Bitching

FOREWORD

In the spring of 1970 rebellion was in the air, and I— a freelance writer, wife, and mother of a two-year-old daughter—went searching for the revolution. But joining one of the activist groups that called itself the Women’s Liberation Movement did not come easily, as it turned out. Redstockings, for instance, was not listed in the phone book. The National Organization for Women was. For several months I attended meetings in a church basement, with nicely-dressed women in mini-skirts and listened to sober speeches about equal pay for equal work. NOW struck me as too timid, however. What I regarded as more appropriately bellicose was the New York Radical Feminists, with its studious hippies and unfussy neighborhood brigades. While trying to locate the group, I kept busy attending the Congress to Unite Women, reading all the clunky feminist journals, joining a sit-in at the Ladies’ Home Journal offices.

Then, one night in June, I found myself in a living room on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Ten or so women settled themselves in a rough circle. Then we began going around the room, each of us looking back and reporting on some experience from our lives, the ones that struck us as demeaning, unfair, or just plain enraging. Bearing a large quantity of suppressed rage, I felt right at home. I observed that these strangers were not going to judge, argue, or challenge. There was no discussion either. When one person finished, the next would begin speaking on the designated topic. As I soon learned, there was a name for this method of sharing experiences. Consciousness-raising, it was called. It could be loud, scary, savage, and vulgar, but never boring and always heartfelt.

Each Tuesday night that scorching summer I would leave my baby with a sitter or my husband and go off to somebody’s apartment. Each week the women went around the room. Yes, there was plenty of bitterness, along with a surprising amount of laughter (which was of course often bitchy). Time magazine, in August, featured a cover story on Women’s Lib and Kate Millett whose book Sexual Politics had become a best-seller. The author, as Time put it, was a brilliant misfit in a man’s world.

Man’s world indeed.

That year 1970 brought forth eruptions of female protest, both political and personal, as women served notice that they would not play by male rules anymore. It seemed that everywhere I went women were eager to talk about their experiences. They complained, moaned, cursed, laughed, and cried. Memories without end began to unroll.

It was a time for slogans.

The personal is political, we said.

Sisterhood is powerful, insisted another slogan.

What should be done about men? Could they be educated, perhaps rehabilitated? Should hard-core resisters of reform be treated like kulaks, enemies of the revolution relegated to the dustbin of history?

Shortly thereafter, I began to record some of the acid conversations I was hearing. A few of the women considered themselves feminists, but most did not. No matter because the streams of discontent sounded pretty much the same. Their ages ranged from around 5 to mid-80s. They were children, students, unmarried women, wives, divorcees, widows, all of them major-league complainers about crummy jobs, failed relationships, frustrated ambitions, wasted lives. Most moving were the elderly women, who looked back with supersad rancor:

What has bothered me, remarked a widow in her 70s, is that everything exciting was off-limits. It was like window-shopping, strolling by and looking and your mouth watering but you could never stop and buy anything. Oftentimes I think my whole life has been spent just passing by.

Bitching was published in 1973.

The response to my book was predictable: it was not exactly popular with men, or with those women who claimed to be satisfied with the status quo.

Transformation of society does not come easily. Yet it did come, and sooner than we could have imagined. Some 40 years later, we live in quite a different world, not yet scrubbed of sexism by any means but considerably altered.

What became of these women who spilled their grievances so freely? They went on to teach school, open restaurants, make films, see patients. Some are mothers and grandmothers, others struggle with the uncertainties of age, poor health, and savings depleted by inflation. A couple are deceased now.

Bitching is a woman’s book: biography plus history plus memoir. Here are the life stories of a few dozen women and the way they were before Women’s Liberation.

Marion Meade

June 2011

New York City

FOR LITTLE DARLING

who has the good sense to deny everything

TO MANKIND, WITH LOVE

The sun splashed liberal gold through the foliage, over the red cement floor, and over the ladies. They had been here since lunchtime, and would remain until sunset, talking, talking incessantly, their tongues mercifully let off the leash.

