- Good evening, welcome to A Feminist Perspective. This program is brought to you by the Women's Resource and Career Planning Center which is located in the Dean of Women's Office. We've collected a wide variety of materials and personnel in this office. And we are here to discuss with you any problem that's of concern to you. We hope that you'll come in to read materials, to talk with people and to get help with whatever problems that you feel that you have. Tonight we're going to be discussing consciousness raising groups. This term has a very special meaning but I suspect it also has some very individual meanings to a lot of different people. We have three panelists, Cindy Kasey, Kasey is that right Cindy?

- Yes.

- Who's a junior in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Kansas. Connie Loskott, who's also a junior in the college at KU and Quincy Lee Striggle, commonly known as Que Striggle that's what will call you tonight for convenience. Who she says can be defined as either a faculty member at Otterbein University or graduate student at KU and Speech. And I like to start by asking you folks, Cindy why don't you start, tell us when did you first hear about the consciousness raising groups and how'd you get involved?

- That's really hard to say. I heard of them for quite a long time before I actually got into one. The first consciousness raising group I got into was this semester in Ellsworth Hall with, well it started with two other friends of mine who also wanted to start a consciousness raising group. So the three of us simply put up signs and said we were going to start one.

- Is that how you got in Connie in the same group? Did you see the sign or were you in on the discussion?

- I was asked my opinion and I helped put up the sign.

- Well, how about your Que when did you first hear about them and how did you get involved?

- Well, of course, I think we'd all heard about them for a long time, in terms of, if you've done any reading in the feminist movement. My first experience goes all the way back to the sort of fatal spring of 1970 here on campus. When we had all of the problems going on on campus and classes ended earlier than a lot of us had expected. At that particular time, they formulated a lot of seminars on various subjects that might be of interest to students who were not formally attending classes. And some of the groups that I went to involved women's issues. There were some people here, mainly people from out of town at that point who were interested in starting women's groups in Lawrence. So it was kind of interesting. One of these two women who were doing this work had a meeting in their apartment, just sort of posters around campus as you girls did and say, anybody who's interested in women's groups sort of show up. So I went with two other friends of mine and we registered in a group and it was kind of a situation where they said okay, you eight go off and be a group. So I had, three people that we knew and five others that were total strangers. Sort of wandering out of their apartment and the nearest place that we could find to hold our first meeting was in the lounge of the ladies room and the KU Union. So from that we started our group which lasted for approximately two years. There were probably about 15 people that were in and out of the group. Of course it was somewhat of a transient society here. There were three of us who started with the group and ended with the group during that whole two year period and many others that were in and out but most of them were fairly stable. Most of the people who were in the group were in it for at least a year's time. And so it was a very intense kind of long experience for all of us.

- Well, I expect we'd better say, first of all, what is a consciousness raising group? You said that this meeting was called in the spring of 72. Just to talk about feminist issues. There are lots of ways of talking about feminist issues. Is anyway when a group of people get together called a consciousness raising group, or does this have a special meaning?

- I think it has a special meaning for me in that it means dealing with very personal kinds of things rather than dealing with you might I think of a social issues or public issues or the kind of thing that you would go out and try to do by passing legislation or repealing laws or formulating new laws or these kinds of things. It deals with women getting together on a very personal level, very quietly, very grassroots, very spontaneous and talking about the things that really seem important or significant to them as individuals. That's why I think the nature of the groups tend to be very different according to the kinds of persons who were involved in the groups and things that are important to them.

- Would you folks agree that this defines a conscious raising group?

- Quite a bit.

- Well, what about, what do you call a group that gets together to say discuss changing legislation or do you assume though that there's already an expertise their knowledge of themselves and what they stand for or does that have a special name or?

- I don't know if it has a special name or not, but it's not a consciousness raising group in that probably these women have already had their consciousness raised to the point where they know what legislation they wanna pass and things like this. Whereas the consciousness raising group, just starting maybe hasn't gotten that far yet.

- Would it be possible to, let's say that there was some something which someone felt very strongly ought to be done. We use the example of the law again a law that needs to be passed or one that needs to be changed. But you don't have unanimity of opinion about it because there are some women who neither know or your care whether the law existed or not or wouldn't feel personally involved with it. As far as you got together a group like that and there was a discussion of what those needs were would it still not be a consciousness raising group?

