#robin morgan

[radical-ramblings]

I will not call a male "she"; thirty-two years of suffering in this androcentric society, and of surviving, have earned me the title "Woman"; one walk down the street by a male transvestite, five minutes of his being hassled (which he may enjoy), and then he dares, he dares to think he understands our pain? No, in our mother's names and in our own, we must not call him sister.

Robin Morgan speaking at the West Coast Lesbian Conference in Los Angeles, in 1973

[ma-pi-ma]

Nessun microscopio vede quello che può vedere la poesia,

immagini che aleggiano lungo fasci di nervi spenti

e non lasciano traccia. Dove

sono archiviate le cose immaginate, le cose ricordate?

Robin Morgan

[honeyriot]

"Interestingly, feminists seem to have understood from the beginning that all issues are "women's issues," so it's not coincidental that they were also founders and organizers in the earliest stages of (only a partial list): anti-poverty work, abolition of slavery, child-welfare crusades, penal reform, public-health campaigns, peace movements (regarding every violent conflict, including the Civil War), and environmental activism-often overtly identifying a problem as a symptom of the underlying malady: patriarchy. Women's activism in the temperance movement, for instance, was based on their precocious analysis that a correlation existed between male alcoholism and wife battery; more than a century later, scientific data would confirm the experience-based hypothesis of these "crazy" women."

"Later, not content with a support role, some women would successfully disguise themselves as men to fight in the revolutionary war of independence, as Deborah Sampson did. Small wonder that by 1776, while in Philadelphia at the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams would receive from his wife, Abigail Smith Adams, the epistolary prophecy warning him that "If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation." Unfortunately, Adams heeded her advice no more than Thomas Jefferson heeded that of his de facto wife, Sally Hemmings, on denouncing slavery. Nor would this be the last betrayal of female citizens by a revolution that would set an example for worldwide "democracy." Westward expansion, for instance, relied on female labor and sacrifice. As one anonymous Iowan woman wrote at the time, such life "was mighty easy for the men and horses, but death on cattle and women." There were a few roles that broke free from the presumptive one of wife/mother (schoolteacher, solo farmer, businesswoman, even brothel-madam or missionary), but roles enjoying such relative freedom were unattainable for most women."

[fablock]

Robin Morgan, 1973

[haggishlyhagging]

The strength of this politics lies, in fact, in its dynamism, in the fluid energy that links unapologetic intellect with unashamed passion; it is a means, not an end; a process, not a dogma. Consequently, what a radical feminist in Brazil (the nation's debt, for example) might consider her cutting-edge issue, need not be the same as that considered a priority by a radical feminist in Thailand (combating sex tourism) or in Kuwait (winning women's suffrage) or in Sudan (ending the practice of female genital mutilation) or Nepal (gaining inheritance rights) or the Pacific Island nations (halting French nuclear testing, the fallout of which creates "jellyfish babies"—children born with no spines), and so on—and so on, and on.

What radical feminists have in common, though, includes a stubborn commitment to the people of women, the courage to dare question anything and dare redefine everything, a dedication to making the connections between issues, a sobering comprehension of the enormity of this task—freeing more than half of humanity and, by so doing, saving the other half—and perhaps most importantly of all, radical feminists share an audacious understanding of this politics' centrality to the continuation of sentient life itself on this planet.

This is no hyperbole. Women constitute the majority of the human species, so the female condition is hardly a marginal or minority issue. Furthermore, all the ills that afflict humankind—from pollution to war to poverty—impact first and worst on women, who are also the last to be consulted about solutions to such problems.

-Robin Morgan, “Light Bulbs, Radishes, and the Politics of the 21st Century” in Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed

[electronicsquid]

Child disc jockey Robin Morgan (right) with records

(Gene Smith. 1947)

[primulaceas]

Robin Morgan, “Rendez-Vous.” Monster

[writtenincolors]

ig: writtenincolor