No, I didn’t watch the Oscars. Yes, I heard about the opening number, “We Saw Your Boobs.”  Yes, of course, it’s sexist, immature, offensive, disrespectful… and the fact that several of the so-called boob sightings are associated with rape scenes is disgusting. Of course.

And…  what about all the actresses and celebrities who were sitting in the audience having to listen to this dreck?

Well, what about them?

You mean the actresses who are, for the most part, wearing gowns specifically designed to show maximum cleavage of cleavage already maximized by underwires, padding, boob tape, and cosmetic surgery? The actresses whose efforts to maximize cleavage exposure has caused the Grammy Awards this year to issue a dress code banning “bare fleshy under curves of the buttocks and buttock crack,” “bare sides or under curvature of the breasts,” and “sheer see-through clothing that could  possibly expose female breast nipples.”

Was that really necessary? I mean, what kind of professional musician would need to be told not to expose her nipples? Um… Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Janet Jackson, Rihanna, Britney Spears...

Oh, but wait… That was the Grammys, and this is the Oscars. This is about actresses. We all know that musicians are paid to put on a show.

Okay… actresses. Actresses who have exposed their breasts off-duty. Let's see... Emma Watson. Penelope Cruz.  Elizabeth Hurley. Keira Knightly. Kirsten Dunst. Salma Hayek. And then there was Anne Hathaway at the premiere of Les Miz… the film for which she would win a Golden Globe, the Screen Actors Guild Award, the BAFTA Award, and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Does any celebrity really not know that there will be a fleet of paparazzi hoping to get a crotch shot when a famous actress gets out of a car? Does any celebrity seriously think it’s not going to be an issue to go without underwear while making that maneuver?

And I am hearing it already… Don’t blame the victims! If Anne Hathaway wants to go commando, well, that’s her own damn business! If these celebrities are forced by their publicists and studios to show ever-more-daring décolletage, who can fault them for the inevitable wardrobe malfunctions.

Three words: Clothing. Reform. Movement. Ever hear of it? Well, it was part of that first wave of feminism, when women began to understand that women’s clothing was not just impractical, but downright dangerous. Try carrying a child up a dark staircase, with a lantern or candle, while trying to hold the floor-length hem high enough to avoid tripping. How many women broke their necks, killed their babies, and/or caught on fire because of Victorian dresses?

And what about those pioneer women on Oregon Trail crossing hundreds of rivers on makeshift rafts on their way from Kansas to the Pacific? Not even an Olympic swimmer could keep her head above the water with eight yards of fabric wrapping themselves around her legs. And what about those tight-laced corsets… 80 pounds of pressure per square inch causing miscarriages, displacing organs, increasing blood pressure and restricting breathing.

The Clothing Reform Movement was an organized attempt on the part of those First Wave Feminists to reject the traditional garments for women in favor of safety, practicality, and clothing that would actually allow for full range of human movement.  Because women are, you know... human.

It was an awesome movement. The women who had the courage to wear the bloomer costume—harem pants over a short skirt—were met with taunts and catcalls, barrages of excrement, and violence. Actually, “bloomer” was a dismissive and insulting term invented by the media. The activists who wore the outfit called it the “American Dress” or “Reform Costume.” They were deeply involved in abolition, temperance (which was a movement confronting domestic violence), and women’s rights. They were a real movement. Yeah, movement.

Lady Gaga recently had to cancel a tour because of a tear in the cartilage around the hip joint. Not too surprising, given how many times she falls down. In Atlanta, in Mexico, in New Zealand, in Houston, in New York, in Montreal. She falls off a piano, she falls off a runway, she falls at the VMA’s, at Heathrow Airport, at a photoshoot with Annie Liebovitz. And why is she falling so much? Take a guess.

What if there was a song about Lady Gaga called, “We Saw You Fall?” Would we be outraged at the callousness? So what if she likes sky-high heels? Isn’t that her business? What kind of feminist would want to suggest that maybe, just maybe, she has made herself a target of ridicule by wearing such obviously dysfunctional foot-hobblers… foot-hobblers that male performers would have more sense and self-esteem than to wear.

If the actresses don’t like a song that says, “We Saw Your Boobs,” then, I say, don’t show them.

Don't even think of telling me they have no choice. They have a choice. It's the same choice I had. Buy into it or opt out. And, yes, that is a real choice. A choice with steep consequences, but also ample compensations. A choice.

