Tradition: The Fool Can Say Anything Without Punishment

This is the work of Irene Adler. 

I am a problem wherever I go. I test the rules just existing. I do not plan it that way. I just cannot act right. I get (de?)-moralized out of human groups fairly often. I just do not know how to shut up. As Lady Shrink tactfully puts it, I am an activist by temperament.

It is the late 80s, and I am busy trying new jokes out in a motel bar Open Mic, where comedians hang out and do the same. Not much civilian audience, if any.

If you are a man, you can stand up in front of the mic and just say fugga fugga fugga suck and every.body, particularly the drunk Penn students in the second row, laughs and claps. If you are the only woman comic in the room and you say the word clit, your fellows grimace and make horns at you and sigh loudly in disgust. 1987.

Women just are not funny right? Women comedians, particularly women comedians who did sexual humor, were struggling against active male resistance. Maybe they just did not like me? Maybe I am just an annoying snowflake? Well yeah but even the annoying have feelings. Sniff.

Jim Gaffigan followed me out of an Open Mic once, I was near tears. Jim apologized for the beating I was taking because I was doing sexual humor. What a funny good man.

I was working out of the Arts Cafe in Princeton New Jersey in a sketch comedy troupe I produced: Ultrasonic Theatre — Only Dogs Can Hear Us. 

When Art Kelly got arrested, every other male comedian had a pedophile joke. I was pregnant out to there and I had this pregnancy and abortion joke. Okay it was kind of sick.

Troupe, I have this joke.

What’s the joke.

The joke is: I am 43 years old, and I am pregnant, but I am not worried. If it turns out to be a cretin, I will train it to eat me and I can still have orgasms when I am 85.

Disgusting. You cannot say that.

Hey, it’s gallows humor. Black humor, you know. Gets people through war and pestilence. I am talking about death and deformity.

Sick and disgusting. You cannot say that.

A woman who is pregnant at 43 stands a 1 in 26 chance of birthing a handicapped child. The kid might have a hole in its spine and never walk or talk. The only test you could have at the time was given at 4.5 months. One could not get the results until 5 months pregnant. Meanwhile, you can feel the kid jumping around inside going “It’s great in here.”

If the kid is defective, you are bumping up against the 23-week mark upon which the fetus has a chance at survival. You going to kill it because it might be like me, ODD, even though you can feel it doing cartwheels going “It’s great in here.” 

t was a hardass time. Nobody wanted to let me talk about it. Wanted pregnancy. Turned out to be a girl named Jessica Lorraine. All her fingers and toes.

I was crestfallen. Shamed even. I am a grown abused child. I have a big problem with shame. I decided to tell my joke to Lady Shrink. I am bipolar. Most comedians are bipolar according to a study I read.

Once, I said to her, “Never leave me.” She said “Don’t worry. I am taking the phone into my coffin.” That is pretty funny for a PhD. I feel safe. She never pushes my shame or defiance button. Woman saved my life by treating me for free for a while. I am sending her a link to this opus.

I told her the joke. Shrink practically falls off her chair she is laughing so hard. I am getting worried. Finally, she wipes her eyes and says

“Mary, I will pay you any reasonable sum if you do that joke for the Parents of Handicapped Children Support Group to which I belong. We will laugh our asses off.”

Who is/was the sick person here? Censorship sucks the big badoodie. Hurts me. Hurts society. I will believe censorship is useful when we censor stochastic terrorism to the same degree we censor sex. It is a pet hate of mine, and I think I will write more about it.

I will close with a short eulogy for Lenny Bruce. For those who do not know who Lenny Bruce is, he is The Fool who made it safe for all the rest of us to say the word FUCK and defecate verbally on religion. The Governor of New York formally forgave him for the crime of obscenity 30 years after his death. 

My Hero who did too much heroin for the pain, played Carnegie Hall and went to jail for saying fuck.

Join me. Let us give Lenny Bruce the tribute he has earned. On the count of three, let us all yell FUCK as loudly as we can wherever we are.

 One, two, three: FUCK! Good night, Lenny, wherever you are.

