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Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Jody Aliesan 
April 18, 1996  
Cassette 2, Side 2 
 
 
Julie O'Grady  00:03 
So I've turned the tape around, and this is side B of tape two.  
 
Jody Aliesan  00:09 
I was just mentioning that I ran for student body president without expecting to win, as well as 
the chance you could and certainly [?wanted to try?]. And I had the support of a lot of girls who, 
uh, did some really great things for me, especially in the, uh, with a demonstration of support 
with signs and-and, um, standing up in back of the auditorium during the speeches that we were 
all supposed to give as candidates. I don't remember what the ballot was. It really didn't matter, 
but it-it broke through that kind of glass wall to say that if a girl can run, a girl might win 
someday. And I don't know if anyone has, I suppose that's probably true. I don't know how--I 
wonder how many years it took, but at any event, another thing that happened in high school that 
was interesting, was that, um, the valedictorian position in graduation turned out to go to another 
girl who was a business major. She ended up having the highest grade point average. I 
consistently got B's in gym. I wasn't--I just wasn't an athlete on the one hand, and I didn't really 
feel like exerting myself to become one, so I straggled along. Uh, and so my grade point average 
was the second to hers. Well, that's fine, because that would make me salutatorian. But the 
school had a rule that that one, if one was a female, the other had to be male. So Steve [?Reed?] 
ended up being the salutatorian, and I didn't get either one. And it was okay with me at that 
point, because I knew better and I knew that everybody else knew better. And Steve even 
offered, the dear guy, to bow out of it because of that. And I said, "Don't worry about it. Now I 
don't have to write a speech." [Laughs.]  
 
Jody Aliesan  02:17 
Because there were so many things that happening to me at the end of the year, including the 
senior recital, senior solo recital, I had to give in piano, after 10 years of study, that big senior 
solo recital. And then that was--that was such a requirement of me that I vowed I wouldn't touch 
the piano for a year, and I didn't. And of course, I lost all my chops, and so I never really got 
back to the piano, but I don't care. It gave me some foundations of music that were useful, but it 
only prepared me to play other people's music.  
 
Jody Aliesan  02:53 
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So that was the end of high school, and interestingly enough, many, years later, a high school 
principal, progressive kind of man, decided that he wanted to set up a Hall of Fame in that high 
school to encourage students to stay in school so they could see examples of people who have 
gone on before them and done other things in life than what they might be imagining for 
themselves. And I was chosen to represent my high school class, which was pretty amazing, and 
I got to go back and speak in and assembly. I remember, I basically said that they were asking us 
to talk about secrets of success. And I think I said that there were three, and one was learning 
how to love, and another one was finding out what your work is, what you're supposed to do, and 
doing that. And the third one was having a relationship with spirit, with spirit, [inaudible] spirit. 
It was really great. Oh, like, how many 20--25, years later, to stand in front of people in the same 
auditorium, remember what it was like in the seats and be able to see something that might be 
useful. But my brother couldn't understand why I had been chosen, and he said in front of me to 
Judy, my sister in law, asked me when I was sitting at the table, as if I wasn't even there. Said 
[inaudible]. It's like once again, an example of how my biological family doesn't it seem to 
collect or remember what I've--I might have been able to accomplish over time, or that the things 
that I value aren't valuable to them. Um... And maybe that's--I don't know I'm free associating 
here--but that may be part of the reason that it's been clear to me since I was in grade school, that 
I was not going to have children, that I positively did not want to have children, it's as if there 
was something about my family that could be tied up in my genes what I did not want to 
perpetuate.  
 
Jody Aliesan  05:24 
Well, um, college, I was a scholarship kid in a middle-class, upper-middle-class college. Once 
again, I-I passed, but I knew I didn't fit, but I just plugged ahead anyway, and had much more 
pleasure with the faculty and the library, the resources were breath, made me breathless. It was 
exciting to learn there, and I ended up, once again, being in service organizations. And got an 
award for the highest GPA for freshman woman, and some of the others were things like the 
faculty sweepstakes writing award, and I got an international fellowship to the North Frisian 
Islands, which are off the coast of Denmark and Germany. And that's another story. And 
[inaudible], I guess that's a national organization. And college honors, and I was graduated 
magna cum laude, and I got a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, which was a first for women in 
those days. And then something happened to me also. It was like that girls that were at the 
college, I went to Occidental College, there was what they called the May Queen, which was not 
a beauty contest. It was elected by the women from, and I was elected May Queen. And that was 
very meaningful to me, once again, that the women saw fit to-to-to say that, through their votes, 
that somehow I represented something that was important to them, gives me tears to remember 
right now. [Laughs.]  
 
