Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground Press, Part 2

The Furies: Goddesses of Vengeance - Ginny Z. Berson, with appendices

The Furies: Goddesses of Vengeance GINNY Z. BERSON I n the winter and spring of 1972, while Richard Nixon and his minions were preparing to bug Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate Building, twelve self-proclaimed revolutionary lesbian feminists—who were known collectively as the Furies—were putting out the first issues of what would almost instantly become the “legendary” The Furies. While Washington, DC, may seem an unlikely place for the birthing of such a major contributor to the exploding underground press in this country, in retrospect, and in light of what the Furies wrote about and stood for, it all makes perfect sense. Washington, DC, was, after all, the belly of the beast, the very seat of power of the U.S. government. As such, Washington was also the focus and locus of hundreds of protest groups and demonstrations. Government offices were regularly occupied by groups as diverse as the National Welfare Rights Organization and the Committee of Returned [Peace Corps] Volunteers. The Black Panther Party was strong and active. Gay men and (fewer) women were coming out of the closet and talking about their civil rights. As the war in Vietnam raged, hundreds of thousands of people descended regularly on the Capitol grounds to march and rally, smash windows and fight with cops, circle the Pentagon and try to levitate it, block traffic and sit in the halls of Congress. Hippies and freaks dropped acid and contemplated their visions in the reflecting pool across from the Washington Monument. D.C. Women’s Liberation in the early 1970s was thriving. Consciousness-raising groups enabled hundreds of women to understand a critical lesson of this second wave of feminism: the personal is political. Women took the revelations that followed and established a host of services for themselves and other women, including rape counseling and child care. Women in the health fields began researching the Pill and testified in Congress to its dangerous side effects. Others began organizing and lobbying for changes in restrictive abortion laws—Roe v. Wade was not decided until January 1973, so for most American women abortion was still illegal. off our backs, a feminist monthly, was publishing news and opinion from around the This article originally appeared in The Furies, no. 1 (January 1972). It was reprinted in Lesbianism and the Women’s Movement, ed. Nancy Myron and Charlotte Bunch (San Francisco: Diana Press, 1975), 15–19. It is reprinted here with permission of Diana Press. 270 | Ginny Z. Berson country. Women Against Racism, Women Against Imperialism, and Women Against Population Control met regularly, marched together, wrote position papers, planned to change the world. The particular confluence of forces that gave birth to The Furies was being duplicated all over the country. Straight women were tired of being the gofers and sperm receptacles for the white male Left. Lesbians were tired of being ignored by the gay liberation movement, and were being actively told to go back in the closet or get out by the women’s liberation movement. It seemed that liberation went only so far. Women’s liberation was considered bourgeois by the lefties—something to take care of “after the revolution.” It was not even taken seriously enough to be considered a threat. Lesbianism was considered a bedroom issue by women’s liberation—but leaders like Betty Friedan were very threatened because the mainstream media were already dismissing the emerging women’s movement as a bunch of “bra-burning” lesbians. If that turned out to be true, women’s liberation would have an even harder time gaining credibility and winning converts. The twelve original Furies came from D.C., New York, and Chicago, having worked in all the movements, and having found no home in any of them. We were all white, rural and urban, working, middle, and upper-middle class. Our ages ranged from eighteen to twenty-eight. The primary organizer of the group was Rita Mae Brown. Rita had been a lesbian activist for years, being one of the authors of “The Woman-Identified Woman,” the first authoritative definition of political lesbianism. She came to D.C. to organize, and she formed her first critical alliance FIGURE 1: The Furies staff at layout (from left): Lee Schwing, Tasha Peterson, Ginny Berson, Jennifer Woodul. From staff archives. The Furies | 271 with Charlotte Bunch, a straight (though not for long after meeting Rita...