There were only seven of us. I was the menial, a part-time
of ice 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 cal ed 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 dissociated 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; intellectuals per se were low on the list. As an of ice 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 put ing 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 wil ing to
rethink the status quo. In fact, no one was prepared to understand 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 especial y,
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 themselves 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 - someone had to make a phone cal - but returned to the table wel before the break was over. None of the women, including
myself, talked. Our col eagues of the male persuasion did talk:
about Marilyn Chambers, the pornography star who had
