Orgasm Politics
a lesbian view

"Is This Why We Did It...
So Women Could Use Whips and Chains?"

The African American lesbian-feminist poet Pat Parker composed these lines in 1983. They were occasioned by a historically specific event: "Three women," she wrote in her introduction, "were arrested for assault recently after they beat up a woman who put a swastika on another woman's shoulder during an S&M encounter." Parker, also a health activist, died of cancer in 1989 at the age of 45.

It's something you should write about.
If you talk about it
then women will listen
and know it's ok.
Now, envision one poet sitting in a bar
not cruising
observing the interactions
and then sitting face to face
with a young woman
who wants a spokesperson for
sado-masochism
among lesbians.
The first impulse is to dismiss
the entire conversation as more
ramblings of a SWG

     (read Silly White Girl:
     derogatory
     characterization
     used by minorities for
     certain members of the
     caucasian race.)

The second is to run rapidly
in another direction.
Polite poets do not run,
throw up, or strike
the other person in a conversation.
What we do is let our minds ramble.

So nodding in the appropriate places
I left the bar
traveled
first to the sixties
back to the cramped living rooms
activist dykes
consciousness-raising sessions 
I polled the women there
one by one
Is this what it was all about? 
Did we brave the wrath of threatened bar  
     owners 
so women could wear handkerchiefs in 
     their pockets?
One by one I asked.
Their faces faded
furrows of frowns on the their brows.
I went to the halls
where we sat hours upon hours
arguing with Gay men
trying to build a united movement
I polled the people there
one by one

Is this why we did it?
Did we grapple with our own who hated us
so women could use whips and chains?
The faces faded
puzzled faces drift out of vision.
I returned to the jails
where women sat bruised and beaten
singing songs of liberation
through puffed lips
I polled the women there
one by one
Is this why we did it?
Did we take to the streets
so women can carve swastikas on their 
     bodies?

Hundreds and hundreds of women
pass by
no, march by
chant, sing, cry
I return to the voice
the young voice in the bar
and I am angry
the vision of women playing
as Nazis, policemen, rapists
taunts me
mocks me
words drift through

it's always by consent
we are oppressed by other dykes
who don't understand
and I am back in the bar
furious
the poll is complete
no, no no no
this is not why we did it
this is not why we continue to do.

We need not play at being victim
we need not practice pain
we need not encourage helplessness
they lurk outside our doors
follow us through the streets
and claim our lives daily.
We must not offer haven
for fascists and pigs
be it real or fantasy
the line is too unclear. 

                    --PAT PARKE

"Bar Conversation" copyright © 1985 by Pat Parker, reprinted from Jonestown & Other Madness by Pat Parker by permission of Firebrand Books, 141 Commons, Ithaca, New York 14850. "Bar Conversation" also appears in Unleashing Feminism: Critiquing Lesbian Sadomasochism in the Gay Nineties, Irene Reti, ed. (HerBooks, PO Box 7467, Santa Cruz, CA 95061).