The
Light Dawns
from A
Desperate Passion, by Helen Caldicott, pp. 99-100.
Chapter 8
The next two
years, 1970 and 1971, were to be a watershed time. As I gradually
recovered from both hepatitis and the depression and entered the
angry stage of grief, I read a book that affected me profoundly by
the Australian author Germaine Greer -- The Female Eunuch.
She urged that women recognize and own their own thoughts,
rather than saying the "right" things to conform to the dictates
of a male-dominated society. It was okay to say those
things out loud and to be the person I really was. Wow,
what a sense of liberation! It wasn't until I read that book that
I realized I had never really stopped to consider what I
thought about things, let alone to expose the real person beneath
my inhibitory layers of "niceness."
Suddenly I didn't care what other people thought about me, and I
started to feel my oats. I developed a white-hot certainty that
left no room for compromise. The depression lifted at last, and I
had no compunction about speaking my mind at dinner parties,
political meetings, and other social settings, much to other
people's discomfort. One evening we were invited to a rather
social dinner party given by one of Adelaide's most influential
and well-connected radiologists. Somehow the conversation turned
to the delicate subject of relationships, whereupon I mentioned
the word "orgasm," and the ceiling metaphorically crashed onto the
table. Of course, there was a certain sense of wickedness which
accompanied my sometimes wild remarks.
My energy level was high, and I was eager to explore and
experiment. I took painting lessons at the local technical
college. After my one and only class in portraiture I rushed home
and drew the faces of Bill, all three children, and Bill's father,
George; they turned out not to be bad, and I had them framed. I
also took lessons in sculpting and pottery. Even more important, I
was awakened sexually by reading the feminist literature, which
did wonders to improve our ailing marriage.
During 1971 my political activities began when I challenged the Australian government and the French to halt atmospheric nuclear testing in the Pacific. But it wasn't just the big guys I took on; I blasted local council workers in North Adelaide for heavily pruning the trees in our street, and I took on a prominent Adelaide businessman to save a local historic pub just around the corner from our house.
Then I discovered the three volumes of Bertrand Russell's autobiography, and he became my next mentor. His thoughts about moral societies and his leadership against nuclear weapons perfectly matched my own newly emerging sense of righteousness. A highly intelligent, compassionate man, he articulated his truth loudly and clearly with no reservations, and if he was proven wrong, he would acknowledge his mistake, recant, and continue preaching the new truth. I liked that.
I discovered for the first time who I really was, the real person hidden beneath the layers of intense societal and parental conditioning. I ceased to be a puppet and became me. Difficult, contentious, lively, irascible, with enormous amounts of energy and an irrefutable certainty about the truth as I saw it. Not an easy person to live with, I'm sure.
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