4 t Eighty years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-0552 f a JYY B- a.. l -Ago .I Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. _ ?';e II'I 11.1.; '1 it: tji Ii' '1 ' i ; rr y - y s 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 I4 4 * V .2 no'~. ( oil1- 'f , * 4 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 I