THE FURIES: INTRODUCTORY ESSAY BY GINNY BERSON

(Furies office in basement of 221 llth St. SE, mailing out the newspaper, L-R Ginny Berson, Susan Baker, Coletta Reid [standing], Rita Mae Brown, and Lee Schwing. All were members of the collective except Susan Baker. © JEB Joan E. Biren)

In January 1972, a collective of 12 lesbian-feminists in Washington, DD who had named themselves The FURIES began publishing a monthly newsletter, also named The FURIES. This single periodical played a role in the development of lesbian-feminist theory that cannot be overestimated. A year later, ten of these women would begin planning a women's record company that would eventually become Olivia Records, one of the flagships of Women's Music.

Due to the efforts of the Rainbow History Project, all but one of the issues of The FURIES is available online, along with a good herstory and some of JEB's photographs. However, the newsletters are saved as PDF files, which preserves the integrity of the publication but does not allow for online searches of terms. Therefore, I intend to periodically transcribe one of these pivotal essays and post it here for further preservation of our community history (so rapidly being revised and distorted).

I'm starting with the first essay of the first issue, an article by Ginny Berson about The Furies, past and present, and their statement of purpose. It appears after the fold.

Members of The Furies Collective have been identified by Dr. Annie Valk as Ginny Berson, Joan Biren (JEB), Rita Mae Brown, Charlotte Bunch, Sharon Deevey, Susan Hathaway, Helaine Harris, Nancy Myron, Tasha Peterson, Coletta Reid, Lee Schwing, and Jennifer Woodhul.

Below is the table of contents for Issue #1. You may go to the link above to read more on your own.

THE FURIES, ISSUE #1, JANUARY 1972
The Furies, by Ginny Berson
Such a Nice Girl ..., by Sharon Deevey
Women: Weak or Strong, by Lee Schwing
The Dentist, by Ginny Berson
Roxanne Dunbar: how a female heterosexual serves the interests of male supremacy, by Rita Mae Brown
Edward the Dyke and other poems, by Judy Grahn [NOTE: This is not the poem "Edward the Dyke" but instead work from that collection, including two I have published here at my blog, "Detroit Annie Hitchhiking" and "A History of Lesbianism"
Lesbians in Revolt: Male Supremacy Quakes and Quivers, by Charlotte Bunch for the Furies Collective
Queen Christina: Lesbian Ruler of Sweden, by Helaine Harris
Gossip, by Rita Mae Brown
The Price is Wrong, by Susan Hathaway
What's Going On (lesbian news)


(The Anger of Achilles, painted 1819 by Jacques-Louis David; Achilles has just been told by Agamemnon that he will not be allowed to marry Iphigenia because Agamemnon intends to murder he as sacrifice in hopes of changing the winds so he can sail to battle at Troy; Iphigenia is behind her arrogant father, and behind her is her devastated mother, Clytemnestra, who has one brief moment of hope that Achilles will slay her husband and save her daughter's life. This massive painting hangs in the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, Texas; the first time I saw it, I broke down in tears.)

THE FURIES by Ginny Berson, in The Furies #1, January 1972, p. 1

The story of the Furies is the story of strong, powerful women, the "Angry Ones, the avengers of matricide, the protectors of women. Three Greek Goddesses, they were described (by men) as having snakes for hair, blood-shot eyes, and bats' wings; like Lesbians today, they were cursed and feared. They were born when Heaven (the male symbol) was castrated by his son at the urging of Earth (the female symbol). The blood from the wound fell on Earth and fertilized her, and the Furies were born. Their names were Alecto (Never-ceasing), Tisiphone (Avenger of Blood), and Magaera (Grudger). Once extremely powerful, they represented the supremacy of women and the primacy of mother right.

Their most famous exploit (famous because in it they lost much of their power) involved Orestes in the last episode connected with the cycle of the Trojan War. Orestes, acting on the orders of the Sun God Apollo, killed his mother Clytemnestra, because she had killed his father. Clytemnestra had killed the father because he had sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia, in order to get favorable winds so his fleet could sail to Troy. The Furies tormented Orestes; they literally drove him crazy, putting him under a spell where for days he could not eat or wash his blood-stained hands. He bit off his finger to try to appease them, but to no avail. Finally, in desperation, Orestes went before the court of Athena to plead his case.

