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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1970
NIGHT EDITOR: ERIKA HOFFI
Standing firm on equal
rights for homosexuals
IN WHAT MUST BE viewed as a com-
mendable action, the Office of Stu-
dent Services (OSS) Policy Board has re-
affirmed the right of the Gay Liberation
Front (GLF) and Radical Lesbians to use
University facilities for a Midwest con-
ference on homosexuality.
The conference had b e e n previously
banned by President Fleming because, he
claimed, it would be bad for the Univer-
sity's "image."
Fleming, of course, was challenged on
that arbitrary judgment and revised his
objections to the conference. Lately he
has opposed the conference because he
said he could not see any "educational
value" in the proposed conference on ho-
mosexuality. He convinced the Regents
that this criteria of "educational value"
is a standing, University-wide criteria for
judging whether a student organization
could use University facilities.
This has never been the case, and the
action of the OSS board has put this fab-
rication to rest once and for all. The Re-
gents themselves delegated to Student
Government Council the power to recog-
nize student organizations. SGC has,
consistently, taken the position that priv-
ileges and rights should be applied equal-
ly to all student organizations. And it
has never taken the position that SGC
should attempt to judge the academic rel-
evance of the pursuits of extra-curricu-
lar student organizations.
Fleming's entire handling of the GLF
issue is dismaying. He is one who invokes
the words "academic freedom" at every
sign of dissent or critical evaluation of
University functions. He must compre-
hend that as long as he takes his double-
standard approach to student issues, he
will find himself in more and more dis-
putes and confrontations.
THE ACTION of the OSS Board should
in no way be construed as a judgment
that the Gay Lib conference has no edu-
cational value. Clearly, a gathering of
homosexuals from all parts of the Mid-
west to discuss their s a d social plight
cannot help but be productive, refresh-
ing, and educational, even if only to serve
notice to straight society that this sub-
ject matter is no longer taboo for public
discussion. That certainly would be edu-
cational, for that subject matter has been
suppressed too long; the humanity of ho-
mosexuals has been denied, out of ignor-
ance, by too many.
The OSS Policy Board has taken a firm
stand. If its position can be maintained,
and the conference can finally take place,
the University and Fleming will h a v e
been saved f r o m a truly embarrassing
mistake.
-JIM NEUBACHER
Editorial Page Editor
-JONATHAN MILLER
"No, it's not chicken soup .. but you're
getting worm."
Letters to The Daily
B 1ng n the Athletic Dept.
into the Seventies
REGENTAL BYLAW Section 1.14 states
that the University shall work for the
elimination of discrimination in private
organizations recognized by the Univer-
sity, and by non-Unversity sources where
students and employes of the University
are involved. But the Athletic Dept. and
the Graduate "M" Club do not feel this
applies to them.
The p o i n t in question concerns the
"Press Smoker" held every Friday before
a home football game by the Athletic
Dept. and financed by the Graduate "M"
Club. The smoker, though a selective af-
fair, is held at a public place, the Ra-
mada Inn.
In the past the Athletic Dept. has ex-
cluded female officials like Regent Ger-
trude Huebner and former Acting Vice
President for Student Affairs Barbara
Newell from attending t h e smoker,
though males holding corresponding po-
Editorial Staff
MARTIN A. HIRSCHMAN, Editor
STUART GANNES JUDY SARASOHN
Editorial Director Managing Editor
NADINE COHODAS . .... .. Feature Editor
JIM NEUBACHER Editorial Page Editor
ROB BIER ....... Associate Managing Editor
sitions have been invited. Recently, Daily
Executive Sports Editor Pat Atkins was
not given an informal invitation, though
the male sports editor's were.
ATHLETIC DIRECTOR Donald Canham
has justified the policy on t h e
grounds that these are private parties
and are no place for women. "Obscene"
language is used, it seems. It is fob the
woman's protection, the Athletic Dept.
has said, that they are denied permission
to attend. The fact that the women in
question may have no wish to be protect-
ed seems beyond the understanding of
Canham.
And at last look the Department was
part of the University and Canham an
employe of the institution. Therefore his
policy seems in violation of the spirit, if
not the letter, of the Regents' Bylaws.
The Athletic Dept. has hemmed and
hawed around the issue of inviting wo-
men to their smoker for long enough.
Women today utter and hear foul words,
enjoy careers in all walks of life, and, in
short, are living, breathing, aware hu-
man beings. They should not have to sit
and wait for the athletic department to
come into the 1970's.
