Audio Interview, Maria Scipione, May 17, 2012
- EVELYN BAILEY: So we're here with Maria Scipione, who
- was a part of the Women's Collective
- that put the New Women's Times together and got it out.
- Well, it was a newspaper here in the community for ten years,
- but you didn't-- you weren't at the beginning.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: I was.
- I came in about two years in, but was there until the end.
- EVELYN BAILEY: And can you share with us
- why was the newspaper the New Women's Times begun?
- Why did it become--
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Well, it was 1975, and it was a groundswell.
- It was the height of the second wave of the feminist movement.
- And there was the term "woman-identified woman."
- There was a real sense of looking
- at the world from a woman's perspective.
- It was very different than all of the newspapers
- and all of the history.
- And while that was considered neutral,
- we realized that really that was a man's perspective.
- And that everything could be looked at differently
- from a woman's perspective.
- That the default was not from a patriarchal position,
- but that there were people who were not powerful in society,
- who could in fact talk about the very same events
- that the newspaper did, and saw it differently.
- Because we were the people who didn't have the power.
- It's like history from below versus history from above.
- The victors write one version of history,
- and the people who suffer through the crap
- write a different perspective of the history.
- So it was our time to decide to take hold of the presses
- and redefine.
- And there was a groundswell of feminist and gay reporting
- that was going on at that time.
- Lots of people were--
- it was an empowerment, you know.
- It was all of a sudden we controlled the press,
- we got to define ourselves, other people
- couldn't define us.
- If we were going to do something,
- we were going to put it out there in our media,
- and we got to control our image.
- We got to control our voice, which
- was really very powerful, and very provocative early on.
- And while we were Rochester, we were in all fifty states.
- And the only other paper at the time
- that kind of took that national range was a paper
- called Off Our Backs, which was in Washington D.C.
- And I think they still do a monthly issue.
- I think they're only electronic now.
- And if they don't still do it, they've
- only very recently stopped.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Who were the driving forces behind--
- MARIA SCIPIONE: It was Maxine Sobol, Karen Hackenberg,
- who still lives here in town and teaches piano lessons,
- and Martha Brown, who's passed away a couple years ago.
- EVELYN BAILEY: So they were the three women
- who really began this effort?
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Yeah.
- And they were very connected with lots
- of the literary voices that were coming about.
- Adrian Rich, who just passed away, Gloria Steinem.
- There's names that I'm embarrassed that I can't--
- they're not spilling off the tip of my tongue.
- But there was just an explosion of feminist writing,
- and books that were being ignored by The New York Times.
- And so a few years in, New Women's Times
- started every other issue.
- We also had what was called a feminist review,
- that Susan, who's the editor of The Empty Closet,
- was one of the people who started that.
- And it was very much about getting recognition
- for books written by women.
- It was, you know, breaking the ceiling
- in a lot of ways for that.
- And also, for the first time, giving serious legitimacy
- to a lesbian voice, you know.
- Even in what used to be, you know, ladies magazines
- and stuff like that, where you were getting
- feminist stuff infiltrating about, you know,
- workplace issues, day care, very important
- stuff, but they would not cross the line on lesbian gay issues.
- And that was a real problem.
- And, so we also-- that was part of our mission as well.
- Sure.
- Yeah.
- (Interposing voices)
- KEVIN INDOVINO: OK.
- Because I have two questions but I'll just ask one.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Sure.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: How did you get involved?
- MARIA SCIPIONE: I moved here from Buffalo
- where I had worked on a community press.
- So actually, I came more from a production--
- not so much of a writer.
- Very much an activist, but much more on the kind of production
- art end of it, but became a writer
- while I was working at the paper.
- And it was funny because when you approached me about this,
- I just looked through some back issues that I had.
- And some of them were totally dated, you know.
- It's like you could just see the time period that it was in.
- But I found one editorial that I had written about--
- there was a woman in town named Alicia McCuller, who
- was the daughter of the guy who used to run ABC.
- And she was shot by the police.
- I could have written that editorial today.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Why?
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Because nothing's
- changed around issue for people of color, women of color,
- and the power of relationship in terms of poverty,
- and the police, and things like that.
- For me, my agenda, in terms of ever expanding the paper
- being for all women, was to make sure
- that all voices were included.
- So women of color's voices were another voice
- that those ladies' magazines kind of didn't get in there.