The point at issue was whether matricide was justifiable to avenge your father's murder, or in other words, whether men or women were to dominate. Apollo defended Orestes and totally denied the importance of motherhood, claiming that women were no more than passive sperm receptacles for men, and that the father was the only parent worthy of the name. One might have thought that Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, would have condemned Orestes, but Athena was the creation of the male God, Zeus, sprung full-grown from his head, the first token woman. Athena decided for Orestes. Some mythologists say that Zeus, Athena, and Apollo had conspired from the beginning, ordering Orestes to kill his mother in order to put an end, once and for all, to the religious belief that motherhood was more divine than fatherhood. In any case, that was the result.

The Furies were, of course, furious, and threatened to lay waste to the city of Athens. But Athena had a direct line to Zeus, King of the Gods; she told the Furies to accept the new male supremacist order or lose everything. Some of the Furies and followers relented, the rest pursued Orestes until his death.

We call our paper The FURIES because we are also angry. We are angry because we are oppressed by male supremacy. We have been fucked over all our lives by a system which is based on the domination of men over women, which defines male as good and female as only as good as the man you are with. It is a system in which heterosexuality is rigidly enforced and Lesbianism rigidly suppressed. It is a system which has further divided us by class, race, and nationality.

We are working to change this system which has kept us separate and powerless for so long. We are a collective of twelve Lesbians living and working in Washington, D.C. We are rural and urban; from the Southwest, Midwest, South and Northeast. Our ages range from 18 to 28. We are high school drop-outs and Ph.D. candidates. We are lower class, middle class and upper-middle class. We are white. Some of us have been Lesbians for twelve years, others for ten months. We are committed to ending all oppressions by attacking their roots -- male supremacy.

We believe The FURIES will make important contributions to the growing movement to destroy sexism. As a collective, in addition to outside projects, we are spending much time building an ideology which is the basis for action. For too long, women in the Movement have fallen prey to the very male propaganda they seek to refute. They have rejected thought, building an ideology, and all intellectual activity as the realm of men, and tried to build a politics based only on feelings -- the area traditionally left to women. The philosophy has been, "if it feels good, it's O.K. If not, forget it." But that is like saying that strength, which is a "male" characteristic, should be left to men, and women should embrace weakness. Most straight women, to say nothing of men, feel afraid or contemptuous of Lesbians. That fear and contempt is similar to the feelings middle class whites have toward Blacks or lower class people. These feelings are the result of our socialization and are hardly worth glorifying. This is not to say that feelings are irrelevant, only that they are derived from our experience which is limited by our class, race, etc. Furthermore, feelings are too often used to excuse inaction and inability to change.

A political movement cannot advance without systematic thought and practical organization. The haphazard, non-strategic, zig-zag tactics of the straight women's movement, the male left, and many other so-called revolutionary groups have led only to frustration and dissolution. We do not want to make those same mistakes; our ideology forms the basis for developing long-range strategies and short-term tactics, projects, and actions.

The base of our ideological thought is: Sexism is the root of all other oppressions, and Lesbian and woman oppression will not end by smashing capitalism, racism, and imperialism. Lesbianism is not a matter of sexual preference, but rather one of political choice which every woman must make if she is to become woman-identified and thereby end male supremacy. Lesbians, as outcasts from every culture but their own, have the most to gain by ending race, class, and national supremacy within their own ranks. Lesbians must get out of the straight women's movement and form their own movement in order to be taken seriously, to stop straight women from oppressing us, and to force straight women to deal with their own Lesbianism. Lesbians cannot develop a common politics with women who do not accept Lesbianism as a political issue.

In this (see page 8) and following issues of The FURIES we will share our thoughts with you. We welcome your comments, letters, articles, fiction, poetry, news, graphics, and support. We want to build a movement in this country and in the world which can effectively stop the violent, sick, oppressive acts of male supremacy. We want to build a movement which makes all people free.

