Woman; A Conversation with Florynce Kennedy

One thing she's changing. Good evening and welcome to woman my guest this evening makes some people very angry.

She scares the living daylights out of others and still others refer to her as the resident of the women's movement. She is Florence Kennedy Flo is an attorney. She is founder of the National feminist party and author of abortion rap and the pathology of oppression. Welcome to women. Thank you. I love this title of the show. Let's talk about your new book pathology of oppression. Well you know I it is just lying and writing waiting for dicks to get to it. Super editors but. It's very hard to get that book out of there but my sister's book is coming out first and I don't mind. So I'm very philosophical about it I just think things are going well enough for me that I shouldn't worry about the book so for two years it's just been sitting there since before I moved back to New York's MFX. I came back specially from San Francisco to talk to my editors and I never even got an appointment with them and I had to go back to move to San Francisco without doing anything at all on the book. Let's talk about what's in the book. Well it is

a book that tries to explain about oppression first place there are four kinds of oppression. And I think one of the reasons people get confused about things like feminism is because they for instance you'll talk to a man that tells you his wife is not oppressed and you're really not interested in his relationship with his wife that's not what I'm about anyway. So there's personal oppression there's private oppression as when a person will give you a job because you're a woman. There's public oppression is when you have to pay to go to the job and the man doesn't. And then there's political oppression as when the laws make the prostitute a criminal. And the John not all the engaged in an act together that apparently is illegal although honeymoon night is not illegal it's really hard sometimes. But oppression is also subjective. The difference between a rape and a honeymoon night and a great affair and a bad screw are consent. No matter how bad. A sexual encounter is it is not rape unless there's a struggle but if you struggle too

ard you wind up in prison like Joe and littlest bunnies as Garcia. So. One of the indicia of oppression is that you're boxed. You see if you go too far in this direction. You're a lesbian if you go too far in that direction you're a whore you're if you're a mother you're a Madonna you're on the pedestal you're a good woman. But if you're a little weird or lesbian mother you're off the pedestal and. When you're boiling water or whatever they happen to have when you fall off the pedestal. So. Being boxed in is a part of it and everybody is oppressed to a degree. You see when white male executives go into airports and have their luggage opened and rifle through that's a form of oppression. It doesn't compare with having to deal with an unwanted pregnancy especially if you don't have any money or if you live in an area where for example nurses are told if you don't want to do an abortion you don't have to. But no nurse is ever told that if you don't believe in alcoholism you don't have to sew up the ford of a drunken driver that went through the

windshield. So you see the way people are treated. Depends on how low they are on the value scheme of society and the PAF ology of oppression involves the fact that not only are the oppressors. Pathological but the oppressed become pathological. And I think that's one of the reasons I hesitate to act as well as if women are black people or gay people or ex prison inmates or Native Americans are so noble because to me if we're all so noble and so much better than the oppressors then I would suggest that the oppression is good for you and I don't think that's it. But if you have to do with oppression Well the oppressor extends there are the oppressive institutions extend what I call the pall of guilt over seas over oppressed groups. You see in other words you were raped but you're guilty. Your government can't keep drugs out of your country or out of your barracks in the army but you are guilty. So that. The government takes you

overseas. If you're a male. And puts you in the Army and the military takes your clothes away supplies your food your clothing everything. And yet when they can't keep the drugs away from you you come back with a less than honorable discharge. In other words one of the addition of oppression are involved with the fact that you're always the guilty one. And besides it uses things you can't control like you're black you're guilty you're woman you're guilty you're fat you're skinny. You don't take care of your children you do take care of your children you don't work you do work you leave your kids in a daycare you're guilty on all those counts and besides that you don't just melody your pretty little arms. And. You see this guilt mechanism is one of the reasons why people don't make demands on the society. It's also one of the reasons why we permit the Pentagon to have thirty five million dollars a billion I'm sorry for armaments when we can't. Afford public education through the Ph.D. degree. You see I go to colleges and

people are coming out as sharecroppers they owe money to the government. Right. And women and men and women can't go to graduate schools with families think oh well you'll just get married so you know you don't need a graduate degree. But the fact is that. If we understood that the major social disease we're going to got a real we wouldn't be having all the tax money go to the Pentagon. We would have telethons and we'd let people that wanted war pay for then we'd have plenty of money for free abortion clinics and all sorts of things for women and other people. I'm sort of a specialist in many respects but in other respects I worry about oppression wherever it lands you see. So on a show like woman I have a little trouble because I really For instance I think that racism is infinitely more serious than sexism because they kill people like Mark Clark and. And Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Women lose their identity and black people lose their lives. It's sort of the difference in my opinion between cancer and

athlete's foot are to think maybe the better because a tooth ache hurts like crazy but most people don't die from it. But if you've got it who cares who's dying from cancer. Let's talk for a few minutes about white women dealing with racism. Well that's a little complicated because white women tend to try to recruit black women when they do I'm thinking for a moment about feminism. By talking about the sexism of black men in other words we're all women so let's get together and why aren't you interested in feminism. It's my position that wife and this should be more concerned with the racism of white women than with the sexism of black men because I think the sexism of black men is a reality and many black feminists recognize that many black women who are not feminists recognize it. But the problem is that black women are very suspicious of white women. And when they try to turn them against their brothers because no matter how much white women call black women sisters usually without their permission although we understand that they do at the best of good will it would seem that there's an attempt to divide and conquer which makes black women very suspicious.