- And it was Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison,
- and I'm going to be embarrassed because I can't
- remember some of the other--
- Audre Lorde.
- All those names they just busted right up.
- So we were part of that.
- We were part of breaking the door down.
- But some of it hasn't changed.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Let's go back a little bit
- because you touched upon--
- you said, giving all women a voice, particularly
- lesbian women.
- I want to kind of get a sense of how closely aligned the New
- Women's Times was with the gay and lesbian movement
- at the time.
- And I guess, to my understanding,
- the New Women's Times wasn't began as a gay and lesbian
- magazine.
- It's a women's magazine, a feminist magazine.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Right.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: But if you were to weigh out
- in a ratio scenario, how much did the gay and lesbian
- movement incorporate itself into that magazine?
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Right, right.
- Well, the other reality was is that the three women who
- started it were all lesbians.
- So, you know,-- and again, that's
- a time where gay leadership comes in
- not just to a gay movement, but to the feminist movement
- as well.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Excellent example.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: You know, that was also a part of it.
- Yeah.
- It's important.
- I think there were times where there was friction
- between the communities.
- And a lot of the time that came up around issues of--
- not so much about violence against women, but about
- the issues of pornography.
- Because there's always the tension about--
- where is freedom of speech?
- What is appropriate sexually explicit material
- that's sex positive?
- We can call it sex positive now.
- We didn't have that term quite back then.
- But back then it was, what's the difference between erotica
- and pornography?
- And we all kind of knew the difference,
- but who could exactly say where the line was?
- But there was a definite analysis
- of looking at mainstream pornography.
- And you could do an analysis of the images
- and it was misogynous.
- It was absolutely misogynist.
- Women were objects.
- Women weren't people.
- They weren't, you know, equals engaged in really
- fun, sexual stuff.
- They were things to be consumed.
- And so there were times when there was
- tension around those issues.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: That's all?
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Yeah.
- EVELYN BAILEY: I want to go back to your life.
- You were born in Buffalo.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: No.
- I was born in Liberty, New York.
- Podunk, Liberty, New York.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: And where is that?
- MARIA SCIPIONE: It's halfway between Binghamton in New York
- City and the Catskills.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: That's not really a bad area
- MARIA SCIPIONE: No, no, no.
- Actually, it was a great place to grow up because it was
- rural, but it had the hotels.
- It was the--
- (Interposing voices)
- Yes.
- And my father's family, who were the immigrants,
- they came out of New York.
- So New York has always been this home magnet.
- It's still a home magnet in odd ways.
- So I came from there, and then I went to college in Buffalo.
- And then I moved here.
- And when I was in Buffalo, I had worked
- with Emma, the Buffalo Women's Bookstore, which existed
- for maybe five or six years.
- Didn't make it.
- And then when I moved here, I found the New Women's Times.
- And I was also involved with lots
- of community political stuff.
- Part of what came after New Women's Times for me,
- was doing lots of solidarity work
- around international issues.
- I had gone to Nicaragua on a coffee picking brigade
- after the revolution there, where you
- kind of did human shield stuff.
- We went to--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: You're lucky you're alive (laughter).
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Yes.
- I think back now and it's like, aah!
- And then from there, I progressed into--
- I was a community organizer for a while with Metro Act, which
- is now Metro Justice.
- So all of that politics stuff was very intertwined with that.
- And I never left my feminism behind.
- And I never was unclear about who I was sexually.
- Now I have to say, my partners have changed over time.
- And I would say I would kind of technically
- have to call myself bisexual.
- There are times where I was much more lesbian-identified.
- I ended up in a relationship with a man and had a child.
- And now I'm older, and single, and thinking,
- who am I going to go out with?
- And I kind of think, I could choose from anybody.
- (laughter)
- I kind of look around, and I have really come to--
- for me, plumbing isn't what it's about (Bailey laughs).
- It's about finding people who--
- which makes me kind of queer in the queer community.
- I guess.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Well, yes and no.
- EVELYN BAILEY: There are people who
- are very similar in their desire to have a relationship that
- goes beyond the physical, who want the connection, who want
- to feel not only they're a part of,
- but they're individual and free within.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: I have to say it just depends on what age group
- you're socializing with at the moment.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Yes.
- Right.
- Right.
