Echo of Sappho

The feminist periodical Echo of Sappho directly reflects Sappho’s identity as a lesbian symbol throughout the 1970s. Their inaugural issue features a dedication “to the memory of Sappho” and defines the magazine as “for lesbians, feminists, and men who wish to free themselves from sexism” (Sappho and Hoffman 1). The issue opens with a page (pictured left) detailing information on Sappho’s life: her work, her interpretations of Greek mythology, and the island of Lesbos itself.

The rest of the issue features a wide range of content, including a short story, a variety of opinion pieces on current events, and a sidebar entitled “How to Tell Your Parents You’re a Lesbian.” It also contains a large number of “opinions” scrawled in messy handwriting across the middle of pages. “Opinion: Sagging breasts are in again,” one reads (Sappho and Hoffman 3). “Opinion: one must consider the times in which things took place. Women probably would have been left to die if they were suddenly left with no husband,” another proclaims (Sappho and Hoffman 14). Yet another reads, “Oedipus, who commits two outrages, is only blinded and exiled, while Jocasta (a woman) must die for only committing one” (Sappho and Hoffman 13). The very act of writing these opinions unapologetically in an editor’s handwriting with no accompanying text is powerful. So often, women are asked to explain or justify themselves, and these honest opinions with a startling lack of explanation speak volumes.

Throughout all issues of Echo of Sappho, quotes from Sappho’s poetry are interspersed among the pages. Most of them reflect on female beauty and love, as well as the female body, such as these lines: “Nothing can take its place in my mind / this beauty of girls” (Sappho and Hoffman 3), and “The small dark body’s lesbian loveliness that held the fire eternal” (Sappho and Hoffman 12).

Echo of Sappho continued throughout the next few years as a prominent lesbian feminist journal, yet released its last issue in fall of 1973. Till the end, the editors continued to publish a wide range of art, writing, and opinions by queer women, interspersed with mentions of and quotes from Sappho herself.

Works Cited:

Sappho, and Nancy Hoffmann. “Echo of Sappho.” Echo of Sappho, vol. 1, no. 1, Sisters for Liberation, June 1972, pp. 1–16, https://jstor.org/stable/community.28036004.

The Lesbian Tide

The Lesbian Tide, a feminist periodical that remained in circulation from 1971 until 1980, began as a bulletin written by the Los Angeles chapter of the prominent lesbian rights organization Daughters of Bilitis and was initially entitled the LA DOB Newsletter (Clendinen and Nagourney 164). After expanding beyond Los Angeles and becoming the first ever national lesbian periodical (as well as the first American magazine with a title including the word “lesbian”), the staff organized the West Coast Lesbian Conference in 1973 (Clendinen and Nagourney 164).

D. Cartier’s poetry, featured in the inaugural issue of The Lesbian Tide

The periodical’s inaugural issue featured a wide range of content, including opinion pieces, “Gay Community News,” Daughters of Bilitis monthly activities, and artwork. Notably, two poems by “D. Cartier” accompany a black-and-white romantic drawing of two women captioned with a Sappho fragment:

“We shall enjoy it . . . as for him who finds fault, may stillness and sorrow take him.”

The two poems by D. Cartier, entitled “For You Only” and “Non-Dichotomy,” both contain themes of loss. “For You Only” laments a lost love, its opening lines reading, “Nothing in my life has been easier than loving you / Nothing will be harder than forgetting” (Cartier 12).  “Non-Dichotomy” is less mournful, expressing gratitude for a past relationship despite sorrow that it has ended: “I’ll remember you, who opened up a world for me / And showed me . . .  LOVING  . . . / Doesn’t need any labels” (Cartier 12). The effect of placing these two poems together on a page with the illustration of two women in a passionate embrace creates a strong sense of the intensity of the romantic love that can exist between women. Sappho’s fragment ties all elements of this page together—that despite the heartbreak, trials, and tribulations that will exist amongst any lovers, love between women can be as beautiful and powerful as ever.

A snapshot of the “Dear Sappho” column – from Vol. 1 Issue 8 of The Lesbian Tide

As The Lesbian Tide continued to circulate throughout the 1970s, the editors developed an advice column entitled “Dear Sappho.” Readers could write with queries, worries, or musings addressed to “Isle of Lesbos, 1124 ½ North Ogden, Los Angeles” and receive a response from “Sappho,” an editor of the magazine. Topics ranged from relationship issues to sexual queries to worries about coming out. “Dear Sappho” continued as a way for editors of the periodical to connect with their audience until 1980, when The Lesbian Tide ceased publication due to financial struggles.

The April 1973 issue of The Lesbian Tide, featuring a quote from Rita Mae Brown’s “Sappho’s Reply” on the cover page.

Works Cited:

Clendinen, Dudley, and Adam Nagourney. Out For Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America. Simon & Schuster, 2016, p. 164.

Cartier. “For You Only.” The Lesbian Tide, vol. 1, no. 1, Tide Publications, Aug. 1971, p. 12, https://jstor.org/stable/community.28039236.

Cartier. “Non-Dichotomy.” The Lesbian Tide, vol. 1, no. 1, Tide Publications, Aug. 1971, p. 12, https://jstor.org/stable/community.28039236.

Deeni, et al. “The Lesbian Tide.” The Lesbian Tide, vol. 1, no. 1, Tide Publications, Aug. 1971, https://jstor.org/stable/community.28039236.

Julie Lee, et al. “The Lesbian Tide.” The Lesbian Tide, vol. 1, no. 8, Tide Publications, Mar. 1972, p. 9, https://jstor.org/stable/community.28039242.

Adrienne Rich – “Hubble Photographs, After Sappho”

A recording of American singer Amanda Palmer (also known as Amanda Fucking Palmer) reading “Hubble Photographs” as part of the 2020 Universe in Verse, an annual “celebration of science and nature through poetry.”

