sheet and all that that white sheet symbolized to hide this man’s
own physical vulnerability to attack. He himself was nondescript;
the Klan was not. When I recognized the fear this man inspired in
me, and measured that fear against his own physical presence, I
felt ashamed: and yet I was still afraid of him . *
*Klan and Nazi groups threatened violence at the convention: we were
promised bombings and beatings. Some women were in fact beaten up,
others were physically threatened, and the possibility of being hurt was
considered both real and immediate by all the conference participants with
whom I talked.
He said that women needed the protection of men. He said that
the Klan had sent men to the convention to protect their womenfolk from the lesbians, who would assault them. He said that it was necessary to protect women’s right to have families because that
was the key to the stability of the nation. He said that homosexuality was a Jew sickness. He said that homosexuality was a lust that threatened to wipe out the family. He said that homosexual
teachers should be found out and run out of any town they were
in. T hey could all go to Jew New York. T ryin g to keep up m y end
of the conversation, I asked him w hy he was against homosexual
teachers, especially if their homosexuality was private. He said that
there was no such thing as private homosexuality, that if homosexuals were in schools, children would be corrupted and tainted and molested and taught to hate God and the fam ily; homosexuality
would claim the women and the children if they were exposed to
it; its presence at all, even hidden, anywhere, would take people
from family life and put them into sin. His description was almost voluptuous in that no one, in his estimation, would remain untouched.
Are you really saying, I asked slowly and clearly and loudly (so
that the women delegates could continue to overhear the conversation), that if homosexuality were openly visible as a sexual possibility or if there were homosexual teachers in schools, everyone would choose to abandon heterosexuality and the family? Are you
really saying, I asked carefully and clearly and slowly, that homosexuality is so attractive that no one would choose the heterosexual family over it? He stared at me, silent, a long time. 1 am afraid of
violence and the Klan, and I was afraid of him. 1 repeated my
questions. “You’re a Jew , ain’t y a , ” he said and turned away from
me, stared straight ahead. All the women in the row who had been
looking at me also turned away and stared straight ahead in utter
silence. The only woman whose head had been otherwise engaged
had not looked up except once: she had taken one hard stare at me
in the beginning and had then turned back to her work: knitting
blue baby booties, the Klan’s own Madame Defarge; and I could
imagine my name being transferred by the work of those hands
from the press pass on my chest into that baby-blue wool. She sat
next to the Klansman, and she knitted and knitted. Yes, I am a
Jew , I said. I repeated my questions. He memorized my face, then
stared straight ahead.
In my few remaining minutes on the floor, I implored the Mississippi women to talk to me. I went hurriedly from row to row, expecting somewhere to find one rebellious sign of interest or simple compassion. One woman dared to speak to me in whispers, but did not dare look at me; instead she looked down into her own lap,
and the woman next to her got jittery and upset and kept telling
her to “think again. ” She whispered that she was against the Equal
Rights Amendment because girls would have to go to war. I said:
we say we love our children but isn’t it true that if we send our
boys to war we can’t love them very much? why are we willing to
have them killed if we love them? At this point the marshals forced
me physically to leave the floor. They did not ask or tell or say,
“Tim e’s up”; they pushed. *
In the face of the Klan and the marshals, I risked one more trip
back to the Mississippi delegation. On the floor, delegates were
milling around; it was a brief recess (but the same strict time limits
applied for journalists). In the sheer confusion of the numbers and
the noise, the discipline of the Mississippi delegation had relaxed
slightly. A Mississippi woman explained to me that as a Christian
woman she was in a superior position, and that this superior position was not to be traded for an equal position. I asked her if she really meant to say that boys were less valuable; and was that why
we sacrificed them in wars— because we didn’t think they were
worth very much? She said that it was the nature of boys to guard
*The system o f press access to the convention floor that favored male
journalists over female was set up by a male “feminist. ” It was outrageously, unashamedly, and inexcusably sex-discriminatory.
and to protect, which included going to war and also taking care of
their families. She was not prepared to say that boys were less
valuable than girls, only that women were superior to men in
Christianity, had a favored place based on and because of the
male’s role as protector. God, she said, wanted her husband to
protect her. The Equal Rights Amendment would force her to take
responsibility for decision making and for money. She did not
want to take this responsibility because to do so would be against
the w ill of God. She then said that she was equal spiritually in
God’s eyes but in no other w ay. I said that seemed to mean that in
every other w ay she was inferior, not superior. She said that feminists want women and men to be the same but that God says they are different. The Equal Rights Amendment would permit homosexuality because men and women would no longer be as different as God wanted them to be. Being homosexual was a sin because
women tried to be the same as men, and homosexuality confused
the differences between men and women, those differences being
the will of God. The recess ended, and with the return of order
(delegates seated and under discipline again) no more talk between
the Mississippi woman and m yself was possible. The marshals approached; don’t you fucking touch me, I said loudly, ending forever the possibility of further conversation with the Mississippi delegation; and I ran out fast so that the marshals fucking wouldn’t
touch me.
The Utah delegation had women supporters who attended the