An Act Surprising: Wednesday Night

 

Minority Opinions Forum (MOF) did an excellent job of scheduling speakers from a wide range of political ideologies. They had sponsored George Lincoln Rockwell from the American Nazi Party and Norman Thomas of the American Socialist Party. I had attended a few through the years. Student Activity ticket money was used to pay the speakers and most of us felt it was a good use of funds. It was always free to the public. Attendance varied with interest in the particular speaker.

These speeches were always given in the student union building. The union is an evolving structure. It adds on, redecorates and otherwise changes from year to year. This night MOF was in a room with a series of accordion doors that could be opened or closed to make a single room larger or smaller. It was furnished with a hundred or so folding chairs in rows on three sides of a small dais. Robin was on the platform along with the person introducing her. I sat with friends to the speaker's right in the front row.

Anticipation was palpable. It was a typically institutional room of bland color and little adornment. Windows, if there were any, were covered with heavy drapes. The stage was exactly big enough for a podium and two chairs.

The room filled rather quickly but people were still arriving. The union staff came, opened the first set of wall-doors and began unfolding more chairs. For a while these filled almost as soon as they were placed in line. The decibel level increased with the size of the audience and the amount of activity. Everyone was dressed in layers of clothing that had to be removed and stored somewhere. Conversation to the power of hundreds provided a muted soundtrack and the clank of unfolding chairs provided counterpoint. And finally there came the adjustments to the sound system, heavy metal static and screeching.

And still people arrived. It was very crowded and a feeling of being packed in began to descend. We began to be concerned that not everyone would be able to hear. From our front row perch several of us suggested (repeatedly and in ever louder voices) that the men move to the back and allow the women to sit up front "because they needed to hear this particular speaker" more than the men. Above the din, it was hardly heard. Eventually Robin spoke the request; she was polite and quiet, unlike those of us full of pot luck and power. The only movement I noticed was a few gay men who actually changed seats.

The University Daily Kansan (UDK) said the next day that over 400 people had gathered and about one third was male. (Wonder if they printed gender statistics for any other speeches given at the university that year. The President of the United States spoke to a crowd that was about half male...)

The speech was about a lot of things. It was about the women's movement which Robin saw as consisting of various elements:

1) The National Organization of Women (NOW), Women's Political Caucus, etc. - She called these the NAACP of the women's movement, looking to get a bigger piece of the great American Pie.

2) Women's Liberation - refugees from the anti-war and civil rights movements who could no longer endure the treatment of women by the boys who ran SDS and SNCC.

3) Radical Feminists - for whom the priority was women. This was not "warmed over Marxism". However, the speech gave no comfort to those who feared communism.

Radical Feminism was described as a mathematical term meaning, of course, root. Radical feminists believed in getting to the root of the problem that is systemic sexism. They understand that the primary contradiction is gender discrimination and that pretty much all of the evils of society arise from this.

She pointed out that power must be seized; it is never given up freely.

The daily violence against women was discussed, violence in Lawrence and around the world. She suggested that we learn to use weapons and carry them; that we learn karate or Tae Qwon Do. Anti-rape squads were suggested. These could be formed to protect women if society or the university would not. By any means necessary was widely quoted in the press.

Robin even suggested that women should research and write their own history courses and other academic classes because the current power structure was unreliable and untruthful. Just take control, she said, do it yourself.

Some of this was new information and some we had already heard. Content is not what caught our attention; this is not what inspired us. It was the way Robin took women and their issues seriously when no one else did. For instance, she suggested that the dismissive term Women's Lib was a way of belittling women and their issues. No one would speak of the National Lib force of Vietnam or Palestinian Lib. And, of course, she spoke of men as boys, just as some men call all women girls. The boys in the senate and the boys in the movement...that boy Freud.

We the listeners began to understand how we had incorporated these attitudes into our lives, our expectations of ourselves and other, our view of our inner selves. Did we take ourselves seriously? Were we ever taught how?

So, baby sisters that we were, not yet aware of our identity, we listened actively. We empathized, we understood, and we saw the absolute sanity of her analysis and the incredible possibilities of her solutions. For those of us who had broken bread together the speech gave us the vocabulary and the political theory to understand the revelations of the pot luck. The problem was not systematic discrimination it was systemic sexism. The insidious nature of injustice and the layers of oppression were laid bare. The university administration seemed like boys, seemed suddenly small and weak compared to the real world out there.

These were not especially new ideas; we had read Sisterhood is Powerful after all. It was not that we had never thought to apply them to our lives; our Consciousness Raising (CR) groups were weekly attempts to apply political theory to the events of our experience. It was not even that we had not done these things collectively before. The CR Groups were collective and Women's Coalition gathered us together on a regular basis. Instead, it was that we were so many all in the same room, all hearing it, thinking it and doing it at exactly the same moment.