Choosing to show major cleavage contributes powerfully to the marginalization of the actresses who don’t have huge breasts, who aren’t willing to undergo surgery to enlarge them, who don't feel comfortable--for any number of reasons-- in dressing like a sex object. And choosing to show major cleavage, choosing to stage coy "nip slips" and oopsy commando photo ops may be great in terms of web hits and viral videos, but they wag the dog in terms of the stories these actors can be hired to tell and the characters they will be considered for portraying.

These are not the career moves that lend themselves to telling stories of women who have survived sexual abuse, who have organized in resistance to the patriarchy, who have recruited and healed other women. These are not stories of  liberation. Contrary to the dictates of faux feminism, conflating a woman’s complicity in her own oppression with empowerment is just plain stupid. It’s kind of like applauding the independence and initiative of the strikebreaker who crosses the picket line to work for a substandard wage, undermining and betraying the workers who are holding the line to improve conditions for all.

Yes, the isolated actress who refuses nudity in a scene, who refuses to sexualize her appearance is going to be punished. Of course. That’s how it works. Ask any union organizer.

But a movement... well, a movement moves things. And the Clothing Reform Movement never really died. There have always been women refusing to sexualize themselves, to compromise their health or their safety for a fashion industry dictated by mostly male designers and based on distorting, controlling, and exploiting women. There have always been women willing to disqualify themselves from the jobs that require a dress code intended to pit us against other women and to estrange us from our dignity. There have always been women who wouldn't want a job where they were expected to show more skin than the men (a primal display of submission), where they were expected to wear a mask or hobble their feet.

Movement. But for a movement to happen, you have to be able to move.

I’ve been getting daily invitations to participate in the One Billion Rising event locally, and I’m also hearing from folks all over the world. Thousands of  global flashmobs all dancing to end violence against women. What could be wrong with that?

I try to picture flashmobs of Native Americans doing a peppy dance number to protest the horrors of genocide, the Indian schools, the ongoing treaty violations. I try to imagine flashmobs of African Americans in choreographed upbeat numbers, bringing awareness to the fact that one out of nine Black males will be imprisoned in their lifetime. I consider the potential effectiveness of Pakistani flashmobs all over Youtube in a dance to protest the drones.

And you know what? I can’t see it. It wouldn’t happen. Because light-hearted, non-ritual dancing to draw attention to oppression actually sends a mixed message. If the drone warfare is that horrific, how could people be having such a good time doing a bouncy dance with sexy moves? If the legacy of the Indian schools has been so devastating, why would all these dancers having such a great time? See what I'm saying?

The medium does become the message. A flashmob about breast cancer awareness might work. A flashmob to rally volunteers for a national disaster might also work. But these are not situations that involve acts of war, of terrorism. These are not situations—dare I say it—that involve an enemy.

Two weeks ago, one of my greatest mentors Julia Penelope died. Julia was a linguist and a lesbian-feminist. She paid a lot of attention to language, and how language shapes perceptions and controls people. She paid attention to what was happening as women were becoming more vocal about violence against us. We were beginning to take back the language. “Date rape,” “marital rape,” “sexual harassment.” These were new terms for behaviors that had been “business as usual.” Suddenly women were naming them and getting laws passed to criminalize them. Incest was being named, and suddenly we were discovering that it was not some obscure crime among the inbred in isolated areas of rural poverty, but actually commonplace across all classes.

Julia noticed that, as women began to take back the language, there was a counter-movement to introduce the “agentless passive” into this discourse.  One went from saying “John beat Mary” to saying that “Mary is a battered woman.”  Rape victims and battered women… victims of domestic violence. The agent is removed. The phrase "domestic violence" is gender neutral, even though the overwhelming majority of the agents are men and the overwhelming majority of victims are women and children. “Violence against women” hides the agents. It’s a thing that happens to women. We must deal with that “thing.” People have become comfortable speaking about the atrocities perpetrated against women, because the agent has been removed. When one speaks of domestic violence or violence against women (now “VAW”) one does not have to defend oneself from charges of men-hating or men-bashing.

