Feminist Pornographer

After my first successful exhibition of heterosexual lovers in 1968, I found myself on a popularity skyrocket. Having a show of erotic art was like displaying a big advertisement that I'd be fun in bed. Many interesting Prince Charmings were available to me as I waltzed into the glittering world of the rich and famous. Artists have always been able to break out of the rigid class structure that we all pretend doesn't exist in America. I'd already dated a big name politician, a movie star, a well known author and lots of wealthy jet setters who lived here and abroad. My girlfriends were telling me now was the perfect time to score a rich husband. But with all the social invitations pouring in, I had the luxury of being a sexually liberated woman who could say "yes" to men who intrigued me and "no thank you" to one's that didn't. I was going to be a famous artist and make my own million. Although the money never happened, I had a million dollar sexlife.

In spite of the monumental effort I put into drawing and exhibiting the masturbating nudes for my second exhibition in 1970, few feminists understood the importance of this basic activity. Once again I read Betty Freidan's The Feminine Mystique and found myself disagreeing with some of her concepts. She spoke of female sex seekers as "Peter Pans, forever childlike, afraid of aging, grasping at youth as they searched for reassurance in sexual magic." She called it "sex without self." In my opinion, women were love seekers, not sex seekers. We had sex to be loved, not because we loved sex- a profound distinction. Once I broke free from the confines of the feminine mystique based on the endless search for love, sex became a frontier for self-discovery. When I had sex with a partner, it was to experience myself, the other person, and the physical energy between us. Orgasms were their own reward.

My transition to having sexual friends instead of one faithful lover had taken a lot of soul searching and bitter tears to get beyond my female conditioning. Now as a forty-one year old bachelor, my efforts were paying off with a fulfilling sexlife. I wasn't under any illusion that many women would accept my unique sex style, but I knew many of my insights about female sexuality were important when it came to orgasm and pleasure. I needed words.

Once I told my friend Grant Taylor I wanted to write an article about women's sexual liberation, as a retired English professor from NYU, he became a formidable taskmaster while I turned into a competitive little shit. We embarked upon an intellectual power struggle with more passion than all my romantic lovers strung together.

My first article "The Masculine Mystique" was featured in Screw, a sex tabloid published by Al Goldstein who pushed the boundaries of smut and bad taste. I began with society's fixation on "position A" penis/vagina intercourse that made it difficult for women to have orgasms. I asked why the clitoris was never shown in male porn and with all the available "split beaver," why did the law forbid the showing of erect penises? In my opinion, it was to protect men from having to compete with male centerfolds that displayed gorgeous giant pink cocks. Goldstein told me Gore Vidal thought my point about men being fearful of becoming sex objects was quite accurate. He was one of my heroes, a great thinker and author so I was thrilled.

The next BIG opportunity to communicate came from Evergreen Review published by Barney Rosset, a magazine that was the latest in radical chic. They wanted to do an interview with me and although I could have worked with a big name like Nat Hentoff, I requested a woman. Mary Phillips was more of a feminist activist than a writer, but I figured we could work together with me shaping some of my own answers which worked best. Grant also suggested questions and helped with the editing so our three-way collaboration created a unique interview.

No romantic lover had ever created the degree of excitement I felt when the February 1971 issue of Evergreen hit the news stands. THE FINE ART OF LOVEMAKING: A woman painter of erotic art comments on sex and feminism. The article covered eleven pages with sixteen of my erotic drawings placed throughout the interview like sexy little postage stamps and one centerfold drawing of a couple fucking. Mary opened with a comment about her confusion when we first met. Was I a feminist or a pornographer? She decided I was both. We discussed my erotic art, covered censorship, feminism, sexual liberation, and alternative lifestyles (remember them?). Of course Masturbation got another rave review.

Mary pointed out that some women in the movement felt pornography was degrading to women and asked if I felt there was a conflict between my erotic art and feminism. "Absolutely not," I answered. "If all erotic material is degrading to women that really means sex is degrading to women." I went on to say it would be a tragedy if feminists moved into a puritanical posture of censoring sex in art. Instead, women needed to learn how to get more joy out of sex and create our own feminist pornography.

Around that time, a handful of feminists raided the offices of Grove Press and busted up the place in protest against pornography- a poor choice because Evergreen was a principal supporter of liberal causes. Blaming porn for sexual violence reminded me of the Temperance Movement of the 1920's when Carry Nation busted up bars. She diverted women's energy and brought the quest for women's rights to a screeching halt. Censoring pornography would not prevent rape any more than Prohibition had prevented alcoholism. It just turned a lot of middle class people into criminals because they wanted a drink. No law was ever going to guarantee a woman she'd end up with a sober, faithful husband! While it was true pornography perpetuated the myth of masculine virility, romantic love stories consumed by women perpetuated the myth of ultra femininity. Romance and Pornography were opposite sides of the same coin of sexual repression.