- EVELYN BAILEY: True.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Yes.
- Right.
- EVELYN BAILEY: That's true.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Absolutely.
- EVELYN BAILEY: But let me take you back again.
- Let me ask, can you identify in your own life when you became,
- or when you began to identify yourself as a feminist?
- MARIA SCIPIONE: It's a really good question.
- I think it was--
- I've always been somebody who, if you told me I couldn't, I
- said, fuck you.
- I can.
- You know, like a little bit of that chip on my shoulder.
- But I think the feminist part really came with a dress code
- in high school.
- This sounds crazy, but this was 1972,
- and we were told we couldn't wear pants to school.
- And that was ridiculous.
- I lived in a cold--
- it was cold.
- Hell with fashion.
- It was cold (Indovino laughs).
- And there were four of us who decided
- we would put pants in our bags when we left home
- in our skirts.
- And we'd put our pants on on our way to school,
- and we went to school in pants.
- And we broke the dress code, and we fought about it,
- and the dress code changed.
- So I think that may have been one of the--
- that for me, I think it was the beginning of that feminism.
- But I think more what it was about
- was learning that if you thought something was right,
- and you had the courage to stand up for it,
- that you could make things change.
- That you could make things change.
- And this is 1972, so the anti-war movement
- is all over the place.
- People were having the courage, daring to make things change.
- So it was a wonderful time.
- A wonderful time to feel that.
- Yeah.
- Right.
- To actually go, that's not right, and I can fix that.
- I can do that. you know.
- I was, you know, those Kennedy kids that said, not ask--
- what was it?
- Don't ask what your country can do for you,
- but ask what you can do for your country.
- The idea of service.
- I get what the context of that now politically is.
- But the idea of service and responsibility to a community,
- and that if you didn't like the way things were,
- that not only did you have the right to change it,
- but you had a responsibility to change it.
- And I grew up Catholic.
- And part of deny--
- there's two Catholic churches.
- There's the great daddy with the--
- talk about drag queens, right?
- There's a big daddy with a really pretty hat.
- You know?
- But then there was also those Catholics who
- were liberation theologists.
- I didn't know that word then, but, you know,
- that's what they were.
- How do you create heaven on earth?
- How do you make social justice?
- And I was very affected by them.
- I rejected all of that other Catholic part.
- Not that I don't fight.
- I always call myself a recovered Catholic.
- The guilt. When something really good happens,
- I'm always looking over my shoulder
- to see how I'm going to pay.
- That kind of stuff (laughter).
- Do you know what I mean?
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: So I think I definitely
- came out of a historical time.
- And I wasn't the only one.
- So that sense of both empowerment and responsibility
- was something that informed me about feminism.
- It informed me about, you know, gender rights
- in general, the bigger picture.
- It informed me about social justice, and class,
- and race, environmental issues.
- You know, it opened my world up to having
- the planet be my home.
- That's the world that I live in.
- I don't live in some very tiny little place.
- I really do live in a big, interconnected thing.
- And, you know, I can't fix it all,
- but I sure have a responsibility to kind of at least
- affect what I can.
- And I try to do that with my art now.
- Because as an activist, as a organizer, I burnt out.
- I totally burnt out.
- And I went back to school for what
- I loved to do in the first place, which was theater.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Yeah.
- I was going to eventually get around to that, but OK.
- With everything you did with the activist movement,
- and the magazine, and writing, and editing,
- and all that stuff, how did you get in the theater, though?
- A lot of people just kind of fall into it.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: No.
- Well, when I graduated from high school,
- the big question was-- was I going
- to be Anne Bancroft or Anne Sullivan?
- You know, who was I going to be?
- Was I going to be the person who was going to change the world?
- Or was I going to be the actor who played the person who
- changed the world?
- And what I learned in--
- it was in my thirties, was that I had better
- find a way to do meaningful work,
- but work that fed me back.
- That didn't just use me up and leave me burnt out.
- And the theater is what I found to do that.
- And I try to do meaningful work in the theater, you know.
- I work with two friends of mine and we do the Fringe Play
- Reading Series.
- And we pick edgy stuff.
- You know, we try and do stuff that's probably not
- going to get a full show any place else,
- but it's material that people just really need to hear.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Can you remember the first action
- you were involved with as a feminist?
- You were an activist--
- gosh, gosh, gosh, gosh.
