University of Virginia Library

Self-Righteous Smirks At 'Whimpering Little Bitches' Burning Bras

Liberating Women's Lib

By ROBERT GILLMORE

(The following originally
appeared at a column in The
Cavalier Daily on March 5,
1971–Ed.)

There she was, the most
glamorous number in the class
of '56 but still in her heart a
Smithie, and thus able to
reassure her "sisters"–of sex
and of college–that Women's
Lib was really okay.

"But we don't want to be
men, either," Gloria Steinem
also said. "We don't want to
walk off with slim line
briefcases and work for IBM."

During the big Women's Lib
rally in New York last year,
there were the Lib types on the
tube: whimpering little bitches
steaming in the heat of their
own newly-found ideology and
showing with every poignant
frown and every clumsy
gesture and every safari in
search of a new word, their
oh-so-serious-c-o-n-c-e-r-n
about the m-o-v-e-m-e-n-t.

And of late there is that
Hebraic tough, Norman Mailer,
dueling with the smoke he fills
too (incredibly!) much of
Harpers' magazine.

As Norman has so well
demonstrated, and as he
himself likes to say, there is
just too much crap obscuring
the simple clarity and the
moral force of an otherwise
rather splendid movement.

Women's Lib at its highest
and purest form would stand
for a value which many of us
consider the most
fundamental: individuality. It
would speak for a society that
would enhance the freedoms
and the capacities of everyone
and at the moment especially
of that group, which because it
is female, has less than its share
of both.

But, Gloria dear, Women's
Lib does not necessarily mean
that women will not tool off to
IBM. They may or they may
no. The point of Lib, I hope,
is that women ought to have
the true choice of deciding
what they want to
do–whatever it might be.

Women's Lib, I would hope,
is something bigger than the
New Left: because its highest
value is individuality, the
movement must be able to
tolerate all political styles.

And to all those who would
delude themselves that Lib is
something new under the sun, I
would suggest that if its goals
are fundamental ones, its
precedents are ancient and
numerous.

Its roots are the early
struggles for women suffrage
and abolitionism; its spirit
should be nothing different
from the most impeccable
premise of the civil rights
movement: that an individual
is that first, and a black man
and/or a woman or anything
else second.

For a woman to be thought
of as a woman with certain
things that as a woman she
must do is a kind of tyranny of
convention – from which
happily Women's Lib hopes to
free them–and all of us.

There are no logical reasons
why women inherently must
do domestic or other such
things or play social, economic
or any other roles. Of course,
as someone once reminded
Margaret Mead, "in no society
do the men have the babies,"
the list of necessary feminine
functions tends necessarily to
end about there.

Unfortunately for Women's
Lib, this kind of spirit is
forgotten in the hodgepodge of
its rhetoric.

Women's Lib fundamentally
must not be a movement in the
usual sense; it must have
nothing fundamentally to do
with a group.

If it must be a movement, it
must be one of each woman,
alone: it is the doing, truly, of
her one thing.

It must therefore be the
product of a large will and vast
inner-direction. It must be
heroic. And therein lay its
glory.

Its models, perhaps, might
be John O'Hara's women, or
Mary McCarthy or Mary
Bunting or Claire
Booth–women who are
captivating not because they
are women but because they
are women who are great
individuals.

And so if Women's Lib is in
need of things, it has little need
of Gloria Steinem–and none at
all of Norman Mailer–but a lot
of the will to do.

Slowly, it seems, in spite of
all the rubbish, women are
developing this kind of will.

And men, for their part,
would do very well to realize
that Women's Lib is hardly a
curse but a long-overdue
blessing. For if it goes well,
more and more women will be
public entities in their own
right: creatures as interesting
and worthy of knowing as their
husbands.

Lib, happily will allow
marriage to be put at arm's
length: the family, the home
and all that horribly ordinary
stuff will lose its present
over-importance: with women
wanting and having careers–if
such they want– men
themselves will also be
"liberated" from the need to
give time and attention to the
family.

Both men and women will
thus be spared the absurdity of
washing floors, dishes, and
children's noses if they do not
want to and if they want to do
something else and can find a
main to do it better and more
willingly then they.

In time, perhaps, the
logically indefensible–but
rather barbaric and very
inconvenient and inefficient
idea of male initiative may die
also.

And in even more time,
women as well as men may be
able upon occasion to enjoy
sex for the sake of lust alone
and feminine sexual reticence
(once but no longer genetically
functional) may also go the
way of the hoop skirt.

Perhaps history's most
fruitful marriage was between
John Stuart Mill and Harriett
Taylor. They had no children
but a housekeeper. Their
family was the world; their
home was philosophy. And,
thankfully, neither one was
bored.