Jody Aliesan  07:23 
Um, on the other hand, there were a lot of ways that I walked into a big fog in high school and 
then further in college, and, uh, that goes-crosses over into the whole question of sexuality. I'll 
get back to the sexuality in a minute. I unfortunately can only speak one word at a time, and 
things have to be linear. But I'll sum it up at this point to-to say that I ended up getting married to 
a man, uh, which was the first of the two biggest mistakes in my life. And if I had to choose one 
or the other, I would say it was the very biggest mistake of my entire life. There were things, 
things about this man that were positive. He was involved in Civil Rights work. He did some 
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great things along those lines. He was a very competent thinker, and he was also someone who 
did very well scholastically. You might say it all looked good on paper, and I don't want to use 
this interview to-to talk critically about anyone, so I think I'll just draw a line here and not say 
anything more, um, although I will have to give some examples of how I was treated in that 
marriage, because they belong in this comment about, uh, my experience as a woman.  
 
Jody Aliesan  09:04 
We married at the end of college, and then we went back east for graduate school. Originally, the 
plan was that we would--that he was going to go into medical school--I'm sorry, yeah, medical 
school--so we were both accepted at Columbia University. But then at the last minute, he 
decided he wanted to go to law school, and he applied to Harvard, and it was too late for me to 
apply to Harvard, so when he was accepted there, that-that cinched it, and I had to scramble to 
find someplace to go to school in Boston, and, uh, I didn't know anything about the schools in 
Boston, and most of their, uh, admissions were closed, so I ended up getting admitted into 
Boston University. And at the same time that this was happening, we moved to the close of the 
year, when there would be examinations to determine who would be summa cum laude, which 
was not only grade point average, but also an indicator that one had passed the honors exam with 
an A, which was one all-day--oh, I can't--it may have been two all-day exams, but one of them 
was written and the other had an oral component, I can't remember now, but they came at the end 
of everything else you were doing, so there was a lot of strain attached to it. Well, I said to him 
that I could really use a quiet evening of study before the exam. So he ended up leaving the 
apartment, um, and not telling me where he was going, and we didn't have a phone, so I didn't 
know where he was, and that interfered seriously with my ability to study and to concentrate, 
um, without passing on responsibility or blaming someone else unduly, I will say he was 
certainly responsible for part of the reason I didn't get an A on those exams, and so I didn't get 
summa cum laude.  
 
Jody Aliesan  11:13 
And I think that there's an interesting combination in the way to look at the valedictorian in high 
school and the summa cum laude in college, both had to do with one form or another of sexism, 
gender behavior selection, something like that. Maybe this is too general, but I find it interesting. 
Either that or I'm just not supposed to have that kind of honor. Supposed to be given the 
experience over and over again of seeking to excel and aspiring to excellence without being 
given that, uh, crowning seal, so that I'll learn to do it for its own sake, which is maybe more 
than one case [inaudible].  
 
Jody Aliesan  12:04 
Well, at Brandeis University, which I wish I went off-story--these are long stories that are sort of 
irrelevant--but what happened when I got to Boston was I realized Boston University was not the 
right place for me, um, and so a friend of mine who was at Brandeis suggested I come to the 
campus, and I was inspired by what I overheard among the students there, even though classes 
had already started by a week. But she took me to the dean of the grad school and the chair of the 
English department, and without any paperwork with me, I just told them who I was and what I 
had to offer, including the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, which they would get part of, I guess. 
And so they had me call the foundation to verify that that was true. And that day turned things 
around so that I could go to Brandeis instead of Boston university and register late and certainly 
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be accepted months late, started in classes a week late. But I ended up having the highest grade 
point average and finishing the program at Brandeis faster than anybody had in the history of the 
university to that point. And it wasn't an older university. But I was told that by the chair of the 
English department, with some wonder in his voice. And the truth of it is, I really had to, um, 
drive myself to get the--get it all done, which was the master's degree, plus the first two years of 
classwork for the PhD--I should say, I got done in three years, a master's degree, and the first--
and all the coursework for a PhD in three years.  
 
Jody Aliesan  13:53 
And I had to do it in three years because my husband was going to finish law school in three 
years, and then he wanted to move. I don't know. And one can say, "Well, how is it that you put 
up with that?" Hm, good question. He was the--and this is where I would get into a lot of his 
behavior towards me, and maybe I'll get into that later. But while I was at Brandeis, alongside 
doing that kind of work, I was also a residence counselor and--not all at the same time, different 
terms--teaching assistant, research assistant and teacher of English as a second language, because 
basically, I was, uh, the breadwinner. Um... He also said that I should quit and support him like 
the other wives did. He was non-cooperative domestically. Once, when I finally got to the point 
where I could talk to him about it, and was crying, he decided that what I really needed was 
[inaudible] and [inaudible] wine, I got ridicule and criticism and correction and cruelty from him. 
And, uh, I could go on, but there's no necessity. He's-- He has to live with who he is.  
 
