Lee Comer
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Cover of The Myth of Motherhood pamphlet
I wrote The Myth of Motherhood to counter the prevailing mythology that mothers who went out to work instead of staying home out of sight to care for their children were responsible for every ill in society. It was published in Spokesman Journal in 1971. I paid the publishers for off prints which I sold at cost at the Skegness Conference in October 1971. (See HOWL Timeline.) I took this photo of the cover in a glass case at the Women in Revolt exhibition at Tate Britain in 2023
In 1968,happily single having extricated myself from an unwise marriage to a man who proved to be a dedicated alcoholic, I began working as a primary school teacher in Camden. I was 25 years old, living the dream, in a job I loved and was good at, sharing a nice flat in Chalk Farm, going to gigs, reading and writing poetry and getting stuck into every kind of lefty activism. (As a teenager I’d been actively involved in CND, bunking off school to work at Peace News).
But then in 1969 I fell hopelessly in love with a man who lived in Leeds and whose poetry was much better than mine. Without a backward thought, truly thoughtlessly, I left my life, my flat, my job and my friends to move in with him in his grotty bed sitter in Leeds. With hindsight, it was the best and most important decision I ever made.
At that time there was fervent political activity in Leeds, much of it driven by former university students who had settled in the city. Among them was a group who published an alternative newspaper Leeds Other Paper, out of which grew the first women’s consciousness raising (CR) group in the city. It met weekly in a small room in a small back-to- back house.
Initially the group numbered 8 – 10 women but each week as word got out more and more women attended so that another room in a larger house had to be found. Then fortuitously for the group I became pregnant in 1970 – it meant I could be rehoused (those were the days!) into a very large flat with a most enormous living room. This then became the new semi-permanent home for our group allowing it to grow and develop into a serious force for change.
Back cover of Wedlocked Women
I wrote Wedlocked Women in 1972/3 to develop the themes raised in my earlier work on The Myth of Motherhood. The photo is of me with words from the book. It was published by Feminist Books in 1974. Feminist Books also published a reader, Conditions of Illusion and imported and distributed all the American feminist titles published by Daughters Inc.Such was the growth in the group that we could splinter easily into a myriad of issues: abortion, childcare, domestic abuse etc and still come together whenever necessary. We had, for example, a subgroup on children’s literature (and the sexism therein) which one member took to local radio resulting in a weekly broadcast of rewritten children’s storiesAnother subgroup established a Women’s Aid house for what we then called battered women. Others hurtled around giving talks, organising demos, writing articles and generally making magnificent nuisances of ourselves.
Attending that first CR meeting in 1969 was the biggest and most consequential step I took in my life. For me it paved the way to writing The Myth of Motherhood, Wedlocked Women and co-editing Conditions of Illusion and many other pieces. It gave me purpose, determined my work and gave me lifelong friends.