But if we saw the feminist movement going after the South the racist white women you see with a real vengeance and we could see the concept of SR as applied to black. Women from white women see black people have black kids and white people have white kids. So a black woman can see a black man as a brother albeit the sexes whereas she could not accept a white woman as a sister because it's just is not generically consistent with reality. So that a lot of black feminists relate to feminism and many of them work constantly with white people but I think that's the flaw of the technique of the. Way that we've handled you know the recruitment of black feminists. But there are of course many many black feminists and they are sometimes less. Tolerant of black male sexism than white women are of white men's sexes are racially weighted that would leave us alone while it leaves white women with the job of attacking racist white women to show black women that they have a sisterly concern for

them. If you had a woman in your house and she was being abused by another woman even if they were even if you were all sisters you would take the side of the one who's being abused. And what's happening in Boston and in various other areas here I'm sure in Buffalo is that white. Feminists seem to feel is sufficient to be friendly or to work for Shirley Chisholm and they don't seem inclined to take on racism among women. They'll take on racism among men in a minute. And that's why white women are leading the fight to defend Joe and little you see. So it's a complicated thing that you can't simply dispose of. But I think that feminism makes for the opening of a second front on the pigs the pink rats you see. So in that sense I think that feminism is extremely important in the overall societal situation. But white women are obviously you know struggling against racism especially in the feminist community. But. The reluctance of some black women to trust them. So I have to be very

arrogant. So I'm sure I can use white women fast and they can use me. So I you know I don't have that little hang up. I think sometimes black women think of white women the way I do when I come in off the road and I've got some half and half or milk of the refrigerator and I'm not sure whether it's gone sour or not and I just don't want to taste it to find out. I think black women are so tired of racism and so bored with trying to straighten my people out and realize you know how we feel about men. That they'd just rather stay away from them than terrorists you know because who wants a mouthful of sour. You know. So bad you know. And so I explain it that way and I think also that all press people are like somebody with a bad sunburn. And sometimes when you embrace them they're so tender that they react with hostility. So that's another reason so I think that white women if they're interested in nonwhite women Third World women Indian women Connell's or any of that they need to deal with the racism of the institutions toward that community rather than to try to hug

those women or you know. You know expect their little faces to be showered and this seems not to be happening at all is that true. Oh no no no no. You see it's a part of the nigger noble aspect of the oppressed mentality that black women are still very patient you know. Later the ability is when you're lying on the ground with a chronic ankle and somebody comes over and wants to offer to go to the library to tell you how much it weighs when you're lying on the ground with a conical your head in the mud somebody says Don't cry don't yell the people upstairs are sleeping are having a cocktail party or garden party in other words oppressed people are supposed to behave exceptionally well. OK. And that is difficult you see because when you're lying around the corner and call the least you ought to be able to do without anybody's protest is a scratch the car but won't some rational person come up and say. But my dear how do you know the person that drove the car on an angle on the car. See that rationality. So it's my opinion that a part of the oppressed befallen G is

reasonable. This I think that oppressed people don't have to be reasonable. I don't have to be rational. I think they have a right to violence. They don't have to exercise it because our country is specializes in violence so I urge people not to exercise it but they should have that right. And they should never guarantee an oppressive capitalist racist sexist society that they won't be violent. You know how dare a society expect that when we can't even make our settle our differences with tiny countries like Viet Nam without making 25 million craters in their land. You see. So I think the right to violence is a right of all oppressed people and I think that most oppressed people try to be too rational and I mean that whether it's personal oppression private public or political. See I think when you're well behaved in a society that doesn't care about you it's like I'm a collected baby. I mean the baby would never get changed if you didn't cry. Now if it's neglected enough if it cries too much it will become battered so that. Need to be somewhere between getting

