Meeting Gloria Steinem

Meeting Gloria Steinem At Boston University

A few years ago, I had the honor of meeting one of our culture’s most important feminist icons, Gloria Steinem at the Boston University Barnes & Noble Lecture Series where she was promoting the book ENSLAVED, edited by Jesse Sage and Liora Kasten of the American Anti-Slavery Group in which true stories of modern day slavery are told. Sadly, slavery, though officially outlawed in every country in the world, still occurs. Approximately 15 to 30 million people are still enslaved. Here are some photos of me meeting Gloria, an amazing and very moving experience for me.*

When I was about seventeen, I heard Gloria Steinem make a remark I was not ready to hear. It shocked me, but it stayed with me. In response to a question about abortion, she said, “Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”

All of recorded history ran out from under me as when the tide on the beach takes the sand out from under your feet and leaves you dizzy. I realized I had been conned. By religion, in particular, which plays on good people's innate sense of responsibility by creating guilt where it might not exist and using this guilt to control people's lives.

I asked myself, what if society had given us a different set of rules? We would think differently about many things, including abortion.

One’s opinion of abortion is not the issue. One should never tell another woman what to do. The issue is power. Power over us. Power over our lives. We need to take that power back. That’s why I wrote Atlantis, poems about the United States being another Atlantis. Not because I think the United States is about to sink into the ocean. But because I think we can stop our country from destroying itself and the rest of the world with us.

I gifted her a copy of Atlantis, which seemed to please her very much. I had to tell her how she had influenced me.

Gloria’s response when I told her that a statement of hers had changed my life was to sit back and listen. As I explained, she answered, “I didn’t say that! It was said by a female Irish cab driver, in Boston!”

We went on to talk about religion, and needless guilt about sex. That's when I made her laugh, which was great!

She made some excellent comments on imperialism, which always results in slavery, the subject of the evening.

It is always sad and terrifying to me, especially on a night when we were speaking with women who had escaped real slavery, that people who should otherwise be free, have actually chosen slavery in so many ways. 

*(You'll notice, behind Gloria's head, ironically, sadly, in keeping with the recent #metoo movement is a poster for one of Harold Bloom's books - Harold Bloom, the Yale professor who sexually assaulted his graduate student, another feminist writer, Naomi Wolf in 1983. Whenever I see this photo, his name rankles.)

©Patricia Goodwin, 2019

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse. Previous poetry books, Atlantis and Marblehead Moon are currently out of print. However, you may read excerpts from these works at patriciagoodwin.com.

Deaf Ears – The Pendulum Swings

The pendulum, that motherfucker whose only purpose in life is to fuck its mother…

In a recent interview with the BBC, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg tried to console us with a calming speech: “We're not experiencing the best of times…A great man once said that the true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle; it is the pendulum, and when the pendulum swings too far in one direction, it will go back…”

The pendulum, that motherfucker whose only purpose in life is to fuck its mother has swung away from everything we worked so hard to achieve and protect: women’s rights, human rights, health care, the environment, education, the arts - and, oh, a little thing called, freedom!

Justice Ginsburg went on to repeat the quote on the Statue of Liberty, becoming herself a kind of beacon, raising the torch to light our way, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” She talked about how tenuous those words were becoming, words we had always stood steadfastly by, rather like the Statue of Liberty herself.

She talked about the importance of a free press, using Watergate as an example of the kind of bravery we need to uncover the Watergate scandal and Nixon shenanigans. “That story might never have come out if we didn't have the free press that we do,” said Ginsburg. 

But, the 83-year-old jurist said the public's resistance to the new administration - on full display at last month's Women's March - has given her “reason to hope that we will see a better day.” She was right. In the days after the election, nearly 5,000 women from around the country registered to run for public office. Hope.

Back to the pendulum. 

I’ve stopped signing petitions. I stopped for one reason: They will fall on deaf ears. Perhaps not forever. But for right now, I don't see the point.

I’m not saying I was entirely hopeful when I signed petitions in the past. I knew there was a pretty good chance I was kidding myself that anyone on the receiving end of my concern was 1.) Going to give a damn, and 2.) Actually going to do something about it. But, it certainly felt that way – that there was a chance. We heard about petitions that had worked. Even one to a foreign nation that embarrassed the official to whom it was addressed so much, he initiated a change of policy. I’d seen video of volunteers from the National Resources Defense Council and The Organic Consumers Association delivering boxes and boxes of signatures to government officials. I knew one signature represented thousands to the government. These signatures were also presented in court cases and had swayed judges.