I read the site for One Billion Rising. If I were a Martian trying to figure it out, I would conclude that violence against women was some kind of viral infection affecting only women, and that One Billion Rising was a campaign to raise awareness that would further medical research about the virus and possibly help women understand that they were at risk. As a Martian, I would come away from the website with very little understanding of what this epidemic was about. There was not one thing on the site that would lead me to understand that I was reading about the male half of the global population colonizing and massacring the female half. How am I supposed to take seriously a campaign or a movement that contributes so powerfully to obscuring the issue it purports to address?

This “agentless passive” is what I am seeing reified with this joyous flashmob. Women just need to become aware, to rise, and to dance. The short film on their website does a good job depicting men raping, harassing, beating, torturing, and terrorizing women. And then the ground begins to shake… there is an environmental, deus-ex-machina intervention. The women come to their senses and get up off the floor, push the men away (pushing only, careful not to fight back… after all, we don’t want to be as bad as them), and…. Dance!

Actually, it’s not that simple. If the film had not morphed into Disney fantasy, we would see the rising and resisting women slapped down harder and further brutalized for their resistance. We would see that the earth is not coming to our rescue,  that there will be no supernatural intervention, and that the women need weapons and training in martial arts, organizations, underground networks for escape, organizations, political education about our oppression, and organizations.

What if One Billion Rising had been courageous enough to face the reality head-on that violence against women is actually a war situation, an oppression, and that it does indeed involve an enemy who is focused on owning and controlling women and who will not hesitate to use any means to enforce that ownership and control? What if One Billion Rising had involved global flash displays of women practicing and teaching each other self-defense? What if One Billion Rising passed out pepperspray on keychains, urging every woman to carry a weapon everywhere she went?  What if One Billion Rising put the emphasis on the agents of our oppression instead of the victims, with workshops about femicide, the failure of Congress to include women as a category in hate crime bills, the intentional depiction of rape and femicide by Hollywood, and so on?

Well, for starts, there would be an immediate understanding that this is nothing to dance about. There would also be an understanding that it’s going to be a long war that’s going to require strategy and resources, and no more pussy-footing around the fact that we have an enemy who is organized and who owns 99% of the resources in the world… in large part because of our colonization.

I am seeing internet memes of women without shirts with the graphic, “Still not asking for it” and women in tiny dresses with signs that say “How we dress does not mean yes.” Again, I see the work of the agentless passive. I can walk into the lion cage at the zoo and yell, “This does not mean I want to be attacked,” but it’s not going to protect me. Does it mean the lions are unclear about my consent or my legal rights? Well, that’s an odd way to frame a situation involving a predator. Rendering oneself vulnerable to a predator is foolish, not empowering.

Did I say “predator?” Yes, I did. I’ll say it again. Predator. Not all men are predators. Not all predators are predatory all the time. But these billions of women being victimized are being victimized by predators, by men. No amount of dancing is going to change that fact. What the dancing will do is increase the marginalization of those of us who are attempting to use language to put the focus on the agents of our oppression. The dancing is going to continue to frame the issue as one of women’s lack of awareness or so-called masochism. The dancing is going to present a scenario where the men just need to become aware of the harm they are doing.

I’m not dancing on February 14. It feels disrespectful to me and to the hundreds of women in my life who have been raped, harassed, mutilated, terrorized, and murdered by men. By men. If every woman dancing on February 14 was willing to take the actions and use the language that would render her vulnerable to charges of men-hating and men-bashing, that would constitute the foundation of an authentic movement.

Where are the representations of older lesbians in the media?

Three decades of lesbian scholarship have borne witness to our incredible courage and creativity in the face of unremitting misogyny and homophobia. Where are the stories, the representations of our lives and our loves?

Well, imagine my surprise to discover an authentic depiction of a old lesbian couple in an Agatha Christie episode filmed by the BBC in 1985. [Click here for selected lesbianic excerpts from the show.]

Even for a series about a woman detective, "A Murder Is Announced" stands out as unusually woman-centered.  Not only is the entire plot built on a matrix of female bonding: love between sisters, between girlhood friends, between a wife and her husband's secretary, and between lesbians, but, in fact, the lesbian relationship provides the key to solving the mystery. And the original mystery was written in 1950!

The time is immediately after the war, and the place is a fictional little village in England.  Murgatroyd is the fem.  She wears the housedress, does the laundry, and defers to her partner.  Hinchcliffe, affectionately known as "Hinch," is the butch.  She wears the boots, slops the pigs, drives the car, and brags about drinking.  Both women are in their late forties/early fifties. Murgatroyd is a big woman with soft features, maternal and plodding in her process.  Hinch is angular, articulate, acerbic, and animated. The two women have apparently been partners for a long time, and the villagers accept their relationship.