- Oh no, I have a feeling it would still raise a lot of consciousness simply because dealing with differences of feeling and opinion is always a learning experience and something that makes you more aware of how other people are acting and reacting. A good example of this that I think is very predominant in the women's movement would be repeal of abortion laws. Some people feel very strongly that the law should be stricter than they are. And some people feel very strongly that there should be no laws whatsoever regarding abortion. And that way you have an opportunity to learn from each other, why do people feel as they do? And it becomes a sharing experience which I always think is consciousness raising in an ultimate sense. So I think there's a lot of room. Oh, well one of the things I really like about the women's movement and the small group is the fact that there is a great deal of room for differences of opinion. And those opinions generally find a great deal of acceptance. Everyone has the right to feelings that are of a different nature. I don't think there's any one line that runs throughout the feminist movement at all.

- Do you and know about the beginnings of the consciousness raising groups of what the point was of whoever started the first one and starting it? Ever wondered about that? I've read some interesting things that I just wondering you might react to them, one. One woman in New York who is very active in some feminist groups there withdrew from a consciousness raising group because she said they never did anything. It never led to action. The ones that you've gone to have you expected that when people's consciousness were raised, that action would result?

- You mean like going out and working towards repealing laws? I haven't, I felt that action was being accomplished in how they related to other people, if they could change their relationship to other women and other men, they've accomplished something.

- I have feeling that you girls are both fairly new in terms of consciousness raising and my group has ended essentially. But one thing that the people who were involved in my group once they have, it took us a period and for us I think it was longer than most, most consciousness raising groups don't last two years but it took us that long to get to a place where we felt like we were ready to commit ourselves to public action. It was a long time of going through very personal, traumatic experiences and very personal kinds of changes. And it completely changed our relationships with frequently, families, friends, husbands, other women, boyfriends, whatever it may be. A lot of very profound changes were going on in our personal lives. I think you have to get through those kinds of problems before you can go on and commit yourself to working for passing equal rights amendment or repeal of abortion laws or whatever happens to be the thing you want to become active in.

- Also our group, I think part of the reason that I expected our group to do anything like that, like working for legislation or anything was that we got started so late this year we were just barely getting started at the beginning of this semester. And didn't really have time for anyone to decide on anything to do along that line.

- Well the other problem is when you're going to school, you don't go out and do a lot things like that.

- But as your consciousness is raised has it been your experience that the individuals in the group and not necessarily the group as a whole which got together for one purpose that the individuals became more committed to the idea of desirable change or are they satisfied just to communicate, relate to one another?

- I would think that's been my experience that they become kind of angry. They become so angry that they have to go out and do something the situation becomes intolerable.

- Have you followed up on the people in your group Que as to how active they do become.

- Well some have become very active and some have become very committed in other things, for example, one of the girls is now in law school which I think is partially a result of her experience. And of course it is very committed in that direction now. Two of us from the group have form Now Chapters one here in Lawrence and the other one that I started last February and Ottawa. And so in that way, we have tried to get together other women who have been through the consciousness raising question, and that situation or just women who are interested in doing things. For example, the group that I'm involved in Ottawa is interested in doing community kinds of works, a girl's recreation program for this summer which is highly, a very active boys recreation program for the summer but a very inactive girls recreation program. So they're doing those kinds of community works. And of course, most of them are housewives and mothers, a few students and so, a lot of us have gone onto other things. I would say mostly though there have just been very personal changes. And most of the women that were in our group are not now really involved in a lot of active work. They have perhaps changed their own lives and the direction of their own lives, but are not now involved in in more public kinds of commitment.

- So actually what I'm hearing you say is that you don't think one thing necessarily leads to do something else other than a greater understanding and which might or might not lead to action. So you are not accepting the criticism for people who say that if you study something for a long long time and gets that satisfaction out of just the study of yourself and one another and the relationships, that this is not as suitable end in itself.

- No, I wouldn't say so. I think the here again becomes a very personal kind of thing. Some people really want to go on to active things want to get involved in public issues. And some people just want to affect their own lives in a very personal way.

- Did you have anyone in your groups who already were quite active and moving toward change, but still hadn't resolved some of their own personal problems?

- No, the people in our group who were already involved in working towards any kind of a change at all were also fairly much together as far as their own personal lines were concerned too.

- It's interesting, I just have never been in a group that's called itself a consciousness raising group, but I have been in groups who have been very much committed to change and I was not real sure everybody in that group even though they knew all the techniques really were as you put it together and at peace with themselves about how they would go about it.

- I was wondering if it was necessary to be together before you worked on legislation. I wouldn't think so.

