Back to Chapter Headings Back to home page Contact Gene Lantz
The women's liberation movement was strong in the late 60's and early 70's. In many ways, American women were leading the world and still are. But those lessons did not come easily for men, including me. I was brought up in a family where seated men rattled the ice in their empty drinking glasses when they wanted one of the women to jump up and bring them more tea. As I lived in a fatherless home, I didn't notice the chauvinism as much as I might have, but I was aware of it.
Everybody was learning to say "he/she" instead of "he" and to stop using the many women-denigrating terms that had been common. I tried to go much further than that. I insisted that women could and should be as promiscuous as men, or more so if they wanted. After I joined the Socialist Workers Party in 1973, I was around the strongest women I had ever seen or heard of. Part of the reason was that hardly any of them were Southerners like me, but the main reason was hard ideology.
I remember being amazed one day when standing at a urinal, penis in hand, in the men's room at Oberlin College when a woman burst in and announced, "We're liberating those first two stalls!" She was followed by some of the women who had been waiting in line for the women's room. During that same convention, that amazing woman walked into a ballroom where about 400 SWP'ers were dancing, looked around at all the available men, and proclaimed, "I've fucked most of them!"
She taught me another really good lesson once when the college authorities tried to kick her socialist group off the campus. They held a hearing where she was allowed to testify. With her back turned to the authorities, she made her plea directly to the audience. When the authorities objected and insisted, "You're supposed to be talking to us," she said, "Yes, but they want to hear me too" then went right on orating to the galleries. She won that fight. If there ever was an Amazon, it was she. I was awed by her and probably still would be if I knew where she was. More power to her, say I!
I remember marching for the Equal Rights Amendment and for abortion rights, both locally in Houston and nationally in New York and Washington, DC. I think the political commitment was the easy part because it was all ideology to me. Trying to respect women fully in my personal relationships was a constant effort and not that easy. I never was, and still am not, the man I'd like to be.
Back to Chapter Headings Back to home page Contact Gene Lantz