the same power and the same intent, and in-
dicating that word and image can be equal
ingredients in politically effective art.

We found no solutions to the issues raised,
but we are finding approaches that feel fresher
and more satisfying. Working together toward
collective decisions was entirely different from
working alone or as part of conventional hier-
archies. Each of us worked on every page of this
magazine, a slow and frustrating process, but
one from which we learned a great deal: about
each other, about editorial and mechanical
skills, about the collective process itself, about
our subject—feminism, art and politics—and
about what it means to be political in a real,
active, living situation. We mean to go on from
these beginnings and we look to the larger
feminist community for participation, response
and criticism. Together we can work toward
some answers. We have nothing to lose but our
illusions.

Joan Braderman, Harmony Hammond,
Elizabeth Hess, Arlene Ladden, Lucy
Lippard, May Stevens.

| am a feminist first and a socialist second, rather than a
Socialist-Feminist. Not because | don’t care about what
happens to the oppressed men in the world. Not because
I’'m against an ideally democratic socialism. But because
women’s oppression crosses economic-class lines. It's a
matter of focus. Clearly the needs of welfare-class women
are most urgent and those of upper-class women are least
urgent. Some socialists say that getting rid of patriarchy
won't change the world. | wonder. Even in revolutionary
socialist movements women must maintain an autonomous
base. Revolution for Everyman isn’t the same as real social
change; it has taken place in the past without solving the
“woman question.”

In the meantime, living in a capitalist country without a
strong Socialist Party provokes an irresistible urge to kill
time as a liberal feminist. Even though I'm aware of the
dangers of opportunism, reformism, co-optation, and all
the slimy horde, | often find myself working for reform
rather than revolution because | can’t bear to see nothing
done.

Within the art world, this means | work to get women
artists into a system | oppose. Outside, in the real world,
this means | want the ERA passed because it's going to
make a difference in women’s lives. | want to see a politi-
cally aware feminist culture and | hope that Heresies will
help create it and help destroy some of the boundaries that
separate women from the power to make a better society
that will fit our needs as well as men’s.

(P.S. Because I'm a critic, I've been called a “class
enemy” of artists, which is bullshit. I'm exploited by pub-
lishers, and perhaps editors, just as artists are exploited by
galleries, and perhaps critics. | identify with artists whether
or not they identify with me because long experience has
shown me that our lives are more or less the same.) -

L.R.



When we decided that each of us in the first issue
collective should write an individual statement to put
our political differences “out front,” | thought it was a fine
idea. But trying to write one page about my notion of how
feminism relates to Marxism relates to making theory and
making films was easier said than done: too much to argue
in too little space. So what | wanted to do was write,
“please see my article on page x” where I've tried to work
out some of these problems in more analytical depth. But
my sister-editors said, “write something personal.” They
chided me for my rhetorical style and my obsessive?
academic? commitment to making “complete” arguments.
“Who are you in all that,” they asked. O.K. I’'m a woman,
I’'m white, I'm 28. I'm a film teacher, I'm a student, I'm a
writer, theorist, critic, filmmaker. | do political work—in
the feminist community and with a new Coalition (July 4th)
that's building toward a mass, progressive peoples’ move-
ment in this country. | guess I’'m what's come to be called a
cultural worker.

Often it seems there’s just not enough time in each day
to do all the things that have to be done. And to earn a
living, and write a dissertation, and see the art | care about,
and do the laundry, and talk with students, and be with the
friends | love, and see the ocean sometimes. Putting it all
together, Id often like a few clones of myself to help out. |
juggle what's possible with what's not.

Where does the fight for women fit with fighting im-
perialism? Does working in collectives really help change
our deeply entrenched American individualism? How can
“cultural workers” best advance these struggles? | often
argue esthetics with my political comrades. Films, | say,
don’t have to be simplistic to communicate with mass
audiences. We're all subject to subtle propaganda from
Hollywood and Madison Avenue. We're all jugglers of
contradictions and need to see and hear and read about
alternatives to what is. We have to make films that not only
say something different but say it in a different way. They
have to be made in a practical political context, in a
coherent theoretical context, and they have to be able to
recapture the imaginations of masses of people being lulled
to sleep by the crap that’s sold as “mass art.” We have to
find strategies for making our alternate points of view
visible, making peoples’ voices heard, our ideas and films
seen; find ways of fighting the commercial monopolies that
own the air waves, the movie screens, the mass media, that
own us.

| argue politics with my feminist sisters. No more sep-
aratism, | say. | work on HERESIES to say that and also
because—another contradiction—| need community in a
country that is in fragments. In short, and as labor people
like my grandparents always said: women, artists, men,
people; we've got to get organized. J.B.

What kind of socialist-feminist-artist am 12

What kind of socialist artist loves Corot as well as
Courbet and forgives oil painting its bourgeois origins and
abstract expressionism its heraldry of U.S. imperialism?

What kind of feminist artist sees pink as a private color to
be sparingly used?

To the women’s movement | would like to bring, as to
art, the subtlest perceptions. To political action, | would
like to bring, as to art, a precise and delicate imagination.

The personal is the political only if you make it so. The
connections have to be drawn. Feminism without socialism
can create only utopian pockets. And the lifespan of a
collective is approximately two years.

Socialism without feminism is still patriarchy. But more
smug. Try to imagine a classless society run by men.

Trying to be part of a collective is a little like being a
chameleon set on plaid. | may split apart before | get the
pattern right. But somehow it seems worth the pain be-
cause | believe community is the highest goal.

| believe every woman’s life is a little better because of
what we are doing. M.S.