Inside Every Field Marshal There's an Adorable Little Girl (part one)

. . . now don't squirm. let me put my rubber
on. I'm a worl in a lamb skin trojan. ohh yeah that's
hard that's good. now don't tighten up. open up be-
bop. lift that little butt up. ummm open wider be-bop.
come on. nothing. can. stop me. now. ohhh ahhh.
isn't that good. my. melancholy be-bop.

(From Patti Smith, "rape," in the 1973-1974 section of Early Work: 1970-1979.)

What's a feminist to do? There we all were, if not burning our bras (boobs too big) wanting to, stepping forward in closed sessions (no men allowed) to confess our secret and ultimately redundant histories so we could take the bruised hand of the next girlvictim and lead her into the light, away from all that. In the universities (why is that all these meetings took place on one campus or another?) we combed and combed the archives like Rapunzel's hair, searching for tenure--oops, I mean the nit of that Hot New Forgotten Author from at least a century ago, that female Bartleby scrivening away unaware that we were waiting in the future to rescue her from the Canon fire of our benighted colleagues. Like Poe, we preferred them lovely and dead.

Because the living ones cause so much trouble.