The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

N.C. Schools Employ Radical Lesbian Who Called Marriage ‘Slavery’ for Women

Posted on | May 24, 2015 | 123 Comments

By Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain on Twitter)

A pioneering lesbian activist who called heterosexuality “the ideology of male supremacy” and condemned marriage as “slavery” for women is now working as a math teacher in North Carolina.

 

As a graduate student in 1969, Margaret Small helped begin what became the Women’s Studies program at the State University of New York’s Buffalo campus and in 1972 co-taught a course called “Lesbianism 101” recognized as the first such class taught in the United States. Since 2009, Small has been employed as a K-12 Mathematics Curriculum Specialist for Buncombe County Schools in Asheville, N.C., according to her LinkedIn profile. However, in the 1970s, she was a member of a radical lesbian collective known as The Furies, co-founded by legendary feminist Charlotte Bunch. Small’s 1975 essay “Lesbians and the Class Position of Women” offered a Marxist interpretation of “lesbian consciousness” as part of a “revolutionary struggle” to end women’s “oppression” in the “relationship of slavery,” as she called marriage.

“Women’s oppression is based in the fact that she reproduces the species,” Small wrote in the essay, published in Lesbianism and the Women’s Movement, a book co-edited by Bunch and Nancy Myron. “The relationship of men to reproduction is defined by a single act of fucking at the moment of impregnation and ends at that point.”

Invoking the historical theories of Friedrich Engels (colleague of Karl Marx and co-author of the 1848 “Communist Manifesto”), Small declared: “Class society arose because of the oppression of women. . . . The exploitation of all women by all men made possible the exploitation of some men by other men. The more exploitative the relationship between men and women becomes, the stronger and more vital become the institutions of male supremacy.”

 

After getting her master’s degree from SUNY-Buffalo in 1973 Small “worked for 8 years as a machinist, first in a shipyard in San Diego and then at several manufacturing plants in Chicago,” before returning to school at the University of Illinois-Chicago, according to an online profile. She became a math teacher in Chicago public schools, got her PhD. and, in 2000, became “a founding Director of the Young Women’s Leadership Charter School of Chicago (YWLCS),” the only all-girls public school in Chicago. Small moved to North Carolina in 2009 and, in 2013, married her lesbian partner Peggy Baker. Also a former YWLCS teacher, Baker runs an education non-profit, EASL Institute, whose clients include schools in North Carolina, New York and Chicago.

Margaret Small’s pioneering work in the feminist movement has been recognized in numerous books, including Breaking the Wave: Women, Their Organizations, and Feminism, 1945-1985, edited by Kathleen Laughlin and Jacqueline Castledine (2010), and the Historical Dictionary of the Lesbian and Gay Liberation Movements, by JoAnne Myers (2013). Her role in teaching the first lesbian university course (along with Madeline Davis) was cited as No. 10 on a list of “20 Notable College Moments in LGBT History” by Best Colleges Online.

Small’s 1975 essay condemning marriage and heterosexuality has been cited in such books as Separatism and Women’s Community by Dana Shugar and The Invention of Heterosexuality by Jonathan Katz. The essay was adapted from a speech Small gave to the Wasington, D.C., think tank Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) on behalf of The Furies.

“In terms of the oppression of women, heterosexuality is the ideology of male supremacy,” Small wrote. “In order for men to have a justification for exploiting women and an ability to enforce that exploitation, heterosexuality has to become, not merely an act in relation to impregnation, but the dominant ideology.”

Under male supremacy, Small asserted, women “become defined as appendages to men” in a system “which maintains the ideological power of men over women.” Small’s article (the full text of which is embedded below) declares: “Heterosexual hegemony insures that people think it natural that male and female form a life-long sexual/reproductive unit with the female belonging to the male.”

Lesbians, Small wrote, were crucial to “the development of revolutionary consciousness” because they are “outside of the reality which heterosexual ideology explains.” Heterosexuality would become “irrelevant” as alternatives to sexual reproduction were developed.

“Male supremacy is what is attacked in lesbian ideology,” Small wrote. “What we are doing in revolutionary struggle is to make our consciousnesses different. When enough people’s consciousnesses are different, then we make a revolution.”

