Intimate Wars

by Merle Hoffman

  Feminists had to create a collective J’Accuse. Any individual woman who stands up against a powerful man must shed her “good girl” mentality to match his aggression. Real resistance, like great social change, doesn’t happen just because people get angry. Anger is not enough. We had to say no to the system, no to the historical definitions of “female,” and no to the historical oppression of our class. It was time for feminists to match the anger of the antis with our own righteous rage.

  In 1985 I volunteered to lead a pro-choice march and rally to commemorate the twelfth anniversary of Roe. Members of NARAL and NOW had been talking about marching down Thirty-Fourth Street to the right-to-life headquarters, but no one wanted to lead it. It was dangerous to be so high profile; the rash of threats and bombings had left people afraid to come out.

  I was afraid, too, but I knew facing my fear was the only way to practice and display courage.

  I dressed carefully the morning of January 22. I knew that the cameras were going to be on me. I wore an Italian trench coat that looked like something out of the late thirties in Berlin. With civil rights attorney William Kunstler standing protectively at my side, I took my place on the platform, raised my bullhorn, and made a great rousing speech to the couple hundred people who had bravely come out for the march.

  We rallied and marched with passion that day, but anti-choicers had also marched—Nellie Gray led seventy thousand of them in Washington on her annual March for Life. It was obvious that there was a necessity for progressive women and men to work together in coalition. If I could unite the factions of the pro-choice community, emphasize our shared goals and minimize our differences, I could channel our collective energy to pose a formidable challenge to the antis and their political allies. I put out a call for members, sending letters, placing ads, and calling people personally to tell them that it was important that we all meet to strategize and come up with a plan. The enthusiastic response I received led to the founding of the New York Pro-Choice Coalition (PCC), the first umbrella organization of pro-choice individuals, politicians, nonprofits, activists, providers, and organizations committed to ensuring legal, safe abortion in New York.16 Our mission statement held that we would fully utilize the talents and input of organizations and individuals to ensure the continued existence of reproductive freedom for all women.

  This was, of course, easier said than done. I found myself once again the leader of a group of people with very different ideas about how things should be run and how our goals should be accomplished. We agreed that it was necessary to come up with a new strategy to combat the language, symbols, and actions of the antis. The question was, could we agree on the tactics?

  One of our first internal debates revolved around how to publicly counter the imagery used by the pro-lifers. We had to find a psychological match for those shameless bloody fetuses, contrasted with the “cute” pairs of fetal feet. The possibility of using the iconic image of Gerri Santoro—she bled to death as a result of a botched self-abortion in 1964—lying dead in a pool of blood was brought up, but quickly put aside for fear it would be seen as just another exploitative media image. The use of multiethnic and multigenerational women’s faces was also discussed as a variation of NARAL’s theme, “We are your mothers, your sisters, your daughters, your friends,” but it was felt that this was too timid a response.

  Finally, I suggested we use the simple image of the wire coat hanger, which represented all of the awful homegrown abortion remedies: poison, lye, throwing oneself down the stairs, putting a knife in one’s stomach. It addressed the severity of the issue without stooping to graphic shock tactics. Many thought it was too negative, and some representatives of Planned Parenthood worried that it might turn off funders. Others thought that young people would not know what it meant. Since we were unable to reach a consensus, I went ahead and used the hanger as a symbol myself. It went on to become a ubiquitous symbol of reproductive rights and a powerful visual cue that reached younger women.

  The lack of minority representation within the PCC was another subject of many heated discussions. We broadly publicized our meetings and were totally open to new membership, but few women of color joined us. This meant that when women of color did attend, they were often put in the uncomfortable position of speaking for their entire racial group.

  Another source of tension within the PCC was more personally directed at me. I’d founded the coalition on the strength of my will and ideas, and I was the natural leader for practical reasons as well: thanks to Choices, I was able to spend a great deal of money supporting the coalition’s political actions—and many of the activists on an individual basis, too. Some saw this as contradictory; I was radical on the streets, but I had the financial resources to assist in the necessary day-to-day needs of street politics: having expensive props made, paying for printing costs, phone bills, transportation, and publicity. People were grateful for my generosity, but there was always some degree of resentment. Rhonda Copelon, a fellow activist who would become a lifelong friend and supporter, once called me a mixed bag.

  Others—socialists, in particular—were sensitive to the notion of me or anyone being the acknowledged leader of the coalition. I recall one telling occurrence that took place during an action in front of the New York City Planned Parenthood: when the police asked, “Who is the leader here?” I had to carefully reply, “I can speak for the group.” I was able to understand everyone’s need for recognition and participation.

  These tensions were the predictable result of forming a coalition, but they never came close to overpowering the success of PCC as an organization. Working together, certain of our common goal, the coalition proved itself to be one of the most formidable opponents of the anti-choice movement. Over the next few years feminists across the country were beginning to recognize that all kinds of silences had to be broken. Wide media coverage of rallies, marches, and awareness weeks—on both sides of the war—placed the abortion debate more prominently in the public spotlight than ever.