For the Chinese women whose feet were bound and crippled; for the Ibibos of Africa whose clitori were mutilated; for every woman who has ever been raped, physically, economically, psychologically, we take the name of the FURIES, Goddesses of Vengeance and protectors of women.

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READERS' LINKS

Readers of this blog tend to share their sources and links, as they are a well-read and curious bunch. To their frustration, links don't always come out correctly in the comments box. Therefore, I've gone back, checked them all out, and turned them into HTML to be shared here. Keep 'em coming in, folks. I'll do this regularly as need arises.

Regarding Class and Classism, Kat shares an article by Michael Young, the man who coined the term "meritocracy", first used in his book The Rise of the Meritocracy in 1958. The article, Down With Meritocracy, appears in the 29 June 2001 issue of The Guardian with a tagline "The man who coined the word four decades ago wishes Tony Blair would stop using it".

Surrounded by an exhibition of her life's work, and greeted by three hundred guests and old friends, the photographer enjoys Alice Austen Day in Richmondtown, October 9, 1951. (Photo by Yale Joel, Time-Life Picture Agency, © Time Inc.)
Regarding Alice Austen, the ground-breaking woman-identifed photographer of a century ago, Liza links us to the website maintained by those who run the Alice Austen House, Clear Comfort, a National Historical Landmark on Staten Island, NY, including herstory of Alice Austen, the photographer, her life and work

(Untitled, 1979, by JEB -- a clue as to what African-American dykes actually looked like in the late 70s, instead of Clarice)
Regarding another photography pioneer, JEB (Joan E. Biren) whose slideshow in 1978 also paid tribute to Alice Austen, there's a great interview with her by Carol Ann Douglas in Off Our Backs, January 1998. In this interview, JEB says "The reason that I became a photographer was to make lesbians visible. I became a photographer to photograph lesbians and make those images accessible to other lesbians. At the time that I became a photographer, in 1971, there weren't images that were authentic, that reflected who I was, that I had ever seen. I had never seen a picture of a lesbian like myself.

"There was nothing. Nothing is not an exaggeration in this.

"Part of my work was to go back into history and uncover those earlier images, which existed but were not accessible.

"I've done a lot of photohistory as well. One of the ways that I supported myself early on was to travel around the country with slide shows that talked about the history of lesbian photography and to share those images with communities of lesbians in way that was accessible and affordable. It didn't require a lot of money, like publishing a book. That was wonderful work, to be able to travel around and feed this available hunger that people had to see themselves. It was nice to be the bearer of those pictures.

"It was my life's work to make more and varied and true images of who we are and how we live our lives. To me, the words "lesbian" and photographer go together very easily."

(Furies office in basement of 219 llth St. SE, Washington, DC circa 1972, mailing out the newspaper, l. to rt. Ginny Berson, Susan Baker, Coletta Reid [standing], Rita Mae Brown, and Lee Schwing. Photo taken by JEB, copyright hers.)

JEB co-founded (along with others, including Rita Mae Brown and Charlotte Bunch) The Furies, a shortlived but extremely influential lesbian separatist collective that flourished in 1971 and 1972. She published many of her early images in the collective's newspaper, The Furies. She is the author of two groundbreaking volumes of photography: Eye To Eye: Portraits of Lesbians (1979), the pioneering photographic book that made lesbian existence visible as never before, Making a Way: Lesbians Out Front (1987), a vigorous affirmation of lesbian lives that portrays 125 women. You can also check out her page at the American Lesbian Photography website.

Regarding Captain Oates of the Scott South Pole Expedition and Antarctic exploration in general, little gator shares several sources. The first is Scott of the Antarctic - 1868 to 1912, a website with extensive background, history, photos and links. Within this is found the information that Oates' famous last comment, "I am just going outside and I may be some time", is a remark they generally used to excuse themselves from the tent for toileting purposes.

