Senior “feminists” long ago became immune to derision and disrespect. However articulate or polite our arguments for women’s equal treatment, we saw more winks and elbowing than sympathy from too many men. Stepford Wives opposed to feminism accused us of evil instincts, and worse.
I went to a private Catholic girls grammar school (Convent of the Sacred Heart) run by nuns in full nun gear — long black gowns, tight starched white linen helmets covering their heads, from which floor-length veils flowed. A crucifix the size of a fist hung mid-chest, like a hood ornament warning of the fury behind it.
We endured white-glove ceremonies, Mrs. Hadley’s diction classes, “courtesy” seminars on “manners,” and endless lectures on how (female) “children of the Sacred Heart” behaved.
Still, I doubted Jesus was a misogynist.
I transferred to Classical High — a public school my former Reverend Mother called the “Protestant school [I] chose of [my] own free will” (in cahoots with the Holy Spirit).
There I breathed the air of equity, as students, whatever their gender, competed on the level academic playing field. With the will to hone one’s intellectual ability, everyone could excel!
At Elmira College in New York, I was hostage to President J. Ralph Murray, who treated the all-women students like children. Emerging as a full-blown crazed conservative by senior year, he stuffed students’ mailboxes with paperback copies of “None Dare Call it Treason,” by John Stormer. A cover note explained that if the book generated pro-Goldwater support in the 1964 presidential elections, “the donor” would be happy. I organized my first book burning. The New York Times covered it.
I became a welfare social worker. My supervisor yelled at my clients for “wasting money” buying frozen broccoli vs. fresh. My caseload included more than 100 women getting government Aid for Dependent Children. Still he screamed, “Catholic taxpayers aren’t paying your salary to have you teach clients birth control!”
By 1985, my public excommunication by a Catholic bishop (of questionable purity) targeted me as director of Rhode Island’s Planned Parenthood, a contraceptive clinic providing physical exams, pap smears, sex education, and also abortions. Of particular bad judgment was the Diocese’s attempt (unsuccessful) to bar our teenaged daughter from her confirmation.
I cut my feminist teeth on Catholic oppression of girls by nuns, and I touched the stars of my feminism when the (male) Canon Law Society of America exonerated me, saying the banished bishop should know better.
Yet, only now, with millions of women taking to the streets, naming oppressors and abusers openly, and millions more wielding power as senators, generals, working moms, Supreme Court justices, surgeons, engineers and astronauts, do I weep with joy — the finish line in view.
I shall die fighting for women’s rights, as I have lived fighting for them. We still have t’s to cross and i’s to dot, but, finally, we “old guard” here — and sisters watching from that ultimate rally in the sky — cheer our daughters and granddaughters taking their rightful, deserved place, thinking, “Well done!”
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Mary Ann Sorrentino (thatmaryann@yahoo.com), a monthly contributor, writes from R.I. and Florida, and, in summer, from Italy.
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