- In Buffalo or in Rochester?
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Oh, yeah.
- In Buffalo.
- In Buffalo.
- It might have been a really early Take
- Back the Night March.
- And I'm a rape survivor, so for a long time
- that that didn't kind of raise to the surface in terms
- of connecting.
- Because quite frankly, I have a very hard time
- dealing with my-- or seeing myself as a victim.
- It kind of doesn't fit into my perception of myself,
- so I had to struggle with that for a really long time.
- But when people started talking about putting it
- into a bigger context where people weren't alone,
- that you're not alone in the isolation of that experience,
- you know, the powerlessness that you feel,
- and that, in fact, you can join with people who also think
- it's a terrible idea and make ruckus in the street about it,
- is pretty damn healing.
- So I'm going to think early Take Back the Night stuff.
- And I was involved here--
- (Side conversation)
- MARIA SCIPIONE: OK.
- I did it earlier.
- There was a lot of work that I'd done with Rochester Women
- Against Violence Against Women.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Now were you one--
- MARIA SCIPIONE: The snuff film?
- The glass breakers with the case?
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: No, I wasn't.
- I actually moved here while the trial was going on.
- So I was part of the defense committee a little bit.
- And that was Martha Gever, Mark Hall, Sylvia Gazoy,
- and a young woman named Leah, and I
- don't remember her last name.
- But there is a video, a documentary video that Martha
- Gever made about that.
- That if you don't have a copy of that,
- I will help find a copy for you.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: And how do you spell Gever?
- MARIA SCIPIONE: G-E-V-E-R.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: G-E-V-E-R.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: And she's a really big--
- she lives in LA now.
- She used to work for--
- where are we?
- Over at visual studies.
- And she's a nationally--
- she's a media analyst, media studies,
- kind of big-deal stuff.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Now I know what that was about, but--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: I don't.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Snuff films are where people are actually
- murdered in a film that depicts their murder.
- So that's why it's called snuff.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Right, OK.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: OK.
- And a woman was murdered, and a film was supposedly
- made in Argentina.
- And on the bottom, the kicker of the poster
- it says, "where life is cheap."
- And a guy named Cesar D'agostino ran a porn theater
- where the Holiday Inn is now--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: This is all kind of coming to light now.
- Yes.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: And these four women--
- and this group, there was lots of wheatpasting and spray
- painting.
- We don't have money for billboards,
- but if you do a black velvet, feel the velvet one--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: That's because they--
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Yes.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Went on trial for vandalism.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Yes.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Right.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Right.
- They went on trial for vandalism.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: I remember it now.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: And it was a huge deal.
- And a lot of those writers that I talked about earlier
- would come here and do fundraisers.
- And it got national attention.
- And they were fined, and I believe
- they never paid the fine.
- And nobody ever came after and paying the fine.
- And Cesar D'agostino sold the theater.
- And then it was Rochester Community Players
- for a little while--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: [INAUDIBLE],, yeah.
- And now it's just the Holiday Inn.
- I don't know what the hell they--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Not even that.
- Radisson or--
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Radisson or one of those.
- Yeah.
- And that was around--
- after that, then the softer versions of that
- came out like Dressed to Kill, the Brian de Palma.
- Really not just murder, but really eroticized murder.
- And here's a climate where--
- I mean, we still--
- all of Eve Ensler's statistics are right there.
- One in three women in the world are
- victims of some sort of sexual violence.
- So in a climate like that, what does it
- mean that you make films that eroticize
- the murdering of women?
- So there was a lot of that.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Were you a part of the Black Velvet action
- flick?
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Can you tell by the smile on my face?
- Oh, there was wonderful--
- we were like great guerrilla artists.
- We devised ways to put spray paint on sticks,
- and spray paint where we couldn't reach, and climb.
- And, you know, after Christmas we
- would buy ornaments because they were really cheap,
- and you could fill them up with paint
- and then drip wax over the top.
- And then you could really hurl them, you know.
- Just great stuff like that.
- Wheatpasting.
- There was some wonderful wheatpasting that we did.
- And there was a particular string
- of rapes that happened in the city, I think in the early 80s.
- And basically the police weren't doing anything about it.
- And we made up a self-defense poster, and what we did was
- we just flopped the usual images.
- And there was a fully-clothed woman and a naked man.