The Furies collective, which Small represented in her speech at IPS, was formed by Bunch and others in 1971, and announced its revolutionary feminist goals in early 1972. Bunch’s manifesto, “Lesbians in Revolt,” is included in many university Women’s Studies textbooks and curricula. Bunch became a distinguished academic at Rutgers University and in 1999 was honored with the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights by President Bill Clinton. (Click here to see C-SPAN video of Hillary Clinton’s speech at the December 1999 ceremony.)

Lesbian Margaret Small 1975 by himself2462

 

John Hoge and Jeanette Runyon assisted in the research for this article, which is part of the Sex Trouble project that has been supported by contributions from readers. The first edition of Sex Trouble: Radical Feminism and the War on Human Nature is available from Amazon.com, $11.96 in paperback or $1.99 in Kindle ebook format.





 

 

Comments

123 Responses to “N.C. Schools Employ Radical Lesbian Who Called Marriage ‘Slavery’ for Women”

  1. Jeanette Victoria
    May 24th, 2015 @ 9:12 pm

    Two elderly butch feminists living together in a mockery or real marriage indoctrinating little girls to hate/blame men and Blacks to hate/blame whites.

  2. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    May 24th, 2015 @ 9:13 pm

    Is shame…I mean same sex marriage slavery too?

  3. Dana
    May 24th, 2015 @ 9:31 pm

    If one is only the “bottom,” then maybe . . . .

  4. robertstacymccain
    May 24th, 2015 @ 9:31 pm

    No. Minus the male, there is no slavery.

  5. Dana
    May 24th, 2015 @ 9:33 pm

    The unanswered question is: in her current position, is she doing anything other than working on mathematics curricula?

  6. concern00
    May 24th, 2015 @ 9:37 pm

    No, because it’s the mechanism through which marriage will be ultimately dismantled. Think of it as a virus infecting what is already an unhealthy body; ultimately, it will kill the host.

  7. Nemacolin
    May 24th, 2015 @ 9:40 pm

    So the headline is that some state workers have unusual opinions?

  8. Michael
    May 24th, 2015 @ 9:42 pm

    Rather hateful opinions.

  9. WarEagle82
    May 24th, 2015 @ 9:50 pm

    It should be patently clear that state-run schools are now engaged in full-blown propaganda and indoctrination to confuse children about sexuality and actively recruit children into nothing less than perversion and depravity that will ultimately compromise their mental and physical health.

    My kids have never spent a day laboring under the “tender mercies” of these tax payer-paid Marxist and homosexual recruiters! Take your children out of government indoctrination centers before your kids are destroyed by their propaganda and recruiting efforts.

  10. Jeanette Victoria
    May 24th, 2015 @ 10:00 pm

    Way back when I was young and poor I sent my daughter to an “Alternative” school. She has a butch lesbian for a teacher for three years (they had three grades n one class room). The one thing my daughter got from that experience was if she ever had a son she would never ever send him to a public school.

  11. Kirby McCain
    May 24th, 2015 @ 10:10 pm

    Funny, she doesn’t look like a girls soccer coach …

  12. Kirby McCain
    May 24th, 2015 @ 10:11 pm

    Except the slavery to an empty and hateful ideology.

  13. TitzyFritzensimmons
    May 24th, 2015 @ 10:16 pm

    Asheville is a lot like Austin in the 70’s. Turn a corner downtown and see a drug deal happening, and lots of leftover “hippies,” old and young. Too bad because it’s a beautiful town.

    “Stand for something or you will fall for anything.” Should be the mantra of traditional Americans.

  14. Nemacolin
    May 24th, 2015 @ 10:20 pm

    Yeah, my letter carrier seems odd too. Where can I report him?

  15. Jeanette Victoria
    May 24th, 2015 @ 10:20 pm

    Funny I’ve never been to Asheville and I go to Bryson City all the time (it’s just 30 min further on the 77) to photograph the sky and just get away.

  16. Michael
    May 24th, 2015 @ 11:48 pm

    Perhaps to someone that cares.

  17. Michael
    May 24th, 2015 @ 11:49 pm

    You’re not missing anything. This state is petty dull in my opinion. I suppose the mountains are nice but that’s it.

  18. Jeanette Victoria
    May 24th, 2015 @ 11:56 pm

    yson city is a bedroom town for Asheville except it is very conservative I expect I will move there eventually. Oh and I really Love NC escaaping SoCal was one of the smarter things I did.