I found myself replaying and fast-forwarding to watch the scenes with the two lesbians, and as I did this, I asked myself why I should be so fascinated with such obviously old-fashioned and stereotypical representations of lesbians at a time when I could download so many more recent lesbian films.

The fact is Hinch and Murgatroyd have something I rarely see anywhere else.  They have a real relationship.  A long-term relationship.  A relationship in a world which is brutally hostile to lesbians and which involves complicated strategies for survival, compromises, divisions of labor, and highly protective coloring. Hinch and Murgatroyd reflect a relationship where, over time, each partner has gained a monopoly over the areas in which she possesses the greater strengths, ceding to her partner the territory to which she holds the lesser claim.  It is a question of economy, not caricature. 

This is evident from comparisons with the other characters: the communist student-idealist, the mysterious war widow, the potentially unbalanced refugee, the long-lost school chum, the retired army officer, and the upper class "waster."  All of these characters are charming, shifty, and one-dimensional.  Their heterosexual relationships are blatant plot devices, which even the actors cannot  invest with any authenticity.  Not so Murgatroyd and Hinch, whose behaviors are complex and coded.

For example, when Hitch characterizes Murgatroyd as flighty and unreliable
to the police inspector, it is not only to cast herself in the light of being the responsible partner, but also to shield Murgatroyd from the questions of the police and the eyes of the community.  In this scene, Hinch makes a point of mentioning her fondness for liquor, her war service record, and the fact that she has seen things that would make the inspector's hair curl.  Caught slopping the pigs, she makes a show of her affection for the animals, as if she were indulging herself in a hobby instead of performing a menial task.  When Murgatroyd joins them, Hinch hovers over her -- correcting, mocking, and confusing her.  Editorializing on the inadequacy of Murgatroyd's answers, Hinch successfully deflects the inspector's interest in both of them and redirects it toward the other villagers. Even as she patronizes her partner, she throws a protective arm around her and makes it clear that the inspector will have to deal with her if he intends to badger her lover.

Two later scenes are even more illuminating. Both women are at home in their modest cottage. In both scenes, Hinch is puzzling over the murder they have witnessed. She recruits Murgatroyd's aid in re-enacting the shooting. Overtly, Murgatroyd follows Hinch's orders, anxious to please her mistress. Overtly, Hinch is acting in a high-handed and domineering way. But watching the scenes a second time, a different quality emerges. When Murgatroyd mentions that she remembers hitting her foot against the door, Hinch stops mid-hunch to address her concern for Murgatroyd's failure to see a chiropodist about her corns. Later, Murgatroyd, caught up in the drama of the re-enactment, drops her deferential act, and we see her emerge, if only for a few seconds, as a full partner to her irascible lover.

During the second re-enactment, Murgatroyd realizes the identity of the murderer, but Hinch is distracted by a call to rescue the family dog from the train station. On the way back, Hinch picks up Miss Marple, rescuing her from a downpour. She rakishly suggests that Miss Marple tell the others she is "out on the town." Returning to the cottage, both women discover Murgatroyd's body.  After a thorough check for vital signs, Hinch sets her face with grim determination: "When I find out who did this, I'm going to kill her."

Back at the cottage, Hinch blames herself for Murgatroyd's death, because the re-enactments had been her idea -- "silly games."  Miss Marple, in a very tender scene, gently asks her to focus on the killer's identity.  Later, Miss Marple will make inquiries about how Hinch is doing.  The inspector notes that she seems to have aged ten years.

In the final confrontation scene, Hinch is silent and stony, but as soon as the accusation is made, she rivets her attention on the killer like a bloodhound who has scented her prey.  When the killer is apprehended, she bursts in on the scene, lunging at the murderer with the cry, "I'm going to kill you!"  Restrained by the police, Hinchcliffe finally gives way to her grief. 

Alcoholism, domination, gender roles...  and real life. Real lesbian life. In a story where the detective-heroine is an old woman who speaks plainly about what it is to live on fixed low income at an age when all of one's friends are dead, the lesbian story line is given a dignity and depth not accorded to the other more privileged characters.  Miss Marple and Hinchcliffe share the understanding that beneath the surface of life in a storybook village lie violence and evil. Hinchcliffe, in carving out some corner of joy and safety for herself, had found a partner who seemed untainted by knowledge of that evil, and she had devoted her life to protecting her innocence. Indeed, Murgatroyd's last words were admonishments to the murderer to come in out of the rain. 

