University of California Berkeley - Blue and Gold Yearbook (Berkeley, CA)

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gay liberation A Human Being Is a Human Being Whatever causes homosexuality is the same thing which causes hetrosexuality. And it ' s as simple as that, explained a member of the Berkele y Gay Liberation Front. He said the purpose of the eight-month-old or- ganization was to teach today ' s society that human beings will not be free until they are able to express their sexual feelings and desires to whomever they want, regardless of sex and based solely on another ' s consent. This message is constantly preached by the Gay Lib- eration street theater and by picket demonstrations in the business communities of the Bay Area. The Uni- versity, he continued, is no more free than any other societal institution. Gay students are still afraid of being discovered, he lamented. So to demonstrate the University ' s repressive attitude and actions towards gays, the Liberation Front in January consecrated a bathroom in Harmon Gymnasium as a sanctuary for homosexuals. 27

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Student Planned U n-parenthood Cowell Hospital presented a proposal to Planned Parenthood for a birth control center at Cowell, s imilar to those in Oakland and at the Y.W.C.A. If the pro- posal is approved, the Hospital will contract with the Planned Parenthood Association to make space avail- able in the evenings for registered female students. There will be a fee similar to that of the other centers, about ten dollars. Students generally agree that a Planned Parenthood Clinic is needed, where the students can obtain more information. In light of the recent investigations into the uses of the pill, female students would feel more informed if they would be allowed to speak to the doctors, and learn all the pros and cons of this and other contraceptive measures. The center would also keep records on the length of time the patient has used the pill, and keep watch on her to check her health. Some students think that Cowell is not doing enough in the area of birth control. Even what is allowed under State law, is not available at Cowell. However, it is an emergency center, not a general hospital. Some want Cowell to provide contraceptives for males, as well as information on male contraceptives. But, there is a strong minority which is not so en- thusiastic about a birth control center, fearing that the public will be outraged. 26

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Women ' s Lib Cross-Examined Women ' s liberation doesn ' t have the immediate impor- tance of black liberation or ending the war in Vietnam — the revolution. That statement shows you have no concept of the oppression of women. It ' s true that women are not being killed off as a group in the great numbers that black people and Vietnamese are, or in such obvious ways. But 10,000 women die each year from abortions be- cause the men who run this country have decided that a woman may not control her own body. Women are dehumanized and put into service roles like black peo- ple. More of us can make it economically, if we are willing to prostitute ourselves as wives of upper- or middle-class men. But basically we are economically ex- ploited, psychologically oppressed and socially kept in our place by men i by a capitalist system that has institutionalized male supremacy — in a more subtle way than the caveman but just as destructively. Your ideas may be all right for you personally, but why must you impose a particular life style on other women? Some women really want to serve a man in the tradi- tional way, they just naturally want to be housewives. That sounds like the happy slave argument for the South — a great rationalization for continuing op- pression. There are at least two things wrong with your point. First, no woman in a modern Western society has grown up in the absence of lifelong pressure to seek sub- missiveness, to want to be a housewife, to define herself in the terms of the dominant male society. So no one can say for sure that such attitudes and goals are innate in women, that they have come naturally. Women never had a chance to find out what they really want; no one knows what a woman would choose if she were free psychologically and technically. In the second place, it doesn ' t seem really probable that anyone would want to be no more than a housewife if all other avenues were open. Housework is uncreative, no matter what the mass media say about it in their re- lentless drive to sell a new cake mix or floor wax. Any- 28