  19. Robert Oscar Lopez
    May 24th, 2015 @ 11:59 pm

    These people are truly horrible. Good work, McCain.

  20. Michael
    May 25th, 2015 @ 12:08 am

    It has its perks. Move out in the country and get away from most people. It’s quite nice and peaceful but it does getting boring at times.

  21. Daniel Freeman
    May 25th, 2015 @ 12:40 am

    “The relationship of men to reproduction is defined by a single act of fucking at the moment of impregnation and ends at that point.”

    That is as silly as saying that the relationship of women to reproduction is defined by a single act of birthing at the moment of disimpregnation and ends at that point. Sure, men could take it from there, but why would anyone want to do it by themselves?

  22. Daniel Freeman
    May 25th, 2015 @ 12:46 am

    When your characterization would encompass everyone from Einstein to a Nazi, perhaps you’re not being precise enough.

  23. RKae
    May 25th, 2015 @ 3:22 am

    “Marriage is the slavery of women.”

    Riiiiiiight! Because men just running around, impregnating women irresponsibly, then jumping on the next bus out of town, is sooooooo
    good for women!

    Sheesh! What a maroon!

  24. Shawn Smith
    May 25th, 2015 @ 3:40 am

    Gee, what do you think is her opinion of such sexual standards such as rules against adult-minor relationships? Do you think it might involve the phrase “oppressive patriarchy”?

  25. Shawn Smith
    May 25th, 2015 @ 3:41 am

    Yeah, this is an argument I’ve used occasionally with pro homosexual “marriage” people. If homosexual “marriage” is really the same thing as marriage, why are rabid feminists fanatically in favor of one and opposed to the other? It’s almost like they know the two things are not the same at all.

  26. Shawn Smith
    May 25th, 2015 @ 3:42 am

    Maybe she’s coaching softball.

  27. Shawn Smith
    May 25th, 2015 @ 3:42 am

    Does your letter carrier have a captive audience with other people’s children, dimwit?

  28. Nemacolin
    May 25th, 2015 @ 3:49 am

    Hey! Buy I stamps! That means I can tell him what to think just as surely as you can tell teachers what to think. After all, you pay school taxes.

  29. Shawn Smith
    May 25th, 2015 @ 3:52 am

    Well, I can’t say I disagree with the idea of the American public pushing around government employees rather than the other way around.

  30. Shawn Smith
    May 25th, 2015 @ 3:53 am

    I’m just curious, by the way, are you okay with public school teachers who are openly opposed to homosexual “marriage” and think that homosexual behavior is sinful? Or would gleefully join in an online lynch mob (a la Memories Pizza) to get that teacher fired?

  31. kerrari1898
    May 25th, 2015 @ 4:11 am

    Has your letter carrier been granted a captive audience of kids to indoctrinate?

    Did anyone other than you say anything about reporting anyone?

    Are Creationist and anti gay rights activists in teaching roles just state employees with strange views?

    Did you learn your woeful debating skills at a liberal run public school?

  32. Fail Burton
    May 25th, 2015 @ 4:29 am

    There’s an air of insanity about this movement that’s so bizarre that even mentioning it startles people. The movement loves to promote itself and even has many acolytes who buy into its tenets in a more radical chic kinda way like Valenti, Marcotte and Penny. They ask us to look into this stuff and even give us links. Then, when we do and write about it, people say “you must be nuts.” They’ll make fun of you by linking you to a site run by lesbians the same week as a lesbian literary convention and a lesbian is elected to the head of a literary organization without a hint of irony. That’s the same week this supremacist cult goes nuts over the rape of a woman on a TV show with many tortuous deaths of men. That’s like the police only investigating women who are murdered.

    In other words radical lesbian feminism is startled by itself when seen though the eyes of others as a wacky cult and so are those flak catchers unaware they are vectors for the disease. Is there a name for a thing that’s so nuts people laugh at its mere existence even while they’re handing you pamphlets?

    Is this what “mainstreaming” means? Is this like the Star Trek episode where the Yangs say “E Plebneesta” without understanding it came from our Pledge of Allegiance? Is “white privilege” the bastardization of our language? In the Wiki for that episode you have this:

    “When Kirk plots an escape, he uses the word ‘freedom.’ The Yang male objects to an ‘enemy’ using a ‘Yang worship word.'”

