| Yes, I was, from about 1974-1977.
It was a very valuable experience. The ground rules were excellent.
I have referred to them a number of times elsewhere in womannotes,
but I'll mention them again. I have made many of them a lifelong
model for communication with other people.
1) Each woman is the expert on her own life's experience.
(If a woman says she feels something, don't contradict her.
Don't try to change what she says. Accept her assessment
of her experience.) We found we could ask challenging
questions respectfully.
2) Listen to each other. Find a way to share the time. Respond
to another woman's story with thoughtful questions about her
experience, not statements like "That reminds me of the time
when I...[launch into own story]...".
3) Make I-statements, not You-statements. In other words, learn
to take responsibility for your feelings. The group tried to
support women learning to do this.
4) Look very carefully at statements and assumptions which begin
"I have to", "Mothers should", "Women have to", and "I don't
have any choice about...". This was a big issue in the 70's,
and reflected the passivity and programming a lot of us had
grown up to take for granted. When the group challenged me
on things I was passively doing and hating, I had to look
at why I thought I had to do these things. This generated
both relief and tons of anger for many of us.
5) Don't generalize. Speak about your own experience. Avoid words
like all, none, never.
6) Look at anger. Look at passive aggression. How do group members
deal with their anger towards one another? (Hint: They act
out old patterns.)
7) (This came a little later.) Look at racism and classism as well
as sexism. Does your group have 3rd world/poor women involved?
Why not? Does your group have all white, college-educated, upper-
middle class women in it? Do something about that.
8) Does your group have all lesbian women or all straight women
in it? Why? What is the fear of including the other group?
We spent a lot of time on anger. A lot of it came out among ourselves.
I learned about power in those groups. I learned to feel strong,
and to fight back. I learned to be assertive. I learned not to
generalize.
I also learned a lot about "politics" in the sense of "Power
relationships". Women talked about "their politics" a lot in the
CR groups I was connected with. Women often spoke of finding out
"what someone's politics were" as part of getting to know someone.
(That sounds funny to me now, but at the time it was taken sooooo
seriously).
I think the down side of CR for me was the pressure I felt in
conforming to the "correct outlook". The open ended parts of becoming
more powerful, feeling strong and feeling assertive were wonderful. The
rhetoric was not always wonderful, but it is often a part of social
change movements. Feeling "sisterhood" and feeling close to other
women was wonderful; the occasional warring factions in the women's
community were not.
There was also a lot of pressure around what we wore, what jargon
we used, and whether we chose to see men and have male friends during
our participation in the groups from some members.
This is just a start. There were a lot of good article in MS. magazine
in the early and mid 70s about starting CR groups, and women's
experiences in the groups. It might be interesting to get some
back issues at the library and check them out.
Holly
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| I don't know of any CR groups (as such) today. Many of the people who
did CR went into individual therapy. I met many, many veterans of mid
70's CR who were very involved in women's spirituality movements in the
early 80's (perhaps to balance out all those years of intense anger?)
A number of people also got involved in 12 step programs, and various
types of wholistic, new-age groups.
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| I was in a CR group during 1970. There was a lot of searching and
learning, intellectual seeking and emotional support. But there
were also problems--peer pressure, popularity issues--the same old
group stuff that always happens.
It was nice meeting with a group of women every Sunday night.
It was heavy, but it wasn't like therapy, either. One thing:
there was a feeling of tremendous growth & change. We were all
thinking about things we'd never thought about before, dealing with
issues publicly that we'd been shamed or embarrassed to mention,
learning from each other, removing taboos, rethinking the way we'd
been taught to think on real basic things. It was exhilerating
and liberating and new!
It was such a long time ago--17 years!
Nina
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