“Some say a host of cavalry, others of infantry, and others of ships, is the most beautiful thing on the black earth, but I say it is whatsoever a person loves. . . . I would rather see her lovely walk and the bright sparkle of her face than the Lydians’ chariots and armed infantry.”

-Sappho, “The Anactoria Poem”

Adrienne Rich cites Sappho’s “Anactoria Poem,” a love poem referencing Helen of Troy, as the inspiration for this piece describing photographs taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. Arguably, this is the most multi-faceted of the works I have selected to feature in this collection, with Rich actually expressing the opposite sentiment of Sappho’s poem. “It should be the most desired sight of all / the person with whom you hope to live and die,” Rich’s poem begins (Rich 366). But then she goes on: “Yet I say / there is something more desirable: the ex-stasis of galaxies / so out from us there’s no vocabulary / but mathematics and optics” (Rich 366).

“Hubble Photographs: After Sappho” goes on to detail the beauty found in the images garnered from the Hubble Space Telescope, the “lacerations of light and dust” and the “violet green livid and venous” (Rich 366). Rich showers these images in beautiful, lengthy descriptions that make up most of the poem, and when she does mention the unnamed “lover” (who is the subject of Sappho’s poem), it is briefly and without detail. In this piece, Rich exalts the unexplored galaxies and places them above romantic love, in a complete reversal of the Sappho fragment she imitates.

Even though Rich’s poem is in direct contrast with Sappho’s “Anactoria Poem,” this poem is a testament to the multifaceted nature of Sappho’s legacy. Not all pieces in response to her works reflect the same ideas that she initially intended. A myriad of works like “Hubble Photographs” find their inspiration in her writings, yet go in completely new or opposite directions. Sappho’s influence on the poets of the 1970s and today is rich and complex, and her work lays the foundation for an abundance of artistic work that freely expresses female love and sexuality from a multitude of different perspectives.

Works Cited:

Palmer, Amanda. “Hubble Photographs: After Sappho.” Vimeo, 2019, https://vimeo.com/332596348.

Rich, Adrienne, et al. “Hubble Photographs: After Sappho.” Selected Poems, 1950-2012, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, New York, 2018, pp. 366–367.

“Closer to the Loss” by Colette Inez

“Closer to the Loss” by Colette Inez is a graphic poem that shares the traumatic sexual violence endured as a young child. Published in the feminist journal Aphra, Inez opens up about her abuse in the hopes of breaking the silence of sexual violence against children in the household. Through explicit, graphic wording, Inez addresses how her childhood was directly affected by the trauma of her foster father’s abuse.

Colette Inez’s poem, “Closer to the Loss” was published in the Winter 1972-1973 Aphra journal. Originally, the poem is not placed side by side. Instead, stanzas directly follow after each other.

Inez became an orphan when she was eight years old and was in multiple foster homes until she was permanently placed in a foster home until she was permanently placed in Long Island, New York. There, she was abused by her foster father (Colette Inez). In the second stanza of the poem, Inez describes her time with “her foster families” in graphic and chilling words, “: / Daddy-boozers / in bargain suits / crouching at the dark / for a squeeze of her breasts” (Inez, 39). By using “Daddy-boozers,” Inez refers to the always drunken state of her foster father. As an eight-year-old girl, there was no way to protect herself against this sexual abuse, especially when her “daddy” was intoxicated. The use of “daddy” in this stanza is chilling as the next line describes how he would go “crouching in the dark / for a squeeze of her breasts.” By unveiling the truth about her abuse, Inez created a new pathway so that other women can feel heard and validated about their nauseating experiences. It reassured women that they were not alone. Their trauma was voiced through feminist periodicals and brought awareness to such cruelties.
Inez uses violent imagery in the lines, “To slam the child’s guff / bloody with sores” to put into perspective how critical her situation was at home (Inez, 39). The word “guff” is a metaphor for Inez’s genitalia. “Slam the child’s guff” explicitly illustrates the physical, sexual torture experienced by a child. “Bloody with sores” illustrates the severe sexual abuse Inez painfully experienced. It reinforces the idea that she will never go back to living a normal childhood because it was tortured out of her.

This is a portrait of Colette Inez (1931-2018). Inez wrote ten poetry books and won many awards for her poems.

Inez also relates innocence to purity as an important ideal in childhood. Being exposed to the evils of the world at a young age strips children of their childhood and changes their whole perspective of the world. Inez was exposed to the cruelty of the world and expresses her change in behavior when she says, “Don’t see her coiled, reptilian smile- / enough terror and rage / to ravage your loins” (Inez, 40). Reptiles are cold-blooded and can symbolize strength. Inez calls on her strength to keep her composure, despite the rage she feels. Her once innocent smile has now turned into a fury which she is fighting to release. The word choice in “ravage your loins” demonstrates the intensity of her rage. By describing her foster father’s penis as “loins,”––as in pork loins–– she sees her foster father as a pig. She is now a little girl filled with rage.

The ending of the poem uses graphic sexual metaphors to illustrate the end of her childhood by saying, “A belt’s tight notch / to move in close / like a zipper’s climb / or a doorknob’s cold, / closer and closer to the loss; / the worlds that drown / in easy sperm / gasping for love” (Inez, 40). The title of the poem is referenced when she says, “closer to the loss” meaning every second that passes by brings her closer to the loss of herself. “The worlds that drown in easy sperm” alludes to her innocence and lost potential of a normal childhood because of this horrific crime. “Grasping for love” is connected to how her foster father would use rape as a symbol of love and the darkest twisted ways love can be represented.

 

Works Cited:

Aphra, vol. 4, no. 1, Winter 1972-1973.

​​“Colette Inez.” Penny’s Poetry Pages Wiki,   https://pennyspoetry.fandom.com/wiki/Colette_Inez.