Play the video. This is a multi-media experience.

“There is only what is and that’s it. What should be is a dirty lie.”

― Lenny Bruce, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People

”If you can’t say “Fuck” you can’t say, “Fuck the government.”

Lenny Bruce — Complete Live Standup (Rare, 1965) — YouTube

WOKE quote for today: “No woman could have been Nietzsche or Rimbaud without ending up in a whorehouse or lobotomized.
― Andrea Dworkin, Right-Wing Women

Andrea Dworkin Haunts Me -or- Ghosts of Protests Past

Every 68 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted. Every 9 minutes the victim is a Child. Only 25 of every 1,000 perpetrators will go to prison.

https://www.rainn.org/statistics

Now that REDpublicans are proposing to put women who abort a rape pregnancy in prison for more time than their rapist, I thought I would run this again.

I'm a radical feminist, not the fun kind. - Andrea Dworkin

The #MeToo Movement's power, and the chaos that has accompanied that power's expression, has me remembering Andrea Dworkin.

Ms. Dworkin was reviled for talking about pornography and the politics of rape and sex in the 70s. And is still reviled by folks making something off her strong back.

But what no one said, and what no one wrote in Dworkin's obituaries, was this: Dworkin's true legacy has been that far too many young women today would rather be bitten by a rabid dog than be considered a feminist. - Havana Marking 

Andrea Dworkin and I were in college in 1968. Different colleges. Irrepressible, furry, thinking/being Andrea is the activist Sister I turned to in my mind when I began reading #MeToo accounts. So I went looking for her and this quote sprang at me off the page. She died in 2005 and ironically has become even more relevant in 2018.

“I don’t believe rape is inevitable or natural. If I did, I would have no reason to be here. If I did, my political practice would be different than it is. Have you ever wondered why we [women] are not just in armed combat against you? It’s not because there’s a shortage of kitchen knives in this country. It is because we believe in your humanity, against all the evidence.” ― Andrea Dworkin

I publish these quotes out of context. With Andrea Dworkin there is so much context. 

Poster by Favianna Rodriguez. I am a fan.

I never met any of the New York media-darling Sisters in the flesh. I read them all religiously. Ti-Grace was the Southern Belle, Gloria was effective Seven Sisters, Valerie was Artist Nutz, Florynce the Cowboy Lawyer and Germaine was a Brit. What a Meme Bouquet.

In New Jersey we were busy looking up each other's vagina with speculums provided by nurses from NOW at house parties. We were not waiting for the government to say was okay we owned our bodies. We were learning menstrual extraction.

Why Andrea? She speaks to the burning core of my condition now the WombZombies are on the march again.:

“In her heart she is a mourner for those who have not survived. In her soul she is a warrior for those who are now as she was then. In her life she is both celebrant and proof of women's capacity and will to survive, to become, to act, to change self and society. And each year she is stronger and there are more of her.”
― Andrea Dworkin

 

SALMAGUNDI - March 2020 - Women in the News with Doggerel

Doggerel first. Then the FemiNazi News.

T-Shirt Epitaph

  TEXAS

Free Dumb!

Molon Labe

Margarine Taylor BAM!

She's the insurrectionist what AM!

With a gun right beside her,

Made herself a DC insider.

Hot damn. Sad I am. 

If you make the above LGBTQ Poster using an image of the Great Goddess Mara, Queen of the Universe, you get arrested. The Roman Catholic Church is in charge in Poland. That is how life goes in a Theocracy. The original image of the Black Virgin is venerated by Polish Catholics. 

The Roman Catholic Church is a death cult. Their latest 'pro life' move in USA? Prohibiting Roman Catholics from taking a form of the vaccine because it was developed using fetal cells from an abortion in the 1970s. Therefore Roman Catholics are encouraged to act as disease vectors and sacrifice themselves and infect others like you and me pro life. Note: I am a Roman Catholic for Choice. The Vatican's position at this LINK. 

NOTE: I have the best Readers. They improve my blog on a regular basis. Larry Motuz has provided a link that gives accurate information about the cell lines in vaccines and this controversy.

