The Accomplishments of Feminism, NOW and Then

In the early ‘70s, when I worked in the Washington bureau of an afternoon paper in Louisville, Ky., the editors asked me to check out an emerging women’s group they said was the militant part of the feminist movement.

So I met with half a dozen of the leading members in a spacious downtown apartment where one of them lived. We sat around in a circle with our shoes off. I thought maybe we were going to pass the pipe around. Instead we drank cinnamon-flavored tea and discussed the issues these women considered important.

They had militant views all right: Equal rights for women (they actually wanted to make it part of the U.S. Constitution), equal pay, an end to glass ceilings, no more sexual harassment. Domestic violence was important too. And they were talking about shelters for battered women, a militant idea indeed.

The group was called the National Organization for Women (NOW) and those strong views they discussed as we sat on that apartment floor 22 years ago are now considered pretty mainstream.

NOW has grown to more than 250,000 members and 600 chapters. This Saturday, the South Orange County chapter of NOW holds an open house/membership drive at its meeting room in the Wells Fargo Bank building at 260 Ocean Ave. in Laguna Beach.

“Bring your ideas, questions, energy and friends,” its spokeswoman, JoAnn Perlman, suggests in a flier.

NOW has two Orange County chapters, north and south, and is still fighting for most of its original causes. It popularized the phrase “59 cents” in the ‘70s, to dramatize how much women earned for every dollar earned by men in comparable jobs. NOW says that number is up to 75 cents today. Whether that’s adequate progress depends on how you see things.

The South Orange County chapter has been around since the early ‘70s. I asked Perlman if any of its original board members remained. Just one, she said: Georgia Fetchen Reed. So I called Reed, who turned out to be younger than I am.

Reed, a computer programmer who lives in Orange, says she joined NOW after seeing an ad for it the first time she picked up a copy of Ms. magazine. She didn’t actually become an active participant in NOW until after her son was born in 1976.

“I found that people treated me differently after I had a baby,” said Reed, who lived in Laguna Beach then and remembers taking her son to an Equal Rights Amendment rally before he was a year old. “It was as if, because I had a baby, suddenly I had the baby’s IQ.”

Reed is proud not only of the causes the South Orange County chapter has taken on, but how the group joined with the national movement to help educate women.

“The fact that many young women don’t think they need us is evidence of our success,” she said.

But Reed believes NOW’s role is just as important as ever.

“Today we have to fight just to keep the rights we fought to gain in the past,” she told me. One example she gave: affirmative action, which many want to end. It’s still necessary to assure women a proper chance to compete with white males, in Reed’s view.

Reed said her group is hoping the open house will bring in young women who have never even heard of NOW, women who need a reminder of what the organization has been able to accomplish.

Said Reed: “I’ve been in NOW so long, I just can’t not be in it; I have to stay involved.”

Jungle Revisited: I said in my last column that listeners to a KFI-AM radio talk show were overwhelmingly supportive of Larry Kaml, the former Jungle Cruise operator at Disneyland who faces misdemeanor trespassing charges for jumping in the water on his final day, after 11 years of service. (It’s a tradition that cruise operators be thrown in by their colleagues on their last day; Kaml beat them to it.)

Now I have a fax from someone at Disneyland who identifies herself as “Ruthie Ride Operator.” She says there is a side to this that the KFI listeners weren’t told by Kaml: Instead of just jumping in, as he indicated to radio listeners, he played the moment to the hilt by swimming around for the crowd.

“Ruthie” says Kaml also had stashed away an inflated rubber raft, and hand-paddled it back to the dock. It was a 25-minute show that wound up inconveniencing park visitors on the other cruise boats, she said. Her suggestion to Kaml: “Larry, if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.”

Park officials acknowledge the final-day tradition, but say Kaml created a potential safety hazard because the other cruise boats had to be shut down while he was in the water.

Around the Town: It’s not the Christmas season yet, but Molly Lynch, artistic director of Ballet Pacifica, is already thinking “Nutcracker.” She’s holding auditions Sept. 21 at the Ballet Pacifica Conservatory in Irvine for its 30th anniversary production of the traditional Christmas ballet. Ages 6 to adult are welcome; male dancers especially needed. . . .

“The Blind Boys of Alabama” sing gospel music Saturday night at the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library, as part of its Multicultural Arts series. The group has received the National Endowment for the Arts’ Heritage Fellowship for Lifetime Achievement. Don’t count on hearing the original members--the group is more than 50 years old. . . .

How many of you had to do back-to-school shopping? Some day my 13-year-old son will thank his mother: She stopped him from buying a T-shirt at South Coast Plaza that said “I Dig Chicks.” . . .

Wrap-Up: I have my own suggestion for national NOW leaders. During the next four years, help turn around the country’s thinking so that Republicans or Democrats wouldn’t dare nominate a presidential candidate without having a woman on the ticket. We’re long past the time for diversity at that level. Though somehow I can’t picture Ross Perot asking a woman to be his running mate.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail tojerry.hicks@latimes.com