The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s husband is so good at sliming

the women he’s abused - and he has had so much help - that

it might take two vil ages.

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True Grit

Becoming a feminist - seeing women through the prism of

feminism - meant changing and developing a new stance. For

instance, I hate prisons, but the process of becoming a feminist made me face the fact that I thought some people should be in jail. Years later, after watching rapists and batterers go free

almost al the time, my pacifism would collapse like a glass

tower, leaving me with jagged cuts everywhere inside and out

and half-buried as well. I began to believe that the bad guys

should be executed - not by the state but by the victim, if she

desired, one shot to the head.

When I was still a baby feminist (this being the lingo of the

movement), I was asked to go and interview a felon named

Tommy Trantino, who had published a book of drawings and

stories called Unlock the Lock. The person who had asked me

to go thought that I could write something about Trantino

that might help to get him out.

I went to Rahway State Prison, a maximum-security prison

in New Jersey. I talked to Trantino in a small, transparent

room, almost al glass. I was surrounded by the prison population, not in lockdown. Trantino had been convicted of killing

121

Heartbreak

two cops. I read a lot about him before I went. The same

day on which he had kil ed the cops he had also beaten up a

couple of women.

I asked Trantino al the obvious questions, including “Did

you do it?” His response was that he didn’t remember. Then

I departed from the script. I said that I knew he had been in

jail a long time, but had he heard of the women’s movement

and what did he think of it? Hands in his pants pockets, he

spread his legs wide open and said, “Wel , I'm good with women

and I'm bad with women.” That was enough for me, but ever

the intrepid reporter I said that I had noted that he had beat

up two women on the day of the killings; did he think he

would stil beat up on women if he was out? His answer was

an equivocating no, but I heard yes as clear as church bel s on

a Sunday, and as far as I was concerned he could stay in jail

forever. I didn’t think that this was the right way to think, but

I couldn’t stop thinking it.

I began the Socratic course of discussing the problem with

my friends, stil mostly on the pacifist left. Everyone told me,

in different ways, that I had an obligation to help Trantino get