For Art's Sake

Beat the Street had a daytime art program.
At the Women's Committee, some women said
they were not comfortable going to the art program.
We decided to do art on Tuesday nights.

One night in May of 1992,
we decided to paint how we felt.
Each woman said one word that was important to her
and we wrote them all on pieces of paper.
The words were: safety, violence, sanity, feminist,
pregnancy, men, power, relations, danger.
Each woman pulled one word from a hat,
and painted what it meant to her.
If we didn't like the word we got, we pulled another.

One woman got the word 'men'.
She had been raped by her uncle and was pregnant.
She painted what she was feeling. She painted a pig.

We left our paintings up to dry, like we did every week.
The next day, the men at Beat the Street were angry.
They said the painting was man-hating, unfair and sexist.
Men said, "I am not a pig."
They demanded that we take the painting down.
They could not understand this woman's anger. .