The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant

story is too weird, too ugly, too unsightly for an educated

woman to believe.

150

Basics

What comes along with every ef ort to stop the sexual

abuse of women is the denial that the sexual abuse is happening at al , and U. S. women should understand that William Jefferson Clinton and his enabler, the senator, have set women

back more than thirty-five years in this regard. Some women

are pushed up and some women are pushed down. It’s the

women who are down who are paying the freight for al the

rest; the women who have been pushed up even a smidge

have taken to acting as if everything is al right or wil be soon.

Their arguments are not with men or even with subgroups of

men, for instance, pimps. They smile and make nice with the

men. Their arguments are with me or other militants. Being a

militant simply requires fighting sexual abuse - the right of a

rapist, the right of a pimp, the right of a john, the right of an

incest-daddy to use or intimidate or coerce girls or women.

A young woman just out of college says that date rape does

not happen, and the media conspire to make her rich and

famous.

A woman of no intellectual distinction writes a 3, 000-page

book, or so it seems, and she is celebrated - she becomes rich

and famous.

The wealthy wife of a multimil ionaire writes longingly

about being a stay-at-home mother. Feminists, she says, have

made that too hard - as she pursues a golden career writing

(without talent) about how she wants to be home mopping

up infant vomit.

151

Heartbreak

A middle-class English feminist of ferocious mediocrity

spends her time charting the eating disorders of her betters.

They are not so evident on the landscape now, but there

were so-called feminists who published in Playboy, Hustler,

and Penthouse and penned direct attacks on feminists fighting

pornography and prostitution. There were women labeled

feminist who wrote pornographic scenarios in which the

so-called fantasies were the rape of other feminists, usually

named and sometimes drawn but always recognizable; one at

least has become a male through surgery - her head and heart

were always right there.

Making fun of the victims was even more commonplace

than making fun of the feminists fighting in behalf of those

who had been raped or prostituted.

It became an insult to be cal ed or considered a victim, even