- I wouldn't think in a sense in which we're using it being together, that this would be essential, although it certainly does help because it means that you're not as easily and diverted from your cause if you really understand why you're engaging in it. In a recent MS. Magazine, there's an article on consciousness raising groups that are called Rep groups, is a common name that's given to CR groups?

- Sometimes I think if you were talking particularly in a social sense where there are lots of people not familiar with the women's movement, I will sometimes call it a Rep group because in some situations that's perhaps a little less threatening where they think you just get together and rep and all kinds of people do that. But if you call it consciousness raising it identifies you much more closely with the feminist movement. And in some circles, that's still a rather threatening thing for people. So I think frequently you'll hear and its also shorter.

- They're people get together to raise their own consciousness level or.

- Well some of the interesting things that happened to me in a smaller community like Ottawa, and I wasn't even the one who suggested formulating the Now Chapter there it was some of the women who came to me and said we want to do something and we know you've done it in Lawrence. So why don't you get us together and have a meeting some night? And the reaction from the husbands a lot of the women that are in this group are faculty wives, their sort of label and a lot of the husbands that are colleagues of mine on the faculty would come up to me with little, with smiles on your face. But at the same time, remarks like, house breaker, home breaker, what you're doing, this is going to ruin all of our lives and our wives won't cook dinner for us anymore and the you're gonna often leave and there will strad radical women.

- They didn't have much of a conception of what the national organization or wherever it is. Did you invite them to come?

- Yes, we did invite, some of them joined as a matter of fact. And several of them came to meetings, I'm sure out of curiosity found out we were not going to burn the town down do anything very radical. I gave a talk to the Kiwanis Club there recently about what the Now Chapter was about. And it was very interesting. The associate pastor of the baptist church came up afterwards and said, "Oh, I think you've allayed a lot of fears." And I'm glad know that I have taken care of some of the fears that they had of what we were going to do so.

- It does seem strange how much time one spends in allaying other people, of shouldn't really threaten anyone. Let's talk a little about how you get started. Supposed that you had a group of people that were talking and decided that they'd like to talk some more about how they feel about things, about other women or about themselves or any suggestions on how they could go about it?

- In our group we did have a little bit of trouble getting started right at first people would just kind of say, well I don't have anything to talk about. Do you have anything to talk about to this for a while. But one night, one woman came and said that she wanted to talk about whether she felt she could trust the other women in group or not. And this helped us get started, we all told a little bit about ourselves so that we would know each other somewhat better and got into things a little bit more through the channel of talking about who we trusted and why we trusted them. And if we trusted the other women in the group.

- I actually think that's a good question because the trust issue comes on very, very soon. I think in almost any small group and especially when was a very personal groups you have to trust each other before you can say very personal things about yourself or about your feelings. And then also you have to trust each other to be able to say, be honest with each other, to tell each other problems that you see any kind of reactions that you have towards the other person. So I think, the trust issue is one that very rarely comes up and is a very important one.

- Is there more of an inclination in the groups that you've known about personally to believe that one sex or the other is more trustworthy or more to be trusted?

- I think is all part fable of our society is women are sort of trained that women are gossipy and catty which you learn this. But my experience always denied when I had learned, I found that women probably gossiped less and were less catty or certainly no more so. And I think he was a very individual thing. So men are very gossipy. Some women are, but lots of women are and lots of men are too.

- How could you be sure that in your group are these groups of friends or could they be strangers or gonna be a combination or what's the best technique there in getting a group together? What would you rather be in a group of strangers, acquaintances, friends or a combination?

- I feel comfortable knowing at least two or three people that I would consider friends in my group but I was very pleased to see people come in that I didn't know or were friends of friends. Because that added a whole new dimension somebody new to experience. And this, I think can be a very exciting process to develop yourself further rather than just get to know better everybody you already know kind of thing.

- What do you Cindy of being in a group.

- Well in our group in the dorm, it was a little bit different than this because in a dormitory people know each other at least by sight. So everyone was acquainted to a small extent some of us were already fairly close friends who were getting into the group but I enjoyed having some people there that I knew too. I felt more comfortable but I wished I would have been more people that I didn't know.

- If you were in a strange city and somebody asked you to go with them to a consciousness raising group. And you got that and you didn't know any of them at all. What kind of a situation that be for you, would that be a comfortable one or uncomfortable or how would you feel?

- Well, I would feel somewhat more comfortable than with a group of total strangers anywhere else I think because the fact that they were in a consciousness raising group would mean that they felt the same way that I did about some things about the feminist movement for example, would be the biggest one.

- How do you know they're not someone who gave you, because you must've gossip to get some good stories to tell.

