Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!jarthur!uci-ics!gateway
From: ellene@microsoft.UUCP (Ellen EADES)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: "Off Our Backs" magazine cover
Message-ID: <54993@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 1 Jun 90 23:42:30 GMT
References: <265df9d5.1abd@petunia.CalPoly.EDU>
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 55
Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu

Reply-To:ellene@microsof.uucp (Ellen Eades)


In article <265df9d5.1abd@petunia.CalPoly.EDU> dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Dave Gross) writes:
>  I [...] found the latest issue of that oft-mentioned feminist journal
>  "Off Our Backs." The cover illustration was a brick wall with the following
>  graffiti:  DEAD MEN DON'T RAPE.

I infer from this that Dave was overcome with hostility and did not bother
to read the article linked with the cover photograph.  I happen to be a
proud subscriber to _off our backs_.  The brick wall runs along a bicycle
trail in Arlington, Virginia, a trail that runs parallel to the I-66
highway.  It is a well-lit trail that is used all hours of the day and
night by runners, bikers, strollers, and folks heading to the subways.
It is picturesque and peaceful, and it gives the impression of safety and
security.

On March 31st of this year a young woman took the trail on her way to the
subway.  She was traveling to her own birthday party.  When she did not
arrive, her friends went out looking for her.  They found her in a back
staircase the next morning.  She had been pulled off the trail, beaten and
stabbed to death.

That same evening, the man who is the prime suspect in this murder also
chased a jogging woman (she outran him) and then grabbed another woman off
her bicycle and sexually assaulted her.

The graffiti Dave refers to is now appearing along the wall at the site of
the murder and assaults on women.

In the current issue of _off our backs_, two women, Angela Johnson and
Carol Anne Douglas (both members of the off our backs collective) write
contrasting commentaries to the previous issue's cover article.  Johnson
finds the shock value of the graffiti empowering, and the anger a message
to both women and men that rape and murder will no longer be tolerated
by women, that women refuse to be victims any longer.  Douglas writes
that she loves individual men and while she understands and shares the
pain and anger of the graffiti writers, she does not support the idea of
killing all men (I point this out to refute Dave's implication that all
feminists, or all of the oob collective, support the killing of men to
eliminate the rape of women).

I find _off our backs_ an extremely valuable news source for information
on women's issues which I would not find in any ordinary journal.  I
learn that Amnesty International does not concern itself with wife-burning,
sexual mutilation, the killing of prostitutes.  I learn that the National
Hate Crimes Bill specifically excludes women's issues.  I learn that a
recent Radical Women conference was more concerned with Marxism than with
feminism.  I read a feminist review of the movie "The Handmaid's Tale."
I get to laugh with the comic strip _Dykes to Watch Out For_.  I read
abortion news, health news, international news.

Dave just looks at the pictures, I guess.

Ellen Eades (uunet!microsoft!ellene)