There was an excitement, a movement, a thrill of taking part in an effort to change things: to stop human trafficking; to stop abuse of human rights and animal rights; to stop U.S. Navy sonar experiments in the oceans from killing our whales and dolphins; to stop the killing of wolves, bears and buffalo; to stop Monsanto from poisoning our food; to stop fracking and drilling from poisoning our water; to stop the government from lowering organic standards and to stop the EPA from lowering pollution standards.

The EPA. My father was a foreman at a very old family stain company – staining wood, that is – in 1970 when the first EPA rep came to call. Daddy came home shaking his head, “They told me I could throw much more waste into the creek than I was already. I would never throw that much into the creek!” He was so disheartened. And, that was the EPA in its fresh-faced infancy.

I cannot sign petitions any more. I’m quite rattled by that. It’s been a black hole in my online life. The last petition that arrived in my email from my usual trusted orgs would have gone directly to the President.

What a joke! I won’t sign anything that’s going to the White House. What a waste of hope.

My advice to orgs wanting people to sign petitions: Address your petition to lower level officials – not the current President. Address your petitions to Senators, Representatives, Mayors, Governors, Directors, Board Members, any town or city official that must be elected.

In fact, I have conceived a direct mail campaign based on the Cultural Revolution’s dictum, “What if they gave a war and nobody came?” I’ve decided, and anyone may join me in this, the more the merrier, to begin a letter campaign to CEOs of major companies that might be heavy polluters of air and water if the EPA standards are lifted. I intend to appeal to their most human and practical qualities. I’ll request that they maintain their current clean air and water standards regardless of what the current government decides about the EPA. In fact, they may decide to tighten their standards. At the very least and most menial, changing nothing costs nothing.

UPDATE: 3/29/17 CEO of General Electric, Jeff Immelt is "calling on other companies to step up to fill the void that the administration is leaving behind,” as per an internal memo obtained by Politico.  Immelt threw down the climate change gauntlet: “Companies must be resilient and learn to adjust to political volatility all over the world. Companies must have their own ‘foreign policy’ and create technology and solutions that address local needs for our customers and society.” In another article, Colin Taylor of Occupy Democrats wrote: "Immelt went on to point out that innovation and investment into green technology is not only both environmentally prudent and profitable, but also a necessary evolution in today’s rapidly changing global economy."

Just what America needs! A truly benevolent, forward-thinking CEO! Thanks, Mr. Immelt!

 Let's not go back to this!

I will continue to donate to my most favored orgs: the National Resources Defense Council; the Organic Consumers Association; Polaris and The Wilderness Society – all faves because they are effective on both the national and the grass roots levels. I also like their civilized, intelligent methods. I won’t sign petitions with violent language. 

From now on, if I cannot sign and join in a petition, I’ll use my skills to write and speak, whether on this blog, on Facebook, or at poetry readings. My work has always carried my message, my mission, my faith. As the water protectors in North Dakota say, “My weapons are my heart and my words.” I shall write to protect organic standards. I shall write to protect people from slavery of all kinds. I shall write to teach people about achieving health through diet and lifestyle. I shall write to protect the environment. I shall be like Benjamin Franklin. I shall publish pamphlets if I must. I shall be like Supreme Justice Ruth Ginsburg. I shall not retire. I will never stop writing. My head will drop to the keyboard when I die. I shall be like F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I shall be like Tachia Sandoval, the woman in Colorado who used to have a clear, mountain spring running by her house and now, because of fracking, must travel miles several times a week to a water station where she uses her credit card to buy water.

Want to hear the irony? Fracking is no longer profitable. Solar, wind, and waterpower clean and sustainable sources are becoming easier, more efficient and cheaper to access than oil and gas. And, these renewable resources have more potential jobs on all levels for those concerned about jobs. That’s the good news. The bad news: Earthquakes. Many fracking wells have had to close down (good news) because of the powerful earthquakes caused by the holes and the trauma to the earth in the Southwest.

Why do oil companies and countries keep on with pipelines and drilling? There are many more pipelines to fight than the Dakota Access at Standing Rock  – here’s a list.

Oil is a dying industry, yet stubborn in its death throes. The Black Snake is not dead. But, it is dying.

Hope. Meanwhile, we write. And tell, and try to reach people.

To quote this brave woman, Tachia Sandoval, “If I can just make one person wake up, then I’m good.”

©PatriciaGoodwin, 2017

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her newest book is Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author. 

HOLY DAYS - Sexual Memories

     Holy Days used to be titled Sexual Memories. Sometimes I wish it still were. It wouldn’t have a child on the cover, though I often talk about Gloria Wisher’s early sexuality in the novel, in such chapters as “Feeling the World,” for instance, because that’s how I remember life. “What a riot, what an orgy of living my little life was for me! I wondered at the peculiar mixture I was of Mama and Daddy, Nona, Grandma and Grandpa and all the things I saw and felt and ate and breathed. A part of me was perverted as though the good in Mama and all her generations had met the bad in Daddy and all his generations, had somehow twisted like a curious string of DNA creating this perversion, putting me beyond them both and everything.”

