Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble Read online

  And Gloria. Sic transit, etc. Gloria Steinem has in the past year undergone a total metamorphosis, one that makes her critics extremely uncomfortable. Like Jane Fonda, she has become dedicated in a way that is a little frightening and almost awe-inspiring; she is demanding to be taken seriously—and it is the one demand her detractors, who prefer to lump her in with all the other radical-chic beautiful people, cannot bear to grant her. Once the glamour girl, all legs and short skirts and long painted nails, David Webb rings, Pucci, Gucci, you-name-it-she-had-it, once a fixture in gossip columns which linked her to one attractive man after another, she has managed to transform herself almost totally. She now wears Levi’s and simple T-shirts—and often the same outfit two days running. The nails are as long as ever, but they are unpolished, and her fingers bare. She has managed to keep whatever private life she still has out of the papers. Most important, she projects a calm, peaceful, subdued quality; her humor is gentle, understated. Every so often, someone suggests that Gloria Steinem is only into the women’s movement because it is currently the chic place to be; it always makes me smile, because she is about the only remotely chic thing connected with the movement.

  It is probably too easy to go on about the two of them this way: Betty as Wicked Witch of the West, Gloria as Ozma, Glinda, Dorothy—take your pick. To talk this way ignores the subtleties, right? Gloria is not, after all, uninterested in power. And yes, she manages to remain above the feud, but that is partly because, unlike Betty, she has friends who will fight dirty for her. Still, it is hard to come out anywhere but squarely on her side. Betty Friedan, in her thoroughly irrational hatred of Steinem, has ceased caring whether or not the effects of that hatred are good or bad for the women’s movement. Her attack on Steinem in the August McCall’s, which followed the convention by barely a week, quoted Steinem out of context (Steinem’s remark, “Marriage is prostitution,” was made in the course of a speech on the effects of discrimination in marriage laws) and implied that Gloria was defiantly anti-male, a charge that is, of course, preposterous. I am not criticizing Friedan for discussing the divisions in the movement; nor do I object to her concern about man-haters; if she wants to air all that, it’s okay with me. What I do not understand is why—for any but personal reasons—she chooses to discredit Steinem (and Bella Abzug) by tying them in with philosophies they have absolutely nothing to do with.

  At a certain point in the convention, every N.W.P.C. meeting began to look and sound the same. Airless, windowless rooms decked with taffeta valances and Miami Beach plaster statuary. Gloria in her jeans and aviator glasses, quoting a female delegate on the gains women have made in political life this year: “It’s like pushing marbles through a sieve. It means the sieve will never be the same again.” Bella Abzug in her straw hat, bifocals cocked down on her nose, explaining that abortion is too a Constitutional right and belongs in a national platform. “I would like an attorney to advise us on this,” says a New York delegate who believes it is a local matter. “One just did,” Bella replies. Clancy and Sullivan, two women delegates from Illinois whose credentials are being challenged by the Daley machine, stand and are cheered. Germaine Greer, in overalls, takes notes quietly into a tiny tape recorder. Betty looks unhappy. The South Carolina challenge is discussed: the women want to add seven more delegates to the nine women already serving on the thirty-two-member delegation. “Are these new delegates going to be women or wives?” asks one woman. “Because I’m from Missouri and we filed a challenge and now we have twelve new delegates who turned out to be sisters of, wives, daughters of.… What is the point of having a woman on a delegation who will simply say, ‘Honey, how do we vote?’ ” The microphone breaks down. “Until women control technology,” says Gloria, “we will have to be dependent in a situation like this.” The days pass, and “Make Policy Not Coffee” buttons are replaced by “Boycott Lettuce” buttons are replaced by “Sissy for Vice-President” buttons. The days pass, and Betty is still somewhat under control.

