The Woman Problem
Will, George F.
The Woman Problem George F. Will Earlier this year America faced the tedious prospect of a new decade without a new oppressed group to liberate. But in one swell fell swoop our Yankee ingenuity...
...If women shun jobs to which they were once relegated, who will be airline stewardesses...
...The Justice Department should seek a court order requiring Smith to bus males from (say) Amherst until the Smith student body has the same sexual composition as the town of Northampton...
...As Lenin said, you shouldn't break eggs without making an omelette...
...The Women's Liberation Front recently added a new dimension to the exciting business of pandering to prurient interests...
...It would be even better to directly attack what the "Mrs...
...Let us begin by distinguishing between DeJure and De Facto discrimination...
...Now after forced busing achieves integration at all schools, we must recognize the justice of women's demands for creative sexual separatism...
...Women must save themselves...
...This oppressed majority will gain Uhuru come Hell or low hemlines...
...Yet regretably this form of bodily witness, so helpful in eliminating false consciousness, causes air pollution...
...Anyone with a grievance is relevant now that "environmental concern" is the measure of relevance...
...Women have nice bodies, and fortunately, government cannot do much about that...
...Just ask Barney Rosset, pornographer...
...Upward Curtsey would affirm the basic principles of the American Dream by guaranteeing any American girl the chance to grow up to be a Rambling Wreck from Georgia Tech...
...Some male Neanderthals thought female suffrage would suffice to end female servitude...
...This was good for the Grove Press' property rights but bad for its revolutionary reputation...
...He is only forty-seven...
...The day may come when the traveler slumps wearily into his seat, only to hear a rich baritone voice asking "Coffee, tea or milk...
...Such a program could be called Upward Curtsey, and could use Federal funds to send (say) Bryn Mawr graduates to Atlanta, Georgia, for a two year hitch in the robust and rehabilitating atmosphere of Georgia Tech...
...No woman will be free until all women are willing to step on cockroaches...
...Coleman Report...
...It is time to opt for minimum standards saying "Never...
...Women may break the sex barriers in many occupations...
...We discovered that women need liberating and this discovery has liberated us from creeping ennui...
...But the soft, warm, intractable fact about women's problems may teach these Americans an invaluable lesson about the very finite capabilities of government...
...Equity demands a color centerfold of Joe Namath, stapled in the navel...
...It, too, is subject to pollution...
...Thus the women's liberation movement may rescue the railroad passenger business...
...The "historical sexism" that lavishes attention on Napoleon while downgrading the contributions of Catherine d'Medici and Katherine von Bora must end...
...The men at Grove Press are fierce opponents of repression, but they take a businesslike approach to mixing business and pleasure...
...This was rank sociological naivete...
...The Constitution is not only color blind but sex blind, and it is immoral to tolerate laws or customs that take notice of another human being's sex...
...One cannot turn around (or roll over in bed) without rubbing up against environment...
...But it is tolerant to believe that pollution is in the eye of the beholder...
...The government must mount a determined attack on all such "private" institutions...
...And breathes there a woman with a soul so dead, who never to herself has said, "One Hemingway deserves a Willa Cather...
...Such colleges must be compelled to conform with the law of the land, which is that every school must have a sexual composition identical with that of the surrounding community...
...We need an ambitious program to salvage those young women who suffer the cultural deprivation of attending predominantly female colleges...
...We must demand that the time devoted to Catherine the Great be proportionate to the real uniqueness of her behavior...
...But that worry betrays an insufficiently systemic view, for the new science of "issue ecology" teaches that every issue is related to every other issue in this troubled biosphere...
...The WLF sat in at Grove Press to protest commercial "sexism...
...Under the guise of "deliberate speed," Smith is substituting tokenism for meaningful change...
...They had the WFL protestors arrested...
...Some Americans do not believe such a problem exist...
...Anything that bothers you is a pollutant of your environment...
...After all, every autumn the students get to these colleges by driving over public highways...
...DeJure discrimination is that which is established by law, or by the deliberate acts of public officials...
...Therefore, it is monumental hypocrisy to attack de jure sexism while leaving the de facto form untouched...
...Finally there is the stigma of servitude attached to the exclusive use of women in the Playboy centerfold...
...The reason...
...There is one basic reason why women are victims of capitalism, male chauvinism, institutional sexism, imperialism, objectification, Hugh Hefner, psychological deformation, moral mutililation and physical exploitation...
...Fairness demands that if Faulkner is studied, there must be equal time for Eudora Welty...
...Their so-called "privateness" is an illusion which must not insulate them from public control...