Evergreen ran into a number of censorship problems, and my art was involved in one. The county prosecutor threatened the local library in Groton, Connecticut with obscenity charges for carrying the magazine. When a woman from the Norwich newspaper phoned for an interview, she said the prosecutor had pounded his fist on my picture of an all women's orgy and said the perversion of lesbian sex was evidence of obscenity. I laughed, saying "Betcha that's his favorite fantasy!" Next was a call from the head librarian to inform me there was going to be a meeting of the Library Board and the D.A. The press would be there, and the ACLU had gotten involved. Could I possibly attend?

Grant and I drove to Connecticut for our first taste of censorship in action. When both sides of the arguments ended, the press descended on me. I don't recall what I said except sex was nice and censorship was dirty, that kids were never upset by my pictures, but their parents often were. A few people complimented me on my words and art. One local woman said she found my art "disgusting and pornographic" but that I had a right to show it. After being threatened individually with jail terms and fines, the Groton Library Board banned Evergreen from its shelves forever. Sexual censorship had won again.

Driving home that night, I wanted to know how anyone could call my beautiful nudes disgusting. Why couldn't people see the difference between erotic and pornographic art?" Grant said it was all art- beauty or pornography would always be in the eyes of the beholder. Then he warned me against making the mistake of trying to define either one because it was an intellectual trap that led to endless debates with no agreements. As usual he was right! If I embraced the label "pornographer," I could become America's first Feminist Pornographer.

Scurrying to my dictionary the next day, I found pornography originated from the Greek pornographos: the writings of prostitutes. If society treated sex with any dignity or respect, both pornographers and prostitutes would have status, which they obviously had at one time. Sexual women of antiquity were the artists and writers of sexual love. All forms of sexual pleasure had been demonized, so knowledge of the esteemed courtesans was buried in the collective unconscious, suppressed by the authoritarian religions of mankind.

Reclaiming women's sexual power by creating feminist pornography was a thrilling heady concept. Women could restore the historical perspective of the Temple Priestesses and Sacred Prostitutes, the Amazons of Lesbos, and the Royal Courtesans of the Sumerian Palaces. Sexual love was probably what everyone longed for, so I gave myself permission to break the next thousand rules of social intimidation aimed at controlling our sexual behavior.

The spring of ‘71, I was on a PR roll. A woman called who identified herself as Enid Nemy from the New York Times. The newspaper was going to do an article on groupsex, and she would like to interview me. I suggested that talking about sex in general would make more sense; not that many women were interested in groupsex. She said the paper felt it was worth noting. Since it was an opportunity to reach a lot of women, I could at least talk about some positive things I'd learned from attending sex parties as well as throwing in a good word for masturbation.

Several weeks later, at seven o'clock Monday morning, the phone woke me from a sound sleep. A strange man's voice said how wonderful I was and then asked me for a date. I declined his offer and hung up quickly. The phone rang again. This time it was a man wanting to be invited to a groupsex party. That's when I realized the Times article had hit the newsstands. Dozens of commuters coming into the city were going to call me. At ten o'clock, I finally had a cup of coffee and called Grant asking him to bring a copy of the newspaper so I could read the article. When he said it was mostly a put down of groupsex, I groaned. He reminded me that it was the New York Times. What did I expect?

The phone was ringing again. This caller was a woman, so I relaxed my defensive posture. She asked in a sweet voice if I was the person in the Times article on groupsex? I told her I was, expecting a pleasant conversation when suddenly, "Filth! Whore! Fucking Pig!" blasted into my ear. "You're dirty garbage! Gutter slop! Pig shit! Burn in hell." Then she slammed down the receiver. My only obscene caller was a woman! She called back twenty minutes later, shouting the same dirty words in the same order; obviously the extent of her swearing vocabulary. Between ten a.m. and three p.m., she called exactly sixteen times. When she finally stopped, I figured she was fixing dinner for her family from a recipe she'd gotten off the women's page.

The headline read: "Group Sex: Is It 'Life Art' or a Sign That Something Is Wrong?" It was estimated that over two million people were involved. Psychologists, anthropologists, and the clergy were quoted. Swingers were characterized as being fearful of emotional involvement. Two categories were identified; utopian swingers," who were "concerned with building a better world," and "recreational swingers," who thought sharing sex openly was more fun than playing bridge or golf; neat little academic distinctions that were as wrong as they were right. We qualified in both categories. Only one male sex educator was brave enough to say groupsex might benefit a marriage if both partners were equally enthusiastic. As for the clergy, one rabbi saw groupsex as "a disintegrating force," and a catholic priest said it as "a new form of prostitution."

There were two positive interviews: Mine as a single woman, and another with a young married couple, John and Mimi Lobel, who were both architects. We were the only people whose photographs, ages, and names appeared, making us visible targets. As a single woman, I was the biggest target of all. The telephone was ringing again. Laura and Grant both agreed I was going to crack up if I didn't stop picking up the phone doing my "research" while taking notes. They pulled me out of my apartment and we drove off for a few days of R&R in the country.