There appear to be several links for viewing this episode online.  Click here for one of them.

So Jodie Foster gave a speech at the Golden Globes this year. Some people loved it. Some people hated it. Lots to love: She acknowledged she was lesbian. She acknowledged the support of her former partner and co-parent. She was clearly frightened and did it anyway. Yay!

Lots to not love, too. She never said the word “gay” or “lesbian.” When she talked about coming out “a thousand years ago,” she did not make it clear that she had remained professionally closeted for decades after that.  And then, of course, there were the cutaway shots to her best buddy Mel Gibson, gazing adoringly at her, during her speech. Mel Gibson, whose record for unrepentant domestic violence, and anti-Semitic and misogynist epithets have made him anathema to most folks with a conscience.

Folks have asked me what I thought of her speech. I don’t have too much to contribute. It’s the half-empty/ half-full thing. But there is one question I would raise:

What if Jodie Foster is a butch? Yeah, I know, “Have you SEEN the woman?” But to that I say, “Have you seen her in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore?” Have you seen her pre-Taxi Driver? And then I would ask, “How much do you understand about butch identity, butch culture, and butch oppression?” How many butch celebrities have there been prior to Ellen, and even now?

What would happen to a lesbian butch girl, not only growing up in Hollywood, but coming of age, after a series of tomboy roles, with a turn as a pre-teen prostitute at the age of fourteen—and getting nominated for an Oscar? And then discovering that one’s performance in this role attracted a stalker who shot the President in a bid for her attention? Artificial worlds with incredibly narrow and highly incentivized gender roles. And then massive, public trauma around that gender role, even as one received a nomination for the nation's top award for it? Confusion much?  And this was an era before “gender dysphoria” was a thing.

Another thing I find interesting about Foster is her choice of adult roles. Lots of female avenger/protector roles. And then there was Nell. For all the mockery, Nell was not of this world. She was someone whose identity had evolved free from gender roles. She spoke her own language. Hollywood, of course, femmed her up… but the story… ! The story is an intriguing one, and the film might have had more integrity if it could have committed to the androgyny that, at least to this viewer, would have been intrinsic to the situation.

The butch identity, when not disparaged, is erased. Butch oppression is subsumed under the rubric of homophobia. There is no language for the multiple dissociations that occur when a lesbian butch lives a publicly closeted life and has an appearance that can be mistaken for a heterosexual femme icon… or when she tries to adopt a public persona to go with that.

But there are clues. For instance... one might be giving an acceptance speech in which one has difficulty figuring out one’s audience, or the tone one should adopt… resulting in a confusing monologue in which voice and focus alternate wildly. One could find it easier to split off alarming aspects of another person’s identity also… such as a history of domestic violence. One could make comments that indicate a certain dissociation from one's own body or appearance. One could be insanely uncomfortable.

 I have no idea about what's going on with Jodie Foster. But butch invisibility is something about which I do care, as a lesbian playwright whose work features butch women. Not all tomboys are just immature fems. Some of them are butches, and that road is not an easy one. And let us just imagine a different Hollywood. What if an actor like Foster could have moved into a canon of adult roles featuring grown-up, tomboy women? What if she could have had celebrity cachet as a gorgeous masculine woman? Would she have gone for it? And how might that have changed everything?

Here’s hoping that future, with all its options, becomes a reality for other tomboy girls.


Thanks to Kathleen Carbone for her insight and inspiration in writing this blog.

The year was 1962 and I was ten years old. My mother stood up to my father. That was something she never did, and it was a conversation I never forgot. I am thinking of it today, as I, like the rest of the nation, try to make sense of the Newtown school shootings.

Nineteen sixty-two was a time of national paranoia. The Cuban Missile Crisis had brought the Cold War tensions to a boiling point, and the spector of nuclear war appeared immanent. It was the era of bomb shelters and practice drills with children hiding under their desks to avoid fallout. 

My family lived in the suburbs, and my father was an attorney. He was, as usual, declaring intentions and giving orders. Specifically, he was going to buy a generator and he wanted my mother to begin to stockpile canned goods. He wanted to make sure that his family would survive.

