Susan Lydon
Susan Gordon Lydon | |
---|---|
Born | Susan Carol Goldenberg November 14, 1943 New York City, U.S. |
Died | July 15, 2005 Boca Raton, Florida, U.S. | (aged 61)
Occupation | Journalist, author, columnist |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Vassar College |
Notable works | "The Politics of Orgasm" (1970) |
Spouse |
Michael Lydon (m. 1965–1971) |
Children | 1 |
Susan Gordon Lydon (November 14, 1943 – July 15, 2005) was an American journalist and writer, known for her 1970 feminist essay "The Politics of Orgasm", which brought the female fake orgasm into popular discussion.
She helped start
In 1993 she published a memoir, Take The Long Way Home: Memoirs Of A Survivor, detailing her career highs and drug-addicted lows, ending in a successful recovery. Her memoir came one year after the book Home Fires, written by Don Katz about her birth family, the Gordons.
Early life
Lydon was born to an
After her father returned in 1945, the family welcomed two more daughters, Lorraine (1946) and Sheila (1949). In 1952, they all moved to
Journalism
Michael and Susan Lydon moved to the UK to work in journalism. He wrote about British affairs for the American magazine Newsweek. As a freelancer, she submitted fashion pieces for London Life magazine, the newly adopted name of the Tatler, published weekly during the Swinging Sixties.[2] She also wrote for The Times.
The two left London for San Francisco at the beginning of 1967, just in time to witness and report on
Lydon's daughter Shuna was born in March 1968, and she left Rolling Stone, writing for a short-lived Hearst periodical titled Eye aimed at the youth market. Helen Gurley Brown took over Eye as editor, and chastised Lydon for writing so much about sex, drugs and politics. Lydon accepted assignments from The New York Times Magazine, and she edited a biography of Huey P. Newton for Ramparts, later recalling the day when gun-toting Bobby Seale guarded the Ramparts office building while Eldridge Cleaver was smuggled out of the country. In late November 1968, Lydon attended the first women's liberation conference at Camp Hastings in Lake Villa, Illinois, at which 200 women's rights activists met.[5] Lydon separated from her husband in January 1969, taking her daughter to Berkeley to live with Ramparts contributor Tuck Weills for six months.[6] In December 1969 she was at the Altamont Free Concert to report on the Rolling Stones and the music scene, but she was appalled to witness there the death of the "good vibes" of the sixties.[5]
"The Politics of Orgasm"
In Berkeley, Lydon met with women feminists who were conducting a consciousness raising awareness meeting, and she was shocked to hear one woman admit to never having experienced an orgasm. The women in the group opened up about their sexuality, and Lydon determined to write about this little-understood topic. She proposed the idea to Ramparts' male editorial board, including Robert Scheer, who all laughed at her. She cried in the face of their ridicule,[4] but persisted with her vision, writing the essay "Understanding Orgasm", which editor Peter Collier changed to "The Politics of Orgasm", published by Ramparts in 1970.[4] Scheer buried the article in the back pages, but this failed to hide it.[6] Scheer later said it turned out to be "one of our great articles".[4]
"The Politics of Orgasm" brought the subject of fake orgasm into the mainstream. A few earlier writers had uncovered the topic: based on the Kinsey Reports and the studies of Masters and Johnson, psychiatrist Mary Jane Sherfey had challenged Sigmund Freud's ideas in 1967, saying he was wrong about a distinct "vaginal orgasm", separate from clitoral orgasm, with the vaginal sort somehow superior. In 1968, Shulamith Firestone wrote the revealing "Women Rap About Sex" for the group New York Radical Women. Anne Koedt published "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm" in the same issue of Notes from the First Year, which was seen by a limited circle of feminists. But Lydon's article prompted a much wider discussion of the prevalence of the fake orgasm, how a majority of women were unsatisfied in sex, frustrated by Freud's disproved assertion about vaginal orgasm.[7][8]
If woman's pleasure was obtained through the vagina, then she was totally dependent on the man's erect penis to achieve orgasm; she would receive her satisfaction only as a concomitant of man's seeking his. With clitoral orgasm, woman's sexual pleasure was independent of the male's, and she could seek her satisfaction as aggressively as the man sought his, a prospect which didn't appeal to too many men. The definition of normal feminine sexuality as vaginal, in other words, was a part of keeping women down, of making them sexually, as well as economically, socially, and politically subservient.[9]
