If Malvina were living in these times, she would be blogging. From 1976 until she died in 1978, Malvina put out an occasional newsletter called Sporadic Times. This meant typing on a typewriter, going to the copy shop, addressing the copies, and mailing them by snailmail. If she’d had the internet, I’m guessing Sporadic would have been less sporadic. Here’s the first item from the third issue, June, 1976.

It’s a bit early for my epitaph, but I’ve made a resolution to get things done on time and not wait till the last minute.

 

                Wake For a Singer

    Celebrate my death for the good times I’ve had,

    For the work that I’ve done and the friends that I’ve made,

    Celebrate my death, of whom it could be said,

    “She was a workingclass woman, and a red.”

 

    My man was the best, a comrade and a friend,

    Fighting on the good side to the very end,

    My child was a darling, merry, strong and fine,

    And all the world’s children were mine.

 

I’ve been on the side of women’s liberation ever since I can remember, and my mother was, too. I have supported the fight for equality no matter what the size shape color age or sex, religion, nationality or race.

But I have always been uneasy about being identified as a Feminist, not quite knowing what the word meant, or that anyone quite knew, but feeling that there was war between the sexes implicit.

On Thursday, the day before I left, it looked as though the evening’s concert and subsequent ones would never happen. Some individual women, extremist Separatists (my first contact with this movement), had threatened to disrupt the concert unless all men were ordered from the hall. A leaflet signed by a number of the performers and functionaries had been distributed, but the extremist threat was verbal. The leaflet said, in part, “Because of past experience in a sexist society, men, (regardless of their politics, consciousness, and good intentions) negatively alter the dynamic of a woman-space because they represent our oppression. Recognizing the crucial importance of that woman-space, free of real and/or symbolic oppression, has made many performers choose to work with all women. It has encouraged many women producers to work with all women. But so often, the audience is being denied the pleasure of that valuable all-women experience...We are sorry that the decision was made for the festival to be open to men.”

If men were barred from the auditorium, the Festival would have come to an end, because discriminating in a public place is against the law.

There was a quick meeting by the committee and some performers, and they issued this statement. “As performers we demand the right to perform our music and present our views. We also represent the right of our audience to hear us.

“All performers knew that the concerts would be open to women and men.

“The reality is that refusal to comply with Title IX, which guarantees the right of men to enter the concerts, will terminate the festival immediately.”

I, too, distributed a letter. The young women in the Festival office scrambled, in spite of the lateness of the day and closed facilities, to get it run off for me. I do not know what their own position on the matter was, but they could not have been more helpful.

“The Physical exclusion of men from a Women’s music Festival is a mechanical, sterile and unpolitical way of dealing with the matter of our liberation.

“A Man who comes to our concert is already half a convert and worth educating. If he is basically an oppressor, he will find that he is in the wrong place. The likelihood of his coming to the concert is small, and he would be immediately and easily psychologically overpowered.

“To class all men together is a stereotyping, false and unproductive. I have worked with men, including my husband of forty years, in organizations of struggle for freedom, for a decent world for all creatures.

“The time is short. We need to be together with all possible allies.

“We talk of woman space. But unless we find ways of reconciling so that we can united confront the common enemy, there will soon be no space for anyone.

    “Your loving sister,

        Malvina”

The letters were distributed at the door of the auditorium. I was heartened by the many young women who came up to me and thanked me for voicing this position, for the extremists were well organized and emphatic, and the others had felt overwhelmed.

The anger of the Feminist women is understandable.

The system of capitalism, by means of its accumulations of money and power has been able to maintain itself into a period when it is a total anachronism, so that everything it touches is poisoned. There is no longer any productive, creative place in society for these young women, nor for the young men, either, who are their contemporaries. They are all rejected and bitter and they take it out on the nearest and most obvious--each other.

We have to get smart. The beginning of wisdom is to know our enemy, and unite our talents, our strength, our courage, to put it out of business and make way for the new time.