- Well, what difference would it make? It probably wouldn't get back to me, if they were total strangers.

- What if they were adults, or acquaintances or is that really the issue? I take it you don't start out by. When you don't start out by talking about highly intimate matters I suppose either, why not? Is it certainly not because you think someone's gonna tell. Why is it that that wouldn't be a good way to start?

- I think pretty much like in any group though, it goes back to this issue of trust. You start off on a fairly common level of talking about who you are and what you do and what your family's like and what your experiences are like. And then you gradually worked down to, well why are you here, kind of thing. Well, I'm here because I felt different kinds of problems in different situations or felt put down in situations. Or I'm curious, cause I wanted to find out what this kind of thing was all about was some of the reactions that we got. And gradually then as the weeks go by you just get more and more personal. But this element of trust builds up to the point where I think at a certain point, you know that you can trust everyone in that group or they wouldn't be there. You just have a great deal of faith.

- Did you use any special techniques or just a kind of a give and take discussing whatever came up in the groups that you belonged to?

- We used very much a technique of just give and take. It would be particularly if someone would come to a meeting and have a problem that she particularly noticed or that she wanted to discuss. And sometimes these would be personal problems with family, with children, with things they'd run into at school, with things they'd run into with boyfriends, with things that had happened to them and jobs or work or job interviews and things like this. And usually somebody would come say I had this horrible experience this week and one thing would lead to another and--

- So there never was any planned agenda?

- No.

- Was there in yours?

- A few times, maybe once or twice, we had a planned agenda. For instance, when one woman in the group mentioned that she didn't know if she could trust the other people in the group or not, that led to another one or two sessions where we planned to talk about exactly who we trusted and who we didn't trust and why.

- I noticed that the article in MS. said that one of their questions of which some conversations begun was why did you come, why are you here? And I suppose that could lead to your response if somebody had a particular problem but then there would be others. Can you recall any other kinds of reasons? What would people have said if you started out with a question, of why did you come?

- Some people wanted to find out what they were, what the conscious raising group. What the women's liberation was. We even had one who wanted to know more about the movement.

- Anything else that you can think of?

- Some of them that I found wanted to find out more about themselves as individuals, that perhaps they were going through a time of either being dissatisfied with what they were doing or feeling trapped if they were at home all the time and this was kind of their thing to get out and to be able to talk about themselves, to relate experiences back and forth, to say, this is my problem, has anybody else ever had that problem? What'd you do about it, kind of thing.

- And did usually people, other people have the same kinds of problems that they brought up?

- Almost universally, yes.

- I understand that's one of the big advantages is the discovery that the thing you thought was very probably peculiar just to you that its not peculiar to you at all but pretty universal.

- Time and time again, there was this great relief of oh I'm not the only one who's crazy. There are other people just like me. And once you find out that a lot of the traumas you've experienced are collective then you started thinking, well, maybe there's another cause besides just me, perhaps there is something wrong with the way society is structured. Perhaps there is something wrong with the way women are educated, perhaps the way that there is something wrong with the sell, the hard sell toward being a docile, passive creature as as not being in the all and be all of humanity.

- Did the group ever, any of the groups that you've been associated with ever decide that he really was something wrong. There really was something wrong with a particular person who was bringing up a problem, that there were some ways which she could have changed that would have helped with any? They never decided that?

- I don't think the group ever decided. I think personally, some of us decided that wow I really missed that one up. Or, here's a way I could change that would be very constructive.

- How would you learn that if you didn't get it from the group so its assuming that you were in a particular situation when you went in and told your story.

- Someone could tell how they would've reacted to it.

- So that's all right to do that?

- Well, you're not putting them down. You're just saying, well I would have reacted in a different way not saying it was better or anything.

- But some of the kinds of problems that we have all kinds of societal differences probably wouldn't make any difference what it unless we changed, whatever it was that was dysfunctional in our relationship to other people. That's no reason for putting them down, I'm sure but.

- We got into this a little bit where a person was having a particular kind of problem. And it somehow resolved itself to a personality problem like maybe they were pushing or trying too hard or maybe they were tense or nervous and made other people nervous because of this. And if you reach a certain level of trust and you realize that you're there to help each other it isn't a confronting or cruel or harsh kind of thing, in fact it's really immensely supportive. And I think you very constructively can help each other in saying, perhaps if you could or do you know that you were always reading your hands in care kind of thing when you're talking? No, I never realized that I did that and these kinds of personal characteristics that frequently you don't recognize that you have that other people see, that's a hidden part of yourself.

