As one of the requirements for participation in PASSAGES, women were asked if they are willing re-examine their own--and society's--attitudes concerning sex and race, especially as portrayed in the arts and the media. The idea behind such investigations was that the women could transform and debate their thoughts and share their findings with the community at large in an art/cultural event.
___________________________________________________________
 Women and Their
Work participants: Theresa Macias, Kit Fontaine, Debbie Dew, Deanna
Stevenson, Glee Ingram, Delores Carkuff, Helen Cox, Teresa Anderson, Dorothy
Charles Banks, Rita Starpattern, Carol Ivey, Peg Runnels, Olive Spitzmiller,
Orena Dennis. photo by Millie Wilson
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During the summer of 1980 in Austin, Texas at the Laguna Gloria Art Museum I
participated in a three-day event that started July 18, 19, 20. It sponsored by
Denna Steveson, creator of Women and Their Work, specific specifically created
for women of all ages and diverse backgrounds. It appeared to me that each
woman participating in the event were already in full bloom of her womanhood
and her own self-acknowledgement. There might have been a few women struggling
like hell to reach these points in their lives.
The sisterhood of minds consisted of poets, authors, performers, artists, and
women who just wanted to verbally tell their stories. We were encouraged to
submit some of our work for a magazine, in which our works would be published.
As a poet I submitted a number of poems, five of which were accepted. I smiled
as I read the poems I submitted. I remember the sassy language that popped in
my head as I wrote the poems, especially "pavlov's dog" and "you
. . , who is not hipped at all". "pavlov's dog" was inspired by
a discussion in psychology class.
A couple of days ago I was searching for a particular book in my small library
when I pulled out PASSAGES after all these years. One author wrote about her
fascination with laundry. She combined her life experience in poems and a
historical essay. Another interesting piece caught my attention was the poem,
Virgin Whore, written by Peg Runnels and Susan Shaw in photo below. The poem
tells of the journey that all girls go through on their way to womanhood only
to end up being called a "Bitch! followed by "Woman!"
VIRGIN WHORE
by Peg Runnels and Susan Shaw
I am the first
and the last
I am the honored one
and the scorned one
I am the whore
and the Holy One
I am the wife
and the virgin
I am the barren one
and many are her children
I am the silence
that is incomprehensible
I am the utterance
of My NAME
Text, Cnostic Gospel
Virgin and whore are states of mind. Virgins and whores are incomplete
women: women who need men for identity, women afraid to be whole, women who
haven't come to terms with their sexuality.
I was raised to make some man a wonderful wife. Of course that meant being a
virgin.
"MEN NEVER MARRY THE GIRLS THEY SLEEP WITH."
I was taught to know my place and to keep it clean.
I wanted to be like Mother and Grandma and like Aunt Cora who always wore a
girdle, even in the summer.
"DON'T LAUGH SO LOUD. DON'T WIGGLE. DON'T GET DIRTY. AND FOR HEAVEN'S
SAKES, KEEP YOUR KNEES TOGETHER."
I lived in terror of getting caught playing doctor with the boy next door. I
knew about "bad girls."
"BOYS WILL BE BOYS. IT'S UP TO YOU TO SAY NO."
The worst thing about being about Being a Sweet Thing was the waiting. Always
waiting. Waiting to be noticed. Waiting to be asked. I smile a lot. I would
think, I'm not pretty enough. So I smiled more.
"YOUNG LADY, THAT SKIRT IS TOO SHORT. MARCH BACK IN THERE AND WIPE OFF
THAT MASCARA."
I cleaned my body until I squeaked. I sprayed, I softened, I deodorized. I made
my body desirable, so they would notice me. And they did. They always noticed
the PARTS.
"LOOK AT THE TITS ON THAT ONE." "I"M A LEG MAN,
MYSELF."
Tits, thighs, ass, boobs, jugs, jugs, knockers, cunt, bunny, beaver . . . is
this the virgin?
"DON'T BE SO UPTIGHT; I'M NOT GOING TO HURT YOU." "IF YOU REALLY
LOVED ME, YOU'D PROVE IT. COME ON. TRY IT; YOU'LL LIKE IT."
I married at eighteen. Marriage has its boundaries, too.
"DON'T STAND TO NEAR THE WASHER REPAIRMAN; HE MIGHT GET THE WRONG IDEA.
PRETEND YOU DON'T SEE HIM EYEING YOUR BREASTS. IF A MAN STOPS BY WHEN YOUR
HUSBAND ISN'T HOME, TALK THROUGH THE SCREEN."
Don't be too clever.
Don't dance too close.
Don't hold a man's gaze too long.
Don't go out late at night alone.