My mother was not a courageous woman, and in the conservative South in this conservative era of “father knows best,” she devoted most of her energies to appeasing her husband. But this time she did something unusual. She told my father that, if the neighbors were not going to have the supplies to survive, she did not want to have them either. 

My father, for once, had nothing to say. The subject was dropped, and I remember feeling a rush of gratitude for the sense of sanity and safety that accompanied my mother’s perspective.

Why am I thinking about this today? Because I am reading in the news how the mother of the Newtown shooter was a survivalist and part of the “Doomsday Prepper Movement” that advocates the stockpiling of guns, food, and ammunition in preparation for an impending economic collapse and the end of civilization. In the words of her former sister-in-law:

"Nancy had a survivalist philosophy which is why she was stockpiling guns. She had them for defense. She was stockpiling food. She grew up on a farm in New Hampshire. She was skilled with guns. We talked about preppers and preparing for the economy collapsing…”

  She had a collection of guns and according to some reports, would take her sons target shooting. Three of the guns from her collection were found at the scene of the shootings.

Many things are being written about factors contributing to this massacre. The murderer had a prior history of mental health issues, which appear to have been inadequately addressed. He was a gamer, and there have been studies linking violent video games with the acting-out of violence. And, of course, there was the easy access to assault weapons, and the glorification of and desensitization to male violence that is a staple in our culture.

It's not my intention to downplay the significance of any of these factors, but I want to say, from my experience that the kind of “end of the world” paranoia expressed by my father during the Missile Crisis and by this Prepper Movement can be tough on the psyche of a child. It was, in fact, overwhelming in my experience. I will always be grateful to my mother for restoring my sense of belonging and my faith in humanity in a situation where I was feeling terrified, helpless, and thrust into a hostile, callous, and competitive dynamic with my neighbors and friends.

An adult might experience a sense of reassurance and mastery from strategies of dominance and hoarding in the face of an imagined national catastrophe, but a child or someone with mental health challenges might not feel so secure in these “preparations.” In fact, revisiting the conversation of that night, I remember an overwhelming loss of bearing which was dangerously close to an existential crisis.

We know from studies of suicide, that one of the biggest motivators for self-destruction is a loss of a sense of identity, or self. Folks who jumped off buildings during the Depression were less motivated by the loss of their wealth than they were by the existential terror of not knowing who they were or who they would be without their wealth. Losing one’s orientation to others can constitute a tremendous assault on one’s identity. Ask any incest survivor whose family has denied her experience.

So I am thinking of a child, homeschooled and growing up in an environment with a single parent who is propagating the beliefs, attitudes, assumptions, and orientations of a “Doomsday prepper movement.” And who is taking her son out and teaching him how to shoot, specifically to prepare him to kill others—neighbors perhaps—who might be attempting to access their stash of food.

How could a child or a disturbed adult cope with an environment suffused with this end-of-the-world mindset? Were these measures generating the very anxiety they were meant to control? How does one wait calmly for something so horrendous? And was this young man less confident in his ability to survive than his mother? Was he experiencing relationships as potential liabilities in a post-apocalyptic world?

My own brief brush with survivalism is etched indelibly in memory, and with it is one of the only good memories I have of my mother. I have blogged on the potentially devastating effects on children of being taught to believe in hell, and today I am aware that it may be even more devastating to teach children to live in anticipation of the immanent arrival of this hell on earth. In fact, today it seems possible that preparing for Doomsday may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There is a revolution, and a young brilliant leader emerges in the struggle. She writes a book that makes a compelling, ardent, and persuasive case for the revolution. As a result, tens of thousands of women rise up, our lives changed forever.

Something happens to the leader. She is attacked, she is maligned. She shows some signs of fatigue, some signs of weakness. She falls into enemy hands, but they are careful not to make a martyr of her.

What do they do? They administer massive amounts of heavily addictive, psychotropic drugs. The side of effects of these drugs enable multiple diagnoses that justify a perpetuation and proliferation of the drugging. The prisoner becomes numb, docile, apathetic, amnesiac… distanced from her former identity and alienated from her former causes. She identifies herself as a patient. The enemy’s mission has been accomplished… almost.

