Right-wing Women

of access—and the prospect of being physically thrown out as soon

as one’s time was up. So when I raced in, I raced right over to the

Mississippi delegation.

I asked several women to talk with me. They refused even to

look at me. Whoever managed them disciplined them well. They

were a wall of silence. Finally I approached a man sitting on an

aisle. I said that I was from Ms. magazine and would like to ask

him some questions. I was wearing overalls and a T-shirt, and a

press pass with Ms. in large inked letters was hanging from my

neck. The man laughed and turned to the woman next to him,

whispered in her ear, she laughed and turned to the woman next to

her and whispered in her ear, she laughed and turned to the

woman next to her and whispered in her ear, and so on down the

row of delegates. The man did not turn back to me until the identification had been passed to the end of the line. Some of the women had not laughed; they had gasped.

I asked the man why he was at the conference. He said that his

wife had wanted him to be there to protect women’s right to procreate and to have a family. I asked him if he was a member of the Klan. He claimed high office in the organization. He talked about

the Klan’s militant role in protecting women from all kinds. He

himself was physically rather slight, not particularly tall, wore

glasses; I suspected I was physically stronger than he was. Many

times during the interview I realized that it would take a white

sheet and all that that white sheet symbolized to hide this man’s

own physical vulnerability to attack. He himself was nondescript;

the Klan was not. When I recognized the fear this man inspired in

me, and measured that fear against his own physical presence, I

felt ashamed: and yet I was still afraid of him . *

*Klan and Nazi groups threatened violence at the convention: we were

promised bombings and beatings. Some women were in fact beaten up,

others were physically threatened, and the possibility of being hurt was

considered both real and immediate by all the conference participants with

whom I talked.

He said that women needed the protection of men. He said that

the Klan had sent men to the convention to protect their womenfolk from the lesbians, who would assault them. He said that it was necessary to protect women’s right to have families because that

was the key to the stability of the nation. He said that homosexuality was a Jew sickness. He said that homosexuality was a lust that threatened to wipe out the family. He said that homosexual

teachers should be found out and run out of any town they were

in. T hey could all go to Jew New York. T ryin g to keep up m y end

of the conversation, I asked him w hy he was against homosexual

teachers, especially if their homosexuality was private. He said that

there was no such thing as private homosexuality, that if homosexuals were in schools, children would be corrupted and tainted and molested and taught to hate God and the fam ily; homosexuality

would claim the women and the children if they were exposed to

it; its presence at all, even hidden, anywhere, would take people

from family life and put them into sin. His description was almost voluptuous in that no one, in his estimation, would remain untouched.

Are you really saying, I asked slowly and clearly and loudly (so

that the women delegates could continue to overhear the conversation), that if homosexuality were openly visible as a sexual possibility or if there were homosexual teachers in schools, everyone would