Ms. Blogger
Susan Rubin
I believe that I was born a feminist. This has guided my life choices and led me to be an artist/cultural worker (look up Cultural Revolution for the definition of "cultural worker") for decades. I have been an actor, dancer, and cabaret writer. For the last 15 years, I have been a playwright, and I have been writing video documentaries for the Feminist Majority for (OMG) ten years or so. My partner, Lorraine Sheinberg and I develop documentaries on subjects ranging from women's reproductive rights to the struggle to stop international and domestic violence against women. My plays have been produced in Cuba, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. I have always written strong roles for women, and their relationships to the world and to whatever subject the play was focused on. The balance of the documentaries, which often tell brutal truths, with my plays, which are usually comedic, allows me to keep writing and advocating for women to be seen as whole human beings. On a lighter note, I was the only person to ever teach tap dancing at the Institute for the Study of Bertolt Brecht (true story)! My efforts to bring accessible art to a broad based audience are at the core of all of my work. And yes, there will be more about my tap dancing to Marxist texts in my upcoming blogs. Also, watch for the newly created web series: "VAGINA/DIALOGUES" based on my ms blogs!
Website: http://www.indecentexposuretheater.org
Twitter: susanrubin1
Susan Rubin's Posts
Womanslaughter: Cuts in Breast Cancer Screening Hurt Women
October 11, 2011 by Susan Rubin · 7 Comments
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and also happens to be the month, in 1986, that I first underwent surgery for my own breast cancer. I do a lot of thinking as the days grow shorter and my sense-memories of being diagnosed, having surgery, radiation and chemo grow stronger. I was younger than 50 when [...]
Woman #451: Imagining the U.S. Without Legal Abortion
August 25, 2011 by Susan Rubin · 6 Comments
Report from the United States of America, July, 2015. Four months after the re-criminalization of abortion. Woman #451 was 38 years old. She had just finished chemotherapy treatments for breast cancer. #451 believed she was infertile because the chemo had stopped her period. When she discovered she was pregnant, she was very afraid. Doctors had [...]
To Serve and Protect–And Sexually Assault?
June 17, 2011 by Susan Rubin · 8 Comments
Recently, a New York City police officer was charged with raping a drunk and comatose woman while his partner stood watch. The two were cleared of rape charges, to feminist outrage, but the fact that the officer crossed sexual boundaries with a very intoxicated woman was undisputed (he admits to kissing her shoulder). Many of [...]
War on Drugs 1, War on Rape 0
May 31, 2011 by Susan Rubin · 24 Comments
I was called to jury duty last week at federal court in Los Angeles. Thirty-five prospective jurors were asked if they could fairly judge a man accused of selling a “small amount of a controlled substance”–crack cocaine–to an undercover cop. (In total, six undercover cops worked to bring this guy down!) When asked in voir [...]
Click! A College Grad Strips on Bourbon Street
March 28, 2011 by Susan Rubin · 8 Comments
I was dancing in a G-string and pasties when I first realized I was a feminist. Backtrack: I was a young woman experimenting with the boundaries of freedom. It was the sexual revolution, the time after Roe v. Wade and before AIDS, and there was enormous confusion about what it meant to be free. I [...]
2, 4, 6, 8, Let’s All Go Re-Virginate!
January 20, 2011 by Susan Rubin · 30 Comments
For Jeannette Yarborough’s 17th wedding anniversary, she wanted to give her husband something special. So she had her hymen re-attached. Wow, better than new golf clubs or even tennis balls! This gift would allow hubby the thrill of conquering a “virgin” all over again! According to news reports, hymenoplasty, or “revirgination” surgery, is increasingly in [...]
Surviving Breast Cancer: 24 Years Later
October 28, 2010 by Susan Rubin · 13 Comments
“The good news is, you’re a candidate for a lumpectomy!” With those ten words, my surgeon told me I had breast cancer. I didn’t understand the “good news” part. But he cheerfully handed me a brochure filled with pictures of lumpectomies, mastectomies and reconstructed breasts. Then he told me to go home and come back [...]
Rape Kit Backlog Hits Primetime on “SVU”
October 6, 2010 by Susan Rubin · 10 Comments
A woman is raped. Four times by the same man over a 15-year period. She is afraid to leave her home and hires people to do her shopping and all her outside chores. She works inside her apartment, which is locked up like a prison cell at San Quentin. She is the prisoner; terrorized, badly [...]
Senator Alan Kooi Simpson Steps in a Cow Pie
September 2, 2010 by Susan Rubin · 6 Comments
Former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson recently stated that Social Security is becoming “a cow with 310 million tits.” I’m a vegetarian, but even I know that cows don’t have tits, they have teats. Thus begins the list of incorrect and nasty misstatements that have poured out of the mouth of Alan Kooi Simpson lately. (Hey, [...]
Hey Broadway, Don’t Forget Women Playwrights!
July 16, 2010 by Susan Rubin · 32 Comments
I am a playwright living in Los Angeles. Am I an oxymoron, or just a regular moron? Everybody knows that Los Angeles is a movie town! In spite of this, through great good fortune all of my plays have been produced, and I have nothing to complain about. So why this blog post? When we [...]
