the other day, in the cozy "living room" of the Random House office suite, Ms. Morgan granted consciousness-raising interview to one of the still benighted.

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While she talked, her 8-year-old son was in a nearby room inspecting the company's new line of children's books. She was gracious and patient, letting the metaphysics alone and talking of matters within the comprehension of her listener.

The thing to understand about radical feminism, she explained, is

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that the feminist movement has progressed beyond the primitive objectives aimed at by its modernday founder, Betty Friedan, who is now regarded as the leader of its con.servative wing.

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What Ms. Friedman was after, according to Robin Morgan, was simply "getting a piece of the pie." There were not enough women holding down judgeships, corporate executive jobs and academic posts. But, as Ms. Morgan pointed out, it isn't only professional women who have cause to complain. What about housewives and the female poor?

Radical feminism, she stressed, is a movement for all women. It concerns itself with the basics of female oppression "rape, battered wives, sexual harassment on the job.".

So who is the opposition? Somebody is maybe in favor of rape, wifebeating and the slob employer who can't keep his hands to himself?

"It isn't that anyoody advocates these things," Ms. Morgan explained, "it's that people are apathetic about trying to get rid of them." To back up her point, she cited the recent case in Wisconsin in which a judge' released a pair of schoolboy rapists on the grounds that the girl they molested had asked for it by dressing immodestly.

That case is especially interesting, she said, because the judge, when the feminists went after him, tried to excuplate himself by posing as a protector of minority rightsthe rapists being black and the victim white.

But according to Robin Morgan, it turned out on investigation the the judge's record with earlier black offenders was not as benovolent as he tried to make out. "It just goes to show," she said, "that the oppression of women is the model for every other form of oppression, whether the victims are black; homosexual or vulnerable in some other way."

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Robin Morgan says she is “not ideolog," but she puts ideology to adroit use when approaching a question like the evil of pornography, another target of radical feminist ire.

By her lights as a alumna of the New Left, it wouldn't do to condemn pornography simply because it is revolting to civilized people. That would be bourgeois prudery, ranking one too close for comfort with the kind of square who would censor "a book on lesbian love poetry.”.

But since pornography tends to exploit women and express hostility toward them, there are sound doctrinal reasons to disapprove of it. "Why should I be psychologically assaulted as a woman," she asked, referring to the garbage on the average newsstand, "when I just go out to buy a paper?”

Patriarchal society, according to Ms. Morgan, is deeply in arrears in the amends it owes even to women who are dead. Take George Sand. "This was a woman," she pointed out, "who wrote something like 160 books. Balzac, Conrad and Henry James acknowledged their debt to her. Turgenev addressed her as "cher maitre" (dear master).

Could she have been as shallow and sentimental as we are now given to understand? She was a major and marvelous author but she was a woman. So what do most people know of her today? That she was Chopin's mistress.”

What will the future say of Robin Morgan? Or equally interesting, what would she be doingsubmerged as she is in the dialectics of what it means to be female if she had lived in a time before radical feminism was invented?

Quick as an actress picking up a cue, she came back with the answer to that one: "I would be inventing radical feminism.”

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