Doris Lessing, Martha Quest

When women get together, they talk about all sorts of things, but their juiciest topic is, and always has been, men. Unlike the male sex, women have few problems confiding in each other about their intimate relationships. They habitually spill their inner feelings. Over the back fence, on the telephone, in kaffeeklatsches, at the beauty parlor, in official and unofficial consciousness-raising sessions, women spit out their troubles, bitches, experiences, and rage. They speak about how to con, conquer, and above all, simply exist in the same world with men.

The current resurgence of feminism has made woman-talk a more profound and perilous pastime than ever because once a woman begins to question her own life, the next person she automatically starts to challenge is the male chauvinist nearest and dearest.

Women disclose their deepest thoughts about men to other women because:

1. They're not as emotionally constipated as men.

2. Misery needs company.

3. Who else have they got to talk to? Surely not men.

Men have never had the fuzziest idea of what women are all about. Or what it's like to be a woman. Or what women really think. Mostly, this is because they're afraid to ask. They suspect that if they do find out, it's not something they'd appreciate hearing. And they are absolutely correct. It is far safer to assume that women are inherently mysterious persons who desire only petting and idolatry, or to coyly speculate, as Freud did, What do women want?

But God knows men are not entirely to blame. Womankind learned early on to shut up around them. The shrewd woman knows better than to fully reveal her true feelings on important matters. From experience, she knows that candor is not the best policy, that it, in fact, can be fatal. For a woman, honesty toward a man is a luxury to be indulged in only in time of stress, or when she no longer wants the man, or when he already has one foot out the door. That's why, after a relationship breaks up, it's invariably the man who complains what a bitch his beloved turned out to be once she showed her true colors. One reason Women's Liberation petrifies men is that, for the first time in their lives, they are hearing women say publicly exactly the things they've been revealing to each other privately for centuries.

Since women have always found it impossible to be frank with men, they have subsisted by playing games. Not fun-and-games games, but serious games of sexual politics which are nothing less than a means of survival. From the beginning, women recognized that male supremacy is baloney. At the same time, they understood the dangers of coming right out and saying so. In their daily confrontations and skirmishes with men, they get along by playing woman-man games which, though they may amount to guerrilla tactics, have proved effective nonetheless. By this point, the survival devices are so ingrained in female behavior that women often are unaware of them. Although they may seem to play instinctively, gameswomanship is learned. If they don't figure out the rules for themselves, there are plenty of how-to sources, beginning with mother.

Men are forever squawking about how women talk too much. At the sound of female voices in groups, they tend to fidget and then flee, dropping shrill, terrified remarks as they go. They have stereotyped women as chatterboxes, natural-born babblers of trivia, nits who have nothing better to do than sit around and bitch. Okay, fellas, right you are. But bitching as they gleefully remove the imperial male chauvinist's clothing is what saves their collective sanity. Bitching and game playing with the men in our lives is how women make it from cradle to coffin.

Admittedly, bad-mouthing men can grow wearisome, even for those women with no other means of alleviating their frustration, Furthermore, bitching is basically unproductive, because alone, it generally fails to alter the conditions women find so unbearable. A question women keep asking themselves is, Why do we tolerate mortifying treatment by men? There's no point in denying that they put up with a lifelong cavalcade of indignities; there's also no point in denying that they haven't any choice. As a sex, women are coerced into existing inside man-made straitjackets designed to keep them in a state of economic, intellectual, and psychological atrophy. Accordingly, women embalm their feelings and aspirations as they make the obligatory accommodations for survival in a world which belongs, implausibly, to men. The woman impolite enough to reject male dominance, whether the man be father, employer, lover, or husband, can count on appropriate reprisals. The wages of revolt, and every woman becomes aware of it, is inevitably some sort of unpleasantness. It makes far more sense to learn, at as early an age as possible, the womanly art of shuffling with a smile. Outwardly, at least, we aim to please.

Among the traditional birthrights of the male sex has been the prerogative to define women by telling them how they must behave and what they must think, feel, and speak. Judging from some of their recent defensive comments on this subject, one might imagine it never occurred to men that their self-assigned roles as interpreters of women could be presumptuous. Or, that women might wish to speak for themselves.