Not long after that, my feminist girlfriend Pauline invited me to a meeting with a few prominent women in the movement. The first thing I asked was had they read the Evergreen article? She said every feminist she knew had either read it or heard about it. Most of them liked some of what I said, but they found the part about not owning another person unrealistic. They all believed commitment and monogamy were natural components of a loving relationship. When I started to describe the difference between romantic love and erotic love, she said I could explain all that tomorrow at the meeting. She'd pick me up at two o'clock, sharp.

We arrived at Brenda's palatial East Side apartment to find about ten women deep in conversation. Sitting there quietly, I tried to understand all the political talk 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 was from the "A" list of society. Pauline and I looked like two scruffy hippies next to these tastefully dressed, well-spoken, college educated women. There was no way I was going to bring up sex in that kind of setting. These women made love under satin sheets with the men of their dreams who probably owned a large piece of Wall Street.

When Flo Kennedy showed up sporting her symbolic cowboy hat covered with women's liberation buttons, she changed the tone of the meeting. "Okay sisters," she said in a firm voice, "If we don't start kickin' ass in Washington, we ain't going no where." Then she turned to me and said she'd read my interview. She couldn't understand why everybody made such a big fuss over sex. It was as overrated as home cooking. I said she might be right, but when sex and home cooking was good, they were hard to beat.

Gloria asked what I planned to do next. I said I was on my way to Wichita to visit my mother. She suggested I start a NOW group while I was there. It felt like I'd just been honored with an assignment from our feminist General. A few days later, I was excitedly telling Mother about being in the inner circle of the women's movement. She thought I was overly enthusiastic, as usual, but listened with interest. Her concern was that I'd get too involved with all this liberation business and neglect my art. As it turned out, she was absolutely right.

The following afternoon I was on the phone, calling friends from high school and college days. They were all married and raising families. None of them knew what they were supposed to be liberated from. They were doing what they wanted to do. What on earth was I talking about? By the third day I began calling women I worked with at the Wichita Beacon newspaper. My friend Liz had been reading articles about feminism with great interest. She said she knew a few other women at Wichita University who might also be interested.

That Wednesday night about a dozen women showed up to discuss setting up a NOW chapter. To begin, I started talking about equal rights, but when I heard myself stumbling over "historical examples of our political repression," I stopped mid sentence and confessed that I didn't know that much about women's history and politics. I'd prefer to give them my sexual version of feminism. Using my experience, one story followed another fluently: embarrassment about getting contraception, the illegal kitchen table abortion, my desperate search for a prince who turned out to be a premature ejaculating frog, and seven years of guilt ridden marital masturbation. I contrasted that with my post marital love affair with mutual orgasms, and how I could now enjoy guilt free masturbation. I wisely decided to leave out my more extreme ideas.

Jane spoke up first, her voice on the verge of tears. She was Catholic, and had never masturbated. After her divorce, she decided to never marry again so she'd lived the last twenty years without sex. Marie who was sitting next to her said she'd been married for the last twenty years and she'd lived without sex too. That broke the ice. We had a lively discussion with humor and pathos as we raised our awareness of women's second class position in society. Shortly after that meeting, the Wichita chapter of NOW was formed.

My trip to Wichita had been fruitful: mission accomplished. Back in New York, I realized there was no person or place where I could check in and get my next assignment. Obviously I was on my own. What the hell kind of a revolution was I into anyway? There were many opinions and much controversy about that question alone. Pauline explained it boiled down to moderates vs. radicals, but there were two kinds of radicals: The New Left said socialism came first, while Radical Feminists said women came first. The moderates wanted to work within the system and avoid gay issues for fear of sinking the whole movement. In my opinion avoiding gay issues was avoiding sex! We needed a sexually liberated sisterhood that embraced all sex styles.

That fall, I attended a big feminist summit conference held at Jill Johnston's country house. She wrote an ongoing column in The Village Voice. The meeting of over fifty women was to bridge the gap between heterosexuals and lesbians. All the big names in the movement were there plus a few I'd never met but had heard of before. That day I was baby-sitting Pauline who went berserk every time she heard the word "lesbian." Whenever she spoke about feminism in front of audiences, lesbians heckled her the most.

As I sat in the middle of the emotional crossfire zinging between straights and gays, I felt like a non combatant bisexual elf. As the madness picked up, Jill got drunk and had a crying jag. Finally I heard a sane voice from a renowned author. For years she'd had both male and female lovers. It gave her a better perspective about people in general. After she spoke, there was a hush, but the healing concept of bisexuality didn't faze them. Although there'd been agreements about working together for the common cause, we all walked off with the opposing camps intact. Back home, I lit a candle, and sank into a hot bubble bath, wondering if feminist politics and sexual pleasure could ever exist side by side.