  The task Friedan ultimately busied herself with was a drive to make Shirley Chisholm Vice-President, something Shirley Chisholm had no interest whatsoever in becoming. Friedan began lobbying for this the Friday before the convention began, when she asked the N.W.P.C. to endorse Chisholm for Vice-President; the council decided to hold back from endorsing anyone until it was clear who wanted to run. And meanwhile it would be ready with other women’s names; among those that came up were Farenthold, Abzug, Steinem, and Representative Martha Griffiths. Jane Galvin Lewis, a black who was representing Dorothy Height of the National Council of Negro Women at the convention, had suggested Steinem at the meeting. The night Shirley Chisholm was to arrive in Miami, Lewis went up to the Deauville Hotel to welcome her and bumped into Betty Friedan in the lobby.

  “What are you doing here?” Friedan asked.

  “I’m here to meet Shirley,” said Lewis.

  “You really play both ends, don’t you?” said Friedan.

  “Explain that,” said Lewis.

  “What kind of black are you anyway?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You didn’t even want to support Shirley Chisholm,” Friedan said, her voice rising. “I heard you. I heard you put up somebody else’s name.”

  “That was after we decided to have a list ready,” said Lewis. “Stop screaming at me.”

  “I’m going to do an exposé,” shouted Friedan. “I’m going to expose everyone. If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it.” She turned, walked off to a group of women, and left Jane Lewis standing alone.

  “It’s like pushing marbles through a sieve,” Gloria is saying. Monday, opening day, and the N.W.P.C. is holding a caucus for women delegates to hear the Presidential candidates. Betty has publicly announced her drive to run Chisholm for Vice-President. The ballroom of the Carillon Hotel, packed full of boisterous, exuberant delegates, activists, and press, gives her suggestion a standing ovation; minutes later, it is hissing Chisholm with equal gusto for waffling on the California challenge. I am sitting next to Shirley MacLaine, McGovern’s chief adviser on women’s issues, and she is explaining to fellow delegate Marlo Thomas that McGovern will abandon the South Carolina challenge if there is any danger of its bringing up the procedural question of what constitutes a majority. McGovern, she is saying, plans to soft-pedal the challenge in his speech here—and here he is now, pushing through another standing ovation, beaming while he is graciously introduced by Liz Carpenter. “We know we wouldn’t have been here if it hadn’t been for you,” she says. “George McGovern didn’t talk about reform—he did something about it.” The audience is McGovern’s. “I am grateful for the introduction that all of you are here because of me,” says the candidate rumored to be most in touch with women’s issues. “But I really think the credit for that has to go to Adam instead.…” He pauses for the laugh and looks genuinely astonished when what he gets instead is a resounding hiss. “Can I recover if I say Adam and Eve?” he asks. Then he goes on to discuss the challenges, beginning with South Carolina. “On that challenge,” he says, “you have my full and unequivocal support.” Twelve hours later, the women find out that full and unequivocal support from George McGovern is considerably less than that.

  “We were screwed,” Debbie Leff is saying. Leff is press liaison for the N.W.P.C., and she is putting mildly what the McGovern forces did to the women. Monday night, the caucus, under floor leader Bella Abzug, delivered over 200 non-McGovern delegate votes on South Carolina—100 more than they had been told were necessary—and then watched, incredulous, as the McGovern staff panicked and pulled back its support. Tuesday night, the fight over the abortion plank—which was referred to as the “human-reproduction plank” because it never once mentioned the word “abortion”—produced the most emotional floor fight of the convention. The McGovern people had been opposed to the plank because they thought it would hurt his candidacy; at the last minute, they produced a right-to-lifer to give a seconding speec
h, a move they had promised the women they would not make. “Because of that pledge,” said Steinem, “we didn’t mention butchering women on kitchen tables in our speeches, and then they have a speaker who’s saying, ‘Next thing you know, they’ll be murdering old people.’ ” Female members of the press lobbied for the plank. Male delegates left their seats to allow women alternates to vote. The movement split over whether to have a roll call or simply a voice vote. At four in the morning, Bella Abzug was screaming at Shirley MacLaine, and Steinem, in tears, was confronting McGovern campaign manager Gary Hart: “You promised us you would not take the low road, you bastards.” The roll call on the plank was held largely at Betty Friedan’s insistence. She and Martha McKay of North Carolina were the only N.W.P.C. leaders who were willing to take the risk; the rest thought the roll call would be so badly defeated that it would be best to avoid the humiliation. Friedan was in this case right for the wrong reasons: “We have to find out who our enemies are,” she said. Incredibly, the plank went down to a thoroughly respectable defeat, 1572.80 against, 1101.37 for.

