We Won't Choose Between Our Lesbianism and Our Children

WE WON’T CHOOSE BETWEEN OUR LESBIANISM AND OUR CHILDREN

Lesbians are marching today because we have never been able to have the children we want or keep the children we have. We are also marching to protest the cuts in MediCal funding for abortions. For lesbians, forced pregnancy means our ability to break away from relationships with men is severely restricted. Like all other women, we want the right to determine if, when and under what conditions we have children, In order to make that choice, we also demand that there be no cuts in our welfare money, Lesbians have been able to use that small monthly sum to increase our power to leave marriages and to take our children with us. That money also makes it more of a possibility that ‘‘childless’’ lesbians will be able to have the children we want.

Our lack of money has forced us to give up our children or-to remain ‘‘closeted’’ from the world — unable to love other women in the way we want. Lesbians, without the benefit of men’s higher wages, rarely can afford the costly court battle to defend ourselves against the accusation of being ‘‘unfit’’ mothers. Because we don’t get paid for raising our children and our jobs are low paying, we cannot begin to compete in the courtroom with men and their ‘‘economic stability.’’ At the very least, he can assure the court of providing another woman who will take care of the children in a mote ‘‘acceptable family situation.” :

Lesbians are exploding the myth that it is every woman’s natural role to take care of men for free. Like all women, we are fighting for sexual choices in our lives. Our fight to get out of dependent relationships with men is a direct challenge to the government’s plan to keep all women poor, powerless, and working endlessly.

WE REFUSE TO CHOOSE BETWEEN OUR LESBIANISM AND OUR CHILDREN. WE WANT BOTH! WE OPPOSE CARTER’S WELFARE REFORM — WE WANT MORE MONEY SO WE CAN “AFFORD” TO BE LESBIAN. WE OPPOSE FORCED STERILIZATION — THROUGH THE KNIFE OR THROUGH POVERTY WE DEMAND NO CUTS IN MEDI-CAL FUNDING OF ABORTIONS. SUPPORT JEANNE JULLION, A LESBIAN MOTHER WHO IS FIGHTING FOR CUSTODY OF HER CHILDREN IN OAKLAND. SUPPORT LINDA GILL, A DISABLED WOMAN WHO LOST CUSTODY OF HER CHILDREN . IN MICHIGAN.

On Sale Today at the Wages for Housework table - “MOTHERHOOD, LESBIANISM AND CHILD CUSTODY”’ $1.20 By Francis Wyland—-Wages Due Lesbians, Toronto. or available from: Lesbian Women for Wages for Housework—San Francisco P.O. Box 5207 Telephone: 282-1326 or 821-7637

WELFARE, ABORTION, AND THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE

A welfare woman was denied the right to speak at this rally .bout her day-to-day struggle to survive on welfare. We are outraged ‘y this action because it is clear hat cuts in MediCal money are a direct attack on women on welfare. Led by black women, womea on w« ifare have been making the government pay for the work of raising children, and that money has given us more power not only to refuse the children we don’t want, but to have the children we do want. Wages for Housework —San Francisco had been trying to secure Jean Hall, a welfare mother from California'‘ Welfare Mothers in Los Angeles, as a speaker. At the last minute, the coalition decided that we didn’t have time to listen to-a welfare woman speaking about the struggle she is making for more money, less government regulation, less dependence on a man and against taking on more work on top cf our housework. Internationally, the government is trying to attack our right to have children through welfare reforms, new sterilization programs, cutoffs in abortion money and increasing denial of child custody to women. Who is of more priority to hear today than someone who speaks to these attacks?

Keeping a welfare mother off the speaker platform is only symptomatic of the narrowness of whose “right to choose’ this coalition is fighting for. If we are really marching today to demand the right to decide if, when, and under what conditions we have children, we must demand the money that makes such decisions possible. Opposing Carter’s welfare reform which welfare mothers, disabled people, and senior citizens are already mobilizing around nationally was not supported by this coalition. Unless we demand the money we need, we acquiesce to che government’s terms: that it we are poor (and how many women are not poor?), if we are on welfare, if we are black or Third World, if we cannot or refuse to depend on a man for money, our only choice is sterilization —through the knife or through poverty.

It is for this reason that we are letting a welfare woman speak in our leaflet—her outrage comes from one too many exclusions such as this:

You speak of freedom and we are starving, begging, selling ourselves, scrounging daily for our very survival. We are caught in a living nightmare, in terror for our lives and the lives of our children. . . . Talking about control over our own bodies when we don’t have the right to even keep our bodies from being hungry. I want my children to be free to live. I don’t want to turn them over to the Man’s schools so they can be brainwashed, shamed, filled with self-hatred and disgust. I don’t want to have a place to leave them so I can go out and work: I want to have the freedom of staying with them. I’m begging for the privilege of Motherhood. I already have free abortion on demand, lady — they do the demanding, I just want a healthy baby .. . Freedom is being able to want a baby, and not feeling guilty about bringing him into the world to suffer and make the other kids poorer. Freedom is not having to sell ass. I don’t mean on the street. I mean to the one or two men you know who'll put some food on the table or buy something for the kids if you give them some. Freedom is being able to say, ‘‘I’m not married,’’ with a baby calling you ‘‘Mamma’”’ and not being ashamed.

Public opinion upholds the punitive and inequitable way we are treated. It perpetuates the myths about us and insures that the needs of the poor will always be determined by the non-poor . . . The Welfare Department bows to public opinion. We need to build a body of public opinion to counteract the miseducation of the so-called silent majority, to get the truth about Welfare and Poverty into the media. We have to let the Welfare pigs know they don’t have a free rein to fuck over people. They have to know they’re being watched, that ‘respectabie’ people care what they do. Only you — people who are not dependeui, on Public Assistance for your subsistance or your employment can exert the tremendous pressure we need — not, mind you, to gain anything, not te raise our standard of living or even our leve! of nutrition, but only to hold on to ine pittance we have now. We know.we can’t make it clone and — yet WE ARE ALONE.

Why do you ignore us? Where are our needs in your demands? We can’t fight for freedom as women when we're struggling just to stay alive. Your movement is a farce and a travesty to us, because you uphold the forces that make us beg for our existence; that makes our lives a series of lines and interviews and endless waits in filthy, noisy, crowded rooms; that brand and label us as those who live at the whim of the State. Your silence consents to our misery.

— Anonymous (Reprinted from SISTER, Aug.-Sept. 1977

Wages for Housework —San Francisco, P.O. Box 5207—Telephone: 282-1326 or 821-7637