In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution by Susan Brownmiller Page B
Authors: Susan Brownmiller
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cockamamie ideas,” Mehrhof laughs, “like when she said we shouldn’t appear with men in public. Linda Feldman was devastated—she asked if the ban included her father. And then Ti-Grace returned from an out-of-town speech and told us about the famous man she slept with.”
The group was also having trouble with their leader’s talking jags and constant motion, and her irate mood when they didn’t apply themselves as hard as she did.
“We weren’t fledglings anymore,” says Mehrhof. “By then we knew that we could fly on our own.”
In April 1970, THE FEMINISTS passed aresolution directed at Ti-Grace: all future media interviews would be determined by lot. Atkinson resigned two days later. During the next decade she would pursue a stormy course in feminism without being part of a group.
Rosalyn Baxandall remembers 1969 in New York as the year of thetruth squads. Nine or ten women would burst in unannounced on somebody’s husband and confront him with a list of grievances. Baxandall says the name was borrowed from the State Department’s “truth squads” that descended on a college campus after an antiwar teach-in. Irene Peslikis believes the tactic came straight out of Fanshen , William Hinton’s account of a liberated Chinese village, circa 1949, where timid peasants learned to “speak bitterness” and “struggle against” their landlord oppressors.
Ros’s husband and Marilyn Lowen’s husband were confronted by the truth squads for their womanizing. Lee Baxandall sat through his struggle session so penitently that Rosalyn began to feel sorry for him. Marilyn Lowen’s husband went into a rage at the group’s intrusion. “It was scary,” remembers Peslikis.
Robin Morgan joined the truth squad that confronted Judy Gabree’s husband at Penthouse to demand that he quit his job at the porn magazine. Porn boss Bob Guccione took the women on, defending his empire in the name of sexual liberation. Robin, sitting on the floor, began nursing her six-month-old son, Blake.
She relates, “I said to Guccione, ‘Do you see? This is a breast and this is a baby. This breast has a real functioning purpose. It feeds a child. This is what a breast is made for, not for your ogling.’ And then, quite unintentionally, a stream of milk hit him in the eye. It was one of my best moments.”
Robin, whose small group had remained intact after WITCH fell apart, was the best known “politico” in the city. After the episode with Guccione she came up with a new idea: “We were becoming bursitis-ridden, literally, from carrying around these goddamned mimeographed papers in shopping bags when we’d go to some college for a weekend of organizing. So I said, “This is ridiculous. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could publish all of the papers in a book, a publicly available source, so the word can really get out.’ And some people said, ‘Yeah, that would be amazing.’ ”
Those were expansive days in publishing, when sympathetic editors were racing to offer contracts to New Left activists like Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and the Soledad Brother George Jackson. Pressing her connections, Robin approached John Simon at Random House. “He said,” she remembers, “that I had to get the material in fast because six months down the line there might not be any interest. So, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I went back to the group, thinking we’d do the anthology as a collective. And all hell broke loose.”
Robin ran into the kind of opposition that would become all too familiar inside the movement. How would they divide the money? Maybe they weren’t ready to go public! Would the publisher or their collective have final editorial control? Finally the women accused her of being on a personal star trip.
“After two or three meetings in which we continued to struggle with these things, something in me snapped,” Robin says. “To my shock, I heard myself saying, ‘Well, sisters, if the group won’t
The group was also having trouble with their leader’s talking jags and constant motion, and her irate mood when they didn’t apply themselves as hard as she did.
“We weren’t fledglings anymore,” says Mehrhof. “By then we knew that we could fly on our own.”
In April 1970, THE FEMINISTS passed aresolution directed at Ti-Grace: all future media interviews would be determined by lot. Atkinson resigned two days later. During the next decade she would pursue a stormy course in feminism without being part of a group.
Rosalyn Baxandall remembers 1969 in New York as the year of thetruth squads. Nine or ten women would burst in unannounced on somebody’s husband and confront him with a list of grievances. Baxandall says the name was borrowed from the State Department’s “truth squads” that descended on a college campus after an antiwar teach-in. Irene Peslikis believes the tactic came straight out of Fanshen , William Hinton’s account of a liberated Chinese village, circa 1949, where timid peasants learned to “speak bitterness” and “struggle against” their landlord oppressors.
Ros’s husband and Marilyn Lowen’s husband were confronted by the truth squads for their womanizing. Lee Baxandall sat through his struggle session so penitently that Rosalyn began to feel sorry for him. Marilyn Lowen’s husband went into a rage at the group’s intrusion. “It was scary,” remembers Peslikis.
Robin Morgan joined the truth squad that confronted Judy Gabree’s husband at Penthouse to demand that he quit his job at the porn magazine. Porn boss Bob Guccione took the women on, defending his empire in the name of sexual liberation. Robin, sitting on the floor, began nursing her six-month-old son, Blake.
She relates, “I said to Guccione, ‘Do you see? This is a breast and this is a baby. This breast has a real functioning purpose. It feeds a child. This is what a breast is made for, not for your ogling.’ And then, quite unintentionally, a stream of milk hit him in the eye. It was one of my best moments.”
Robin, whose small group had remained intact after WITCH fell apart, was the best known “politico” in the city. After the episode with Guccione she came up with a new idea: “We were becoming bursitis-ridden, literally, from carrying around these goddamned mimeographed papers in shopping bags when we’d go to some college for a weekend of organizing. So I said, “This is ridiculous. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could publish all of the papers in a book, a publicly available source, so the word can really get out.’ And some people said, ‘Yeah, that would be amazing.’ ”
Those were expansive days in publishing, when sympathetic editors were racing to offer contracts to New Left activists like Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and the Soledad Brother George Jackson. Pressing her connections, Robin approached John Simon at Random House. “He said,” she remembers, “that I had to get the material in fast because six months down the line there might not be any interest. So, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I went back to the group, thinking we’d do the anthology as a collective. And all hell broke loose.”
Robin ran into the kind of opposition that would become all too familiar inside the movement. How would they divide the money? Maybe they weren’t ready to go public! Would the publisher or their collective have final editorial control? Finally the women accused her of being on a personal star trip.
“After two or three meetings in which we continued to struggle with these things, something in me snapped,” Robin says. “To my shock, I heard myself saying, ‘Well, sisters, if the group won’t
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