  Thursday. A rumor is circulating that Gloria Steinem is at the Doral Hotel to speak with McGovern. I find her in the lobby. “I didn’t see him,” she says. “I don’t want to see him.” She is walking over to the Fontainebleau for a meeting; and on the way out of the Doral, Bob Anson, a former Time reporter, who interviewed her for a McGovern profile, says hello.

  “At some point I’d like to talk to you about the socks,” Gloria says.

  “What do you mean?” asks Anson.

  “You said in that article that I give him advice about socks and shirts. I don’t talk to him about things like that. He listens to men about clothes.”

  Anson apologizes, claims he had nothing to do with the error, and as we leave the hotel, I suggest to Gloria that such incorrect facts stem from a kind of newsmagazine tidbit madness.

  “That’s not it,” says Gloria. “It’s just that if you’re a woman, all they can think about your relationship with a politician is that you’re either sleeping with him or advising him about clothes.” We start walking up Collins Avenue, past lettuce-boycott petitioners and welfare-rights pamphleteers. “It’s just so difficult,” she says, crying now. I begin babbling—all the pressures on you, no private life, no sleep, no wonder you’re upset. “It’s not that,” says Gloria. “It’s just that they won’t take us seriously.” She wipes at her cheeks with her hand, and begins crying again. “And I’m just tired of being screwed, and being screwed by my friends. By George McGovern, whom I raised half the money for in his first campaign, wrote his speeches. I can see him. I can get in to see him. That’s easy. But what would be the point? He just doesn’t understand. We went to see him at one point about abortion, and the question of welfare came up. ‘Why are you concerned about welfare?’ he said. He didn’t understand it was a women’s issue.” She paused. “They won’t take us seriously. We’re just walking wombs. And the television coverage. Teddy White and Eric Sevareid saying that now that the women are here, next thing there’ll be a caucus of left-handed Lithuanians.” She is still crying, and I try to offer some reassuring words, something, but everything I say is wrong; I have never cried over anything remotely political in my life, and I honestly have no idea of what to say.

  And so Friday, at last, and it is over. Sissy Farenthold has made a triumphant, albeit symbolic, run for the Vice-Presidency and come in second; as a final irony, she was endorsed by Shirley Chisholm. Jean Westwood is the new chairperson of the Democratic National Committee, although she prefers to be called chairman. I am talking to Martha McKay. “I’m fifty-two years old,” she is saying. “I’ve gotten to the point where I choose what I spend time on. Look at the situation in North Carolina. Forty-four percent of the black women who work are domestics. In the eastern part of the state, some are making fifteen dollars a week and totin’. You know what that is? That’s taking home roast beef, and that’s supposed to make up for the wages. We’re talking about bread on the table. We’re talking about women who are heads of households who can’t get credit. They hook up with a man, he signs the credit agreement, they make the payments, and in the end he owns the house. When things like this are going on in the country, who’s got time to get caught in the rock-crushing at the national level? I’m just so amazed that these gals fight like they do. It’s so enervating.”

  November, 1972

  Vaginal Politics

  We have lived through the era when happiness was a warm puppy, and the era when happiness was a dry martini, and now we have come to the era when happiness is “knowing what your uterus looks like.” For this slogan, and for what is perhaps the apotheosis of the do-it-yourself movement in America, we have the Los Angeles Self-Help Clinic to thank: this group of women has been sending its emissaries around the country with a large supply of plastic specula for sale and detailed instructions on how women can perform their own gynecological examinations and abortions. Some time ago, two of its representatives were in New York, and Ellen Frankfort, who covers health matters for the Village Voice, attended a session. What she saw makes the rest of the women’s movement look like a bunch of old biddies at an American Legion Auxiliary cake sale:

  “Carol, a woman from the … Clinic, slipped off her dungarees and underpants, borrowed somebody’s coat and stretched it out on a long table, placed herself on top, and, with her legs bent at the knees, inserted a speculum into herself. Once the speculum was in place, her cervix was completely visible and each of the fifty women present took a flashlight and looked inside.

