AIDS. A young man calls: he and his wife use
IV drugs occasionally, but they “ aren’t addicts
or anything” ; he doesn’t want to get his own
“ works” because he’s not really a user, so they
just share with their friends. Is it really risky? A
man calls about his wife, a nurse who was
accidentally stuck by a used syringe at work; the
hospital is running tests. They are already prac
ticing safe sex, but they have a new baby; he
wants to know if she should stop breast feeding
until they get the test results back. A woman
calls; a single mother with two small children,
she has AIDS and needs a legal referral; she
wants to write a will. A gay man calls: his lover
died last week; he needs to talk to someone.
Most callers just want to know symptoms, or
what is risky, what is not. They want some sort
of reassurance. Some callers are repeats, lonely
people; some are cranks, kids playing around or
obscene callers. But most are genuine calls; we
listen, and we try to encourage common-sense
behavior without heavy moralizing.
8:52 pm
The last call of the night is a woman who
works in health care for the Department of Cor
rections. She has a question about the life span
of the virus outside the body. Could it live, say,
in dried blood and if so, how long? Questions
like this are difficult to answer; medical science
still doesn’t understand the virus entirely. Each
Hotline volunteer goes through an initial train
ing that covers basic current medical data on the
virus. We constantly receive updates; volunteers
agree to be in the office a minimum of once a
week in order to stay current on the informa
tion. But we don’t know everything. I tell the
caller what I do know. Then she asks about
guards who deal with fights. Shouldn’t prison
workers be allowed to know who has AIDS?
What exactly is the civil rights issue involved?
We talk some more.
After her call, I forward the phones to the
answering machines, get my coat and turn out
the lights. Through the windows another damp
E
Cascade AIDS
Project, Brinker
controversy unfolds
To the Editor:
On March 20,1988,1 accepted the “ open to
the public” invitation to sit in on the monthly
meeting of the Cascade AIDS Project (CAP)
board of directors meeting. It was the greatest
disillusion I’ve experienced since the ’60s.
The first substantive item of business was
the Brinker Trust Fund, known throughout our
statewide community for enabling countless
persons with AIDS/ARC to remain in their
homes by paying rent, utilities, food and other
basics for survival when those resources have
been severed from the diagnosed individual. As
Brinker Chair Cal Hackler pointed out, this
service goal was defined specifically by
Mr. and Mrs. Chester Brinker, Sr., upon the
death of their son, whose name is memorialized
in the fund’s title.
I sat aghast as I listened to a litany of
irresponsibility on CAP’S part. When Brinker
became a subsidiary of CAP 2 or 3 years ago, it
was with the understanding that one of the
Brinker trustees sit on the CAP board as a per
manent liaison between the two groups, that
Brinker operate autonomously of CAP and that
CAP release to Brinker 24 percent monthly of
its unrestricted donations. Only the first two
conditions have been met.
CAP has made payments to Brinker only
under duress. Regular monthly payments of 24
percent of the unrestricted donations have never
come in. 24 percent of last year's successful
Walk-A-Thon never was handed over. The im
pression I got repeatedly and consistently from
CAP Chair Mike McGowan was that as long as
Brinker was solvent, it didn’t need the money.
He clearly is either not knowledgeable about, or
else he desires to withhold from Brinker the
ability to invest unspent funds to create even
greater resources for our suffering family mem
bers. Beyond that is the element of trust: A
contract was made to pay that money over. It
has not been paid. Over $28,600 was overdue
and owing to Brinker as of the end of February
1988 — providing that CAP’S bookkeeping has
been maintained on a regular basis, a proviso
for which there seems to be no real foundation.
CAP’S board members seemed largely
unaware of this infidelity, and most appeared
quite disturbed. McGowan’s focus seemed to
be maintaining punctuality with the agenda
(after starting 10-15 minutes late) rather than
with the issue of a promise not honored and a
seriously outstanding bill.
When the motion passed to hire a mediator to
discuss the problems between the two boards, I
was more than shocked. A mediator was not
needed. Someone to write a check to Brinker
E
woman who reviews for you does not do so with
a feminist, much less lesbian, perspective. Her
reviews would fit comfortably in any of the
mainstream papers in Portland. She reviews the
art of the dominant-male culture by the standards
set down by the dominant-male critics. She
makes no attempt to evaluate the movies in the
political context of a society that enforces
heterosexuality and promotes the “ cheerful
darky” theory of oppressed minorities and
women.
Nowhere is this so blatant as in her review of
Patti Rocks. This movie, according to Malin,
shows up the boys and makes a strong affirma
tive statement about women. Ha! The boys get
to talk about women in the most degrading
terms possible, and they do this for a con
siderable portion of the film. The woman’s so-
called feminist manifesto is that she has decided
to have and to keep the baby, and to raise it
without any support from the man who fathered
it. She’s no whiney ball-and-chain running to
lawyers for child support. Oh, no, she’s an
independent feminist. She makes choices. She
doesn’t let society dictate to her. She asserts
herself, her biological imperative. She says,
“ Hey, before you tell me I can’t get it. I’ll tell
you I don’t want it.” What a woman! And on
top of that, having released him from ail
responsibility, she fucks him again!
