No More Nice Girls was a feminist guerrilla theater group in the 1970s and 1980s. Perhaps Ellen Willis came up with the name at a meeting in July 1977, shortly before the lights went out all over the Northeast. I think our first action was in the early 1980s, when Reagan’s administration was cracking down on abortion rights and pornography. We wrote a skit called “Sex Cops,” with half of the group ordinary women and girls going about our lives—taking birth control, having an abortion when the birth control didn’t work, looking at porn or making porn, having sex without being married or being married having an affair—and the other half were cops arresting us for doing any of those things.
In another skit, half of us were pregnant women being forced to keep our pregnances against our will by the sex cops. For this performance, we had to put pillows under our garments so we’d look pregnant, and while it had been about 10 years at that point since I’d been pregnant, the feeling of being so was distinctly disorienting and unpleasant. I did not even want to imagine myself pregnant, willingly or unwillingly.
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I’m participating in the 17th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 18 of the 31-day challenge. It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about. Join in!
