- Collection:
- Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives
- Title:
- Walker talks about gender issues in marriage counseling (2:51)
- Creator:
- Walker, Annabelle (Annabelle Hoppe), 1940-
- Contributor to Resource:
- Durand, Joyce Jenkins, 1939-
- Publisher:
- Atlanta, Ga. : Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 1999-09-24
- Subject:
- Feminism
Social movements
Women's studies - Location:
- United States, Georgia, Fulton County, 33.79025, -84.46702
United States, Georgia, Fulton County, Atlanta, 33.749, -84.38798
United States, Louisiana, 31.00047, -92.0004 - Medium:
- audiocassettes
- Type:
- Sound
- Format:
- audio/mpeg
- Description:
- Annabelle Hoppe Walker was born in 1940 in Pineville, Kentucky. Walker worked as a speech therapist, a first grade teacher, and an early learning teacher before becoming an attorney. She is currently Deputy City Attorney for the City of New Orleans. She holds a B.A. from George Washington University, an M.Ed. from Georgia State University, and a J.D. degree.In addition to teaching and practicing law, Walker was actively involved in women's advocacy in the 1970s. She served as president of the New Orleans NOW chapter from 1972 until 1975 and was the state co-coordinator for the Louisiana ERA Coalition in 1975.
The daughter of a college professor (and later, musician), Walker describes her childhood spent in college towns. She says that although she was highly intelligent, her parents "had in mind that I would be a teacher, or a librarian or a nurse. It just didn't occur to them [for me] to be anything else." Majoring in speech therapy, Walker describes her experiences in beauty contests while at Louisiana State University. After getting engaged to the president of the student body, Walker says that she finished out her junior year at LSU and transferred to Georgia Washington University in Washington D.C. to be with her fiance'. After some moving around, Walker and her young family came to Atlanta, where she enrolled in Georgia State University's Early Childhood Education Program. She says that it was through her sociology classes that she first learned about the Women's Movement, and that her consciousness was raised immediately. She says, "At first, I began to notice how much women were put down and discouraged from doing anything. But the constant demeaning of women really began to bother me." She recounts that her marriage did not survive her newly-found feminism. Walker says that while she was studying Early Childhood Education, she became aware of sex-role stereotyping. She and a classmate, Ramona Frasher worked on a research project, and she recounts their work examining the roles of women in children's textbooks. She says that although they had trouble publishing their findings, the findings were in fact very influential in forcing textbook publishers to take sexism out of their books. Walker says that she joined NOW because they "had a national structure and they [were] middle-of-the-road enough sort of the NAACP of the Women's Movement. "She describes the issues that NOW focused on, such as the Weeks v Southern Bell discrimination case, and the discriminatory practices of the Salvation Army. As a member of NOW, she was asked to speak to various groups, and she recounts her experience at Westminster school in Atlanta, where she spoke about sexism to the entire high school and faculty. Walker describes moving to New Orleans in 1972, shortly after her divorce. She says that within six months of her move, she was president of the local chapter of NOW, and co-coordinator of the Louisiana ERA Coalition. She recounts the many demonstrations and rallies she attended, including "the wedding dress incident"which involved her wearing a wedding dress with a hooped skirt to the Louisiana legislature, and carrying a sign that said "equal partnership in marriage." The incident was recounted later in a Time magazine article which examined the different approaches taken by northern and southern feminists. Walker says that her activism waned after she started Law School: "I kind of dropped my activism and wasn't active any more. It would take an issue to bring it back to life, I suppose. From then on, you see, you could battle individual cases of discrimination through laws that we had passed, or through organizational efforts. Because once feminism became accepted, it was no longer acceptable to be sexist anymore than it was acceptable to be racist. Because of a movement, we didn't need the movement anymore."
Transcript of this excerpt: AW: And we went to a doctor and he recommended marriage counseling. Unfortunately, the marriage counselor he sent us to was a former Baptist preacher -- yes he was -- but the marriage counseling game paid a lot better you see, so he'd gone into marriage counseling. And he told us when we first went, he said, "Well now, what I do first is to ask you to read a couple of books." He said, "I have one book for husbands and one book for wives." Now, I knew right away that was going to be a problem because anytime there's one book for husbands and one book for wives, then he is seeing us in different roles and guess what mine is going to be? And guess what his, you see, is going to be? Yes, uh-huh. And guess what books they were. I think I've kept one of those. One is called Letters to Philip; that's the husband's book, and one is called Letters to Karen. Letters to Karen was first and then Letters to Philip. I don't know if you've ever heard of those? JD: I've heard of both of them. AW: Well, we took the books home. And, of course, I read the husband's book first, [laughs][I said] "Let me look at yours." And I was just, oh boy, what it did to me to read his book first! The first chapter was called, "Take Charge," and the second chapter was called, "Be Kind." And that was the whole theme. The male is to take charge. The male is the head of the family and the male should take charge. But, in the second chapter, now that you've got charge you should be kind to her. And he ended that chapter by saying, "You know," he said, "I know it's not the best analogy," he said, "but most women are like my old dog Shep. He'd come all the way across the yard for a pat on the head. Now, most women are like that. They just want a pat on the head." That book is probably is still in print. JD: I wouldn't doubt it. AW: And Joyce, I swear that's what he said. Anyway, you can imagine what I thought of that. JD: And how long did you stay in therapy? AW: No, I didn't stay much in therapy. In fact, I was a problem for him, because we went to separate groups -- little group therapy things. So my group had these women in it and here was the Baptist preacher, and I remember getting resentful in the group because he would give compliments to some of the women in the group. Now there was at least one woman there who was struggling to tell about her problems, and so on, and she was very overweight and not very attractive. And, of course, I'm sure it didn't help her psyche any to notice that he would compliment other women, but of course, he never complimented her. But, we weren't there for him to make us feel pretty. We were there to get along with our husbands and learn to be -- you know, we weren't there for him to compliment us, but that's the way he, you know, the way he related to the women. "Oh, and you're such an attractive woman," things like that, but in front of another woman who is not attractive? How does that make her feel? So I had a lot of problems with my marriage therapist. It just didn't work for me. You know? - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/coles/id/2064
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/coles:2064/manifest.json
- Language:
- eng
- Additional Rights Information:
- Copyright to this item is owned by Georgia State University Library. Georgia State University Library has made this item available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
- Extent:
- 63 pages (two audio cassettes)
- Original Collection:
- Georgia Women's Movement Project Collection
Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives - Holding Institution:
- Georgia State University. Special Collections
- Rights:
-