battered and somewhere between being accepted and cared about. When you're not cared about is where women are politically. But everything is fabulous I mean you know all these horrible things I'm saying doesn't alter the fact that struggle is the most exciting thing in the whole world to do most fun. I mean if you want to break your hip I personally would much rather get my hip broken in or in a demonstration than skiing down some ice cold heel. I mean you know in the middle of all that snow What is that all about I don't even understand that c c I don't understand any discomfort based on so-called fun. But I'll do almost anything in the name of struggle and of course at 59 years old I mean you know what difference will it make when I died I know that young people can't take that attitude. But I think women are too well behaved. I really do. Claire when of the social institutions that you have a particularly warm spot towards the media a warm spot. The electric chair for the media. Oh God. Well I you know I do. I love media because it's so important because one of the aspects of the

pathology of oppression is what I call the divide and conquer strategy and see which means of communication will be hard to come by and isolation is a part of the condition of the oppressed. Suburbs prison. Lesbians over here whores over there. Good women here. Right. You know and so the media are very important now. Talk about it in terms of what happened in Mexico at all. International Women's Year incredible example. And you know very shortly after international women's year we had the phenomenon of the Apollo and the so you lose. So if you will think about how important it was for two men in funny fat suits to shake hands in space as compared to an earth shattering precedent of women from hundreds of more than 100 countries meeting in Mexico City. You will see how bad was the journalistic

enterprise that was involved in covering the Women's Conference. In Mexico there were upwards of 60 papers in New York there were like three. And the coverage for example of the New York Times I think Judy Klemesrud was this was dispatched to Mexico and almost every article was totally involved in the differences. I think Newsweek had a less than a page as a summary of the International Women's Year and they had two women. Struggling over a microphone. That was the message you see. And even before the conference there was a sort of of preparation for trouble. Concerned that the Third World women wouldn't do well with the women from the industrialized countries. That was the main thing people have to phone from San Francisco San Diego to New York to India to the United Nations to learn the dates of the conference. Now imagine how we cover the World Series.

Any jock a critic enterprize anything that has to do with football basketball any kind of balls you know. And I regard the space mission as a sort of extended multibillion dollar Jocko credit caper. You know. And so here you have these details you know how are you going to fix something that went wrong with this multibillion dollar space vehicle you know and every detail how they met in Texas how they met in Moscow how they ate barbecue how they went to Disneyland how the barbecue dribble down the sides of their faces every detail. I love this boring expensive ridiculous enterprise I'm assuming it's important even assuming that there was not super saturation coverage of the Apollo-Soyuz thing. You still could not see that given that time of expansive coverage the Women's Conference should not have been a better coverage. I'm talking about competence not even sexism. You see

because when media does such an appallingly poor job you see. But of course what we must remember is that International Women's Year conference in Mexico City was a handout. So like the courts and everything else it was dominated by men and I guess in a sense we were lucky it wasn't more pitiful than it was. You have some terms that I'm interested in having you define how. One is Purana them. Well the peron you know. Is a little fish that eats people's flesh off. And sometimes the feminist movement. We have what I call pariah ism in that. One woman is sort of set upon. You know. And sometimes she's the most beautiful and the most popular and other times she's not. But unfortunately we rarely do a Purana job on media or on the health community that denies us abortions or in or forces us to become sterilized. Rarely do we do a Purana job on the landlord community. But. There is of course the concept of Alice doesn't which is women strikes

and I like to think that after six years of feminism maybe your tenure eight years be counted. We are beginning to withdraw support from our enemies because that's a part of what it's about. So we don't use our powers you know we have body power we have dollar power and we have both power and with those three powers we could make substantial social changes but we're too well behaved. See we we really are too well behaved and we are also. So involved in our own guilt you know. You know reducing lighting our hair cleaning the table making sure the clothes are clean our kids are well behaved. And that keeps us busy. The whole body. It's 6:00 you know. Sexing with whom you know. What is the appetite. Is she gave. Oh you know. And so we are very preoccupied with the microcosmic aspect of our own selves and the women who are anti feminists. Are really quite upset with feminism sometimes

you know because they haven't figured what they should do if they decide to be feminist. And it's quite upsetting to them so you have to deal with that as far as I'm concerned the women who after five years are still saying I'm not for women's lib should really as far as I'm concerned stay away from feminists and nobody needs them. You know a lot of people say Oh come come leave your husband or whatever I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying if you dig it if it's fun let's go. But I'm not for you know trying to impress people out in the sticks or in the suburbs or in the next office you know because my theory is that what women's liberation is about the way I see it is choice and if somebody wants to be a cupcake and suck their way to success and somebody else wants a bite their way to success somebody else wants to shovel their way to success. Any way you can survive and if you can thrive so much the better is the way I think you should do it you know. And so I really feel that if somebody has six beautiful children I hate to think what would happen if one was ugly but if they have