- And it identified where if you were going to--
- but where you could hit, gouge, punch, da da da da da da da.
- That wasn't what was offensive.
- What was offensive is that the man's penis was evident.
- OK.
- And we wheatpasted them all over town.
- Everywhere.
- And the uproar was that this penis was on there.
- But we never got more coverage than doing that.
- Yet you can put naked women just about everywhere.
- And nobody blinks an eye.
- So always, for me, a really good test
- about whether something is sexist, or homophobic,
- or racist, is always to just reverse it.
- And you can tell right away.
- It's just the greatest litmus test.
- And people get really upset about it.
- Really upset about it.
- And you know.
- And it was a little bit like Pat?
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Pam.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Pam.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: What she was saying about women can
- cross-dress because that's--
- but to do that with men, in some ways that gets at patriarchy
- much more than our freedoms to look like men.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Plus, it's a different perception to it.
- A woman dressing up more masculine
- gives that woman strength.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Yes.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: A man dressing up more feminine weakens him.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Right.
- Well, and what it also does, is if someone does
- that voluntarily, it changes.
- It makes it not weak.
- You know what I mean?
- It takes the paradigm of masculine is strong
- and feminine is weak, to saying, oh,
- well that could be strong, too.
- And that freaks them right out.
- So I love that stuff.
- Gender bending is very fun.
- But that was kind of what we would do.
- And we tried to not, as activists,
- not keep that discussion in a theoretical sense.
- We tried to make it extremely concrete.
- If something happened in there-- like Park Avenue, I remember.
- There was a series of rapes there.
- And I remember going out at night with spray paint cans
- and making X's on the sidewalks where women had been raped.
- One side of that that I always felt squeamish about,
- is I don't want to make women uncomfortable in the world,
- but it's important to know that that happened there.
- And, you know, a lot of the self-defense stuff
- around rape issues is limiting women's freedom.
- And the problem isn't that women are anywhere.
- The problem is that there are men who rape.
- That's the problem.
- So why do you limit where the victims go?
- It's looking at the people who perpetrate that kind of crime.
- And then you look at that philosophy--
- and Eve Ensler talks about this a lot now.
- And doing Vagina Monologues, which is my theater,
- really helps this.
- And I've done it about three or four times,
- and I will do it whenever I can.
- But it's that whole idea of looking
- at that way of thinking, of it's there, and if I want it
- I'll take it.
- I don't care.
- If you really look at the way the world
- works in a bigger way, that goes on all the time.
- If you look at an environmental issues,
- it's a paradigm of rape, you know.
- I don't mean to minimize actual rape by using it
- as a big metaphor, but it really is a mindset
- where, I take whatever the fuck I want and I
- don't care what you say, because it's mine and I can.
- And who's going to stop me?
- So, you know, I feel like a lot of the second wave of feminism,
- now with the younger generation coming up, this kind of next--
- kind of, I don't know what wave it is, but it's kind of a wave.
- It's like you were saying.
- Throw the book away.
- But, you know, it's a lot of young women and men looking
- at that way of thinking, and really challenging the world.
- I think, you know, a lot of that conversation
- has occurred in the Occupy Movement.
- You see it where people go around to the g-20 things.
- And they really say, look, you can't just take what you want.
- There are people here that have real lives.
- That not everything is a commodity.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Has there been a cost to you,
- personally, for your involvement?
- MARIA SCIPIONE: I think there are
- some jobs that I haven't gotten because I don't hide who I am
- or what I am.
- My relationship with my father.
- I think we never got to be as close because he didn't get it.
- And I think about that, but--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: You said it.
- He just didn't get it.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: He didn't get it.
- He didn't get it.
- And it's not that he didn't love me.
- It's not that I didn't love him.
- It's just we couldn't quite figure that out.
- No.
- There has been costs.
- Yeah.
- There's been costs.
- But I wouldn't do it any other way.
- There's also a richness to my life, you know.
- I'm not going to ever be big, and wealthy, and any of that.
- But I sleep really well at night.
- I have friends back from those days
- that are still my friends now.
- I work with young people and I feel really confident walking
- into a room.
- I think because of my activism and seeing the world
- bigger as an artist, I have such a rich well to pull from.
- I kind of pretend I'm other people.
- That's what I do.
- Or I help other people pretend how to be other people.
