Can Consciousness be Lowered?

You\u27ve been working as part of the women\u27s movement since 1968. It\u27s changed your life and the lives of the people you have touched. The job you have probably didn\u27t have a name ten years ago. You\u27re a women\u27s studies coordinator, a rape and domestic violence counselor, an affirmative action officer. You are more involved in women\u27s issues than ever before. You wake up planning strategies and go to sleep drafting rationales. You subscribe to more journals—in spite of inflation—not only to support them, but to buoy yourself up. But something is wrong. There is a new sound in the air. The sound of the seventies wasn\u27t the Beatles or the BeeGees, not Carly Simon or Holly Near. Not even Margie Adam or Cris Williamson. The sound of the seventies was—the click. Do you remember how it went? Those castanets of connection? The air was full of them. Not all the same length. Not all the same pitch. But each one immediately recognizable and a cause for rejoicing. The privilege of having the door held open costs approximately $4,000 a year. Most women are only one man away from welfare. The click was the sound of connection, of someone leaping beyond the isolation of the personal to the potency of political analysis, of someone moving from depression to anger, the sound (magnified perhaps) of someone hugging herself or her sister. I understand; therefore I am. Ready. The problem that had no name was finding its tongue. The clicks were exhilarating. No sooner did you hear one within yourself than you recognized it as the sound you had been hearing all around you. With a leap of imagination, you were part of a symphony