  “ ‘Which part is the cervix? The tiny slit in the middle?’

  “ ‘No, that’s the os. The cervix is the round, doughnut-shaped part.’ ”

  Following the eyewitness internal examination, Carol and her colleague spoke at length about medical ritual and how depersonalizing it is, right down to the drape women are given to cover their bodies; they suggested that women should instead take the drape and fling it to the ground. If the doctor replaces it, they suggest throwing it off again. And if he questions this behavior (and one can only wonder at a doctor who would not), they recommend telling him that California doctors have stopped draping. “And if you’re in California, tell him that doctors in New York have stopped this strange custom.” The evening ended with a description of the most radical self-help device of all: the period extractor, a syringe-and-tube contraption that allows a woman to remove her menstrual flow, all by herself, in five minutes; if she is pregnant, the embryo is sucked out instead. Color slides were shown: a woman at home, in street clothes, gave herself an early abortion using the device. “I hesitate to use the word ‘revolutionary,’ ” Frankfort wrote of the event, “but no other word seems accurate.…”

  Ellen Frankfort’s report on this session is now reprinted as the opening of her new book, Vaginal Politics (Quadrangle Books). When I first read it in the Voice, I was shocked and incredulous. At the same time, it seemed obvious that at the rate things were going in the women’s movement, within a few months the material would not be surprising at all. Well, it has been over a year since the Los Angeles Self-Help Clinic brought the word to the East, and what they advocate is as shocking and incredible as ever. I mean, it’s awfully perplexing that anyone would suggest throwing linens all over an examination room when a simple verbal request would probably do the trick. And when Frankfort informs us, as she does at the end of her book, that “there are several groups of women who get together in New York City and on their dining room tables or couches look at the changes in the cervix,” it is hard not to long for the days when an evening with the girls meant bridge.

  On the other hand …

  On the other hand, the self-help movement and the concern with health issues among women’s groups spring from a very real and not at all laughable dissatisfaction with the American medical establishment, and most particularly with gynecologists. In New York, the women’s movement has turned this dissatisfaction to concrete achievement in placing paid
women counselors in major abortion clinics and in working to lower rates and change procedures at these clinics; in Boston, the Women’s Health Collective has produced a landmark book, Our Bodies, Our Selves, a comprehensive compilation of information about how the female body works. But the animosity against doctors has also reached the point where irresponsibility, not to mention hard-core raunchiness, has replaced reason. When Frankfort asked Carol about the possible negative effects of period extraction, her question was taken as a broad-scale attack on feminism. The fact is that if doctors were prescribing equipment as untested as these devices are, equipment which clearly violates natural body functions, the women’s health movement would be outraged. It has been justifiably incensed that birth-control pills were mass-marketed after only three years’ observation on a mere 132 women. The Los Angeles women are advocating a device that has not been tested at all for at-home use; in hospitals, it has been used safely, but by doctors, and primarily for early abortion. There is a horrifying fanaticism to all this, and it springs not just from the zeal to avoid doctors entirely, but from something far more serious. For some time, various scientists have been attacking women’s liberation by insisting that because of menstruation, women are unfit for just about everything several days a month. In a way, the Los Angeles women are supporting this assertion in their use of period extraction for non-abortion purposes; what they are saying, in effect, is, yes, it is awful, it is truly a curse, and here is a way to be done with it in five minutes. I am not one of those women who are into “blood and birth and death,” to quote Joan Didion’s rather extraordinary and puzzling definition of what it means to be female, but I do think that the desire to eliminate the first of these functions springs from a self-hate that is precisely parallel to the male fear of blood that underlies so many primitive taboos toward women.