A symphony of women's voices is heard in this book. While I have changed names and disguised circumstances to ensure anonymity, the people are real. All of them are women I know. It was unnecessary to seek out strangers or conduct interviews. Rather, I spoke with friends and family, taping their recollections and, in some instances, asking them to reproduce experiences with which I was already familiar. Their voices represent many ages: five-year-old pros full of sandbox nostalgia; scornful adolescents railing at their prepackaged futures; single women unleashing sardonic memoirs of the so-called superior sex; women speaking from inside an institution—the one known as marriage; battle-scarred divorcees bearing oral histories on the sexes; aging veterans armed with voluminous notes on endurance. They are ordinary women with commonplace experiences. Their voices sound amused, contemptuous, outraged, irreverent, unladylike, and, of course, bitchy. Rarely do women whine to each other; they save that melody for male ears.

I have often thought that if men could only eavesdrop on womantalk, they'd rush out to apply for ego transplants. I hope this book will hasten them on their way.

ONE

Her Heart Belongs to Daddy

I. PLAYPEN GAMES

The Fine Art of Faking Out Father

Family Fascism

Sieg Heil, Daddy

I Remember Mama

II. FLOWER CHILD GAMES

Little Princess Power

Sex and the Single Six-Year-Old

Miss Muffet's Fantasies

III. PUBERTY GAMES

The Making of a Girl

The Wisdom of Keeping One's Legs Crossed and Mouth Shut

Her Heart Belongs to Daddy

Let's face it. The war between the sexes is rigged in man's favor from the very beginning. The scenario for Round One is brief:

A little girl studies family power politics, sizes up Mommy and Daddy, and draws two conclusions:

1. Mommy is a mess.

2. Daddy is a prince.

Moral: Hop on the winning team fast.

However, there's no reason for men to feel cocky. Little girls may not want to grow up like Mother but it's equally apparent that Daddy, while a prince, is also a sap. Because even though Mommy kneels in tribute to Our Father Who Art at the Office, behind his back she's subtly (or, as the case may be, not so subtly) giving him the honorable old middle finger. A girl feels justified in doing likewise, and so, with the realization that Daddy is ripe for a royal screwing, she embarks on a lifetime career of exploiting the old man in one way or another. Disillusioning, but there it is.

Think of this chapter as an opening chorus of rude and disrespectful sounds.

1. PLAYPEN GAMES

The Fine Art of Faking Out Father. The first human being a girl meets when she enters this world is a man: the obstetrician. As if she already understands that Baby, It's a Man's World, she greets this advance man from the male establishment with an appropriately symbolic gesture. She pees on him. So far, so good.

The second man she encounters is Daddy; that is, if he hasn't been detained, bonding with his cronies in a bar or passing out cigars. There are two important facts about Daddy that she will eventually discover: 1. He's disappointed because she should have been a boy. (Mother, too, may have wanted a son.) 2. He usually manages to overcome his gloom when reminded that, even though daughters may be second best, there are some compensations. His newly revised attitude toward the inferior specimen is best summed up in a greeting card which announces: CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR BABY DAUGHTER and reassuringly points out:

Little girls are wonderful—

They're sweet and precious, too

And who should know that better

Than a happy pair like you!

In case this message isn't consolation enough, the card manufacturer helpfully reminds Daddy what he can expect from a female child. The poem:

WHAT IS A GIRL?

She's a bundle of sweetness and brightness and fun

The beauty of springtime, the warmth of the sun

She's Innocence covered with mud, sand, and soot

She's Motherhood dragging a doll by the foot

She's a composite picture of giggles and tears

Of tantrums, excitement, amusement and fears

A bundle of mischief and often a tease

A creature of moods not too easy to please

Who can capture your heart with her pixie-like grin

Or chatter and beg till your patience wears thin

But obedient, naughty, mischievous or coy

She's Mom's little Darling and Dad's pride and joy.

Of course, just like a woman: sweet, innocent, tearful, fearful, a tease, a creature of moods, coy, and wouldn't you know it, a chatterbox. Lulled into accepting this quaint, if wildly inaccurate image of his daughter, Daddy makes the mistake of treating her like a Little Darling. He will never know the true her, any more than he knows the real feelings of his wife. Score one for our side.

The tone of her relationship with Daddy virtually set for life, Little Darling can confidently proceed to manipulate him at will, unless one day she makes the deadly error of letting on what she really thinks of him. Nancy, a twenty-year-old college student and her father's favorite child, appraises Daddy:

Until about two years ago I felt my father was the most horrible person I'd known in my whole fucking life. I really hated him and I still have a lot of resentment and anger.