There’s nothing new here. We have been told
for years that the liberated woman fucks men
like a rabbit. So now, we’re told, if she really
has it together, she will want total responsibility
for any children that might result from all this
liberation. And she will goon fucking like a
rabbit. Guess who benefits?
When the movie critic for a lesbian/gay paper
gives column inches to such a blatant piece of
propaganda and fails to evaluate the film in light
of a lesbian perspective, she does a disservice to
the paper and its readers. I cannot help feeling
that if the paper were a totally lesbian publica
tion such a review would never have made it
into print.
Please hire a film critic who identifies with
lesbian issues and values, one whose analysis
goes beyond “ We have let our men get away
from us.”
Susie Shepherd
Caroline Gage
Portland
//
To the Editor:
I am writing about Eleanor Malin’s review of
Patti Rocks in the March issue of Just Out. I
have been disturbed for some time that the .
OREGON AIDS HOTLINE
Local number: 223-AIDS
Statewide toll-free number:
1-800-777-AIDS
Hours of operation:
Monday through Friday. 10 am to
9 pm
Saturday and Sunday, noon to 6 pm
R
for a sum in excess of $28,600 was needed.
That was all.
Throughout the 20-30 minute rambling, CAP
Executive Director Tom Koberstein sat silent. I
cannot believe that he was unaware of this
failure of CAP to pay. Did he know something
that the other boani members did not? No CAP
financial report was made available at the meet
ing. There was discussion preceding this item
on the agenda of spending $31,000just to put on
this year’s Walk-A-Thon, but no hard figures
given as to CAP’s financial status.
Where is the money? Does CAP have it? Or
has CAP become so ineffective that people
would rather give to Brinker, where they can
see their money used directly for and with
diagnosed people? Without Blinker’s money to
tabulate in with CAP’s, would we perhaps see
an organization whose health is no better than
the people it is designed to serve?
With Brinker providing direct assistance to
afflicted individuals, and with the State of Ore
gon having taken over much of the educational
activities CAP was originated to perform, does
that leave as CAP’s primary product the many
and excellent support groups it provides? All of
these are facilitated by volunteers, anyhow. I
have maintained active participation in these
groups for well over two years. The essential
support services they provide are truly outstand
ing. They ought to be maintained in prime
condition.
Now CAP has chosen to spend more money
— whose? — on a mediator to ameliorate feel
ings of basic social injustice and failure to pay. I
can’t help wondering if the 9 percent statutory
rate of interest on many loans applies to this sort
of debt. Banks mail notices to people who don’t
pay. Eventually, delinquent debtors are sent to
collection agencies and then to bankruptcy
court. Is CAP socially bankrupt? Is it living off
a community name and letting other agencies
provide the services for which we ostensibly
pay with our donations?
These questions, and very likely others, need
to be answered — and sooner than it has taken
CAP to repay an organization which is working
more fervently to assist people than anything I
have seen in years.
"Patti Rocks
blatant
propaganda?
office building stares blankly back from across
2nd Avenue, a light on here and there in the dark
night. Most of us look forward to working the
Hotline, even after a long, regular work day. It
feels good. It’s not much I’m doing, but it’s
something.
•
Eleanor Malin responds:
Patti Rocks is being advertised by its makers
as a feminist film. The people who made it are
all feminists, even the men. They didn’t mean it
as a recruiting device; if they did, it can’t be
working. They didn’t mean it as a handbook
on how to live one’s life, either. Heterosexual
women can get a little soft in the head over sex,
just like men and lesbians can do, it’s just that
S
they end up getting stuck with the unplanned
pregnancies. Patti did suspect Billy was mar
ried, and they were using condoms, a far cry
from the usual Hollywood situation where the
sex is casual, unprotected, and nobody gets
anything.
I don’t think one must be a lesbian or even a
woman to be a feminist. Some men have been
walking out of Patti Rocks because they can’t
handle the sexist dialogue. Some women have
been saying they should have stayed, to get the
point. At any rate, Patti Rocks has caused the
dialogue I predicted in my review. From the
standpoint of art, raw, rough, and hard to
metabolize as it was, the film gets across the
negative aspects of macho reinforcement better
than most other films. This arcane use of
language against what adds up to a vast
oppressed majority is a supremely efficient
dynamic. Let’s let those of us with our noses
pressed against the pane get a chance to see
what we’re up against.
Eleanor Malin
Announcing the addition of
Heidi Hibrands, L.M.T.
offering therapeutic massage
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Just Out • 3 • April 1988