I am a Woman with News. On Tuesday I am getting the vaccine. My Black Sister Margie, you know the one God likes better, says I should be concerned about which vaccine it is Penn Medicine is giving me. I want out of my self imposed exile. I cannot be that careful. I want to ride the bus and haunt the thrift shop again. Damn the torpedos! Full speed ahead. 

Anonymous Speaks Truth at Stereotypes

Poster by Favianna Rodriguez.

I do not know who wrote this. It appeared online without attribution. 

Things radical feminism did not do to me, a transsexual woman (Trans women, please read!)
***trigger warning: rape, assault***

Radical Feminism:

•did not cause my father to beat me with a belt because my body language was ‘girly’

•did not cause neighborhood boys and classmates to beat me up for being ‘faggy’

•did not give me an eating disorder in high school as a reaction to my frame getting bigger during puberty

•did not create the religion that made me think when I was little that I would go to Hell for the ways I thought and behaved

•did not cause my rape by a guy who told me afterward that he thought I was role-playing when I cried and struggled, and admitted it was ‘the hottest sex he’d ever had’

•is not responsible for me and many other trans women feeling terror and hopelessness at the prospect of life as a visibly gender-nonconforming person in a society where this is punished

•did not create the unattainable beauty standards that further complicate my already complex struggle with sex dysphoria

•is not the reason I’ve been consistently mansplained to at every job I’ve held since transitioning by men who do it because they think I was born with a vagina (and thus that they need to talk to me like I’m six years old)

•is not the cause of my street harassment by men who think I was born with a vagina and thus feel entitled to proposition, frighten, or threaten me for their sexual gratification

•did not cause the culture of homophobia that makes dating men dangerous and potentially fatal for trans women

Radical feminism attacks patriarchy, which is the root cause of everything listed above. As trans women, we work against our own freedom, health, and dignity when we misdirect our anger and anguish toward the very people who are fighting the system that hurts us. We strengthen the true source of our social struggles.

Feedback is welcome and hoped-for. Trans women, please feel free to add to this list, especially.

The boys who tried to beat me up, and left threatening messages on my voicemail in school, had not been inspired by Janice Raymond.
Nor did the terms “tr*nny” or “f*g” enter their lexicon via radical feminist theory.
It was a male psychiatrist — not radical feminists — who delayed my treatment because he thought my dysphoria stemmed from the death of my father and the absence of male role models.
Radical feminists are not the reason I was flashed and masturbated at by a man as I walked home at night.
Radical feminists are not responsible for the harassment and unwanted advances I experience virtually every time I go out dancing.
And they never sent me obnoxious sexual messages or dick pics, funnily enough!
First rule of misogyny is that women are responsible for what men do.

Just like Bette Davis said: Hold on to your hat. It is going to be a bumpy night...ahh...Election.

Repeating this because of Cavanaugh and his stance on Roe v. Wade and Redpublicans pushing repeal and Cavanaugh for SCOTUS. My sentiment is the same.

Well, so far the Forced Birthers tried bombing us, burning us, killing doctors, maiming nurses, shooting security guards, stalking us, crawling all over us and shaming us. Because they are "prolife." Has not worked. They sent in The Suits. BFD.

Women will remember in November.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/14/1132070/-BREAKING-VA-Gov-McDonnell-R-just-forced-state-health-board-to-shut-down-ALL-abortion-clinics

Under pressure from Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell (R) and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R), the state Board of Health reversed their prior ruling and applied a new trap law designed to shut down every single abortion clinic in the entire state.

In the words of the Most Reverend and Esteemed DriveBy, may the Lord preserve him:
Read your Bible, people. It clearly warns, "Those that Shall vote Republican, Shall have Republican done unto them"
- Beckchivious 9:12.

Tale of Tampon Fairy, the Golden Knight, and the Magical Tampon Rite

I am repeating this story in solidarity with Sisters in Arizona prisons who cannot get tampons at all or more than 12 pads per month. They get fined for bleeding on their uniforms. I say GENERAL STRIKE. Nobody wear pads or tampons. Bleed the fuck all over the mofo's prison. We are as tough as British women, right? 