(Scott's Expedition at the South Pole, January 18, 1912 L to R: Edward Wilson, Henry Bowers, Edgar Evans, Robert Scott, Lawrence Oates)

Finding the Bodies at the website Antarctic Heroes entry for 12 November 1912, I'm going to copy in this entry in full because of an extremely interesting line that is all but tossed away at the end:

"Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his men had been expected back at their base camp in March 1912. When they failed to return for the winter, his men knew they must be dead. On 29 October, Dr Edward Atkinson, the expedition leader in Scott's absence, headed south with a twelve-man search party.
On 12 November, barely ten miles from One Ton Depot, they found a tent, partially covered with snow. They set up camp and dug out the tent. Then each of the men went inside to view the bodies, so there would be no dispute over what they had found.
The only Norwegian on the Terra Nova expedition, Tryggve Gran, later recalled what they saw:
‘I stayed outside... as a Norwegian it was not my place. The others undid the tent flaps and went inside. Wilson was lying quite peacefully, his feet towards the entrance... Bowers, the other direction. Wilson had died peacefully... Scott was between them, half sitting up, one hand reached out to Wilson. Then I heard a noise... like a pistol shot... I was told this was Scott's arm breaking as they raised it to take away the journals strapped under his arm. Scott had died dreadfully... his face contorted with frostbite.'

"After recovering the party's papers and geological samples, and some small personal items, Atkinson collapsed the tent on the bodies and built a cairn over the spot. Further south, they found Oates' sleeping bag, but not his body. "

Emphasis on the above line is mine. If he was "just going outside" as reported by Scott, either to take a dump or inobtrusively leaving to give them permission to leave him behind, what's with his taking his sleeping bag along? My suspicions are now raised, and I immediately think of Roland Huntsford's controversial theory that Scott hounded Oates out of the tent.

The third recommended link is more traditional Scott hero-worship by Dr. Donald Stevens in British Heroism They Would Rather We Forgot.

(Machu Picchu -- Incas gave potatoes to the world)

I myself researched a few links for those of you interested in why buy brown eggs, why eat different colored potatoes, and the question of monoculture in our agricultural base. First is a good New York Times article about potatoes from 1995 by Florence Fabricant, So You Thought a Potato Must Be From Idaho or L. I..

Another source is Which Came First - Brown Eggs or the White by Tammy Dobbs. Through her I found the exhaustive chart The ICYouSee
Handy-Dandy Chicken Chart, "An Alphabetical List of More than 60 Chicken Breeds With Comparative Information".


A Q&A about egg color elsewhere states: "Here in the United States, almost all the eggs sold are white. You've probably seen brown eggs now and again, perhaps at your local grocery store or more likely at the food co-op or the farmer's market, but mostly you've seen white. You may have even wondered why this is and what the differences are. I have an answer or two.

What are the differences?
The color of the shell. That's it. Nutritionally, there is no difference between chicken eggs from different colored shells. Once they shell is cracked and the egg is in the mixing bowl or the frying pan there is no difference.
Argument from me about this statement: White chickens are easier to raise in cages and therefore are more cost effective and convenient for the commercial chicken farmer. The chickens that lay brown eggs are larger and eat more, and thus are more likely to be free-range rather than raised in cages. The chicken-raisers I know, as well as my own palate, tells me there is a big difference in taste between the two, and if there is a noticeable difference in taste, I have trouble believing there is no difference in nutrition.

What determines the shell color?
The color of the shell is determined by the breed of the chicken. Rhode Island Reds and Buff Orpingtons lay brown eggs. Blue Andalusian eggs are white, and Araucanas lay eggs that are green.

Why does my local supermarket only have white eggs?
Most eggs that make their way to market come from corporate agriculture. And the corporations have found that the most efficient egg-laying breed is the White Leghorn. And the White Leghorn lays, you guessed it, a white egg. That's why you'll sometimes see folks who are backers of biodiversity tell you to buy brown eggs. A brown egg did not come from a White Leghorn, but from some other breed. And often eggs from free range chickens or organic eggs are brown because the farmers who raise animals this way often are also interested in breed diversity.


Lastly, if you want a GREAT weekly read wherever you live by a right-on organic farmer, sign up to receive the free e-mail of Carol Ann Sayle's "News of the Farm" from Austin's own award-winning Boggy Creek Farm. Tell her Maggie sent ya.

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