Jody Aliesan  15:17 
When we went down from, uh, graduate school to teach together at an African American college 
in Birmingham, Alabama, we got the jobs, both of us teaching there, because I won the 
[inaudible] internship to teach there. But in the first faculty meeting, the dean of the faculty, who 
knew better, introduced us as his being the intern, and my being his wife. And once again, 
someone could say, "Why didn't I stand up and say something?" It was his place--the man I was 
married to--I don't like calling my husband or ex-husband--it was his place to stand and say 
something. It would only put me in a worse position to do that myself, and besides, unfortunately 
for me, I am not someone who can immediately respond to things like that. I'm a ruminating sort 
of person. When it happens, I'm stunned. When cruelty or abuse happens, I'm stunned. And I'm 
the sort of person who then--because I don't expect those things--circles around it until I 
understand what's happened. I'm not able to react or respond immediately. So I'm learning more 
and more just to sense those situations early on and walk away from them as soon as I recognize 
them, instead of assuming that the world is like that, not everybody is like that, not all situations 
are like that. The exceptions are few, but those are the ones I'm gravitating towards now, instead 
of assuming do I have to cope with and do and deal with the other.  
 
Jody Aliesan  17:03 
Well, [clears throat] it was at the end of that year, in Birmingham, middle of the year, when I 
realized that I had to get out of that marriage that was killing me, and I would be killing myself if 
I stayed in it, and I left at the end of that year, and went to, uh, live with my friend Susan in 
Cambridge, and during that time, I wrote my dissertation, once again, driving myself every day. 
Each-each summer, during graduate school, I was learning a language to pass a language exam 
or getting ready for the master's degree exams or one thing or another. That summer I was 
writing a dissertation, and Susan and I were romantically involved, and still remain very, very 
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deep and dear friends. She was the one who was already going to Brandeis who, made it possible 
for me to consider changing. Took the initiative to walk me into some of those offices.  
 
Jody Aliesan  18:13 
Well, at the end of that summer, there's more biography here than anybody would be interested 
in, so I'll skip to the fact that my dissertation was, um, not accepted. This happened after I'd 
already moved from Cambridge to Washington, DC. I moved there because I didn't know anyone 
there, wanting to start fresh in a new city [inaudible] I was new. And I also wanted to get 
involved in work against the war, and that belongs in another column. Um, but I would say that 
when I did get involved in, um, Vietnam Moratorium Committee, it was as a press 
representative, and when I was transferred to Chicago, it was because the peace organization 
there was in the shambles and they needed some serious help. And the, um, [inaudible] 
coordinators of the Committee asked me if I would go there. And, so in Chicago, doing that 
work, one of the media people I ran into said that it was very unusual for a woman to be doing 
the work I was doing. I hadn't really paid enough attention to notice that. In those days, um, 
things were very different for women. We weren't doing much of anything besides [inaudible]. 
But there was--there were four of us, though, on Chicago Committee. Three of us were women, 
and we were doing work, and we had a figurehead of a man to head it, to give it--so it would be 
taken seriously. And he was actually embarrassed by that, um, taking credit. And there-there was 
some difficulty around that.  
 
Jody Aliesan  20:05 
But the biggest difficulty was the fact that the debt that existed after the rallies were over--and 
this was the largest rally in the city of Chi--in the history of the city of Chicago-- back in the 
political side of that similar time. But Hugh Hefner offered the Playboy Mansion as the place 
where a benefit could be--benefit party could be held to raise money to cover this debt. And the 
three women of us opposed it, and the coordinators in Washington, DC, uh, overruled us and it 
was held at the Playboy Mansion. And I was asked to sing as part of the entertainment.  I was--it 
was one of those critical moments, and you won't necessarily be happy with the ending of this, 
but this was way life is. I walked to the mansion with my guitar, and there was a picket line, and 
then supporters of the Women's Liberation Organization in Chicago. They weren't crossing the 
path. It was an informational picket, so it wasn't a matter of my having to cross a picket line. But 
I had to walk into that place, walking past them, and I know I really belonged with them. I also 
felt I had a responsibility to pay that debt. When I got upstairs into the mansion, I found that 
everybody there who were, you know, liberals and self-identified radicals were miserable. It was 
not a party. Dennis Hopper was there, [?Jane?] Fonda, a number of, uh, senators and 
representatives, and they were all really aggrieved that they had lost a good night. And that was 
the whole conversation. And nobody had a good time. We raised the money, but everybody was 
pretty embarrassed and ashamed [chuckled].  
 
Jody Aliesan  22:05 
And so when I walked out of there, I went back to the office the next day at the Moratorium 
Committee, I just packed up and left and took the elevator train to the Women's Liberation 
office, walked in and said, "Okay, what can I do?" That was my beginning in the women's 
movement. And also, it was a exquisite beginning, because I got no judgment [inaudible], no 
judgment on me. I just said, "This is what I did. This is why I'm here." And they said, "We're 
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really glad there was somebody inside so that you can tell us what happened." Lifted the whole 
burden and there it was. Well, from there, I came to Seattle.  
 