About two years ago she left home. Since then, she has tried to limit their reunions to occasions when she needs money.

If painting women as hypocrites and deceivers of men from the moment of birth seems too black a portrait, it's simply a case of necessity being the mother of invention. To some degree at least, all women are forced to dissemble if they expect to coexist with men by meeting the man-made ground rules for female behavior. The more successfully Little Darling fakes out Father, the better she'll get along later on in a man's world. Her only other option is to turn around and climb back into a woman's world, Mama's womb.

Family Fascism. Armed with the knowledge that Daddy can be used, a girl learns her first lesson in female behavior when she observes the power struggle between Mother and Daddy. One of the revelations apparent from her ringside seat is that conjugal conflict is a fact of life. Hostilities may not always be waged out in the open, but trench warfare goes on continually.

For reasons still obscure to her, one parent hands down commandments as if he were a local representative for the Almighty. (Wait until she hears about the real thing, that celebrated all-male triumvirate, The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost.) Daddy's list of Thou Shalts mainly concerns his status. It is his right to be Dominant, In Charge, Boss, and Head of Household—a precarious authority he nervously struggles to attain and then maintain by means of elementary fascism. Nancy remembers her father's nightly homecomings:

We'd be sitting there, talking and having a good time. When we'd hear the garage door open, which meant he was home, everybody would tense up and change what we had been saying. We'd ask each other, Is he in a good mood or a bad mood? Always, always there was this kind of dread. If he was angry, my mother would tell us, Well, something happened at the office today and he's just taking it out on us.

We had such sensors. Determining his moods and whims became a science.

Whether or not Daddy is the only parent to provide Our Daily Bread, he still feels entitled to control. The crude propaganda he passes out is meant to reassure his family, but mainly himself, that domination is his due. He's bigger and stronger than Mother, isn't he? And smarter? Doesn't he drive the car? Pay the bills? All of which conveniently overlooks the unpleasant truth that his only claim to power rests on biological accident: He owns a penis. If he didn't, he'd be in the same position as Mommy, skimming the Monkey Ward catalogue and marveling at the latest toilet bowl cleaner.

The politics of the family, despite its lack of logic, doesn't take long to decipher. Daddy may act like a megalomaniac, but the real issue here is his unavailability. He simply is not part of a girl's daily existence. In her world the key person is Mother, who is available. For all Daddy's soliloquies about how hard he works, the office or store or wherever else he disappears to doesn't exist. She only sees that Mother, hustling between the stove and the A & P, holds the short end of the stick.

As for the agitprop she hears about males being smarter, this peculiar line of reasoning may confuse her for years to come. On the one hand, she can see that boys, despite their ordinary human abilities, seem to be treated as special people. On the other, this is a preposterous idea which she can refute by observing her brother or the boy next door. A mini-view of the sexes from Laurie, four, describing the boys in her nursery school class:

YUCK! Boys are stupid.

Well, I like boys sometimes. I like Charlie because he gives me gum. Once he gave me nine pieces of bubble gum. But girls are nicer.

While Daddy appears to possess extraordinary power, especially compared to Mother who usually behaves like a nitwit when he's home, his self-appointed title of Provider, Protector, and All-Round Responsibility-Taker is meaningless because, obviously, it's Mother who runs the house and takes care of her. Before long, she also stumbles across the ancient unwritten female code which says: Don't let him know who's the real boss. In the name of household peace, Mother keeps her trap shut and manages to yassuh her way from one wash day to the next by playing the wife's Number One game, Conspiracy. A girl recognizes that Mother's game-playing is far from irrelevant to the family plot. It is the plot. That she immediately acknowledges the seriousness of the game is apparent: She doesn't blow the whistle on Mama.

Meanwhile, television helps to convince her that Mother's conspiratorial games are hardly original; they are universal. To a child trying to check out the true relations between the sexes, the most educational program isn't Sesame Street. More accurate information can be found on The Flintstones where those consummate castrators, Wilma and Betty, sweetly outsmart their Neanderthal child-husbands. Admittedly, Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble, strutting and blustering in the best machismo style, somewhat exaggerate Daddy's