six children and they get you know beautiful I will only got one extra but I'm certainly not trying to get in but leave their husbands. I don't think you can avoid the idea that there's an analogy between housework and slavery because it's one of the few circumstances or two of the few circumstances where you work on a regular basis with special duties responsibilities and you're not expected to get a salary. So you can't avoid the parallel of the analogy. But if people dig it you know again the difference between a rape and a honeymoon night is. Consent. Right. What about horizontal hostility. Well hostility is sort of a kin to Iran yes. And we're all into it because people sometimes say Well Flo there you are having a big fight within feminism over this so that you're always talking about horizontal hostility and of course my answer to that is that a doctor is not immune to scarlet fever or even death. So the fact that we try to analyze the politics of feminism doesn't mean that we don't

fall prey to them. Nor is our hostility is simply my way of describing circumstances where different groups of need arise. People are at each other's throat. You know poor working people and poor people on welfare instead of at Lockheed. You know Rich gets a two hundred fifty million dollar a loan and will let the General Accounting Office examine its books so it's more the idea of two sets of oppressed groups which are at each other are not supporting each other. So how concerned should we be about unity. Oh I think we should not be very concerned about unity. See because if. The church is here and the health communities there are government delinquents here in business to make it so their media is here and into this room they all have their guns and their power into this rule comes what one liner 500 mice one line they've all got their guns they got it knock it off. 500 mice will be under the chair up their trousers in the seat. I feel that we spend too much time trying to agree there's no reason to agree. You know any more there's a reason for me to have on what you have and you

have on what I have lost. We don't have to agree on when to go to the john or what when to eat unless we're eating together. So in my opinion it's very important for various groups to get their thing together and then come together to attack the enemy. But we don't even have to agree on the nature of the attack. But it's in the interest of the enemy to make us think we're supposed to. That's why they divide and conquer stratagem is so often used you see. For example in back to the Mexico City coverage. One of the things that was done was to give the impression that every country was unpleasantly involved in international women's year in Somalia there was a riot for example. So that was reported and in London it was a bore. They had salmon sandwiches I happen to like them and sandwiches and gin and then in in Australia Prime Minister Minister with Lum was accused of having made a major sideshow and he was selling the idea of Women's International Women's Year as if it were apples or donuts or sausages. So in each

case they somehow managed to drop a worm in the soup. Or the newer cover of the chocolate which is the opposite of the bridge mix concept which is when you chocolate covered the manure as in the case of the Kennedy assassination or Viet Nam when you say kill a commie for Christ. You see the words This is a terrible thing. But here is your chocolate syrup over kill a commie for Christ be a patriot. See. You know. And so when you import Vietnamese prostitutes. And then you are one of few countries who don't sign the proper protocol to decriminalize prostitution. It's hypocrisy but it's also this idea of you know making bad things good and good things bad which our country's very good at and of course media is one of the major aside from the church institution that's involved in making the acceptable unacceptable and unacceptable acceptable and that can get you crazy unless you're crazy like me in which case you don't listen and you just keep clicking. What about the rhythm and tactics.

Loser ism is really important in this year of 1956 and coming years in the area of time. It's really important because I think it's one of the reasons why rebels are not into electoral politics. You see in other words loser ism is when for example if they ignore you of course they're oppressing you. But if they don't ignore you they're co-opting you. You see so you got to be careful of that. You see if women in the black community decide to wear Afros you see and then white women start freezing their hair. Then we say all they're just copying us in other words we're never happy because we get smart enough to stop imitating them but even if they imitate us it's not a compliment. So you're losing. You say Why don't you run for office lady and she'll say. I might. Not win. And you say well find so if you don't win you probably don't want the office anyway so you'd be happy to get the office and relieved if you didn't have to go to work on this horrible problem. But even so no matter what you say they say but so and so I don't have the

time or my husband would let me or you know the words everything is thinking up reasons why you can't prevail. Now my position is that the establishment Ariens job is think of why I can't when my job is to get off my apathy see and move regardless of the likelihood I'll win because when they lose I ever win. So why all of a sudden does the loser want to win. You're lucky if you can stay alive or survive. And my position is that loser ism is really an extension of the lack of worth. I really am not entitle to be successful. People get on because we have a swimming pool at the house we bought. And it's my opinion. That if stablish your sincere political. Commitment. Then why would anybody have a sincere political commitment to me. If you're going to suck your way to success. Then everybody is going

to suck and accept whatever society puts on their plate. If you're going to bite your way to success you ought to be able to reach success to show people that you can fight and bite and reject society's oppressive tactics and still prevail. You know I mean we're so poor we can't really do this. It's not that much of a coup. But I personally think that too much is made of the idea that you've got to be poor to establish if you're really committed. I think that if I'm as good as I think I am I'm entitled to money and that's what I'm against volunteerism but the time has all gone. Thank you very much. Thank you for watching and good night. Reduction in funding provided by public television stations. The Ford Foundation and the

Corporation for Public Broadcasting.