    Early chapters are structured around strong male and female images, sensual eating, beautiful gardens, wine, powerful paternal and maternal figures, brothers, sisters, men in uniform, women in soft sweaters, cigarette smoking, laughing, lipsticked lips, and the barren city street alive only with people. From the chapter “Love Parties,” “The house banged and stomped and ran with people; it called out and answered in happy shouts. They didn’t talk to each other in normal voices, they bellowed from deep in their bellies, with joy, with rage, with a deep relish of their joy and rage; from room to room, up the stairs or down, from the refrigerator to the stove, from adjoining beds, they loved the sound of themselves.”

     I describe the streets of East Boston in a chapter called “Sexual Law.” Gloria’s mother, Rosie, was forbidden by her father to ride a bike or skate in the street. Gloria’s response was this, “Grandpa knew how provocative these motions could be: her limbs rising and falling, her behind, a smooth, stiff outline, her red curls beckoning in the breeze. Mama on a bike! Mama on roller skates! I can feel Grandpa’s shudder going through me!

     But, Grandpa’s law couldn’t stop sexual law and restraint made Mama even more innocent and desirable. Especially to the bad boys. Boys like Jake and Daddy. Mama was really good. She prayed and went to mass and confession. She received Holy Communion every Sunday. She obeyed her father and her mother. She had that good look: round and soft and unaware of her power, a labyrinth of red curls, chubby legs in ankle socks and thick high heels stepping up into the corner store. The bad ones, without jobs, without homes, dropped out of school, squinting through the haze of cigarettes, were pulled right to her, without knowing what on earth had happened to them.”

     I remember life in the poor neighborhood as being shot through with sex: “When a young woman stepped out of the house, her sex went up like a shot and young men, standing around all day in the company of other men - like soldiers or sailors who’d been deprived of softness and a sweet smell - stood alert suddenly, even though they seemed not to have altered their slouches against the tenement wall or the store window. They squinted over their cigarettes and a hush, as though decided communally, instinctively, fell over them and inwardly, their feelings swelled as she walked by. Maybe one or two didn’t look at her: they watched her without looking. The others gave her the eye, up and down, through the haze of smoke. In the hush, the tension gathered, to be let out as soon as she passed, when they could still smell her, when she could still hear them, they’d let it all out, swoosh, as remarks she could just barely - or not - hear, but could feel, in a rush of heat through her veins.”

     The poor neighborhood is especially vulnerable to sexual power: “The tenements were close, less than two feet of alley separated them. Sometimes one wall held two houses together. Clotheslines crisscrossed, colored flags flapped from them; women’s voluptuous arms tugged the ropes and pulleys. Windows slid open and women’s arms tossed buckets of water out the windows. The women sang out to each other all day, their voices calling Italian like a song. We lived window to window, door to door, radio to radio, telephone to telephone - how many times did Daddy answer another man’s phone, picking up our receiver, saying “Hello?” into the dial tone? How many times did he look across to see another man’s wife naked in the dark?”

     Gloria is a victim of incest. For years, therapists have been telling victims of incest, “Incest is not about sex, it’s about power.” Rape – and incest is rape – may be about power for the rapist, but it is about sex for the victim. Incest is about sex.

     Sex is about power. At it’s best, sex is about the mutual power of the beloved: being loved is empowering, being made love to by the one you love who also loves you is empowering. If either partner is unwilling or uncomfortable, then the power structure becomes unbalanced. Sex becomes seduction at the least, rape at the most extreme. My definition of rape – would it have happened if you were in charge?

     Therapists mean well when they tell victims that incest is not about sex; it’s about power. But, victims know better. Therapists admit that sexual pleasure experienced during incest confuses victims. Victims ask themselves or their therapists, “Then how come I had an orgasm?” “How come I sexually fantasize about incest?” “How come incest has become the source of my desires?” “How come I cannot have a happy sex life?” “Why do I always feel guilty or dirty when I have sex?”

       The answer to all of those questions is for the victim, incest is about sex. For most victims of incest, incest is their first sexual experience, one that can both mar and make their sexual identity.  Their rapist is usually someone familiar, someone in authority, someone they trust: the very person who is teaching the child about the world, about reality. Incest becomes the child's view of reality. In Holy Days, Gloria envies what she calls "real people doing real things." She watches other kids, rich kids, going to a local baseball game dressed in real baseball uniforms and feels excluded from such wholesome activities.

