Libbies, Smithies, Vassarites

Abstract

N * ^ * ^ ecessarily this concerns a journey. Travels not only to certain women's colleges which have now become places of very real personal concern to me, but, inescapably, travels into my own past as well. I went back to the South; I went home to the Middle West. So I will try to tell not only what I saw and heard, but what happened to me and what I felt. When we started up to Vassar that Monday morning in May, the strike had just been called. Of course, it seemed at first only an accident, a delayed response, a fluorescent bulb tuning up, taking so long it looked for a time as if it were not about to happen. And Cambodia itself a vast idiot blunder, like any tragedy, as lethal as it was inconceivable. But I did not leave town with this most on my mind. Initially there were things closer to my life: the trip ahead of me to the women's colleges, the women's colleges I'll visit, the issue of women's education, the chances of organizing these studentsand naturally, Women's Liberationits immediate reality, its most recent drama. Over the weekend, at the great annual powwow, entitled with perhaps excessive irony The Congress to Unite Women, the movement, awash in its endless factions and squabbles, had scarcely taken account of external politics. While Nixon sounded his victory, we faced the issue of lesbianism. All things considered, we faced it pretty well. Lesbians at the Congress Friday night had insisted on recognition and acceptance. Of course, Women's Liberation had never given them either. When we first went out to picket years ago, we learned to live with catcalls convicting us of ugliness, sexual frustration, and penis envy. But at the word dyke we dissolved on the pavement. Magical languagesexism thrives on it-and the accusation of homosexuality kept us all in line. Lesbians had had enough. They came on camp and pleasant: guerrilla theater, signs like Super-dyke loves you, pastel T-shirts with Lavender Menace stenciled