Don't challenge.
That's enough "don'ts." Isn't it about time to stop playing Virgina
and Whore?
I want my own life, my own sexuality.
Even though we're not whole yet, I think we're getting closer. Don't you?
I suppose. Last week a man called me an Amazon, and I felt proud.
Really? last week a man called me salty.
Virgin!
Whore! Lady! Tramp! S
now White!
Rose Red! Spinster!
Madam! Nice!
Good! Protected!
Experienced! Martyr!
Bitch!
WOMAN!
__________________________________________________________
poem by dorothy charles banks
you . . . who is not hipped at all
you try to impress me
with your
bullshit hype & stale club lines
all the while
trying to turn
me on
with your slick
showing
a faint impression
I look at you
and smile to myself
when I go sister soldier
and jump loud on you
you get embarrassed
and pretend
to blow
your nose
I laugh out loud
as you stand
in front of me
your pretend
manhood
draining from your
African nose
you curse at me under
your scotch and water breath
as you reach for
your glass to leave
I'm glad you
caught the hint
(C)
___________________________________________________________________
THE HISTORY OF LAUNDRY PASSAGE
by Frieda Werden
I must admit that I have always been fascinated with
laundry. Some of my earliest memories involve laying a sheet in the middle of
the living room floor, covering it with dirty clothes, and tying it into a
bundle, to be picked up by the laundry service. Or, I remember my
mother kneeling beside the bathtub doing the wash by hand at a time when we had
no laundry service or washing machine. To me the laundry is
intimately connected with poetry. One of my earliest memories of writing a
poem is of myself at the dining room table of my parents' home. I was in
high school, and literature was a means of transcending fate. The poem I was
writing went in part:
The wild wind hurls into the street
Old overalls with patched-up seats;
But undershirt and
pantaloon
Hanging docilely from noon to moon
Til plucked in haste by weary wives
With hair contrived to make it curl.
No matter how much
each one strives,
This is the essence of their lives:
The moon and sun on wash unfurled
Upon the clothesline of the world.
With the magic of poem making, the control of rhythm,
assonance, rhyme and other devices. I hoped to exorcise the demonic vision
of an adulthood I would shortly enter.
In looking at women's history, I am struck by the fact that
women's accomplishments have taken place against the background of the daily
tasks that no one did unless it was the women. The laundry is exemplary. Heroic
deeds have been formulated around it: the first recorded strike by women
laborers in Texas was a laundresses' strike in 1873.
It was generally Black women who did the laundry in the
early days of what is now Texas--often free women of color who had come to the
area because Mexico's anti-slavery constitution made it possible for them to
exist here. When the Republic was formed and the new laws of the
Republic--founded as much as anything to permit slavery--made free women of
color a nonexistent class, each woman had to petition the legislature for
special dispensation to remain the state. In the Texas Archives, there are a
number of these petitions signed by upstanding male citizens of Galveston, the
husbands, perhaps, of their clients. on behalf of well-known
laundresses such as Zilpha and Zelia Husk.
Around the Mexican border, Mexican and Mexican American
women also got into the laundry business. An oral history of an elderly El Paso
woman reports that her sister once worked in the El Paso Laundry, a giant
commercial laundry on the edge of Chihuahita--the poorest Mexican neighborhood
in the city, located on a bend of the Rio Grande. There women slaved in the
heat without fans through the hot summers, washing, feeding the sheets into the
mangle (known as "el mango" to the workers)--a machine that could mangle
hands as well as sheets. After a long day, the women could come home exhausted,
wringing with sweat.
After the ideas of the Mexican Revolution made their way
north of the border, a 1911 laundry workers' strike in El Paso increased the
wages of laundresses to $1.50 a day. White women in El Paso complained because
maids would no longer do housework for less than the $1.50, they could make at
the laundries; the strike had raised the wage floor of women in the city.
One of the best documented laundry stories, and the one I
told in detail in the performance of my passage, is the story of the Belton
Sanctificationists who started taking in washing in order to build a
self-supporting women's religious and economic community.
_________________________________________________________________________
poem by dorothy charles banks
Pavlov's Dog
like one of Pavlov's
experimental
dogs
your mouth waters
as your trembling
hands travel to
play with the
diamond filled
toy lying
between my
right & left
thighs
I hear your breath
rushing from
you in short gasps
I am turned off by
your labored
agony and panting
when I ask if
you are one of
Pavlov's dogs
you hurriedly say
"Yes"
and ask
"Who is he"?
I knock your hand &
face away
turning on my side
sliding out of bed
leaving you
panting and alone
I was not raised to
make love to
Experimental Dogs
(C)