      In Holy Days, incest is but a symptom of the over-riding sexual power of the neighborhoods and the families. Gloria is incested by her father. She is also raped by the boy next door. Her brother, who “sells” her to her rapist, becomes a thief at 10 years old. All these crimes are symptoms of the larger, overwhelming Stockholm Syndrome going on in Gloria’s life. The way of the poor neighborhood is to overpower those who live there. Gloria’s father, though good at his job and able to solve monumental problems in the factory, is overlooked by the bosses for advancements that go to, according to Billy Wisher, “college men with their heads up their ass.” In the Chapter “A Child’s Christmas in Revere,” Billy tells a black man that he knows what it means to be black. Why? Because he perfected the shrink-wrap machine and didn’t get any credit or reward while his boss walked off with the patent and the profits. Class becomes another form of slavery.

    In a very real sense, the neighborhood is raping the people every day through violence, poor conditions, neglect and disrespect, and the people, in turn, abuse each other and are proud of being abused as red badges of courage. “I come from Revere, I come from Southie, I come from East Boston,” become wounds worn with pride, a daily war that has been survived with an injury to show for it like a Purple Heart, a shining medal of honor.

     Gloria’s father acted his power upon the one thing in his life that he could control – his daughter. But, for his daughter, incest became a sexual battle she had to fight in order to regain her self-respect. Gloria begins to sink down into sexual promiscuity. Only the love of another troubled girl can help bring her out, into the light of her own promise and recovery. 

   As Gloria says in the chapter, “An Ounce of Pride”: “Romantic and idiotic as I was, what gave me that ounce of pride to keep myself safe? So many kids before and after me went under, looking for love in an alley, oblivion in a bottle or bliss in a joint or a needle or a pill, hit by a Mack truck, rolled and left under an overpass, buried under layers of pigeon shit. So many kids ran away from home. I knew I was supposed to run away, but I was afraid.

            I thought street kids must be very brave. I admired them that they were filthy and slept in doorways and drain pipes, that they ate out of trash barrels like refugees of war, a trash can lid for their plate, maybe scraping it with a spoon. I admired them that they coughed and bled and washed in the gutter, that they went crazy with disease and malnutrition and the street. They were brave! Brave!

            I, on the other hand, ate and drank at my father’s table. I sat right next to him and sincerely laughed at his jokes. I snuggled under the cool, crisp sheets my mother washed for me and, on them I had sex of varying sneaky, cowardly sorts with her husband, her boyfriend, my own father. Under the illusion of a contract of innocence and obedience, I let my parents keep me safe - yes, safe - from murder and robbery, beatings and what I came to think of as violent rape.

            But, there are so many subtle violences. And I was tormented by guilt. For having done bad things, for having enjoyed them much of the time, for having become these things out of doing, memory and time, and for not having the guts to run away. I was guilty. I didn’t want to leave my mother’s lap, soft and flowery in her cotton housedress. I used to sit at her feet and kiss them in their old slippers. I loved their smell, like warm, roasted nuts just out of the oven. I couldn’t leave her refrigerator that I could open anytime for fresh bread and butter, a half wheel of Romano cheese, pounds of sweet ham and hot salami, cakes, pies, ice cream, puddings, apples, peaches, grapes, strawberries, milk and cream. The warm, steaming windows dripping with cooking and tables warmly full of people as the winter howled or sizzling barbeques outside in summer. I was weak and as I tasted these things and wrapped myself in warmth, I nearly vomited with shame. And, among these things, I wouldn’t leave my books and my drawings. And, on Sunday nights, as though I deserved it, I wanted to watch “The Wonderful World of Color,” in black and white and imagined the colors. I reminded myself of the Jews who stayed in Berlin because they couldn’t bear to leave the piano and of the Jew who admired a weed blowing in the icy wind because he knew it was as alive as he was, while the bodies he buried were not alive.

            Why didn’t I go under? What gave me the pride that swelled in me like the dirty grey storm waves at Revere Beach, the pride it took to not get pregnant and the gall instead to tease Boy Scouts and sailors? What gave me the madness to bat Rick Likus about with my paw? It was Mr. Lanza giving me a large gold star for my stories. It was Mrs. French and her long-taloned hand on my shoulder telling me I could write. It was Ma and Daddy - yes, Daddy - bragging that I might be a teacher, that I was going to college and that I would be the first in the family, telling their friends and neighbors with pride about the books I read, about my grades, asking me for information like I was an expert or an encyclopedia. Grown men and women, neighbors, calling on the phone to ask me how to spell a word. They let me know I was worth something: but, they didn’t know how to help me. The very people who confused me, hurt me and neglected me also exalted me. They gave me life, but it was a long struggle out the birth canal.

            And, my angel was out there, looking for me. I had one more very important step to take before I could meet her.”

©Patricia Goodwin, 2015

 More to come about Patricia Goodwin's latest novel, Holy Days, now available on Amazon.


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