Once upon a time . . . 
Guns are okay but the tampons must go! 

State troopers are confiscating tampons, maxi pads and other potential projectiles from those who are entering the Texas capitol to watch the debate and vote on a controversial anti-abortion bill. Guns, however, which are typically permitted in the state capitol, are still being allowed. Several people tweeted that troopers were taking the objects before allowing entrance into the gallery:

Stand with Texas Women. 

s
God bless prochoice men. Bless them just standing there in their socks with a sign.

And now for the Magical Tampon Rite.

FEMENS - Grab patriarchy by the balls!

I love FEMEN. What courage. 

Google Adsense quit me because they consider my writing about FEMEN pornography. Ultimately the kiss-off set me free. I became more so.

FEMEN makes the most cogent statement of all. Enjoy. These women get the Balls of Steel Award.

The Well Dressed Marcher - The Pussy Hat Project.

Okay, we have time to make what the well dressed person will wear to the March on Washington or your local March - a PUSSY hat.

There are patterns for KNIT CROCHET SEW. Most are fast and easy because we do not have much time.

Information: THE PUSSY HAT PROJECT. 






Use #pussyhat to post your hat, or the one your GrandMa or boyfriend made for you. 

Pussyhat Project was co-founded by Krista Suh and Jayna Zweiman.

Catcall This! - Artists Give Me Such A Woody

I found a new political cartoonist. Go to Angry Girl Comics for more from this new to me cartoonist Wendy M. Xu.

I must give credit where credit is due: some of the most thought provoking and startling images on the Internet can be found at sexgenderbody. For grownups only.

"Ever notice how sometimes you come across somebody you shouldn't have fucked with?"

The men of the Republican party believe that women and women alone are to be held responsible for the fact that humans have sex. Republicans lost women voters by 10 points nationally and are headed for a 20 point loss.

My Mother had an abortion because of financial hardship when it was illegal. She and my Dad decided three of us was all they could handle. We were 14, 12 and 10. My Mom could have died. I know a past President of NJ NOW whose Mother died of illegal abortion when she was 9 years old.

Mom was 37, working full time and doing IBEW work. Dad was intermittently crippled with a congenital form of arthritis. Another pregnancy would have been a serious social, financial and physical disruption for her and for our family. Most women who get an abortion already have children.

It is despicable to compel folks to give birth to children they cannot afford, and/or do not want, or are defective BY LAW. It is Nazi stuff.

Woman forced to give birth to stillborn in Texas

If you are one of the "prolife" activists, I have questions for you.

My body and its contents belongs to (pick one):

1. You.
2. the State.
3. Me and my family.

My children belong with and to:

1. You.
2. the State.
3. Me and my family.

I look forward to your answers. I will tell you something right now. You Republican ghouls will not turn me and my daughters into baby farmed corpses like poor Mrs. Munoz. We vote.

ILLEGAL ABORTION and CHILDBIRTH (sepsis and hemorrhage) are the leading causes of maternal death worldwide. Fertility is serious business for women. Abortion/contraception is a human right.

We know contraception prevents abortion. Why do folks like Huckabee want to interfere with women getting contraception? How many peaches will you get if you wound the Tree? And why is this fat jowly guy calling me a slut with a Sugar Daddy? That is the Christian Republican idea of good politics evidently. Jesus loves Huckabee but I think he is an anus.

"I will bleed on your capitalism."

Oh how I love Third Wave Feminists. 

CONTENT WARNING: BLOOD.

"Today i am forgoing tampons and pads outside the houses of parliament to show how ‘luxury’ tampons really are.

We are also raising money to buy tampons for homeless shelters, womens shelters and the refugee crisis.

We’re getting lots of dirty looks and someone just shouted at us to get a job. But everyone keeps saying “haha omg how quickly would we get free tampons if everyone stopped wearing them?!” So, I’m giving it a go.

Taxes are necessary, i get it. So are tampons/ pads. They’re not luxury items, anymore than jaffa cakes, edible cake decorations, exotic meats or any other number of things currently not taxed as luxury items.