Inez, Colette. “Closer to the Loss.” Aphra, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 39-40.

In Memoriam: Colette Inez (1930 – 2018) | VCCA. https://www.vcca.com/in-memoriam-colette-inez-1930-2018/.

“Who We Are”: The Weather Underground in Their Own Words

“You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows…”

At the SDS National Convention in 1969, Karin Ashley, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, John Jacobs, Jeff Jones, Gerry Long, Home Machtinger, Jim Mellen, Terry Robbins, Mark Rudd, and Steve Tappis submitted what would become the founding document of the Weather Underground: “You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows….”

Image of “You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows…” published in New Left Notes in 1969 by Karin Ashley, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, John Jacobs, Jeff Jones, Gerry Long, Home Machtinger, Jim Mellen, Terry Robbins, Mark Rudd, and Steve Tappis.

Taking its title from Bob Dylan’s 1965 song “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” this document identifies that the primary task of the revolutionary struggle is to destroy U.S. imperialism and establish a communist world. The document identifies U.S. imperialism abroad and at home, specifically in the systemic oppression of Black people. They reject the notion that oppression against Black people only exists in the South and that Black people in the North are instead incorporated into white working-class society. Rather, they identify anti-Black racism as systemic and not confined to one geographical location. The group used the term “Black Colony” to express that in the U.S., “common features of oppression, history and culture… unify black people as a colony” (3). Recognizing that white people will never fully understand the lived experiences of Black people in America, the WUO positioned themselves as an armed white fighting force to back up the Black Liberation Movement. Proactively responding to the question of how the struggle for Black self-determination connects to the broader goals of the revolution and the establishment of communism, the group answered:

 [A] revolutionary nationalist movement could not win without destroying the state power of the imperialists; and it is for this reason that the black liberation movement, as a revolutionary nationalist movement for self-determination, is automatically in and of itself an inseparable part of the whole revolutionary struggle against US imperialism and for international socialism (WUO 3).

 The other key tenant of the founding document was the WUO’s stress on the importance of a youth-led revolutionary party. Identifying that most young people in the U.S. were a part of the working class, the WUO saw that “youth struggles are, by and large, working-class struggles” (13). In this way, involving and centering young people in the movement still responds to the issues faced by working-class adults but has the added advantage of ideological openness. Generally, the WUO wrote, young people “have less stake in a society (no family, fewer debts, etc), [and] are more open to new ideas (they have not been brainwashed…)” (14). It is easier, therefore, to organize and radicalize them, especially when young people had felt the impacts of U.S. imperialism their entire lives. The WUO identifies four examples of tangible ways U.S. imperialist ideology impact young people: first, jail-like schools where curriculums center American-exceptionalist myths, promote racist and anti-communist ideologies and make young people into capitalistic machines. Second, at the time, “youth unemployment [was] three times the national average” (15). Young people also work longer hours and are compensated less compared to their older counterparts. Third, the WUO reported that there were “two and a half million soldiers under the age of thirty who are forced to police the world [and] kill and be killed in wars of imperialist domination” (15). And finally, as these problems spread to more and more young people, police act in increasingly violent and oppressive ways. Ultimately, the WUO hoped that by centering young people who were working-class (members of the proletariat), the movement would be able to reach a wider audience and move away from a predominantly student elite base.

While most of the statement is centered on race and class, the WUO makes a point to discuss gender as well, specifically focusing on how the New Left has largely failed to address patriarchy and women’s issues. Because of these failings on the left, WUO acknowledged that “we have a very limited understanding of the tie-up between imperialism and the women question” (20). How then, the WUO asked, “do we organize women against racism and imperialism without submerging the principled revolutionary question of women’s liberation—we have no real answer” (20). Even though the group posits no answer to this question, their recognition of the fundamental ways women’s liberation is bound up in anti-imperialism is critical. The group offered the following regarding what they phrase as “the women question:”

To become more relevant to the growing women’s movement, SDS women should begin to see as a primary responsibility the self-conscious organizing of women. We will not be able to organize women unless we speak directly to their own oppression. This will become more and more critical as we work with more oppressed women. Women who are working and women who have families face male supremacy continuously in their day-to-day lives; that will have to be the starting point in their politicization. Women will never be able to undertake a full revolutionary role unless they break out of their woman’s role (WUO 6).

Osawatomie 

Later in the group’s history in 1975, they published a periodical titled Osawatomie, the nickname given to abolitionist guerilla warfare fighter John Brown during the Civil War.

Cover of volume 1, issue number 2 of Osawatomie which came out in the Summer of 1975.

On the opening page of the periodical is the group’s “Who We Are” statement that outlines some of their campaigns and broader ideologies and goals. In this statement, we can see how women’s liberation has become an integral part of their political agenda. Explicitly listed as part of the group’s program is the “Struggle Against Sexism and for the freedom of women” (2). Additionally, the very first sentence of the statement reads that the WUO is a “revolutionary organization of communist women and men” (2). This explicit inclusion draws attention to how the struggle against imperialism is an intersectional struggle. Liberation from oppression based on class, race, and gender all envelop one another.

Image of the “Who We Are” statement that was published in the second issue of Osawatomie in the Summer of 1975.

Works Cited

Karin Ashley, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, John Jacobs, Jeff Jones, Gerry Long, Howie Machtinger, Jim Mellen, Terry Robbins, Mark Rudd, and Steve Tappis. “You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows.” New Left Notes, vol. 4, no. 22, SDS, June 1969, pp. 3-9.

Osawatomie, vol. 1, no. 2, Weather Underground Organization, Summer 1975.

Weather Underground Organization. “Who We Are.” Osawatomie, vol. 1, no. 2, Weather Underground Organization, Summer 1975, pp. 2.