Underneath the prisoner’s drug-benumbed, listlessly synapsing brain, the spirit of the rebel lives on. There is something she needs to tell someone, but what is it? And to whom should she tell it? She can’t… quite… make the connections. It has something to do with what she is living, what she is experiencing. Must… make… observations… Must… tell... someone…

Slowly, across a period of years, the prisoner begins, agonizingly, to write brief one- or two-page essays documenting her observations of her life and the lives of her fellow inmate/prisoners. Some of them are no more than a paragraph. There is no political analysis. There is no context, no induction, no conclusion. Tiny bursts of lucid observation, like matches struck in the dark. There is no candle to light. There is no fuse to ignite. Just these pinpoints of momentary illumination. Someone else will have to piece it together. Someone else will have to map out the cartography of the dungeon from these distress flares.

Two things stand out in the prisoner’s missives: the agents and the subsequent affect. Ativan, Haldol, Valium, Tegritol, Depacote, Trilifon, electro-convulsive shock… And then she describes the damage:

“… due to the medication, her biggest trouble was she couldn’t care about anything, and love was forgotten. That left getting through the blank days as comfortably as possible, trying not to sink under the boredom and total loss of hope. She was lucid, yes, at what price. She sometimes recognized on the faces of others joy and ambition and other emotions she could recall having had once, long ago. But her life was ruined, and she had no salvage plan.”

“Every time she went in [to the mental hospital]… she felt submerged, as if someone was holding her under water for months. When she came out she was... helpless, unable to make the smallest decision, speechless, and thoroughly programmed by a rigid hospital routine, so that even her stomach grumbled on time… “

“Her indecision was awful, for no sooner did an impulse arise to do something, than it would be crossed by a contrary impulse; she was conflicted. (She watched herself undergo this in slow motion as it were, but was powerless to avoid it.) Or she was confronted by so many choices of things to do, that must be done, that she could choose none of them.”

“She could not read. She could not write… the words bounced off her forehead like it was steel; she simply could not care about the content of any written material, be it heavy or lightweight. Why? Why read it? Why absorb?”

“Once in a while she prodded herself to write, but the old excitement of creation did not return, or if it did, it fizzled by morning after her nightly medication.”

Her former revolutionary comrades are confused. What has happened to their leader?  Why is there no naming of an enemy anymore? What happened to the call to arms?  Did she desert the cause? HAS SHE LOST HER MIND…?

Can’t they see that this little book is in code, that it has been smuggled out from behind enemy lines at great risk? Can’t they see that she is writing about the fact she can’t write? Can’t they see that she is naming the inability to name?  Can’t they see that this is the most dangerous and difficult revolutionary tract she ever wrote? Don’t they understand that she is no longer pointing out the horror, the endgame that awaits us in patriarchy, but that she has become the living manifestation of it?

The book is titled Airless Spaces. It was published, after many rejections, by Semiotext(e)  in 1998. The author is Shulamith Firestone, who, at the age of twenty-five, wrote The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for a Feminist Revolution, the book that changed my life forever.

In Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, he depicts the endpoint of breaking the spirit to be the moment when the hero is threatened with rats eating off his face and he shouts out, “Do it to Julia!”—signaling his betrayal of his beloved, as well as his loss of humanity. But this is not the endpoint. Orwell’s anti-hero still loves his own life. The true endpoint is described by Firestone: “... hearing of a death, she often wished she could trade places with that person.”

The author of this fierce, unbearable book died on August 28, 2012. Her body was not discovered until almost a week later. According to the media, Shulamith Firestone died of natural causes.

Frontispiece of Airless Spaces:

"I dreamed I was on a sinking ship. It was a luxury liner like the Titanic. The water was slowly seeping up from below, and the people aboard the ship knew that they were doomed. On the two top decks it was gaiety and mirth, with people dressed to the nines, eat drink and be merry for soon we shall all die. But a note of hysteria hovered in the merrymaking and here and there I saw strange goings on, like in a Grosz cartoon.

I fled down some metal stairs to where people were starting to get their pantslegs wet. Wasn't I looking in the wrong direction? But I desperately searched the equipment in the basement for something that would supply an air pocket, and I succeeded in finding a refrigerator into which I stowed myself, hoping to live on even after the boat was fully submerged until it should be found.

I woke from this dream in a panic that the disaster was real, and that I was picking all this up by e.s.p. I even called UPI to ask if there was any recent news of a sinking liner, and they said yes, but it was in the Bermuda Triangle, so no attempt would be made to find the ship."