...Recent studies reveal that if every women in America were to burn three slightly padded bras there would develop an enormous increase in air pollution and an enormous glut in Manhattan's garment district...
...But while the term loses precision, it gains an ability to make one feel au courant, which is how I feel when I can classify bad books, shoddy arguments and Senator Fulbright as "pollutants" and ecological disasters...
...Fortunately women have not fallen victim to the wretched condition denoted by the wretched noun "ghettoization...
...This will give men a sample of the shame and horror women feel when they are cast in the role of pliable sex objects...
...This is acceptable...
...Kerner Commission" calls "institutional male chauvinism...
...Of course, when we sweep every one of the world's disagreeable features into the "environment crisis" we turn the term "environment" into a classification that doesn't classify...
...Some persons worry that women's liberation will distract us from the all-important task of fending off environmental apocalypse...
...This reference to Rosset was less than fair...
...Mary Calerone, director of the Sex Information and Education council of the United States, recently demonstrated awareness of this when she told the Women's National Democratic Club that, "The primary ecological system that all other systems need to serve is the relationship between a man and a women...
...they should stay in the kitchen...
...Most important, they must not be betrayed into servility by "Aunt Toms," those collaborationists who trade their birthrights for a mess of service...
...Hence most men would suffer death, or at least a mild blister, in defense of every American's right-regardless of race, color, creed, national origin or sex-to burn bras...
...such is the ban which bars women from the New York Mets' locker room...
...Although this "peculiar institution" is becoming co-educational, the pace of Smith's progress is unacceptable...
...But in one swell fell swoop our Yankee ingenuity conjured into existence a gaggle of downtrodden persons to uplift...
...Our whole society-television, movies, fashion-is built on exciting people...
...to deliberate speed, letting the chips fall where they may, and pausing only to pluck the blossom equality from the nasty nettle sexism...
...Rosset runs Grove Press, an establishment guided by his philosophy: "What's wrong with exciting people...
...For example, there was a time when Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, actually boasted about being the nation's largest all-female college...
...We are much in need of a conspicuous problem which clearly cannot be solved by government...
...Fastidious people may claim that Dr...
...This is a stern test, but as the philosopher said, if women can't stand the heat they should stay in the kitchen...
...This is deliciously egalitarian...
...De facto discrimination results from community customs or mores, such as the practice of giving a lady your seat on the subway...
...Someday a woman may play tight end for the Baltimore Colts...
...We must acknowledge the independent dignity of "female culture" by establishing "female studies programs" that will cleanse the sex-bias from our hairychested university curricula...
...Nevertheless, some busing is needed to eliminate pockets of impacted sexual imbalance...
...Federal officials will soon release the "Mrs...
...Women liberators must feel relevant twice over-as freedom fighters and environment cleaners...
...Women's liberation will not be a gift of government...
...Calderone understands the charm of "environment" as a political issue...
...Calderone is contributing to semantic pollution in order to make her cause congruent with this month's priorities...
...Advanced sociological thinking supports - the justice of such busing...
...Besides, the First Amendment is precise and unambiguous: congress shall make no law abridging the right of even the most flamingly symbolic speech...
...Then imagine the the spectator interest that would arise over a 15-yard penalty for illegal use of the hands and arms...
...The principle of literary sex parity requires trade-offs between Sinclair Lewis and Ayn Rand, or Norman Mailer and Taylor Caldwell...
...Most men know that struggling women need dramatic tactics, like bra burning, for it manifests the liberated woman's escape from the roles and stereotypes of a male-dominated society...
...Clearly there are more forms of pollution under the sun than appear in the Sierra Club's philosophy...
...Advanced thinkers understand that we must use compensatory programs to correct the terrible legacy of centuries of unbridled male tyranny...
...Forced busing is awkward, but no one can take seriously the disingenuous argument that Smith women and Amherst men will get together without Federal compulsion...
...As a result of dumb luck (that is, without HEW guidelines), women are spread evenly across the nation...
...Therefore the students are engaging in interstate commerce and the colleges are permeated with public aspects...
...The WLF promptly announced that Grove Press has "the same mentality as Judge Hoffman" and demanded an end to "one-dirty-old-man-rule" at the Press...
...This is the fruit of a multi-million dollar research project which proved what it set out to prove, namely, that when young men and women study together they learn some things they might not otherwise learn in school...
...If men have the right to burn draft cards, then the principle of sexual reciprocity stipulates that women have the right to burn bras...
...Female assertiveness is going to have some dramatic effects on American life...
...Balanced residential patterns reduce the need for forced busing to achieve sexual balance in schools...
Vol. 4 • December 1970 • No. 2
