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The story starts in August 1966, when Susan, a newly married New Yorker,
moves with her husband across the country to Seattle in hopes of saving her
failing marriage. She is shy young woman, with a deep inferiority complex,
subconsciously competing (and losing competition) with her bright and outgoing
husband.
Marital dissatisfaction, boredom, too much housework, lead Susan, just as many other bored middle class wimmin of the time straight to Betty Freidan's Feminine Mystique. For a while, Susan was involved with Women's Liberation; this is where she began to grow, separated from her husband, and, more important, developed the Style -- mini skirt with boots and long scarf and glasses. This is how she spells "Style" -- with a capital "S." Clearly, it's very important to her. Quite often through the book Susan shows typical characteristics representative of the gender aristocracy: she pays a lot of attention to "Style," enjoys dope, shamelessly pursues sex with various men and regardless of her master's degree in social work, supports herself by doing topless dancing and "dirty movies," as she puts it. It's interesting that the reason for the latter was that the topless dancing was more enjoyable, "less dehumanizing," didn't take much time and payed about ninety(!!!) times as well as secretarial work.(p. 46) So much for the theory about poor oppressed topless dancers. Obviously, the gender aristocracy gets into the most ancient profession, because it's also one of the most profitable ones in the First World. This confession from someone involved in the trade once more corroborates MIM's line that gender is a social rather than biological category and prostitutes/topless dancers in the First World cannot claim to be victims of gender oppression. But let's return to the major theme of the book. Susan was in that vague, alternative-lifestyle-pursuing stage of her life when she joined in 1969 SDS, and then, after SDS split from PL, Weathermen. Susan repeats again and again, that she joined the Movement for purely emotional reasons. Regardless of her multiple attractions and encounters, she still was looking for her ideal, beautiful knight in shining armor. Finally she found him. His name was Revolution. She doesn't try to pretend that she knew much about theory; she openly admits she "barely understood" a famous Weathermen paper -- it was "too long and theoretical." (p. 58) She liked it anyway. There was undeniable attraction in something she couldn't fully understand -- for a highly emotional woman like Susan it was demand for sacrifice, calling to give up everything, to change all your being to the very core and never look back. "Long live the victory of people's war!" (p. 64) Neither Women's Lib, nor hippie lifestyle, nor sensible husband Robby with his worker's movement aspirations could provide such an opportunity. "My white knight materialized into a vision of world-wide liberation..."(p. 65) Sadly, Susan's White Knight was not destined to live a very long life. Being children of a deeply sick society, Weathermen inevitably inherited all it's contradictions, vices and desperation which eventually contributed to their demise. They proclaimed love for people as a major strength and carried out terribly destructive criticism sessions; they declared smashing monogamy an important goal and hypocritically called on wimmin to fight male chauvinism, which was the major beneficiary of smashed monogamy; they had numbers of brilliant, highly educated people in their midst and encouraged children to drop out of school; they worked very hard to build an alliance with the Black Panthers and attacked a Black Panther at the June 1969 Convention for the remark that wimmin should be available for any man if necessary for revolution even though such a remark was not really any different from their own "smash monogamy" line. As Susan Stern says, they were victims of "the whole shit ass America, and a culture that would make decent young people... almost destroy each other in order to bring some positive change for humanity."(p. 222) The greatest vengeance against the beast of Amerikan imperialism came from it's best and brightest children, who were supposed to take over, in whose name and for whose sake Amerika committed it's crimes. They condemned the monster which brought them to life, educated them in elite schools, gave them the power of knowledge and then showed it's ugly face. They vowed to destroy it even at price of their own destruction. They proclaimed allegiance to the Third World and rejected the bloody "motherland." They chose to be with the victim rather than with hangman. However, "ordinary" Amerika did not want to hear them. White Amerikans would join Revolution only if they could "keep boogying, keep on smiling, keep on trucking and smash the state." (p. 343) The latter for them was almost side effect. Lifestyle issues were most important. Even Susan, so much in love with Revolution, adamantly defended her right to dope, high heels and go-go dancing. She would never give it up. "What kid in right mind would join a Revolution that banned dope?" (p. 116) Perhaps, a starving kid or disturbed intellectual kid with deep sense of justice would, but neither was the case for most of white Amerika. Young white Amerika felt cheated if Revolution weren't fun. But it wasn't. Weathermen went underground. By 1972, the Movement died. We would highly recommend this book. With her vivid and emotional writing, Susan Stern brings back a turbulent era which seems so far away now. The Weathermen has to be remembered. The young generation in this country have something to learn from them. For all their flaws and mistakes, these disturbed and selfless souls were the only ones in Amerika who held proletarian internationalism at it's utmost importance, above everything else. |