  Every January tens of thousands of antis marched on Washington, vowing to overturn Roe v. Wade. Reagan offered his support with statements like “Together we will insure that the resources of government are not used to promote or perform abortions.”17 The PCC and other pro-choice organizations answered them with meticulously organized rallies of our own that meshed performance, battle, and theater. In one of our first actions, the PCC participated in the nationwide commemoration of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade with local demonstrations in ninety-seven cities. Women lobbied to defend and broaden the right to choose abortion and birth control; some delivered coat hangers to right-wing legislators.18

  Our New York contingent was five hundred strong, and together we chanted:Not the Church,

  Not the State,

  Women must decide our fate.

  Not only a mother,

  Not only a wife

  A woman’s life is a human life.

  Gay, straight, black, white

  Abortion is a woman’s right!

  “Women should be able to have abortions without the threat of dying by bombing or terrorist attack,” I told Newsday that afternoon.

  Each action required dozens of meetings and hours of planning. There were dates, venues, and speakers to work out, each element carefully orchestrated to make the maximum impact. I often took on the role of emcee and gave the opening speech.

  I began our 1986 rally in Bryant Park by asking for a moment of silence for all the women who had laid down their lives for the right to choose. I asked those who had had an abortion or knew someone who had to raise their hands, and as each hand raised it was as if we were being validated again and again. Some shot up boldly, others came up more slowly—but each one was a triumph of will.

  Time for me was measured by planning, actions, and political events. There were no babies’ birthdays to celebrate; my husband’s birthdays were more of a reminder of his mortality and my potential loss than anything else; and I was so totally im
mersed in the work that January 22, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, began to take on as much, and sometimes more, significance as March 6, my own birthday. I felt as if I had been born for this moment in history, that the dreams of my girlhood had finally come to life, and my work was a continual affirmation of that.

  MY WORK WITH the PCC led to some of my deepest friendships. I met Phyllis Chesler at a demonstration for Mary Beth Whitehead in Hackensack, New Jersey, in 1987. Whitehead was fighting to gain custody over a baby she’d contractually arranged to carry to term for a wealthy woman, making her the baby’s surrogate mother. The court conducted a “best interest of the child” analysis to determine which woman had the right to raise the child, putting definitions of motherhood in the spotlight. When I learned that Whitehead had been declared an “unfit mother” for giving her daughter pots and pans to play with instead of stuffed animals, I decided to go down to the courthouse for her trial.

  Phyllis had convened a group of women to rally for Whitehead’s right to keep her daughter. Watching her give a passionate speech in front of an empty crib, I was immediately drawn to her fierce support of Whitehead. I introduced myself to her after the speech and told her I wanted to cover her cause for my magazine.

  She thanked me and asked me to get her a cold drink from inside.

  The next day I shocked her by sending her a thousand-dollar check to support her work. I knew that she was considered brilliant and controversial—she had written the feminist classic Women and Madness—and I also knew that she saw herself as a prophet and a revolutionary, and was comfortable working alone. We had much in common.

  We slowly became friends. We both wanted and craved action, and being romantics with vivid imaginations, we began to make plans for creating a feminist world. Once we placed an ad in the Village Voice recruiting feminist warriors: THE FEMINIST GOVERNMENT NEEDS YOU! We envisioned a kind of feminist guardian angel brigade that would patrol the streets of New York City insuring the safety of women, stopping domestic violence and sexual harassment, and defending patients at abortion clinics. We received only two responses, so that dream had to be put on hold.

  Phyllis was also unusual in the world of the radical feminist leadership in that she was a single mother choosing to bring her son Ariel up to be an active part of her political life. I remember her defining rape for him at my kitchen table when he was just nine years old. She took him with us to some pro-choice rallies, and he later worked at Choices for a couple of summers. We all occasionally spent time at Kate Millett’s farm during her famous celebrations of the Japanese festival Obon, sharing her wonderful feminist arcadia.

  Andrea Dworkin was another dedicated feminist with whom I became friends through my work as a pro-choice leader and publisher of the magazine. She, too, cast a very large shadow. Andrea was always soft-spoken, smiling through her small talk until she came to her reality—then she became a fiery herald of truth.

  I was always impressed by her work against rape and pornography, especially her ability to put theory into practice, as in 1983 when she and Catharine MacKinnon were hired by the Minneapolis city government to draft an antipornog-raphy civil rights ordinance (which would define pornography as a civil rights violation and allow those harmed by the industry to sue for damages) as an amendment to the City of Minneapolis civil rights ordinance.

  In a sense she was the Robespierre of the movement. This analogy came to life when Andrea reacted to A Book of Women’s Choices: Abortion, Menstrual Extraction, RU-486, which Carol Downer had written with Rebecca Chalker detailing ways that women could sabotage potential anti-abortion laws, one of which was to claim that they had been raped. Andrea felt very strongly that if women were to fake rapes as a tactic in the struggle to access legal abortion, it would denude and diminish her work fighting rape and violence against women. She called Downer a traitor to the movement and told me over the phone that if she had the power, she would have her executed. I asked whether she would like a guillotine to be put up in the town square for this purpose and she found the idea quite pleasing.

