The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant

am free.

82

Strategy

After I lived on Crete, I went back to Bennington for two

long, highly psychedelic years. There I fought for on-campus

contraception - a no-no when colleges and universities functioned in loco parentis - and legal abortion. I fought against the Vietnam War. I tried to open up an antiwar counseling

center to keep the rural-poor men in the towns around the

college from signing up to be soldiers. Most of these were white

men, and Vietnam was the equivalent of welfare for them. But

the burning issue was boys in rooms. Bennington, an all-girls'

school with a few male students in dance and drama, had

parietal hours: from 2 a. m. to 6 a. m. the houses in which the

students lived were girls only. One could have sex with another

girl, and many of us did, myself certainly included. But the

male lovers had to disappear: be driven out like beasts into the

cold mountain night, hide behind trees during the hour of the

wolf, and reemerge after dawn. The elimination of parietal

hours was a huge issue, in some ways as big as the war. In

colleges across the country girls were required to be in their

gender-segregated dormitories by 10. Girls who went to Bennington in the main valued personal freedom; at least this girl

83

Heartbreak

did. As one watched male faculty sneak in and out of student

bedrooms, one could think about lies, lies, lies. As one saw the

pregnancies that led to il egal abortions from these liaisons,

one could think about the secret but not subtle cruelty of ful y

adult men to young women. Everyone knew the Bennington

guard who was deaf, and one prayed he would be on the 2-

to-6 shift so one could have sex with a man one’s own age

without facing suspension or expulsion. When a student would

go with a boy to a motel, she could expect a cal at the motel

from a particular administrator, a lesbian in hiding who tried

to defend law and order. It was law and order versus personal freedom, and I was on the side of personal freedom.

The college had a new president, Edward J. Bloustein, a

constitutional lawyer, or so he said. The U. S. Constitution is

amazingly malleable. Regardless, he was a law-and-order guy,

and he didn’t belong at Bennington. You might say it was him

or me. He wanted a more conventional Bennington with a more

conventional student body and a fully conventional liberal-

arts curriculum. He wanted to expand the student body, which

would make classes bigger. He wanted al the hippies gone

and al the druggies gone and al the lesbian lovers gone. He

was for abstinence at a time when virginity before marriage

was highly prized; he was against abortion and once told me