Maternity pads are taxed, but incontinence pads arent. We’ve had enough. Maybe bleeding on their doorstep will get the tories to do something about this?"
- Charlie Edge

ZOMG. I am in LOVE.

This is what funding abortion looks like. Handsome man of the Cowboy Nerd persuasion and Banana his Cat. I want them both with a purple passion. I have always wanted to do twins. Take the Drink a Beer and Eat a Taco and Fund Abortion Challenge.

In Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, send a contribution to Women's Medical Fund. 

Hold Up, So How Does This Work?

You find yourself a fucking taco, or a fucking beer, or a fucking taco and a beer, then you eat the fucking taco or drink the fucking beer or eat and drink both the fucking taco and the beer, and then you donate some money to an abortion fund. You fucking film yourself doing this shit and then you send us the fucking video and we put it on the fucking internet.

"BUT BUT BUT WAAAAHHHHH I DON’T KNOW ANY ABORTION FUNDS"

Welp you fucking do now.

"BUT BUT BUT WAAAAAAH I DON’T KNOW WHERE TO SEND MY VIDEO"

Welp you fucking do now.

I'm a Barbie Girl - Sign of the Month - June 2014

The sign in question is indisputably the most remarkable political sign that I saw in June. It is the work of street artist Sabo. You can see it in one of its settings below.

I almost let the month slip by without a winner. I have been gardening obsessively. Sometimes that is all I do in June.

Go Wendy. Do not let the bastids grind you down. Keep on going no matter what is said or what they do.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
- Mahatma Gandhi

So I googled "feminazi barbie" and a really interesting batch of images came up.

I thought this image ---->  was funny in a perverse sardonic way. Google images said its best artistic source is Nazi propaganda. The rest is the product of a witty photoshop artist. Anybody know who?

Get Your Stoning Right Here! - UPDATE

Shreveport Louisiana asked to stone some gays by transexual woman.

What is really ironic is the guy who proposed the bill in question appears to wear glasses because he has a defect in his eyes. And I wonder if he has prostate issues? According to the Levites, Ron Webb has no right to preach or even approach the Altar of God. Does he have both his testicles. Maybe he will let us check?

Leviticus 21 states:

17 “Speak unto Aaron, saying, ‘Whosoever he be of thy seed in their generations who hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God.
18 For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous,
19 or a man who is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded,
20 or crookbacked, or a dwarf, or who hath a blemish in his eye, or hath scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken.

I wonder if Ron Webb has ever read the book he is thumping. Man is an embarrassment to Christians. Blasphemy is a sin, if you are into the sin type of coercion. Personally, I like Pope Frankie's approach. The thing to keep in mind when dealing with religious authoritarians is - they have very high standards - for YOU.

If you read my blog, it is no secret I despise religious authoritarians. I hope this action becomes a standard way of dealing with religious zealots. In your face!

Call these folks out on their bullshit. Make them live up to all of the "rules," not just the ones that suit their personal prejudices. They cannot live up to their own rhetoric.  Biblical morality will get you arrested.

PHOTOS: LGBT Activists Demand Stoning at Antigay Harlem Church

Well, they'll stone you when you walk all alone
They'll stone you when you are walking home
They'll stone you and then say you are brave
They'll stone you when you are set down in your grave
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned. 

- Bob Dylan, Poet

Another uppity queer woman. Is this a new trend? I approve.

 

Asshats on Parade - "Putin Will Teach You How to Love" Edition

This is the first AssHat Award that is international as opposed to national. The USA does not have a monopoly on exceptional Assholes. 

Cossack militia attacked the Pussy Riot punk group with horsewhips on Wednesday as the group staged an impromptu performance under a sign advertising the Sochi Olympics.

Six group members — five women and one man — donned their signature ski masks and were pulling out a guitar and microphone when at least 10 Cossacks and other security officials moved in.

These brave Folks turned your beating into Art so good I know about it in the USA. It is a small world, Putski.

We are laughing at you, Pussywhipped Putin. 

Laughter is mightier than the pen and the bullwhip. 