Declarations and a Manifesto: Weather Reports in Print

In many of the Weather Underground’s printed communications, one woman’s voice comes through loud and clear: Bernardine Dohrn. Dohrn was a member of SDS and one of the foundational members of the WUO; later, she would go on to become one of the group’s leaders. More than that, she was often the face of the entire organization. As Mona Rocha, author of The Weatherwomen: The Women of the Weather Underground, called her, Dohrn was effectively the group’s “high priestess” (82). In this role, she is highly visible in many of the group’s public messages, three of which include their “Declaration of War,” the report “Honky Tonk Women,” and the apotheosis of their political agenda, their manifesto Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism.

The WUO’s “Declaration of War” 

By the time the organization disseminated their “Declaration of War,” written directly from the voice of Dohrn, much of the group had gone underground.

This is the “Declaration of War” heading from a 1970 issue of RAT, written collectively by the WUO. RAT Subterranean was a New York City-based underground newspaper that circulated from 1968 until 1970.

As the preface to the declaration summarizes, “Five months ago, most Weathermen disappeared from public view. […] Now, another Weatherman fugitive has been heard from—Bernardine Dohrn, ex-SDS activist and member of the Weather Bureau, Weatherman’s elite leadership group” (4). This communication served as an indication of where the group stood following the arrest of many of its members and the death of three members in an accidental explosion in a New York City Townhouse. The WUO explains that they “mailed copies to several of our friends and to several of our enemies,” RAT Subterranean, an underground New York City-based newspaper, being one of their friends.

The Declaration begins as such: “Hello. This is Bernardine Dohrn. I’m going to read A DECLARATION OF A STATE OF WAR” (4). This statement is powerful; although Dohrn writes that she will be reading the statement, it is still her name and voice that first come through. Further, as this is a written declaration and not in fact being audibly read by Dohrn, the word “read” really feels like “written.” While this declaration does not make any explicit links to the Women’s Movement, Dohrn’s power in the piece cannot be ignored.

 “Honky Tonk Women”

At the WUO National War Council, Weatherwomen presented the document “Honky Tonky Women” outlining the group’s position on women’s liberation and articulating what their militant feminism truly meant. This document largely responded to the failings the group saw in the Second Wave movement:

For white women to fight for “equal rights” or “right to work, right to organize for equal pay, promotions, better conditions… ” while the rest of the world is trying to destroy imperialism, is racist. Those material improvements, like the rest of our privileges, are taken from the people of the world. These demands aren’t directed toward the destruction of Amerika, but toward helping white people cope better with life in an imperialist system (185).

This position aligned the Weatherwomen with many women of color and working-class feminists of the time who felt alienated by the superficial feminism coveted by largely white middle-class women. In this assessment, the Weatherwomen stress that striving to improve life under an “imperialist system” actually hinders true liberation as it fosters complacency within an inherently oppressive system. Instead, the Weatherwomen felt that

Our liberation as individuals and as women is possible only when it is understood as a political process—part of the formation of an armed white fighting force. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, and the struggle to gain and use political power against the state is the struggle for our liberation (186).

Here, the Weatherwomen synthesize the purpose and goals of their militant feminism. By framing women’s liberation as a “political process,” the Weatherwomen implicate the entire political system and oppressive political systems in their struggles. Further, naming women’s liberation as political allows them to apply their militaristic practices to the cause. The WUO asserted that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” or militant action. Women’s liberation would only come from the destruction of imperialism which the WUO saw as only possible through militant means.

Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism

Cover of an early edition of Prairie Fire, first published in 1974. Prairie Fire was reprinted and distributed many times in places where radical activists met such as bookstores, college campuses, and food co-ops.

Published in May of 1974,  Prairie Fire was the longest and most detailed account of the WUO’s ideology and strategy for revolution. It was not authored by one particular member of the group but rather reflected their collective views and experiences throughout their active years.  Prairie Fire is dedicated to all “sisters and brothers who are engaged in armed struggle against the enemy. It is written to prisoners, women’s groups, collectives, study groups, workers’ organizing committees, communes, GI organizers, consciousness-raising groups, veterans, community groups, and revolutionaries of all kinds” (5).

Opening Page of Prairie Fire featuring the copyright and circulation statement. This specific edition was one of “1,000 copies reprinted in Boston, August 1974 by Friends of the Underground.”

 

 

 

Prairie Fire tackled feminism in many of its sections, including the introductory ones, where  Prairie Fire names what it sees as the current obstacles to revolution, one of which is sexism. The section reads:

The full participation and leadership of women is necessary for successful and healthy revolution. Revolutionary organizations must recognize the struggle for women’s liberation as a fundamental political revolution and must repudiate the intolerable backwardness of all forms of sexism. The development of the independent women’s movement as well as active struggle against the institutions and ideas of sexism are the basis for insuring that the revolution genuinely empowers women (12).

Compared to their founding document, “You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows,” this articulation of the role of women’s liberation in the revolution is far clearer. It acknowledges the value of a separate women’s movement specifically focused on women’s issues as well as the necessity of having those same women involved in the revolution the WUO was attempting to incite.

In the section “Imperialism Means Sexism,” the WUO links the struggles of women in America to women of color (referred to as “Third World Women) in Vietnam specifically through the bigger system of imperialism. The WUO clearly states that the brutal impacts of U.S. imperial action are felt in countries the U.S. effectively colonizes. Under the guise of American exceptionalism and patriarchy, “women are murdered/tortured, sterilized/raped, stifled/crippled, owned/exploited” (87). In these ways, “imperialism enforces a systematic terror against women” that cannot be ignored. While fighting for revolution, the WUO could not “betray the struggle of women in general and our Third World sisters in particular. We embrace these struggles as our own and merge them with our own we create a basis for revolutionary sisterhood” (90). Again, the idea of “revolutionary sisterhood” and the emphasis on women’s liberation globally throughout  Prairie Fire reflects how feminism truly was a central aspect of the WUO’s conceived revolution.