-ANITA CRONE
Persecution
THE RECENT demonstration
intended to remind Jews and Gen-
tiles alike of the persecution of
Jews inside the Soviet Union
should be followed by a similar re-
minder to Christians on campus
of the unimaginable persecution of
Christians that is presently going
on behind the Iron Curtain. Every
Christian on this campus should
read Richard Wurmbrand's recent
account of what happens to Chris-
tians and especially their families
in Soviet Russia today.
Rev. Wurmbrand, who spent 14
years inside a Communist prison
and was ransomed by a Christian
organization has this to say : "I
tremble because of the sufferings
of thoseapersecuted in the com-
munist camp. I tremble thinking
about the eternal destiny of their
torturers. I tremble for Western
Christians who don't help their
persecuted brtheren." Rev. Wurm-
brand's full account of the mon-
strosities that are now occurring
appears in a pocket book entitled
"Tortured For Christ."
-R. L. Patterson
Oct. 24
Palestinians
To The Daily:
YOUR ANONYMOUS article
"An ideology for Palestinian revo-
lution" (Oct. 21), which is said
to represent the position of the
Ann Arbor Arab Student Organ-
ization, contains the following in-
triguing statement: "Equally this
means that all Jewish Palestinians
-at present Israelis-have the
same rights (i.e. to Palestinians
citizenship) provided they reject
Zionist chauvinism and fully ac-
cept to live as Palestinians in the
new Palestine. The Revolution
therefore rejects the supposition
that only Jews who lived prior to
1948 and their descendants are ac-
ceptable." The letter attributes
these principles to an article in
volume 1, no. 6 (1970) of Fateh,
but does not quote directly any
document on this particular issue.
It might therefore interest your
readers to learn what the official
policy of the Palestinian organ-
izations is. This policy is spelled
out in the Palestinian -National
Covenant with which Al Fatah
concurs. Article 5 of the Covenant
says: "The Palestinians are the
Arab citizens who were living
permanently in Palestine until
1947, whether they were expelled
from there or remained. Whoever
is born to a Palestinian Arab
father after this date, within
Palestine or outside of it, is a
Palestinian.'
IN ARTICLE 6 the status of the
Jews is defined as follows: "Jews
who were living permanently in
Palestine until the beginning of
the Zionist invasion will be con-
sidered Palestinians." The Pales-
tinian National Covenant was
amended by the Fourth Pales-
tinian Council of July 1968. On
page 51 of the official Arab min-
utes of the proceedings of the
Council the year 1917 is given as
the date for the "beginning of the
Zionist invasion." This means that
only those 50,000 Jews who lived
in Palestine in 1917 are to be con-
sidered "Palestinians" according
to official Palestinian pronounce-
ments. Even the descendants of
those 50,000 Jews are not included.
This is obviously quite diflerent
from the policy spelled out by the
Arab students.
-Ernest G. Fontheini
Space Physics Research
Laboratory
Oct. 2
The yths pervading
By LEA FRITZ
College Press Service
ONE OF THE by-products of the Women's Liberation movement-
or perhaps it lies at the very center of it-is a reevaluation of
female sexuality.
We know that we have been exploited in advertising, the media
and "art" as sex objects; that is, we are displayed as consumable
merchandise or often as attractive packaging for other consumable
merchandise, rather than as human beings with needs and desires of
our own.
Indeed, from infancy we are raised to think of ourselves as con-
sumer items in the "marriage market," and in many cultures daugh-
ters have actually been sold by their parents as marketable goods. Being
attractive to seen is a matter of life and death to most women.
In addition to whatever other talents we may have, good looks and/or
the ability to enhance men's egoes are essential for getting the few
carer promotions available to women or hooking a man to take us
out of the job competition for life and setting us and our children
up in physical comfort.
If the competitive merchantile world we live in is distressing for
men, it is an even heavier burden for women who must maintain
a passive facade while fighting the same basic battle for survival, to
which the weight of subtle and not-so-subtle prejudice against women
is added as a depressing obstacle.
Since much of the oppression we suffer has been internalized
over the millenia of female subjugation, it was natural for women
to look for the root of the problem in our sexual'and procreative func-
tions - to which, at once, we owe both our "right" to survive and our
oppression.