Lydon called upon women to stop creating and perpetuating problems by faking so many orgasms: "With their men, they often fake orgasm to appear 'good in bed' and thus place an intolerable physical burden on themselves and a psychological burden on the men unlucky enough to see through the ruse."[4] Newspapers and radio talk shows debated her work. Women began to demand equal rights in bed, insisting that their pleasure was its own goal.[10][11] UK feminist Alison Garthwaite said that Lydon's paper electrified the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group, opening the topic of women's sexuality.[12]
Lydon divorced in 1971. She freelanced in rock journalism and took a series of lovers. She lived in Marin County with drummer Dave Getz, ex–Big Brother and the Holding Company, and wrote a piece about Janis Joplin. She tried heroin and became addicted.[6][13] She interviewed Helen Reddy for Ms. magazine, Dr. John for the Daily News, Mark Spitz for The New York Times Magazine, as well as Debbie Harry, Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon.[12]
While in Marin, Getz contracted
In 1989, Lydon moved back to the
Knitting
In her childhood, Lydon did some knitting, but she became more serious in college.[17] In 1992 while birdwatching in Napa,[6] she broke an arm and shoulder in a fall, and she used knitting as physical therapy. She became an avid knitter, and wrote about the subject, humorously questioning whether she was a "Master knitter or demon knitter. You be the judge."[18] Her best work was a series of shawls woven in a feather-and-fan pattern from qiviut, the fine inner hair of the muskox. She traveled the world to interview knitting women of various cultures that had retained the history and custom of knitting.[2] From this material, she published two books: The Knitting Sutra (1997) and Knitting Heaven and Earth: Healing the Heart With Craft, the latter published in June 2005 just prior to her death in July.[6] She likened knitting to prayer beads ("one prayer for each bead or each stitch") and devotional meditation: "I crave more deeply a communion with nature, with palpable works that emanate from the hands of God. I am a woman... I know how to pray with my hands, and I need those prayers to connect me with the earth."[19] Lydon led knitting workshops at various places including Esalen.[19]
Memoir
Beginning in 1990, Don Katz began interviewing Lydon and her birth family the Gordons for his book Home Fires, published in 1992. The book was hailed as an unvarnished look at the struggles of a typical post-war American family in which the children rebelled and developed into adults in ways that were not foreseen by the parents.[20] At the same time, Lydon started writing a memoir about her own life, published in 1993 as Take The Long Way Home: Memoirs Of A Survivor. Lydon's memoir focused on the more troubling aspects of her life, especially drug abuse, addiction, and incest.[4] The Los Angeles Times reviewed the book as "extremely brave and moving".[4] Lydon named her alcoholic grandfather as the likely malefactor of sexual abuse committed when she was two years old. Lydon was conflicted, certain that something bad had happened to her, but pleading "How will I ever know for sure?" Laura Shapiro of The New York Times was unimpressed with Lydon's revelation of childhood incest, accusing Lydon of a "fatal fondness for easy answers." Shapiro opined that Lydon had failed to achieve the perspective of objectivity, despite her years of self-analysis at Arica.[21]
Lydon retreated every summer to a cabin on the
References
- ISBN 978-0-06-019009-5.
- ^ a b c d "Susan Lydon". The Telegraph. London. July 29, 2005. Retrieved August 27, 2020.
- ^ Katz 1992. pp. 231–232
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Woo, Elaine (July 26, 2005). "Susan Lydon, 61; Author of Influential Feminist Essay". Los Angeles Times.
- ^ a b c Lydon, Susan Gordon (September 1978). "A newspaper for the 'new age,' in which no news is good news". Vassar Quarterly. Vol. LXXV, no. 1. Retrieved August 28, 2020.
- ^ ISBN 9781596988125.
- ISBN 9781618030986.
- ISBN 9780230616608.
- ISBN 9780231528795
- ISBN 978-1-85109-904-7.
- ^ "Susan Lydon". The Times. London. August 4, 2005. Retrieved August 28, 2020.
- ^ a b "Susan Lydon". The Guardian. London. July 26, 2005. Retrieved August 28, 2020.
- ^ Finz, Stacy (July 24, 2005). "Susan Lydon – celebrated author, journalist". SF Gate. Retrieved August 28, 2020.
- ^ a b c Lydon 1993
- ISBN 9780801861659.
- .
- ^ a b c Pfrommer, Kathy (July 19, 2005). "Former columnist Susan Lydon dies". East Bay Times. Retrieved August 28, 2020.
- ISBN 9780767916332.
- ^ a b Lenzo, Amy (Winter 2001–2002). "The Knitting Sutra: Craft as a Spiritual Practice by Susan Gordon Lydon". Gatherings (6) (Special Issue on Art & Ecopsychology ed.). Retrieved August 31, 2020.
- ^ "Two Decades Later, Don Katz's 'Home Fires' is Available as an Audiobook". Wall Street Journal. 2014-05-27.
- ^ Shapiro, Laura (October 24, 1993). "Why Do I Feel So Ashamed?". The New York Times. Retrieved August 28, 2020.