Works Cited

Rocha, Mona. The Weatherwomen: Militant Feminists of the Weather Underground. Jefferson, McFarland & Company, Inc, 2020.

Weather Underground Organization. “Declaration of War.” RAT: Subterranean News, June 5-19, 1970, pp. 4.

Weather Underground Organization. “Honky Tonk Women.” National War Council Packet, December 1969.

Weather Underground Organization. Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism. San Francisco, Communications Co., 1974.

Women’s Issues on the Pages of Osawatomie

Published between 1975 and 1976, WUO’s periodical Osawatomie featured book reviews, editorials, updates on the group’s progress, and even short stories. All of these contributions tackled issues central to the left including women’s issues. By focusing on two of these contributions, I aim to stress how the WUO maintained a commitment to highlighting women’s struggles and sought to bring these issues beyond nation-state borders.

“A Mighty Organization: An Investigation of Women Workers”

The periodical’s second issue featured a mass spread titled “A Mighty Army: An Investigation of Women Workers.”

The opening page of “A Mighty Army: An Investigation of Women Workers.” There is no given author for the article, rather it is a collective effort by the WUO. This article appeared in the second issue of Osawatomie, published in the Summer of 1975.

This article interrogates the working conditions of women and debunks derogatory myths about women and women’s rights. Three main questions structure the first part of the article: First, “who are the women who work for wages?” (7). Second, “Where do women workers work? (8). And third, “Why do women work?” (9). Answers to the first question introduce the reader to five key statistics about the demographic of working-class women. At the time of its publication in 1975:

40% of the workforce [were] women; Black and other Third World women are more likely to be in the work force; married women work, women who head families work, and single women work; 38% of all mothers with children under 18 work; almost half of women works are 40 years or older, almost 2/5 are 45 or older (7).

This is the second page of “A Mighty Army: An Investigation of Women Workers.” Here, the article lays out some demographics of working women including the percentage of married women who work and how many working women there are in the U.S. The three pictures below, from right to left, show a woman making shoes in Ohio, a woman digging turnips in Tennessee, and a woman washing dishes in Ohio.

Answers to the second shed light on the fact that women overwhelming work at non-unionized jobs, and about half of all women workers are “concentrated in 21 occupations which are the lowest paying jobs in the U.S.” (8). Because organizing through class solidarity was one of the main principles of the WUO, information about who comprises the working class is of paramount importance.

In response to the final question, the article essentially writes that women work for the same reasons as everyone else: survival. However, their contribution to society and economic development “has been erased from history and ridiculed by myths about womanhood, all of which serve the imperialists” (9).

The article goes on to dispel the myths that 1) “women don’t have to work;” 2) “women are hard to organize;” 3) “women belong in the home.” By dispelling these myths, the WUO positions itself as not only an explicitly feminist organization but also as one of the few organizations of the New Left that center women. Readers of Osawatomie would have largely been other members of the WUO and leftists, therefore this detailed article would hopefully work to quell sexism within the leftist community.

“The Women’s Question is a Class Question”

Each issue includes a section called “Where We Stand” meant to focus on one issue in particular and give the WUO stance. Two issues following the article “An Investigation of Women Workers”, Osawatomie’s “Where We Stand” focused on women’s liberation.

“The Women’s Question is a Class Question” statement written by Celia Sojourn, an original member of the WUO. This statement appeared in the fourth issue of Osawatomie, published in the Winter of 1975-1976.

Titled “The Women’s Question is a Class Question,” the article is written by Weatherwoman Celia Sojourn, another member of the group’s Central Committee. Echoing the group’s previous writings on the Women’s Movement and as the title states, the WUO situated women’s liberation in the larger context of class struggle. More than this though, the article goes on to talk about key problems in many mainstream feminist spaces. These issues are the separation of white women’s movement from Black and other Women of Color’s movements, the idea that men are the enemies of women, and that the women’s movement “doesn’t have to take on the state” (5). If these three issues persist, Sojourn argues, the movement will never be successful.

 

 

Works Cited

Celia Sojourn. “The Women’s Question is a Class Question.” Osawatomie, vol. 1, no. 4, Weather Underground Organization, Winter 1975-76, pp. 3-5.

Weather Underground Organization. “A Mighty Army: An Investigation of Women Workers.” Osawatomie, vol. 1, no. 2, Weather Underground Organization, Summer 1975, pp. 6-14.

Poetic Revolution: The Poetry of the Weatherwomen

This is the cover of Sing a Battle Song: Poems by Women in the Weather Underground Organization. It was published in 1975 by the Weatherwomen as a testament to women’s struggles for liberation worldwide. Unabashedly raw, vulnerable, and poignant, this anthology captures a range and depth of women’s experiences that had never before been done by a Weather Underground publication.

For a group most remembered by their bombing campaigns, poetry may seem like an unexpected political and revolutionary tool. However, when put into the context of the radical feminist poetry and print movement, it makes sense that the Weatherwomen should add their own contribution and engage in the feminist tradition of poetry as an extraordinary political instrument.

Dedication page of Sing a Battle Song written by the Weatherwomen in 1975.

Published in 1975, Sing a Battle Song: Poems by Women in the Weather Underground is a collection of poems written by women of the WUO. No poem has a named author nor does the anthology. Instead, the anthology centers not only on the collective voice of the Weatherwomen but the struggles of Vietnamese women and other women of color worldwide. The collection’s dedication to “all women / who are fighting / fighting to survive / fighting to live in dignity / fighting to change things” is intentionally widespread in an effort to call attention to the experiences of women across race and class divides.