A New Way to Play Botticelli with UPDATES

This photograph so reminds me of Botticelli. What do you think? I think a new growth in Feminist thought and political action is a good thing. For more photographs of FEMEN protests, go to the links below:

La Primavera by Sandro Botticelli 

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is:  I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a door mat or a prostitute.  ~Rebecca West, "Mr Chesterton in Hysterics: A Study in Prejudice," The Clarion, 14 Nov 1913, reprinted inThe Young Rebecca, 1982

http://www.buzzfeed.com/gavon/the-best-of-femen-nsfw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEMEN

http://www.ehow.com/how_2103828_play-botticelli.html

UPDATE 2: 
Some Russians are torturing and murdering LGBT and/or taking their children. All of this so that some male Russians can prove they and Putin are not wusses in the worldwide who-has-got-the-biggest-dick contest. It is not working. No matter what Putin does now, he looks like an anus to somebodys around the world. .

Translation is "Fuck you, Putin" as far as I can make out. Second that emotion. It seems the women of Femens have the biggest dicks worldwide, metaphorically speaking of course. If a native speaker sees this and can give me a better translation, please do so.

UPDATE 1: 
I wrote this in September of 2012. The FEMEN movement just keeps growing. I must be getting old. I am not sure if these young women are foolish or brave. I will go with impossibly brave. They have a new branch in Turkey. Turkey.

. . . nobody gives you power.  You just take it.  ~ Roseanne Barr

Heroes of Feminism Series - Introduction to Alice S. Rossi and the Hero Margaret Sanger

Introduction to this Long Book Review of The Feminist Papers by Alice S. Rossi

Alice S. Rossi is a Founder of the National Organization for Women. I had a paperback copy of her book that I bought long ago when it and I were new. A link to her obituary is below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/us/08rossi.html?_r=0

My friend Ocean was the inspiration behind this series. I will have Ocean speak for herself. She posted this statement of intent in a comment:

Click Me!

"I've read some great books on the history of the women's rights struggle in the past few years. Apparently, there were a lot of unbelievably stupid women who believed such nonsense as "women aren't interested in voting, because they have their men to do the voting for them." Some of the right-wing female fruitbats (love that term!) today are just as moronic, if not more so, than the anti-suffrage women in the 1850's.

During the summer, I came across a great collection of feminist essays at my public library called THE FEMINIST PAPERS, edited by Alice S. Rossi. I think it's well worth reading some of these essays, if your public library has a copy. Hell, I would seriously encourage ALL girls and women to read some of the great essays this book offers. I think too many women of younger generations have no idea what battles the women in the 19th and early 20th century had to fight to both get the right to vote AND to use contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Reading essays by some of these women, including Margaret Sanger, could help more young women understand that electing an anti-choice candidate would be disastrous for women. As President Obama has said, "we've been there, we've done that, we're NOT going backward, we're going forward."

From:  THE FEMINIST PAPERS, "The Right To One's Body: Margaret Sanger," by Alice S. Rossi, 1973

Quote:

"Without the means to prevent, and to control the timing of, conception, economic and  political rights have limited meaning for women.  If women cannot plan their pregnancies, they can plan little else in their lives during the long period from age twelve to fifty, while they are 'at procreative risk.'  So long as sexual pleasure could not be enjoyed without the anxiety of a possible pregnancy, women seeking wider and more demanding participation in professions or politics really had an either-or choice of marriage or a career, while those who attempted the combination did so with a sense of anxiety that can be anathema to creativity in work.  Sexual abstinence has never been a banner that could attract very women or men, even in the nineteenth century, much less the twentieth.

As perhaps the greatest champion of woman's freedom to control her own life and body, Margaret Sanger has a central place in any overview of feminist history and thought.  From the first issue of her magazine, Woman Rebel, in March 1914, to the financial and organizational support she gave to research in hormonal anovulants in the post-World War II period, her life was dedicated to a passionate single-minded commitment to bring the best birth-control methods to ever larger numbers of women around the world. . . .

