This not to say that the men and women associated with the Rat Bastard Protective Association had freed themselves from the powerful hold of established gender roles on their lives. Shirley Burman, Joan Brown, Jean Conner, Jay DeFeo, and Joanna McClure most frequently provided the practical component of the vision they shared with their spouses; that is, the women all worked for a living... As Càndida Smith observed, the 'contradictions of this imaginary society fell most acutely upon the women, for... they carried the burden of 'holding things together'.