Sometimes we cheered a little at a comment, laughed some too, but mostly we listened, returning the favor Robin had given to us. We didn't want to interrupt or distract. Any rowdiness focused on the words and concepts. We were awed, not with Robin Morgan herself but with the kind of love and respect that we carried for women individually and together. I do not remember much heckling or hostility from the crowd. The boys and these women who would get up at the end and go home unchanged listened respectfully. I think they realized that they were hearing truth.

The forum ended with questions and answers. The only question I remember was something about how the average woman could have the same experience of life as, say, Jackie Kennedy. (...asked by one of the boys, of course. Women knew the answer.) It did not seem to be an attempt to pit sexism against elitism, rather an attempt to understand the nature of sisterhood. (By the way, the answer was quite concise, yes; there are experiences unique to women of all social ranks).

As the crowd was dismissed, it was announced that a reception for Robin would follow upstairs in the union. Surely Robin autographed books there. I believe that the Dean of Women's Office sponsored this event, I don't know for sure. I don't think I knew at the time either.

Being in the front it took us a while to get through the crowd which was busy putting on coats and scarves. It was a while before we got to the upper room. The Lawrence Journal World reported that the males were dismissed so that the women could have a closed meeting. I have no memory that the announcement of the reception included a women's only caveat. Certainly not every woman at the speech came to this other activity. Perhaps it was closed to the press. It was suppose to be a reception, after all. Perhaps the boy reporter felt that if his role was unwelcome so was his gender. How ironic.

I do remember that there were no boys at the reception. So, perhaps, unofficially, men were excluded by a means of which I was unaware. Maybe, there were unseen bouncers at the doors. Perhaps he didn't feel welcome. How ironic.

It was a nicely laid table (we independents thought that laying a nice reception spread was exactly the sort of things that the DOW felt it was important for women to know. I don't remember a receiving line, but perhaps it simply petered out before we got there. (In those days would have had to somewhere and have a cigarette.) I don't remember the food, but I would have eaten a piece of cake or a cookie. This room was less institutional than the speech room. It had homey drapes and easy chairs along with the ubiquitous brown folding chairs.

I have vague memories of at least a hundred women, sitting in a double or triple ragged semicircle, talking. It would have been 10 pm or after, late for a weeknight event. How the party has become a meeting; it happened because we needed it.

The discussion was, in some ways, similar to the pot luck discussion, but much more...more people, more intensity, more determination. There were many more voices here and from many different areas on campus. Student women were the majority but faculty and staff and town women were also present in good numbers.

The discussion was electric. I'm sure the people that see auras saw sparks that night - pure energy blasts, white light glowing from the mouths as people talked. Women spoke in clear, articulate sentences that rolled of their tongues and lips. And the energy level grew after each speaker. All of us contributing to and taking from the cornucopia of female strength. These women seemed suddenly to know exactly was they wanted, R.E.S.P.E.CT. And they almost knew how to get it, almost.

Robin was sitting to the side, listening again. She did not lead this discussion nor did she participate in it except as questions were directed to her. I don't believe there was an actual leader. If there was she (or they) was informal, unobtrusive, and very effective. Everyone wanted to hear, everyone was paying attention. That's where all the energy came from, of course, all those women paying attention. Leadership is not necessary when this condition exists. People talked in turn, everyone had a chance. Everyone had an attentive audience.

Unlike the earlier discussion, this one turned to AND WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT IT rather quickly. It was the main topic of the night and held our attention for the hours we remained there. But we still hesitated to make actual final plans.

This hesitation was not wishy-washiness on the part of the participants. A great deal of it was the political atmosphere of the times. Paranoia was rampant and often justified. It was assumed that every meeting you attended had its fed or narc. This was not entirely unfounded. I've seen my FBI file. I know the kinds of information the government was collecting. In fact, common wisdom from the street said that the person who said, "I know where to get dynamite" was the government plant.

This ambiance was pervasive at the reception. Perhaps inception is more accurate. We wanted to trust, but we had our demons, our dead. Suspicion kept us from naming what needed to be done in any concrete way.

But the hour was getting late.

Before any conclusion could be reach, it was announced that the witching hour was approaching and the union would close at midnight. We needed to wrap it up. A suggestion was made that we move over to the Coalition Office where the pot luck had been held. That building was available 24 hours a day.

Those of us, who had other duties calling us, signed a list. Call me when you need bodies for the line.

I could not stay. I had work on Thursday and had children already asleep. I caught a ride and went home. It has been a wonderful night. I beamed it all to my roommate and fell asleep exhausted and happy.

Other women left then tool. But before we all left the union a small group was selected to plan an action. I believe that several committees were formed at that time. Eventually the majority went home to bed. Robin went to the Women's Center. I don't know how long she met with the women there. In the morning she left for the next campus.