  AS MY CIRCLE OF FRIENDS broadened and my professional reputation grew, I had the opportunity to exchange ideas with some of the most brilliant and unique political and literary women of the time: Petra Kelly, Florynce Kennedy, Kate Millett, Erica Jong, and so many others. I wanted our life-altering conversations and ideas to reach past our meetings, our speeches, and even our publications. On the Issues was a success as far as radical non-mainstream feminist publications can be called successful—at its height we had twenty thousand subscribers nationally and internationally—but I wanted to reach more people, to be on the cutting edge. With the right medium we could spark public dialogue on subjects that were too often passed over in the mainstream media. And the way to reach mass audiences was not through print magazines; it was on television.

  In 1986, I decided to create, coproduce, and host a feminist talk show I called MH: On the Issues. It was a series of ten thirty-minute cable shows syndicated to eleven million homes: the first feminist show on television.

  I interviewed Bella Abzug, Bill Baird, Carol Bellamy, Susie Orbach, Elizabeth Holtzman, and NOW NY chapter president Jennifer Brown. I celebrated my fortieth birthday on the air with Deborah Perry—a self-described feminist witch—who blew bubbles for me and gave me two presents: a small candle from Gloria Steinem’s fiftieth birthday cake, and a large multicolored candle in the shape of a vagina.

  Betty Friedan, on the other hand, was known as a kind of sacred monster—some called her the “mother of the women’s movement”—and she had a reputation for being difficult at best. On the date of her guest appearance the cab that we sent for her was late, prompting her to call from her apartment screaming that we were all a bunch of idiots and she had no time for this. She finally capitulated and we all waited with baited breath for her to arrive at the studio. One young assistant, so very excited to meet her, held a dogeared copy of The Feminine Mystique on her lap ready to be autographed.

  In walked Betty muttering and bellowing, “Let’s get this fucking thing started—I can only stay for twenty minutes.” She rushed past that young girl without even noticing her.

  Throughout the interview Betty was in a state of high anxiety, glancing at her watch and fidgeting, until finally she interrupted a question I was posing to say, “I’m very sorry, but I must leave now.” She got up from her chair, dragging her microphone behind her, and stormed out of the studio while the cameras kept rolling. I continued with the show, having another ten minutes to fill.

  FOR SOME WOMEN feminism is a way of seeing the world more clearly, of taking off the glasses that society, culture, and geography have placed upon you. The best of them had an “aristocracy of the soul” because of their work and their vision for women’s freedom, and even though this did not always translate into altered behavior, I made allowances for them most of the time, as I am sure they felt they made allowances for me. I was attracted to thinkers who were able to bridge the gap between theory and practice, to leap the distance from radical writings to the soapbox to the streets. We were feminists engaged in a just war sharing the privilege of a critical consciousness, and we knew we had to support each other’s missions and lend one another our strengths.

  This truth bolstered my political and professional life, but the knowledge that I could lose my business for Medicaid fraud, which I hid from almost all of my friends, never ceased to haunt me during those years. My possible indictment still felt like an impending death sentence, a terrible secret I had to keep. I remember sitting in my office and looking at my political posters, saying a kind of private goodbye.

  Unlike Marty, who could find release and forgetting in sleep, I was tortured with anxiety at night. I realized that just as he had his defense mechanisms, I would have to develop mine.

  In the midst of my crisis I was fortunate to meet Mahin Hassibi, a well-known child psychiatrist. I was immediately attracted to this small black-haired Iranian woman. I soon found she was the
most well read of any person I had ever known and the only one who had ever completed Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and all of Proust, both in French and English.

  Hers was a political experience of a very different kind: she had participated in the Iranian Revolution, as an activist in the streets and as a doctor treating other activists who had their heads broken open by the Shah’s goons. A close friend of hers had set herself on fire in Tehran to protest women’s status in that country.19 The power struggle between the Americans and the Iranians over the years meant that she, too, was a pariah of sorts in American society. She was harassed in Metropolitan Hospital, where she was the assistant director of child psychiatry, by being called “Khomeini’s daughter.” Over time she became a true soul mate, a woman who was always there to talk and help center me. We would have hours of philosophical conversations that gave me a kind of pleasure that nothing else could and distracted me from my troubles at the clinic.

  After seven years, many thousands of dollars, and much psychological trauma, a legal way out was found to finally satisfy the prosecutors without having Choices ruined or myself indicted. Because the infraction had happened while Choices was still operating as Flushing Women’s Medical Center, Dr. Leo Orris (who had been part owner then) agreed to help us plead guilty in this case under our old name. And since Flushing Women’s Medical Center no longer technically existed as such, Choices as it now existed was saved from destruction.

  The end of my nightmare was reported in an article published on the front page of the New York Law Journal on December 28, 1988: “A Queens abortion clinic pleaded guilty yesterday in state court to illegally overcharging 400 Medicaid patients and paid $50,000 in restitution.” A relatively small price to pay in the end; the hardest part was to accept this verdict as the last word. Clearly, it wasn’t.