Prior to the poems, Sing a Battle Song’s introduction cements the anthology’s aims and ideologies, building on the idea of “revolutionary sisterhood” first introduced in Prairie Fire. Namely, that the struggle for women’s rights is fundamentally an anti-imperialist struggle. In order to end the ways women are “dehumanized and exploited,” the institutions and forces that enforce these practices need to be destroyed. The introduction also offers the Weatherwomen’s stance on poetry and the purpose of publishing these poems:

We are not professional poets. Some poems were chosen for what they say, some for how they say it. Poems are for people to write, as they live; they are a way to share experiences and move others. We prepared this book of poetry as cultural workers, striving to create poems which are accessible to the people and responsible to the struggle (1).

At a time when the actions of women are policed and restrained, poetry offers a uniquely liberating form from which to express these experiences. In order to look at the way these poems reached across race, class, sexuality, and nation-state borders, I will be analyzing “Spider Poem,” “For Assata Shakur,” and “For Two Sisters.”

“For Two Sisters”

“For Two Sisters” paints a picture of love, security, and the simple beauty of female love.

“For Two Sisters” was written in the Summer of 1973 by an unnamed author. This is how it appears in Sing a Battle Song.

The use of all lowercase letters lends the poem an air of intimacy; it also feels innocent and young as if through the letter case the poem is trying to capture the very sensations of the love it describes. Speaking directly to the reader, the author writes that “i think of you often / woman love” (25).  By addressing the reader directly, the poem feels almost like a love letter with the reader embodying her partner. She tenderly remembers the woman coming upstairs in the mornings, “still drowsy with sleep / lovemaking on your breath / on your bodies” (25). This description is sensuous and tender. Although the author is speaking about sex, it is not a graphic description. Rather, diction like “lovemaking” bathes the scene with feelings of domestic contentment. Yet, it is not the physical connection or even what the women say together that sticks with the author. Instead, it is “the touch of your closeness and / womandepth of your loving / that have become for me / a time worn mirror / into which i’ve often looked / seeking my reflection there” (25). The depth of their emotional intimacy, specifically her partner’s “womandepth” is what has kept her whole. Her desire to seek her reflection in the “time worn mirror” not only points to the desire to be seen the way her lover sees her but how another woman who loves her has seen her. Her special “womandepth” is an intrinsic part of her being, captured in the intimacy of this poem.

“Spider Poem” 

This is an image of “Spider Poem” as it appears in Sing a Battle Song. It was written in November of 1974, no author is named.

Through the imagery of a spider weaving a web, “Spider Poem” calls attention to how women’s struggles are united and woven together in a way that transcends geographical location yet also recognizes the nuances of different experiences. The poem begins, “spider, spin me a world web / touch women far away / I go slide down the strands / subway spider strands / to other lands / to touch other hands” (9). The metaphorical “web” is what connects all women in their collective struggle and shared experiences. This opening stanza makes clear that the different segments of the metaphorical web are not separate, rather, women can access and learn about each other’s experiences if they “slide” or ride the “subway” strands. No experience is utterly closed off between women, even if they are different, there is this fundamental “web” connecting them.

Even though women are able to connect to each other’s shared experiences, the poem still acknowledges the differences in experiences, captured in the line: “We will meet / all of us /. women of every land / children on backs, in / arms, in shopping carts” (10). The three options of children “on backs” or “in arms” or “in shopping carts” highlight these differences. Yet even with these differences, whether they be class, race, or location, the author promises that “We will meet / in the center / make a circle / to discuss / to simply discuss / to simply discuss amongst / ourselves / our lives” (10). Here, the “center” is the union of these women, the place where their lives intersect so they may come together. The desire of sharing and power of “simply discuss[ing] our lives” as the poem expresses was a critical component of the Women’s Movement. Ending the isolation that trapped women in their condition alone was paramount to the success of the movement. As this poem highlights, the power of shared experience cannot go underestimated. In this way, power is what transforms the spider web into the final stanza’s “spidernet” (10). While webs are fragile, nets are strong, strong enough to “entangle / the powers / that bury / our children” (10). Nets can last generations. And, as this final line promises, the Women’s movement not only transcends place but also time. It is with a powerful worldwide network of women that true liberation and justice will be secured.

“For Assata Shakur”

This is the opening of “For Assata Shakur” written in June of 1973 as it is seen in Sing a Battle Song.

In the mid-1970s, poems and odes to Assata Shakur were not uncommon. Shakur was an activist with the Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Movement, the anti-war movement, and other groups. On May 2nd, 1973, according to a recent Essence article, Shakur was “pulled over by the New Jersey State Police, shot twice and then charged with murder of a police officer” (Paula Rogo). She spent six and a half years in a maximum-security prison before escaping in 1979 to Cuba where she has lived in exile ever since. There is currently a two-million-dollar reward for her arrest.  To this day, she remains, in the words of Essence magazine, a “revolutionary Black icon.”

“For Assata Shakur” is an ode to her life—a cry for her wrongful persecution and a celebration of her strength. The author speaks to Shakur’s dexterity as a political leader, telling her “You moved among your people / a gentle wind / Invisibly winding into their lives” (4). A “gentle wind” does not speak to any particular gentleness of character or action, but rather how Shakur’s work and activism encompassed all parts of the lives she fought for and how her work will continue to shape and mold people and the world for years to come.

Once Shakur escaped from prison, she immediately became a target of the U.S. government including the F.B.I. and state police. During this especially tumultuous time, she garnered much support from the outside as expressed by the poem’s speaker: “when they hunted you hard / I was a visible supporter, / working on another front.” The author, and thus the Weatherwomen as a whole, are unwavering in their support for Shakur. By including this poem, the Weatherwomen further affirm their commitment to freedom and justice for all women. Any woman’s fight for her liberation is their fight as well, and so when Shakur was captured, “I wept / for all of us” (10).