ONCE OUR EYES opened up in our long enforced sommambulism,
we found all around us vivid signs that we are regarded as legitimate
objects of men's pleasure -- like food and wine - ad that our pleasure,
if permitted to us at all, is conceived of as an automatic out-growth
of the male's: the lamb enjoying its slaughter!
Rmember the old Errol Flynn movies? "What a little spitfire you
are!" he says as the heroine scratches and bites to defend herself
from his assaults, her straitjacket clothing preventing her from giving
him the knock-out punch he deserves, her staitjacket mentality
forcing her finally to submit.
Errol Flynn was a groovy looking man with. a generally pleasant
manner and it's altogether possible that most women would want
to make it with him from the start. Women watching these films
felt that the heroine put up a phony protest to begin with and that
her arm finally creeping around hs neck was not really a gesture
of submission but of genuine desire. The point is that the poor woman
did have to pretend to be conquered over her objections to prove
she was a "good" woman. If she had just said, "Errol, I have a thing
for you. Let's screw," she would have been given the "character" role
of the town hussy . . right?
THE CLITORIAL CONTROVERSY, though, has just begun, and
--oddly enough-I find myself personally in the middle of it! Or
rather, on the counter-revolutionary side of it . . . which is even a
stranger place for me to be.
Recently Masters and Johnson, two indomitable sexologists-one
male and one female--have proved to their own satisfaction and with
much corroboration from women who have read their findings that
the only way women can achieve sexual satisfaction is through the
active stimulation of the clitoris, that small projection just inside the
vagina which corresponds in stimulative power tthe "head" of the male
penuis. The scientists demonstrated this by electronically recording the
reactions of subjects engaged in the sex act.
The rediscovery in America of the importance of the clitoris in
female sexual pleasure is a boon towomen's liberationists who have
always insistd on the women's right to seek her own satisfaction
actively, not merely to serve as a device for satisfying men)
Women now have something to demand from men in bed other
than screwing because screwing will seldom produce a clitoral orgasm.
In a recent Danish book called "I Accuse," the author, Mette Ejlersen,
produced female witnesses to say they had never gotten anything out
of simple sexual intercourse, even with a routin amount of clitoral
stimulation prior to the act. In other words, indications of female plea-
sure-sighs, groans, grunts, etc. - while screwing are all fabricated to
assure men of their prowess. Women who had previously been taught
by the Freudiaus to think of themselves as frigid (sometimes the
statistics went as high as 90 percent of American women!) because they
couldn't "achieve vaginal orgasm" now had the long-awaited last
laugh: no such thing as a vaginal orgasm exists, and any women
who claims to have experienced one is a phony!
Thus Masters and Johnson effectively squashed the myth of female
frigidity. Every woman must be grateful to them for removing one
psychological burden from our sex lives. If you can have a clitoral
orgasm, you are not frigid; that term of contempt can no longer be
applied to miserable feminity writhing under an unwelcome penis.
But, out of Masters and Johnson's "answer" new questions arise:
can the term "orgasm,'i well-understood by men, adequate describe
the female sexual response? Why must female pleasure be defined
by male terminology?
THERE IS A superficial resemblance between the clitoral reaction in
women and the male climax. Both send a kind of shock through the
body and deliver a certain release. But women do not (to my know-
ledge-and against the evidence of male written pornographic novels-,
ejaculate semen. And we are capable -of have many clitoral climaxes in
a row, each an improvement over the one before, so that the first
release, rather than satiating us, often is just an appetizer for things
to come!
Another fact of life the scientists might look into in that female
potency seems to grow as women mature, while male desires tend to
diminish after adolescence. It is likely that such effects are not "na-
tural" but produced by the increasing and decreasing pressures imposed
by society on women and men at different age levels. Still they should
be checked out.
Many men in our society seem to be sensually shallow and
emotionally inhibited to an extreme. Emotional expressions such as
tears which are permitted to women are denied to men. Is it possible
that by objectifying women, relegating us to a purely physical corner
of their lives and denying our humanity, men are losing out on sexual
ecstasies which go beyond the orgasm? Are men afraid to abandon
themselves completely and reciprocally to women-afraid of the emo-
tional waves that may be stirred in them?
As for the so-called clitoral orgasm, the most efficient means for
producing it is the mechanical vibrator, despite the fact that there
is littl spiritual excitement to be gained with its use. Directed by a
woman who knows where she wants to be stimulated, this little
device can provide multiple achievements with very little arm strain.
Next best is the woman's own hand. Further down the list is another
person's tongue; and at the very bottom, another person's hand.