Sanger's vision was not narrowly focused on the dissemination of birth-control devices.  She believed that the whole modern movement toward new sex ideas was bound to be challenged by the conservative forces of society.  In her view, sex morals for women had been one-sided, purely negative, inhibitory, and repressive, 'fixed by agencies which have sought to keep women enslaved; which have been determined ... to use woman solely as an asset to the church, the state and the man.'  [Sanger 1920]"

Ocean - Editor's Note: Because the original introduction to Margaret Sanger's essay is quite long, I thought it would be more helpful to readers to quote what I believe to be the most important points.  Anyone who would like to read the entire introduction can read it in THE FEMINIST PAPERS, if it can be found at the reader's public library or online.

"My Fight For Birth Control," by Margaret Sanger, 1931

Quote:

    "One day a woman by the name of Margaret Whitehurst came to us.  She said that she was the mother of two children and that she had not money to support more.  Her story was a pitiful one -- all lies, of course, but the government acts that way.  She asked for our literature and preventives, and received both.  Then she triumphantly went to the District Attorney's office and secured a warrant for the arrest of my sister, Mrs. Ethel Byrne, our interpreter, Miss Fania Mindell, and myself.

    The crusade was actually under way!  It is no exaggeration to call this period in the birth control movement the most stirring period up to that time, perhaps the most stirring of all times, for it was the only period during which we had experienced jail terms, hunger strikes, and intervention by the Chief Executive of the state.  It was the first time that there was any number of widespread, popular demonstrations in our behalf. . . .

    The arrest and raid on the Brooklyn clinic was spectacular.  There was no need of a large force of plain clothes men to drag off a trio of decent, serious women who were testing out a law on a fundamental principle.  My federal arrest, on the contrary, had been assigned to intelligent men.  One had to respect the dignity of their mission; but the New York city officials seem to use tactics suitable only for crooks, bandits and burglars.  We were not surprised at being arrested, the shock and horror of it was that awoman, with a squad of five plain clothes men, conducted the raid and made the arrest.  A woman -- the irony of it!   I refused to close down the clinic, hoping that a court decision would allow us to continue such necessary work.  I was to be disappointed.  Pressure was brought upon the landlord, and we were dispossessed by the law as a 'public nuisance.'  In Holland the clinics were called 'public utilities.'

    When the policewoman entered the clinic with her squad of plain clothes men and announced the arrest of Miss Mindell and myself (Mrs. Byrne was not present at the time and her arrest followed later), the room was crowded to suffocation with women waiting in the outer room.  The police began bullying these mothers, asking them questions, writing down their names in order to subpoena them to testify against us at the trial.  These women, always afraid of trouble which the very presence of a policeman signifies, screamed and cried aloud.  The children on their laps screamed too.  It was like a panic for a few minutes until I walked into the room where they were stampeding and begged them to be quiet and not to get excited.  I assured them that nothing could happen to them, that I was under arrest but they would be allowed to return home in a few minutes.  That quieted them.  The men were blocking the door to prevent anyone from leaving, but I finally persuaded them to allow these women to return to their homes, unmolested through terribly frightened by it all.

    Crowds began to gather outside.  A long line of women with baby carriages and children had been waiting to get into the clinic.  Now the streets were filled, and police had to see that traffic was not blocked.  The patrol wagon came rattling through the streets to our door, and at length Miss Mindell and I took our seats within and were taken to the police station. 

    As I sat in the rear of the car and looked out on that seething mob of humans, I wondered, and asked myself what had gone out of the race.  Something had gone from them which silenced them, made them impotent to defend their rights.  I thought of the suffragists in England, and pictured the results of a similar arrest there.  But as I sat in this mood, the car started to go.  I looked out at the mass and heard a scream.  It came from a woman wheeling a baby carriage, who had just come around the corner preparing to visit the clinic.  She saw the patrol wagon, realized what had happened, left the baby carriage on the walk, rushed through the crowd to the wagon and cried to me:  'Come back!  Come back and save me!'  The woman looked wild.  She ran after the car for a dozen yards or so, when some friends caught her weeping form in their arms and led her back to the sidewalk.  That was the last thing I saw as the Black Maria dashed off to the station. "