- When you say it's not a confronting time, how would you define this in relationship to the male counter group, for instance?

- Yeah I have been in several because of, well my degree is in human relations here at KU, speech communications and human relations. And so we've been involved in several and I'm finding that the process that the consciousness raising group goes through is very similar to the encounter group. In other words you sort of had this period of feeling everyone out then you had this period of time of building trust and rapport and then is when you really start getting down to the basic issues after those things, preliminaries are established. And so that the group processes I think have a lot of similarities.

- Excuse me we'll have to pause now for station identification. Good evening again, we're discussing tonight women's consciousness raising groups and we even mentioned men's consciousness raising groups before the hour was over but at the moment we've been talking about women's consciousness raising groups and we had just raise the issue and discussed it a little less to what was the connection between consciousness raising group and an encounter and Que Striggle was explaining her point of view toward that is there anything further that needs to be said Que about it?

- Well we'd brushed the issue of being confronting or supporting in a consciousness raising group. And the other girls might check to see if this has been their experience too. Basically my experience has been that the encounter groups were more confronting and had somewhat more hostility along with the supportiveness. Whereas the consciousness raising group was infinitely more supportive. There was a lot warmer, freer kind of open affection and concern. And I think it was, I think the major differences that the consciousness raising groups are women dealing with other women and they don't find the need for the dominance and the hostility and the aggressiveness that most men define their masculinity by. And so that in many ways they find them more supportive, much more warm, much more humanistically oriented than I have in encounter groups which is perhaps not a fair thing to say since there are no men here to defend themselves.

- My telephone number is, 8644530. And if you have a comment or question, feel free to I called this open line and we'll listen to your comment or attempt to answer any question that you might have. I take it from what you're all saying about the supportive nature of the consciousness raising groups that this must take a little time, at least to develop doesn't it? That just doesn't happen, eight to 10 get together, eight or 10 women are often together for what are they doing, what are they talking bout? If they certainly, we wouldn't call them consciousness, raising groups.

- But the coffee klatch that you kind of think of in the mornings.

- Or just the separation at a party with the men going one way and then the women going another to discuss. I'm not sure any of us ever remember after what was discussed. Are these the kind of things that you remember? When you go home from one of these meetings do you remember what was discussed?

- Oh yes, vividly as a matter of fact, sometimes for days it's a very vivid experience.

- I think many of them are highly emotionally charged one way or another the emotions run the gamut, but we found certainly that that there was a very strong impact. And a lot of us felt very compelled to want to go home and talk about the experience with our families and always talking about X, Y and Z rather than sort of naming names, but--

- And did you find that the families that you can make it clear, can you be articulate to your other friends and do your families after such a meeting as to what really happened? Or is it something you must experience?

- You can't really make it clear but you can wanna talk about it anyway.

- You can make them understand it a little, it depends on the person and how much sympathy they have toward it.

- If it's someone that you know really well and that you trust, then you can talk about them fairly well to the things that happen in the consciousness raising group. But someone I don't know or someone I don't trust a whole lot I don't think I can talk about things that happen in the consciousness raising groups to them. And then of course, I think there are just some issues that even though you feel very deeply about them you wouldn't discuss it all because they're either have a highly personal nature or because it was such an experience that was founded by a certain context that it would be totally unexplainable to someone else. And I think people just instinctively know when that is.

- I have asked a lot of questions. I've heard people attempt to explain some things which you almost have to experience yourself before you really can explain it to someone else. I can tell you it was a wonderful experience but it's sometimes extremely difficult for them to get down to earth. And what kinds of things did you talk about which is one of the things I liked about this article because it was very specific about the kinds of things they talked about in the group. And I'd like to ask you, what do you think of some of them, what you think about the question of who do you usually confide in? Is that a good question? Is it a way to define your feelings about trust and friendship? Did you ever use it, what do you think about it?

- We're used, I think most of them, I don't know. I'm trying to remember. We did that rather early in the semester. Didn't most of the women confide in other women?

- But most of them confided in other women except for one or two who also confided in men but they was specific men like boyfriends.

- What kind of other women? Other women, their own age, their mothers, their sisters and friends or strangers or people sitting on the bus next to them.

- Mostly friends their own age.

- Friends their own age.

- And a few friends they could confide in.

- Is there any difference you think in age level? Was that your experience too?

- Yes, it was. See everyone I've ever heard talk about it, especially in the consciousness raising group mostly wanted to talk about personal things to people their own age.

- And to other women?

- And to other women.