- And sort of this affinity with people
- is a really rich thing to have.
- And I think for people who don't engage
- in this kind of community, they don't ever have that.
- EVELYN BAILEY: What would you say was the--
- what contribution did the New Women's Times
- make to the Rochester community?
- MARIA SCIPIONE: I think it forged--
- it became-- what's the word I want?
- It became a framework, a structure for a community
- to grow, become empowered, meet, and to make action.
- And sometimes turn in on itself.
- It wasn't always lovely.
- There were problems.
- Like any group that works intensely together,
- after a while there's that relationship change,
- and then it gets all wonky a little bit.
- But then everybody finds their corner,
- and something happens and we all come back together because we
- remember what we're about.
- But there was that.
- So I think for ten years there, it
- was a real way for people to come together and make change.
- And to keep a dialogue going, both internally and externally.
- That there really was this ability for us
- to learn from each other, to challenge,
- to think about things.
- It spanned all the way through to the Women's Peace Encampment
- in Romulus, dealing with everything
- from those very local issues of Alicia McCuller getting killed,
- and no daycare, and rapes in the neighborhood, to,
- you know, nuclear weapons nationally,
- to looking at what was the political platforms
- of different parties.
- And how that affected people.
- Looking at government policies both international and
- national, and the effects on that.
- And understanding in terms of budget stuff, when
- you don't have money for health care,
- and child care, and things like that.
- Well, why don't you have that money?
- Where else is the money in the budget?
- And you see, particularly, the military stuff.
- And kind of understanding that there were a wealth of people
- who came out of those ten years equipped with that information,
- and have gone off in lots of different ways
- and took that with it.
- And I think, nationally, I think the really big contribution
- particularly early on was that voice.
- All of a sudden there was a visible voice.
- And I think one of the things that people
- like you have done--
- like last year when you got it all digitalized,
- is that it's there.
- It's in a bunch of different libraries now.
- And so it won't disappear.
- It won't go away like pre- Stonewall or pre Susan B.
- Anthony.
- It can't disappear anymore.
- EVELYN BAILEY: What brought the New Women's Times to being
- over, being ended, being--
- MARIA SCIPIONE: I think of it a little bit like breathing,
- and it was exhale time.
- The economy changed, discretionary income
- wasn't there.
- I also think print medium was on its way out.
- Also people started having lives.
- Being an activist is like being in the theater sometimes.
- It's like it eats your entire life.
- And people wanted families, had families.
- Felt like they'd gotten to a point in their life
- where they needed to make money.
- And there wasn't really the influx
- to come in and kind of take it over.
- But NOW still functions--
- they're much more centrist than New Women's Times was.
- But there's still people working on those issues.
- I think there's a lot of people who came over.
- I mean, Susan was one of the editors of Feminist Review,
- and now she's the editor of The Empty Closet.
- So I think we all kind of found our different places.
- People grew, changed.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Now when it was begun,
- you incorporated, or it became incorporated.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Yeah, I think it was.
- Yeah.
- I'm not real good on all of that business information,
- but they had a little office on Monroe Avenue
- just over the Brighton line.
- I drive past it from time to time, and it was just--
- EVELYN BAILEY: But in the end, was there a corporation
- that you had to disassemble?
- MARIA SCIPIONE: There was.
- And I don't remember exactly--
- my name was never on the corporation papers.
- I know that we sold everything off because we had debts.
- And we paid those debts off.
- And then what we did was we got as many pieces of the paper,
- to get bundles of the paper together,
- and sent them off to libraries.
- And then we kind of just dissolved it.
- We didn't have any debt so nobody
- was going to come after us.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Right.
- And you mailed the New Women's Times to people
- all over the country.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Yeah, and we'd lost--
- the last three years we had continually lost subscribers.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: What year you did it at?
- MARIA SCIPIONE: I think it was '86 or '87.
- Because we had a big ten-year, which would have been-- it
- was '85.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: It would have been ten years.
- OK.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Yeah.
- EVELYN BAILEY: So '76 to--
- MARIA SCIPIONE: '75.
- EVELYN BAILEY: '75 to '85.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Yeah, and I think
- we folded in either '86 or '87.
- And it was a whimper.
- It was not pretty.
- It was one of those laborious, depressing--
- yeah.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Kind of like what Codex went through,
- on a much bigger scale.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: But we didn't leave any toxic waste
- or nuclear reactors.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Right.
