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 When Ms. magazine asked me to write an article on masturbation in '71, I was convinced feminism was heading for sexual candor. Instead, the collective at Ms. was my first encounter with a prejudiced matriarchy. The article was put on hold for fear of offending readers and losing subscriptions. A similar incident happened in '73 after NOW's first big sex conference where I showed 100 slides of female genitals. The radical sex freak was once again ostracized by crabby women who didn't like sex or felt it was unimportant. At the time, I had no idea how fearful women were of sex. Two and a half years later, two pages were distilled from my seventeen-page manifesto, and published by Ms. Readers were told they could order acopy of the manifesto, "Liberating Masturbation," by sending three dollars to Ms. In one month, four thousand women responded, so I expanded the material and published an eighty-page book. With the support of women all over the country, I no longer needed Mother's approval. As I continued to distribute my little book, I became the lone cowgirl from Kansas, riding an electric vibrator over the treacherous terrain of women's fear, anger, pain and confusion surrounding sex. Over the next ten years, I'd end up selling 150,000 books: a monumental handjob! And I knew every book mailed out was another independent feminist orgasm. When Women Against Pornography appeared on the scene, it was such a ludicrous idea, I laughed at the notion. But by the '80s, Gloria Steinem and the editors at Ms., along with NOW, had become their allies in the insanity of blaming pictures of sex for violence against women. As if we didn't dish out our kind of violence with lovers' quarrels, disciplining children and punishing husbands who strayed. Sex was a feminist battlefield with romance-starved women on one side and sex crazed men on the other. From where I stood, romance and pornography were two sides of the same coin of sexual ignorance and women's inability to acknowledge human diversity. A lot of brave women from the '70s laid the groundwork for women's sexual liberation. But sexual pleasure as a way to discover ourselves and to feel happy about being alive never made it in mainstream feminism. Most women still want just a little bit of freedom so they can preserve the myth of romantic love and monogamy. While a handful of women might find the ideal lover, a faithful partner for life, there will always be those feminists like myself who claim the freedom to design their own sex lives, and to enjoy sex on our their terms. We make it into the mainstream on our own. 
- Sallie's response to Betty |
Question 1 Susie Bright Betty Dodson Nancy Friday Daphne Merkin Sallie Tisdale Question 2 Susie Bright Betty Dodson Nancy Friday Daphne Merkin Sallie Tisdale Question 3 Susie Bright Betty Dodson Nancy Friday Daphne Merkin Sallie Tisdale Question 4 Susie Bright Betty Dodson Nancy Friday Daphne Merkin Sallie Tisdale Question 5 Susie Bright Betty Dodson Nancy Friday Daphne Merkin Sallie Tisdale Question 6 Susie Bright Betty Dodson Nancy Friday Daphne Merkin Sallie Tisdale |
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