By all means, women should have as many clitoral orgasms as we
wish, but I maintain-from my own experience, which though long,
may not be universal-that when the clitoral potential has been ex-
hausted there is still a hole, physical and spiritual, to be filled. And
when it has been filled well, with penis and ejaculated semen, satis-
faction comes with a certain finality which I have never achieved
clitorally--a feeling of complete physical and emotional contentment.
IT I A IF the body has been saturated with love. This release may
have more to do with osmosis than nerve endings (which we are advised
by Masters and Johnson and others do not reside in the vagina) and
perhaps that is w hy such a reaction is not electronically perceptible. Or
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UNITED STATES DESTRUCTION
Catastrophic effects
of Vietna
(These comments were made by Ngo Cong
Due, Secretary-General of the Socialist Op-
position bloc in the National Assembly of
South Vietnam, at a recent Paris press con-
ference.)
THE CURRENT war is destroying untold human
and material resources in South Vietnam.
Not including the forces of the N.L.F., the army
of the Republic of Vietnam numbers 1,000,000
men; to this figure must be added the forces
of self-defense numbering 1,000,000 men, and
police forces numbering 100,000 men.
' In other words, 2,000,000 young people, instead
of pursuing their studies, and engaging in pro-
ductive work, are forced to take up arms in order
to help American imperialism achieve its political
aims in Southeast Asia.
American forces and the forces of the allies
of the Americans, numbering close to 500,000
men, are engaged in round-the-clock massacres
of our innocent compatriots. Cases such as those
of My Lai-Son My, which each time take 500-600
victime, are by no means isolated.
ON THE POLITICAL level, with the Vietnam-
ization of the war, the United States seeks only
to uphold the militarists and prolong the war.
The Government of Mr. Nguyen Van Thieu is
a dictatorial Government which persecutes all
those who struggle for peace and independence,
and jails the innocent. In the single province of
Vinh Binh, of which I am a deputy, more than 300
people were last year arbitrarily arrested and
jailed. In 1969 the Americans stated that there
were only 20,000 Communist cadres in South Viet-
nam; at the end of 1969, however, the Govern-
ment arrested more than 70,000 people, and it
appears that the number of Communst cadres
had not diminished. These very figures condemn
the repressive policies of the Saigon Government.
At present the Nguyen Van Thieu Government
severely represses all opposition movements. Sev-
eral hundred war victims are being held in jails;
several hundred students were taken to military
training camps; the president of the Student
Union of Saigon-Hue is in prison. All are subject-
ed to the most savage kinds of torture.
Nguyen Van Thie Government to seek a military
victory.
ON THE ECONOMIC LEVEL, South Vietnam
is in a catastrophic situation. The annual budget
amounts to 210 billion plasters; income amounts
to only seventy billion. Every year, in addition to
American aid, inflation wipes out 80 billion
piasters.
The chief purpose of American aid is to divide
the Vietnamese among themselves. The U.S. has
transformed the South Vietnamese market into
a one-way consumers market. Contraband Amer-
ican foods are inundating the South Vietnamese
markets. Of the 17 million people currently living
in South Vietnam, as many as 2,000,000 families
live on war profits by serving the interests of the
United States. This is why the purpose of Amer-
ican aid is by no means to raise the standard of
living of the population; on the contrary, it
plunges the population into ever-increasing
misery. For instance, twenty years' salary of a
South Vietnamese Army officer with a wife and
m'sWa r
than 400,000 Vietnamese women are currently
engaged in this wretched and humiliating profes-
sion. The Americans also try to promote corrup-
tion so as to use their accomplices in pursuing
their imperialist aims in South Vietnam.
ON THE CULTURAL LEVEL, the U.S. seeks
to transform South Vietnam into an American-
type society by sweeping away all the positive
aspects of the Vietnamese heritage. Millions of
young people are deprived of education, 9- and
10-year-old children do not go to school but tend
buffaloes, work in rice fields, shine shoes, and sell
newspapers. American policy in South Vietnam
aims at Americanizing the Vietnamese people,
transforming the Vietnamese into foreigners in
their own country into increasingly ignorant
creatures stripped of all dignity.
Having become aware of the imperialist poli-
cies the U.S. wants to impose in South Vietnam,
and having also become aware of the dependence
of Nguyen Van Thieu's Government on the U.S.,
the South Vietnamese nonlation is now rising in
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