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.