- Does it make any difference that you're not ancient Que but a little older, do you think it makes any difference with the age group?

- I think ours was very similar experience. Our group ranged in age from our youngest member was a college senior who was 21 up to people who were like 33. And for the most part, they confided, well, of course several of our members were married and some of them had children. And so in that case would be either other women friends or husbands or boyfriends in some instances but all of us in the group admitted that there were things that we would say to the women there in that group that we would never say to our families really. You'd never say to parents or even husbands or certainly not children and so I--

- Did you say things in this group that or share experiences that you wouldn't have shared with whoever this confidant was that they all seem to have. Is there a difference there and if so what is that difference? Have you tried to figure that out?

- There was a difference and I think maybe it was because of the the chemistry of the personalities in the group. That growing out different things and if you were on a one-to-one basis even with a very close friend who was not in the group the same thing wouldn't happen or wouldn't make sense to them.

- Did you run across anyone in your group who said that she didn't have anyone to confide in? Or didn't feel that she could confide in anyone or did everybody someone they felt free to confine in?

- If I remember right, everyone could find somebody and at least one person outside of our group but I remember one woman felt very frustrated because her female confinements would always kind of not well they would half listen to her and say, yes, yes, I have that problem. And then go on to not talk about her problems. And just wouldn't pay attention to this one woman and she didn't know how to deal with it at all.

- Now that's a different definition of the word confidant isn't it, that one who simply accepts, I mean if you feel free to say things to, but no feedback from the other person. And here in the group you do get this kind of feedback.

- Yes, you do get a lot feedback. And I think everybody's very conscious of showing, their reactions and their concern. And it's very neutral that way. Everybody has a chance to express, everybody has a chance to get feedback.

- And you never found yourself thinking as you related in this way to other people in the group, say to another specific person in the group, did you ever have any feelings of revulsion or of I really don't like this person, that's a very human thing isn't it? How do you overcome that?

- I think all of us in our group had moments when we didn't like somebody because of maybe something that had happened or something that was said or a situation that had arisen. I wasn't so much that you didn't like them but you were angry with them for that time. And usually though, the good thing about it was that you felt free to say, right now, I'm feeling very angry with you because of the fact that you slighted this comment or that you were offensive in this way or you did something that bothered me and sometimes you found out it was just a misunderstanding and then it was over with very quickly.

- But these examples you're giving are though are kinds of feelings that one can have toward a friend because they heard things that the things that you're talking about are things over which they have control, they could have paid more attention, they could have responded in a different way. What about the person, your reaction to someone that is not about something over which she doesn't have any control? You didn't run across that, suppose she's just not very bright I'd say. And you are and so she misinterprets some things, things that are said or she doesn't really understand what you're talking about and you can't blame her, can you? You really can't blame someone's if there's a sort of a video in her mind but at the same time you do react to it. How do you keep yourself from doing that?

- We didn't have exactly that situation in our group but we did have a situation come up where one person tended to bother in strange sorts of ways, other people. And mainly that was a very sincere attempt on the part of everyone to try and understand why that person was that way and to just accept it and live with it and just not worry about it.

- That would solve really the question that I raised then over things over which someone doesn't have any control. Other than understand it and accept it for as what person is really like.

- I think almost all of us realize that there's bound to be something about all of us but not everyone in that group is going to think its wonderful. And so, we learned to live with our fault and our foibles, which seems to get very human thing to do.

- Did anyone, I take it some people left the group didn't they? What kinds of reasons were there for leaving that conscious raising group.

- One of them that was in our group simply dropped out of school.

- So you presume that if she would have been here, she would have kept on coming. She was getting, there was a positive experience for her?

- Yeah she would probably still be coming if she was still in school.

- Well, did you have anyone who left say in disgust or felt I'm not getting anything out if this, I'm gonna come anymore?

- We had one woman leave because she felt too threatened by it that she felt like it was upsetting her life. And at that point she wasn't able to cope with her life being upset.

- And how'd the group deal with it?

- Well, just listened to her sort of list her reasons she came one evening and said, I have to quit for these kinds of reasons. And everyone just said, you have to do what you have to do and that's okay.

- And did you have to deal with that after she left in terms of thinking it through or figuring out your own feelings about her leaving?

- We certainly did. We talked about it with people that were left and I'm just trying to think very hard to understand her position. And then it was pretty much dropped. It became a past history kind of thing.

- Did you folks have any experiences like that, anyone left because they didn't like what was happening to them or the way it was affecting their lives?

- I can't remember, if they did leave, they didn't say.

