The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant

to the devaluing of women in every part of life. The pornography itself was defined in the statute as a series of concrete scenarios in which women were sexual y subordinated to men.

130

Sister, Can You Spare a Dime?

In 1984 I went with a group of activists and organizers to

the convention of the National Organization for Women in

order to get NOW’s support for this new approach to fighting

pornography.

The convention was held in New Orleans in a posh hotel.

Sonia Johnson, an activist especially associated with a radical

crusade to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, was running

for president of NOW, and she sur endered her time and space

so that I could address the convention on her behalf; our

understanding was that I would talk about pornography and

the new approach MacKinnon and I had developed.

It was a hot, hot city in every sense. Leaving the hotel one

saw the trafficking in women in virtually every venue along

Bourbon Street. The whole French Quarter, and Bourbon

Street in particular, was crowded with middle-aged men in

suits roving as if in gangs, dripping sweat, going from one sex

show to the next, searching for prostitutes and strippers.

In the hotel, NOW women were herded into caucuses and

divided into cliques. I'm a member of NOW, even though its

milksop politics deeply offend me. Now I was going to try to

persuade the members that they should pursue the difficult

and dangerous task of addressing pornography as a civil rights

issue for women.

It is hard to describe how insular NOW is. It is run on the

national level by women who want to play politics with the

big boys in Washington, D. C., where NOW’s national of ice

131

Heartbreak

is located. I had, over the years, spoken at ral ies and events

organized by many local NOW chapters al over the country.

On the local level, my experience with NOW was entirely

wonderful. The members were valiant women, often the sole

staf for battered women’s shelters and rape crisis centers,

often the only organized progressive group in a smal town or

city. I’ve never met better women or bet er feminists. Those

who run the nationally visible NOW are different in kind:

they stick to safe issues and mimic the politics and strategies

of professional political lobbyists.

Soon after I came back from Amsterdam, I spoke at a ral y

organized by the local NOW chapter in Washington, D. C. At

the time the burning issue was the Equal Rights Amendment,

a proposed amendment to the U. S. Constitution that would