Sonny Tufts (David Watson)

When I first saw the headline of the article on pornography in the last issue of the Fifth Estate (“Fashionable Fascism—The Slick Misogyny of Porn,” #289, January 24, 1978) I was pleased that the question was finally being taken up. It is a complex issue, and its treatment would certainly contribute to the ongoing discussion in these pages of human sexuality and its distortion within modern society.

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In mid-April Detroit women were invited to participate in the opening ceremonies for the new Detroit Feminist Women’s City Club, paid for by the recently-formed Feminist Economic Network (FEN). The City Club, located in downtown Detroit on Park Ave. across from the Penthouse A-Go-Go Club, and FEN have been the center of heated discussion and have created factionalism throughout much of the organized women’s movement.

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In House appropriations Bill 4445 for fiscal year 1975–1976, the State Legislature has instructed the Department of Social Services (DSS), the Department of Labor (through the MESC) and the Department of the Treasury to “develop a plan for the exchange of data as a check on the financial eligibility of recipients of financial aid.”

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During the first week of April 1976, Gerald Woltjer, an Ottowa County, Michigan, dairy farmer, shot down his 235-head dairy herd in order to draw attention to the nightmare of PBB--poisoning of Michigan livestock, poultry, and dairy products.

Shortly afterward, the story hit the national news media and within weeks the spectre of a new Minamata-style plague loomed over the heads of Michigan residents. (1) Later in the month, the Michigan House of Representatives approved legislation that will eventually ban the sale of meat from PBB-contained herds for sixty days. A bill is also pending which will result in the liquidation of all tainted animals--virtually every farm animal in the state.

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The Dadaists were writers and artists who made it their raison d’etre to destroy culture, or at least literature and art. They carried to its ultimate and absurd conclusion the distinction between form and content in art, rejecting literary conventions, the frame round a canvas, and even the ‘laws’ of normal speech--all these restricted and deformed the authentic complexity of mental reality.

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