- So you weren't able to deal with that. What about the question of do you feel like a grownup? Did you folds ever deal with that? To talk about childhood anxieties or?

- We talked a lot about our childhoods and sort of compared them which was an interesting experience to see. You're trying to figure out how did we get where we are? Some of us who come out of very traditional backgrounds how did we get to be feminist and trying to figure out--

- Was there any talk about fear of responsibility? We hear a lot about that. Especially from some of the researchers who say that there are women who are afraid to succeed did that affect people in your group or were you able to verbalize that?

- But most of us were already involved in a profession of one sort or another, or were out working with the one exception of the girl who was still in school, who was planning on going to graduate school. And so most of us were angry at the fact that we weren't allowed to have as much responsibility as we wanted.

- Now that might have affected your group, what about that among the college group, is there any discussion there because that's something they haven't resolved yet. Was there any talk about being afraid of what might happen to them if they did assume responsibility.

- No we didn't talk about that.

- Did you ever talk about things, the problems that a girl in being too bright, like men don't like bright women or they won't take them out or being labeled feminists and therefore some kind of outcast.

- We had a discussion about that one night. One of the women came to the group and was being attacked by some males that she knew because they were challenging the idea that, well, if a woman's a feminist then we won't be able to open doors for her and we won't be able to pay her way when we go out on dates with her and they don't want a woman to assume that responsibility they wanted to have all of that for themselves.

- Were you able to talk about how that had nothing to do with the issue?

- Yeah, that's what we brought up.

- Well, I have been labeled a feminist and men have been very startled to know that I took a children's literature course and it just doesn't fit into my role at all.

- Nothing would be classified as normal or feminine.

- Or also the part about the doors that and they've always been men who have opened doors and others who've slammed them. There's nothing in the feminist movement that I know of changes that in the slightest. It's a matter of personal preference.

- We always try to explain to men that it's a matter of convenience. If you're in a situation where you can open the door and it's more convenient than having him open the door do what you do in every sensible. I have opened lots of doors for men carrying packages, or, you do what is polite, what's sensible.

- That's if you're a polite person. When some people talk about it makes it sound like all men have always done these done these things and all the women have to sit back and accept them rather than what the facts actually are. Did you ever talk about food? This seemed to be a for this consciousness raising group of why people eat too much or go on diets. How important is food to you? How important was it in your childhood? Why do you cook? Why do you cook series and things? Did you talk about any of those things?

- I think it would be a good thing to bring up.

- I think that sounds like a pretty good start.

- We had one woman in our group who was a naturalist in terms of food, very much into the brown rice and the wheat germ and this kind of thing and pretty much a vegetarian, also very involved in yoga. And so we all got kind of a background in this attitude from her and when we'd have our meetings at her house she always had these natural oatmeal and nut cookies are always delicious and tea made from all these herbs. And that was always very exotic and exciting. And we did talk a lot about people being obsessed with, like you mentioned like going on diets or gaining weight or losing weight as people being obsessed with size problems, because every woman in the world knows that something is wrong with her somewhere. Maybe there's something wrong with her hips or her arms aren't right or as I was reading an article one woman who was apparently gorgeous but had this real obsession about her nostrils not being the shape. So every woman has some sort of hangup about herself as being imperfect and as if we're all supposed to be sort of Raquel Welch or a Playboy sample, which of course it was ridiculous. And would be dull yes, immensely.

- Did you talk about money?

- Only the lack of it, most graduate student and.

- About money is power or instrument and self-indulgence, self satisfaction or what it means to have a lot or not to have any.

- A lot of us were more graduate students and sort of struggling through at that kind of level. So only kind of in sort of joking passing references but we didn't ever really get into the power issue in terms of money maybe because we just weren't at that position yet.

- What about the subject of jealousy, expressed either toward other women, the question of physical attributes that you're talking about or jealousy about a man, is this a subject that you ever discussed? Or would it be a good one for a consciousness raisin group?

- Oh yeah, I think it's an excellent group for discussion because I think women are very much conditioned and trained to regard each other as competitors rather than as friends, confidants. And it was one of the glorious things I find about the feminist movement is that women have all of a sudden realized that they can be friends and have so much more in common and that they had so much to share with each other. And that all of those who had a petty jealousies that we had because we were taught that every woman is your enemy. Your one purpose in life is to catch a man. And so every other woman who lives is in competition with you and you have to hate them all and try to get the whole really ridiculous rat race.