Jody Aliesan  22:51 
Soon after that, since the military folded, and after that anti-tax rally in April, came to Seattle on 
May 20, on the train to the King Street Station. Knew that this is where I belonged. This was 
home. Finally, after living in every other corner of the country, catching up with my great-
grandparents, who were here before me. So I got involved in-in the movement here. I needed to 
make a living somehow, so I went and interviewed--one last gasp of the academic life--I haven't 
talked about my dissertation yet. I interviewed at the UW in the English department, [gasps, 
laughs] and it was such a non-interview. It reminded me of something that happened to me 
earlier out of graduate school, which I haven't written down here. I had all these gold stars, and I 
saw a flyer on the bulletin board in graduate school for a job that was available--a teaching 
English composition at Suffolk College, not far away, and I went there to apply for it, and the 
chair of the department had the freedom to tell me that I was just going to have babies anyway, 
and that they already had too many women in school. This was before there were any laws 
against this, and there was nothing I could do to convince him. And of course, I was put in the 
position of, well, there was absolutely no respect, no matter how much dignity I carried myself, 
there was a familiarity that was very disrespectful. And the next week, the flyer was changed, 
and it said male English Composition instructors, not illegal then. So that when I got to the 
University of Washington, and I talked about the chair of the department, and he treated me the 
same way. Sounded really ingratiating, nice, little lady kind of a patronizing attitude. I walked 
out of there and not only did-did I leave that possible life behind, but that I was going to put all 
my energy into the women's movement.  
 
Jody Aliesan  25:18 
[Inaudible] University of Washington suffered for Suffolk College's sins, but they had a lot of 
sins to atone for themselves, as I found out, because I went into the Association of the University 
of Washington--ASUW--UW Women's Commission office and asked if I could help. And I 
became an outside agitator, a student helper was my job classification, minimum wage, and for 
the next year, I researched and compiled and wrote the, uh, study of sexism at the University, 
Report on the Status of Women at the University of Washington. [?Lynn Bruner?], who was 
chair of the commission, wrote one part of it on-on staff, and that became the foundation for a 
class-action suit, which changed the--began to change the university. I can go into it some other 
time what ways it was, um, exploiting women and was unjust to women. This is not the time to 
do that. The reports themselves are in the archives in the Suzzallo Library, library, successful.  
 
Jody Aliesan  26:42 
Um, but what I found at the end of that year was I really wanted to stop hitting my head against 
the stone wall of the institution and--I mean, being on that kind of frontline sort of place. I 
wanted to get more into services, and the University YWCA had just divorced itself from the 
YMCA and set themselves up at a storefront situation on The Ave. So I went over there and 
started volunteering, and their history and everything that they did and have done are also in the 
archives. But I started out doing the survival file, then I worked for the speaker's bureau, then I 
was hired on, and not long after that, we reorganized the staff so that there were four co-directors 
and [inaudible] and clerical work.  
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Julie O'Grady  27:39 
And what is the survivor's file?  
 
Jody Aliesan  27:42 
Oh, the survival file is--if you come new to the city of Seattle as a woman, what do you need to 
know? What are your resources? Um, it's the whole spectrum of possible needs. But other things 
that happened at the university--and all of this is well-documented elsewhere--included the 
beginnings of Rape Relief, the Lesbian Resource Center, and [inaudible] abortion [inaudible] 
service, Women in Trades, Save Our Sisters, on and on and on. Uh, rap groups, various kinds of, 
uh, skill-building sessions. It was also the three of us from the University YWCA who taught the 
very first women's studies class. Women 101. It began way back then in 1971, '72, winter 
quarter.  
 
Jody Aliesan  28:35 
Uh, and during that time, everybody also encouraged me to apply for a new body that was 
created by city of Seattle, which is called the Seattle Women's Commission. So I did as a 
representative. Uh, well, I thought I was going as one of many representatives of the women's 
community, which--but it turned out that there were only two of us on the ten- to twelve-member 
body, who considered ourselves feminists, and the other was Helen Sommers, and we had to do a 
lot of educating. At that time, for example, there were segregated Help Wanted columns in the 
newspaper for men and for women. And even to try to point out that that meant that certain jobs 
that women couldn't even apply for, and that ghettoization was happening because of it, took a 
lot of effort. It was a struggle. And the whole thing also got to the point where I realized that this 
Commission was mostly just to pacify the community, to look as if something were being done, 
and-and not to mention to make the mayor look good. And I finally did a public resignation, 
making it clear why I was resigning, which was picked up by the daily papers just as the class 
action suit the university was picked up--that was front page. This wasn't front page. [Recording 
ends.] 
 