This is the final note to the readers of Sing a Battle Song on the inside of the back cover written by the WUO on March 8th, 1975 which is International Women’s Day. By ending the anthology with a note that places the anthology in the broader context of the Women’s Movement, the Weatherwomen solidify their commitment to the women’s liberation struggle and their commitment to ending imperialism worldwide.

On the back cover of the anthology is a final note to the readers of Sing a Battle Song. Addressing the note to the organization’s “sisters and brothers” includes men in the conversation and struggle for women’s liberation. This choice reinforces the WUO’s assertion that men themselves are not the problem, rather, it is the larger systems of oppression that strengthen and uphold the patriarchy. The WUO sent this anthology to bookstores and presses specifically on March 8th, International Women’s Day. A day where “millions of people around the world celebrate the victories that women have won in the liberation struggle. It is a day when we gather to reaffirm our commitment to the struggles that lie ahead.” This anthology, then, both lifts up and celebrates the incredible work done by women globally to end their oppression while still looking forward to all the work that remains. For this work to happen and achieve the global liberation of women, the Weatherwomen wrote: “We believe that revolutionary culture helps to weave us together and acts as a source of renewed strength. Our poetry, our art, our music are powerful weapons in each of our hands.” In this poetic way, militant feminism is not just about literal weapons or threatening violence or destruction. Instead, it is about powerful declarations of humanity, love, and strength that in the hands of a committed collective, have the power to truly change the world.

Works Cited

Rogo, Paula. “8 Things to Know About Assata Shakur and the Calls to Bring Her Back from Cuba.” Essence, 26 Oct. 2020.

Weatherwomen. “For Assata Shakur.” Sing a Battle Song: Poems by the Women in the Weather Underground Organization, edited by the Weatherwomen, Weather Underground Organization, pp. 3-4.

Weatherwomen. “For Two Sisters.”  Sing a Battle Song: Poems by the Women in the Weather Underground Organization, edited by the Weatherwomen, Weather Underground Organization, pp. 25.

Weatherwomen. “Spider Poem.” Sing a Battle Song: Poems by the Women in the Weather Underground Organization, edited by the Weatherwomen, Weather Underground Organization, pp. 9-10.

Weather Underground Organization, editors. Sing a Battle Song: Poems by the Women in the Weather Underground Organization, Weather Underground Organization, 1975.

Woman and Nature: Interpreting Ecofeminism

The first Earth Day held on April 22, 1970.

Although the connections between the conditions of women and nature were first identified in the United States as early as the late 1800’s, the term ecofeminism was first proposed in 1974 by the French feminist Francoise d’Eaubonne in Feminism or Destruction (Le Feminisme ou la mort). She called on women to lead an ecological revolution and to recreate a relationship of reciprocity between humanity and nature as well as men and women. Nevertheless, ecofeminism as a movement branched out across the world, reaching the United States in the midst of the emerging Second Wave Feminist Movement and the Ecological Movement of the 1970’s. The beginning of the modern environmental movement can be traced back to the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, which raised concerns that capitalism and its intrinsic need for the exploitation of the earth’s resources threatened human health and endangered natural ecosystems and their inhabitants. To raise awareness about environmental issues such as oil spills, pollution, soil contamination, and toxic waste, the first Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970, symbolizing a turning point in the growing ecological consciousness that recognized the interdependence of living beings. Inspired by the culture of political activism developed by the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-War Movement in the 1960s, the 1970s became a critical decade for the introduction of federal legislation concerning the environment, including the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970, the Clean Water Act in 1972, and the Endangered Species Act in 1973, among others. 

The first edition of Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, published in 1978.

One of the most influential texts written during this period and credited for inspiring the birth of the ecofeminist movement in America was Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her by Susan Griffin, a book-length prose poem published in 1978. In the preface of this book, Griffin states that “the fact that man does not consider himself as part of nature, but indeed considers himself superior to matter, seemed to [her] to gain significance when placed against man’s attitude that woman is both inferior to him and closer to nature,” (xv) and hence, this book was written. The book is separated into four sections: Book One: Matter (How man regards and makes use of woman and nature); Book Two: Separation (The separations in his vision and under his rule); Book Three: Passage (Her Journey through the Labyrinth to the Cave where she has Her Vision); and Book Four: Her Vision (Now she sees through her own eyes). 

In Book One: Matter, Griffin identifies how the root of patriarchal oppression is the relegation of women to the realm of matter–of the body, of nature– and the dichotomy itself that fragmented reality into the spirit/matter duality, with the former oppressing the latter. Because of women’s cyclical biological functions and life-giving properties, such as pregnancy and menstruation, they were associated with nature. Hell, observes Griffin, is “under our feet” and the demon “resides in the earth” (7). Hence, it is said that women are the gateway to the devil, leading to the corruption of man, because “all sin originated in the flesh of the body of a woman and lives in her body” (11). Griffin highlights the patriarchal belief that all of nature, including women, was designed by God for the benefit of man. Fossil fuels were placed under his feet for him to extract, animals were created to be hunted, the wilderness was meant to be civilized,  and women existed solely for the propagation of the human race. 

In Book Two: Separation, Griffin illustrates how the patriarchy separates women from their own bodies, which have been deemed impure, unholy, and unclean. The womb is separated from her body, as the woman is merely a vessel that carries the seed of man, who is the true giver of life. Women are told that they exist solely for the needs of men, and that it is in their nature to be needed, to be reduced to their reproductive capabilities as resources for men. Traveling through the epochs of history, she outlines how the scientific revolution in the Age of Enlightenment led to the reduction of living organisms into mere resources to be measured, mutilated, and exploited by man. In the third and fourth books, the woman emancipates herself from the shackles of the patriarchal cave of illusions and steps into the light of feminist consciousness. Griffin reimagines the patriarchal world we live in by resurrecting a new age wherein women reclaim their interconnectedness with nature. Like the tree of life, all living beings branch out from the same tree. The consequences of destructive activities inflicted by mankind will reverberate across all levels of the ecosystem, which all species on earth are intrinsically part of. The core of ecofeminism recognizes that “we are all a part of this motion, we say, and the way of the river is sacred, and this grove of trees is sacred, and we ourselves, we tell you, are sacred” (186).

