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MILITANT_VANILLAS

                                                             December 23, 2014
  (vs the sadistic pacifists?)                               February 19, 2015
                                                             February 20, 2019


Betty Dodson-- who was the founder of the
legendary, and I think commonly misunderstood,
lets-show-our-cunts-and-find-our-clits classes--
talks about her experiences with what I think is
fair to call "mainstream" feminism: the NOW
organization and Ms. Magazine.

The leadership of NOW struck her as something
like a high class sorority, where her own fit was
distinctly uneasy-- a working class dyke
interested in talking explicitly about sex.
They initially welcomed her, then avoided her...



In an interview with Betty Dodson,
Melissa Gira Grant quotes Dodson's             http://truth-out.org/news/item/20459
book  _My Romantic Love Wars_:

     "When we arrived at Brenda's palatial East Side
     apartment, there were about ten women deep in
     conversation. Sitting there quietly, I was trying to
     understand all the political concepts but failed
     miserably. When Gloria Steinem walked in immaculately
     groomed, I silently admired her. As I looked around the
     room, I realized this was definitely the number one
     sorority. Every woman there was from the 'A' list of
     good looks and money. Anselma and I looked like two
     scruffy hippies next to these tastefully dressed women
     who were well spoken with college degrees. There was no
     way I was going to bring up the subject of sex in this
     kind of setting. These women made love under satin
     sheets to the men of their dreams who probably owned a
     large piece of Wall Street."


Dodson talks about being the first kid in her working-class
family to graduate high school, and arriving in New York to
find:

    "... these women who already have all these publishing
    connections and their Ivy League educations, and they're
    running-- a girl's club, it seems like, in the women's
    movement."

    "... Although I had to create my own place in the
    movement, in all fairness, Ms. magazine ran an
    article about masturbation that I wrote in
    1974. They included the information that women
    could get the entire 18-page article by sending $3
    to Ms. The readers' response was huge, and I ended
    up with enough money to publish my first book,
    Liberating Masturbation. Then Ms. dropped like me
    like a hot potato. NOW also dropped me after I
    presented that fabulous slideshow demonstrating
    the variety of female genitals-- that was in
    1973. NOW's first and last sex conference. "

This sounds like the beginnings of the fights between
the "militant vanillas" and the pro-sex feminists, who
I usually associate with the lesbians of the BDSM          GOOD_VIBRATIONS
scene of San Francisco, though this split was clearly
more widespread than that.



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