- It seems jealousy is a pretty common emotion and you may very well discuss it in some other other kind of context. But one of the things that is discussed and is a subject that is discussed at some consciousness raising groups in terms of, how did it make you feel, how do you try to control it? Should you try to control it? What's it really like? And what's the composition of it. Why do you feel it toward other women? Why do you feel it toward men. What about discrimination? You ever talk about that? Or is it a good topic when you talked about it in your particular group or not?

- I think it's one that women need to understand, certainly. I suppose if there's any areas where I found a lack of understanding or knowledge it's in the area how discrimination takes place, how can a woman not get equal pay for equal work? Or how can there be subtle kinds of discriminations by calling the men orderlies and the women some other name, aides for example and then you can pay them different wages for doing exactly the same work. I think all women need to be tuned in to the various kinds of problems that arise so that they can be aware of then when they start facing their own lives.

- And in our group we also mentioned a few times the more subtle kind of discrimination that goes on, for instance in classes where men are taken a little bit more seriously than women whenever they say things except in certain types of classes for instance, occupational therapy perhaps women are taking a little more seriously than men there and things like this.

- Just everything, so assume that the men have a reason for being there. In case they want to study before the, what about the non working hard, the homeworking woman who is not making money in the labor market, what discriminations does she feel or can she discuss or be helped by?

- There's a beautiful article in may. I think Women's Day, one of kind of magazines that were at the grocery store. Where it talks about the woman who had worked for many years and then became a full-time housewife. And her very radicalizing experiences with things like delivery men, who would come two days late saying, oh I knew you didn't have anything to do anyway. So I just put off bringing your telephone. As if she had nothing to do, but sit around all day and wait, 'cause she was just a housewife and then other thing that I am constantly infuriated by she was writing the example of trying to check out the library card where they wouldn't put it in her name. They would only put it in her husband's name and they weren't interested in her occupation. They only wanted her husband's occupation. She kept saying, "Peter doesn't want the library card. "I want the library card. And I've been going through this with my dentist. He keeps sending my husband all of my bills. And it really infuriates me So those those are different kinds of problems that, those are those little is Ms. Magazine. The very first issue wrote a tremendous article on the click experiences, those little things that just happened to you. And all of a sudden, somewhere in your head you go click, something is wrong

- But at what point do you go click? Is it after you've had some consciousness raising experience or does it just happen to people?

- I've know some women that it just happened to. And then they came running over and saying, I need to get involved in this because all of a sudden.

- I suppose and I believe that nothing really ever just happens. I think you read an article or its been there all along. But you've passed over it until something activates that cue for you. And then when your husband trips over one of the examples, tripping on a little something on the stairway and saying why did you leave this on the stairway from me trip over, one of the greats. Did I ask you about childhood, if you talked about that?

- We did a little bit, yes.

- Found a lot of differences and well a lot of similarities too. I was really really surprised at to one statement made in the Ms. Magazine article about it, that among the people in this particular consciousness raising group none of them had had a happy childhood. Is that your experience?

- No, in our group, it was about half and half. Half of the people felt that they had a very good childhood and the other half didn't think that their childhood was all that great.

- I think that it's really easy to fall into stereotyping which is what the whole thing's all about. And so I was really amazed to read that all of these women hadn't had an unhappy childhood because I'm sure that there'd be those who'd jumped to the conclusion that the only people would be profit from a consciousness raising group are those who had a miserable childhood. So you found it can be good experience, no matter what kind of. Certainly there are some miserable childhood experiences I suppose for all of us, even those who had a happy childhood, it couldn't have been all happy.

- Right yeah and I think that's what we read. Most people had had, a lot of them had very normal kinds of childhoods with a couple of miserable experiences, but of course that doesn't make the whole period.

- And what about the size of the group and the stability of it. What do you think is a good size and putting becomes too large or too small?

- Well, our group ranged anywhere from four people to eight to 10 people. And personally I liked it when it was a little bit larger like right around eight people. It felt just about right there. There weren't too many people yet at the same time there weren't too few people.

- I think there've been some studies that indicated that in that a group can become so large that it is impossible really to relate to every person in it. And this sounds to me like the kind of a group where everybody should be small enough that people can relate to one another. And I just one final question we're passed our time Can such a group be any fun?

- Oh yes, I think that's one of the great things in the women's movement is women getting together and find out they can have such a marvelous time with each other. Some of the most fun I've ever had, no question.

- All right, time is up. And we have discussed tonight the question of women's consciousness raising groups with Cindy and Cassie, Connie Loskott and Que Striggle. We appreciate you joining us tonight and hope you'll join us again next Monday night for A Feminist Perspective.