MY LAST LEFTIST MEETING

MY story, too, including of the sperm source to the three sons I grew in to their first selves and bulldozed out of me --- ONLY, apparently for him out of his vengeance upon me, to be taken BY HIM and hidden away from me --- UNTIL, and after, ALL OF THEIR ADULTHOODS:  On International Women's Day today, Ms Dworkin's "My Last Leftist Meeting," pages 100 - 103 of her Heartbreak;  the Political Memoir of a Militant Feminist, y2006.  The ONLY "good man" to challenge the sperm source, pillared as a doctor in the community and monied, and to try to stop him from destroying my Boys and me?  Not my only one brother.  Not any of my men "friends," ALL of them thinking of themselves as liberal, even "feminist."  ONLY my own daddy did, Willard Maas.  He ( and I and my three Boys ), of course, lost.

Here in its entirety:  My Last Leftist Meeting

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There were only seven of us. I was the menial, a part-time

office worker. The movie director Emile D’Antonio seemed to

lead the meeting by sheer force of personality. There were

three women, including myself. That translated into six

eminents, two of whom were women. Our goal was to find

the next project for celebrities organized against the war in a

group called Redress. The idea of the group was 100 percent

Amerikan: famous people organized to fight the war, their

names having more pull than those of professional politicians

or ordinary citizens. It was a time when fame was not disso­

ciated from accomplishment: most of our members had

earned through achievement whatever fame they had. But the

hierarchy of fame always favored those in the movies; intellec­

tuals per se were low on the list. As an office worker, I was not

expected to have ideas, but I had them anyway. In the larger

meetings when we had a whole roomful of the famous or

somewhat famous, I would be cut in two for putting an idea

forward. I remember being torn to pieces by some famous

divinity professor. Whoever he is, I hate him now as much as

I did then. Another noneminent and I apparently called his

moral purity into question. I have no idea how or why; I

didn’t then and I don’t now.

In this smaller meeting in a tiny room around a nondescript

table there was more congeniality. Cora Weiss was there, I

remember - her family owns or owned Revlon. A man named

Carl from Vietnam Veterans Against the War headed the

meeting in the official sense; he was famous in the antiwar

movement, prominent, in no way a servant, instead a rather

cunning leader. The women’s movement was going full tilt but

never seemed to penetrate the antiwar movement (and hasn’t,

in my opinion, to this day). No one appeared willing to

rethink the status quo. In fact, no one was prepared to under­

stand that the women’s movement had outclassed the peace

movement with both its originality and its vision of equality.

I had once been at a meeting at Carl’s apartment, shared with

a woman. He proudly showed me the self-hating graffiti her

consciousness-raising group had etched and drawn and painted

onto a canvas on the wall. He enjoyed it a lot and especially,

as he made clear to me, that the women had done it themselves.

See, he seemed to be saying, this is what they think of them­

selves so I don’t have to think more of them. I remember

being very troubled - why was this woman-hating graffiti what

they thought of themselves? I remember noting in my mind

that this was part of the problem, not part of the solution.

We took a break in the middle of our little meeting - some­

one had to make a phone call - but returned to the table well

before the break was over. None of the women, including

myself, talked. Our colleagues of the male persuasion did talk:

about Marilyn Chambers, the pornography star who had

sold Ivory soap in television commercials until she was booted

out by a morals clause in her Ivory contract. The conversation

came from out of nowhere; nothing logically led to it and

nothing explained the fact that the men all liked the conversa­

tion and participated happily. They talked in particular about

how much they would like to fuck her in the ass. This seemed

to derive from her most famous movie, Behind the Green Door,

which they all seemed to have seen.

I sat there in dismay and confusion. Weren’t we trying to

stop exploitation? Weren’t we the love children, not the hate

children? Didn’t we believe in the dignity of all persons?

Wasn’t it clear - surely it didn’t have to be pointed out - that

pornography defamed women? Even if Carl’s woman friend

and her friends debased themselves, commercial pornography

required male consumption and brought the defamation to

a new level. What the men said was so vile that I was really

wounded by it. I seemed unable to learn the lesson that porno­

graphy trumped political principle and honor. (I may have

learned it by now) I found myself nauseated and in my mind debated whether

or not I would give a little exit speech or simply get up and

leave. The exit speech would have the advantage of letting

them know how they had let down me and mine, others

like me, women. Were these men worth it - were they worth

fighting for the right words, which was always so hard? Were

they worth overcoming the nausea, or should I just puke on

the table (and I was damned close to it)? I noted that the men

were having a good time and that the women not only did not

raise their eyes but had their heads lowered as if trying to

pretend they didn’t hear or weren’t there.

I noticed that the men did not notice that the women had suddenly become

absent, at the table yes but not present, not verbal - there was

a quiet resembling social or political death; in effect, the women

were erased. I got up and walked out.

I never went back to the group and stopped getting my $75-a-week paycheck, which

was the mainstay of my existence. Everything else I earned was chump change.