Sources:

“Environmental Movement.” Encyclopedia.com, 18 May 2018, https://www.encyclopedia.com/earth-and-environment/ecology-and-environmentalism/environmental-studies/environmental-movement. Accessed 5 December 2021.

Griffin, Susan. Woman and Nature : The Roaring Inside Her. 1st ed., Harper & Row, 1978.

Miles, Katherine. “Ecofeminism.” Britannica, 9 October 2018, https://www.britannica.com/topic/ecofeminism#ref313489. Accessed 3 December 2021. 

 

Gynocide: The Murder of the Goddess

The historical inception of the patriarchy as we know it today can be dated back thousands of years ago with the nascent of Abrahamic religion and the consequent oppression of pagan religions, which were notably matriarchal paradigms of the belief that revolved around nature goddess worship. As far back as antiquity as western religion can be traced, the supreme deity was female. The Great Goddess was not only an earth mother or an extension of a male god, she was the Source of life itself. The new male ruling class ushered in the patriarchal revolution, imposing a patrilineal kinship system that sanctified the oppression of women (Eller 285). It is of no surprise that the second version of the creation myth presents the creator as an omnipotent male deity, creating a male human being, from whose ribcage a woman is “born”, although every man is born from a woman’s womb. The creationist myth achieves the mythical transference of the power of creation and fertility from Goddess to God and from woman to man. The woman’s “original sin” is also held culpable for man’s fall from morality, thus justifying his dominion over her inherent sinfulness. Thus, the dichotomy of the gender binary was solidified– there was the male divine creator (spirit) and female natural creation (body) wherein other dichotomies were characterized as masculine/feminine (superior/inferior).

An excerpt from Judy Grahn’s poem “A Woman is Talking to Death” published in Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism in 1978.

First published in the second issue of the lesbian radical feminist periodical Amazon Quarterly, in the epic nine-part poem “A Woman is Talking to Death,” Judy Grahn implicitly elucidates how the gynocide of women was a result of their association with nature. The narrator parallels the endemic lynching of African-Americans in the United States to one of the most notorious manifestations of the subjugation of female power, the witch hunts of medieval Europe, which were carried over with the pilgrimage of the Puritans. Indeed, the white patriarchs are no longer “[lynching] the women anymore” because they found a new class of people to subordinate (8). There is a long history of women holding positions of power or of stepping out of the boundaries imposed by patriarchal norms being discredited and persecuted that is evident throughout the pages of European history, and which formed the blueprint for the genocide of Native Americans and the ecocide of their lands during the colonization of the Americas. Threatened by the power women healers possessed with their knowledge of herbal remedies, the sons of the church “had to erase women with the power to heal, not only by killing them, but by denying that they healed of their own power,” attributing their healing powers instead to devil worship (Daly 218). Nonetheless, most of the women burned at the stake were not practitioners of witchcraft, but merely the victims of the patriarchs’, “the lord and his men,” paranoid obsession with “independent people,” as women are deemed to be “witches” for defying gender norms imposed by Judeo-Christian doctrines (8-9). According to Mary Daly, a prominent feminist scholar of religion, the sole intent of the witchunt was “to break down and destroy strong women, to dis-member and kill the Goddess, the divine spark of be-ing in women” (183). The poet then anthropomorphizes Death as the patriarchy itself. The abstract entity of “Death” is literally given he/him pronouns and is manifested in domestic violence, as exemplified by “death [sitting] in her bedroom, loading / his revolver”), presumably to murder his wife and the mother of his “6 young children” (8), the modern incarnation of the mass genocide of women in the name of Christendom during the European Crusade. Because of the creationist myth perpetuated by the Bible, the woman’s original sin, attributed to her “carnal, bodily desire,” is held culpable for man’s fall from morality, thus justifying his dominion over her inherent sinfulness (Daly 180). 

Woodcut depicting witches giving offerings to the Devil.

Grahn implicitly articulates how the root of patriarchal oppression is the dichotomy that fragments reality into the male/female duality, with the former oppressing the latter. This results in not only the patriarchal subjugation of females, but to conflicts and wars between nations, to racism and the colonization of civilizations deemed as inferior, and the exploitation of the environment by humankind who seeks to dominate the untamed wilderness. The patriarchy is the “father” of oppression experienced by humanity and nature and has historically been constructed on the foundation and learned from the exploitation of women. This idea is echoed by “Toward a Woman Vision,” a critical essay purposefully situated right after Grahn’s poem. In this essay, the editor, Laurel, emphasizes that the women’s liberation movement and ecological concern are “inextricably linked”– the only solution to end the “rape of [our] sister earth” is to shatter the male mirror and to resurrect a “womanvision” (33). Just like how Grahn personifies patriarchal capitalist society as the character of “Death,” Laurel compares the exploitation of the source of life itself, the earth, to the sexual terrorism inflicted upon the givers of life, women. Until the male culture of rapism is transformed into a culture of reciprocity, life as we know it, Laurel warns, will be bled out of existence and into extinction, just like women have for millenia. 

Sources:

Amazon Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 2, December 1973.

Daly, Mary. Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. Beacon Press, 1978.

Eller, Cynthia. “Relativizing the Patriarchy: The Sacred History of the Feminist Spirituality Movement.” History of Religions, vol. 30, no. 3, University of Chicago Press, 1991, pp. 279–95, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1062958. Accessed 6 December 2021.

Grahn, Judy. “A Woman is Talking to Death.” Amazon Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 4-17.

Laurel. “Toward A Womanvision.” Amazon Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 18-42.