- (Laughing)
- I don't have any more questions, actually.
- I think she really kind of summed it
- up, the whole mission behind the New Women's magazine.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.
- The feminist movement here in Rochester over the past 30,
- 40 years--
- would you say it peaked at that time?
- Or--
- MARIA SCIPIONE: I don't know if I'm being
- nostalgic from my wild youth.
- I would say it was partic--
- it may have peaked, but I wouldn't
- say now it's like low-level.
- I almost feel like there's a certain amount that's
- been integrated.
- And also, one of the reasons why I think that fed our boldness,
- and also to a certain degree why we couldn't be totally
- pooh-poohed, is that we are in the hometown of Susan B.
- Anthony.
- And the powers that be tout that.
- So it's a little hard, you know, to totally dismiss
- all feminist things, when on everything you
- put out to publicize and bring people
- to the city has to do with Susan B. Anthony.
- Though, when the Susan B. Anthony house became a park
- at first, it was run by some pretty Republican
- conservative women.
- And there was a point where we tried to take it over,
- and we failed.
- But they were doing things like making sure
- that the curtains were beautiful,
- but the photographs and documents of Lucretia Mott
- were rotting upstairs.
- So there was that, you know--
- it's like, wait wait wait wait wait.
- What's important?
- OK.
- I get that you want the house to look fabulous,
- but not at the cost of that.
- So there was some of that went on.
- And the Susan B. Anthony coin came out, which was a disaster.
- I mean nobody used it.
- And I remember that it was my early street theater days
- and we did this whole thing that said,
- we will not be bought off with a coin.
- You know?
- And poor Elizabeth Holtzman, who's wonderful.
- She's a great--
- I mean in terms of politicians, she's one of us.
- She's on our side.
- She came thinking she was doing this wonderful thing,
- and had no idea that she had walked into this hornet's nest.
- You know, and
- the museum in Seneca Falls has come since then,
- so there's a lot of stuff that's been mainstream.
- I teach in a high school where they have a gender studies
- class.
- High school, that has a gender studies class.
- You know?
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Connie can't even imagine.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Yeah.
- Right.
- Exactly.
- They do a day of silence in a lot of high schools now.
- So I got to do Laramie project this past fall with my kids.
- You know that Catholic thing about the shoe dropping?
- I was for sure somebody who was going
- to jump my ass on that one.
- None.
- I got thank you letters from parents.
- So was there more activism then?
- Yeah.
- But does it mean that there isn't anything going on now?
- No.
- It's--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: It's evolved.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Yeah.
- Exactly.
- And I think-- again, I think a lot
- about that metaphor of breathing.
- I think social movements do that.
- You can't sustain that exact level.
- So you come back, and then there's
- another generation that comes up and looks at you and says,
- why are you sitting on your ass when this, and this, and this
- is wrong?
- And you go, well, we kind of did that, you know.
- And they go, well, it wasn't enough.
- And they go out and do it.
- And that's exactly how it should be.
- And they're furious.
- Good, good.
- I got your back, kid.
- But it's just, you know, I've had
- to figure out how to be in it for the long haul.
- And I think that's what a lot of people have done.
- They've figured out how to do it for the long haul.
- But they haven't gone away.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: No, they haven't.
- But also our ways of communicating with each other
- have changed.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Yes.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Drastically.
- So, you know, it's activism texting now.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Right.
- Right.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: It's not marching in the streets
- because you can reach more people by doing this.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Right.
- But still at the end of the day, we
- need to be out on the streets sometimes.
- This isn't--
- KEVIN INDOVINO: True.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Again, as in the theater,
- it's important to have people in the same room
- to make those experiences.
- For us to be able to transform each other.
- And I guess for me, you know, I love making fun theater all
- the time.
- But the real kick for me with theater
- is the transformative power.
- The magic that happens in a room when people
- see something and they walk out different than when
- they walked in.
- And I guess that's how I found to--
- for me to sustain that.
- EVELYN BAILEY: To channel your passion.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Yeah.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Well, Maria, thank you.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: Good.
- I'm going to go see parades, speaking of theater.
- KEVIN INDOVINO: Yeah.
- I've heard good things about it.
- Haven't seen it yet.
- MARIA SCIPIONE: I have, too.