    Is that’s what’s happening here? Are we forbidden using radical feminism’s “worship words?” When we mention male gaze, rape culture, cisnormative, neuroatypical do we somehow become as nuts as them even while they say we’re privileged misogynists? This is Alice in Wonderland stuff, straight up and down the line.

    It’s kinda like a teflon coated virus that prevents its own cure even while it guarantees its own transmission.

  33. Jim R
    May 25th, 2015 @ 5:35 am

    SELF – “WHAT??? Here in North Caro… Oh, wait. Asheville. That explains it.”

  34. Nemacolin
    May 25th, 2015 @ 5:54 am

    No, I would not ask a teacher to be fired for his social views. The idea that every schoolmarm must meet the school board’s moral agenda is long-standing and silly.

  35. Nemacolin
    May 25th, 2015 @ 6:00 am

    Yes, people with strange views are people with strange views. If we were to insist every clerk at the DMV hews strictly to the state’s official doctrine of marriage, diet, or skirt length we would have a government entirely too intrusive. You are proposing a big-government nanny state.

  36. Fail Burton
    May 25th, 2015 @ 6:51 am

    “Catherine Deveny ?@CatherineDeveny Sep 17 @JeffBurtonMusic The institution of marriage is sexist, oppressive, homophobic and discriminatory.”

    “Catherine Deveny @CatherineDeveny · Sep 16 I regard heterosexual marriage as a much more important feminist issue and bigger oppressor of women than the burka.”

  37. Dana
    May 25th, 2015 @ 6:54 am

    I’m not sure that she does have that “captive audience.” Our host noted that, “Since 2009, Small has been employed as a K-12 Mathematics Curriculum Specialist for Buncombe County Schools in Asheville, N.C.” I’m not certain exactly what that jibber-jabber means, but it doesn’t sound like she is an in-classroom teacher.

    Nor does teaching trigonometry, if she does teach classes herself, lend itself to questions about queer “marriage.” I’m as opposed to the idea that the state should authorize or recognize homosexual relationships as anyone, but I have no objection to homosexuals earning a living, even with the public schools, as long as they are not trying to proselytize unnatural sex or copulate with kids.

  38. Quartermaster
    May 25th, 2015 @ 7:15 am

    Waynesville is 30 min past Asheville. It takes a bit over 30 min to get to Bryson from Waynesville.

  39. Nemacolin
    May 25th, 2015 @ 7:19 am

    Very well said, thank you.

  40. Fail Burton
    May 25th, 2015 @ 7:31 am

    No, because goalposts have legs in lady-worship land.

  41. Jeanette Victoria
    May 25th, 2015 @ 7:36 am

    Yeah you are right

  42. Fail Burton
    May 25th, 2015 @ 8:06 am

    Consciousness-raising is just fine in a noble cause – the abolition of slavery for example. The problem is one can just as easily mainstream hate speech if no binding principles are invoked all can benefit by. It’s pretty clear this is a mad hate speech movement against straight white men, and that’s all it is.

  43. Mike G.
    May 25th, 2015 @ 8:33 am

    Now you’re getting in my neck o’ the woods. My old stomping grounds as it were; Back when I was briefly going to WCU, I used to take some girls in my truck to Bryson City to get beer and wine on Sundays. Ahhh…good times.

  44. trangbang68
    May 25th, 2015 @ 9:07 am

    no matter how she tries, 2+2 will never equal 5

  45. Dana
    May 25th, 2015 @ 9:18 am

    If one has a strap-on . . . ?

  46. totenhenchen
    May 25th, 2015 @ 9:42 am

    bun·kum?b?NGk?m/noun, informal dated noun: buncombe

    nonsense. “they talk a lot of bunkum about their products”

    This shit writes itself, folks.

  47. Fail Burton
    May 25th, 2015 @ 10:47 am

    She looks like precisely nothing. Funny how an all-male army won WW II so these mental cases could mutter anti-male shite on blogs and Twitter all day. Nothing highlights their hypocrisy and failure like that does. The idea they’re supremacists fit only to make sandwiches on a civilizational level only adds to the air of madness which constantly clings to these people.

  48. N.C. Schools Employ Radical Lesbian Who Called Marriage ‘Slavery’ for Women | Living in Anglo-America
    May 25th, 2015 @ 11:25 am
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  50. Gahrie
    May 25th, 2015 @ 12:03 pm

    How long until feminists start calling on women to commit sex selective abortions on male babies?