Lessons From Foremothers and Former Selves

Carol Seajay, Pell, Tiana Arruda, Kit Quan, 1982 

We were either closeted or forcibly ghettoized in the those decades. The late sixties, seventies and early eighties brought so much change to the lives of women and lesbians. A lot of us looked different and distinctly lesbian but none of us aspired to the female sex-role stereotypes. Obsequious, flirtatious, decked-out, made-up heterosexual women were the norm then and seem to have made a comeback since. But we really had to be circumspect in dealing with the outside world. There were no job or housing protections and, we were vulnerable to discrimination. Organizing was imperative. There was so much work to be done.

I defined myself as a radical lesbian feminist in those early days. I went to San Francisco State and took groundbreaking women's studies classes from pioneers like Sally Gearhart. I hung out at bars like Scotts, Maude's, Kelley's, Pegs Place and A Little More. It wasn't just the Michigan Women's Music Festival that was happening. Old Wives Tales Women's Bookstore opened, followed by Artemis Society. Plexus newspaper emerged. Osento Hot Tub flourished in a Victorian on Valencia Street. The Women's Press Project began printing pamphlets and books by lesbians. The laws were against us, lesbians were hated and under attack by fellow citizens and police, but it was a heady time in our community, full of hope and promise.

I think my first break with the radical feminist philosophy was when the realization dawned that I didn’t necessarily believe that women were special and could save the world. I was attracted to women. I loved and respected many of them. But I could look back at history and find women falling on the morally incorrect side. Some early suffragists supported racism. In every struggle against fascism there were lots of women taking a stand with murderous dictators. Fighting for more than just lesbians rights seemed necessary. As a Jew and a working-class affiliated woman, often a strictly radical lesbian feminist analysis didn’t speak to every aspect of me. Because I found many lesbians ignorant of these other components of struggle, the romance between me and this simplistic take on the world, faded.

The political work I did with lesbian groups like Lesbian Schoolworkers, Lesbians Against Police Violence and Revolting Lesbians were organized around lesbian liberation but also tackling other issues of oppression like...racism, poverty, and class struggle.

During the day I was a working stiff. To survive in that arena required me to make alliances with all different kinds of people. The line between gender and demographic groups. I’m an odd individual. The folks I liked, and who liked me, varied tremendously. I made friends where I could, usually with people who minimally identified with the workaday world and had other, more interesting and creative pursuits. They helped ease my way through the forest of b-s and artifice. I never stopped going to concerts or conferences or music festivals for dykes, I just stopped seeing that road as the only possible path through life’s jungle.

As organizational work toward lesbian protections found some success, I felt less confined to one small community. My friends became more eclectic, square pegs but not necessarily lesbian ones. Maybe coalition was possible. Perhaps we can explore our place in a broader society. I left the so-called safety of lesbian community for the prospect of a larger life, much the same way I’d left the Jewish community in which I was raised, to take my chances with the larger, multi-racial, diverse world. My family warned me often that, because of hostility,  I would regret that decision, but that was not the case. 

So where does all this leave me today? Older, but still much the same. I incorporate new information and curse the times we are living in. I still despise sex roles for humans but respect each person's right to call themselves whatever they want. And I do the same. As a writer and an individual, I have no desire to generalize or tar everyone with the same broad brush. But I am not willing to toss aside the fore-mothers of lesbian-feminism either. When I see young women throwing out the baby with the bathwater, it saddens me. I want to tell them to read, to study, to learn about what we were up against, the obstacles we encountered and faced down making life a bit easier now for everyone.

It is foolish to place leaders of another time in current society to decide how you feel about them. In order to see the Second Wave generation of feminism clearly, you must first rise to a height where the entire picture comes into view. Many young people are incapable or unwilling to do so. But not all. There are folks, like myself, who will value those who came before them, the lessons that ancestors teach. Violence and hatred have moved large groups of people throughout history, but have left behind nothing which inspires goodwill or pride.

Those who dismiss their elders will get their comeuppance with time. Life is impermanent, yours as well as ours. If you believe you know everything and will live forever, time will prove otherwise. The past is not your enemy. Those who cleared the path before you are not your foes. If you willfully choose to ignore history, it will rear up and bite you at the most inopportune moments. Who knows? Years from today, you may find yourself writing a piece, like this one, engaged in the very same argument. And then, perhaps, you will choose to reflect back on your former self with wisdom and compassion. 

My Body, My Definitions

When I was a reference librarian there was a man who suddenly began calling himself Krystal and demanded, from that point on, everyone refer to him as a she because now she was a woman. Nothing about him had changed except this pronoun. I found that odd but fine with me. Then, to my confusion Krystal stated,” I’m a woman just like you.”

How dare anyone make assumptions or claim to know anything of who I am without talking to me! I have not now nor ever possessed a “woman’s brain” whatever that’s supposed to mean. To me “womanhood” is a nebulous and ridiculous concept. Yes, I have female sex organs but I’ve never experienced any emotional attachment to them. I have been disparaged, discriminated against, discouraged, threatened, molested and undermined for this female body all my life. I have never been called “courageous” for undergoing this abuse. It is just considered normal.

And as a woman who is attracted to other women, I’ve been ridiculed, fired from jobs and beaten by strangers. If I had a dollar for every time someone said “are you a boy or a girl or called me sir, I’d be a millionaire. I have come to answer, “It’s none of your business since I have no desire to sleep with you.”

The New York Times front page article by Elinor Burkett posits an interesting take on the MTF transition. She asks what if someone who always considered himself a black man in a white man’s body chemically increased the melanin in his skin and braided his hair? Would he be lauded as courageous and embraced by the black community?

I am a human being who has been relegated to life in a woman’s body. I don’t feel like a woman or wish to be a man. My brain is full of all kinds of things based on my experience. I’d prefer to have been treated as neutral and allowed to develop my full human potential. What I am capable of accomplishing has nothing to do with the shape of my body. I respect everyone and deserve to be accorded that same respect. Others are not allowed to re-define and rewrite my life experience due to their perceptions of my age, race, identity, appearance or anatomical arrangement.

I have no intention of interfering in personal decisions people make for themselves. Changing gender falls into this category. Choice, personal selection, privacy, freedom of self-definition, these are all rights and protections I will not violate. But everyone has the right to define themselves. So do what you like to yourself, but keep your assumptions and pre-judgments off my body!

Two Separate Societies: Gender in Turkey

Turkish Men Outside a Cafe

The men in Turkey sit in cafes, play dominoes, smoke and converse intensely. To look at two men involved in such a connection, you would swear they were gay. The men are predominantly the folks we dealt with, they run the great majority of restaurants, pensions and shops. Some hotels have women at the front desk and you may find a shopkeeper or two but the overwhelming percentage of workers are male.

It is hard to make genuine connections in a country where you don't speak any of the native language but the following information is based solely on personal observation and experience.

Some restaurants are "family" places which cater more to women and children. Bars and places that serve raki (an alcoholic beverage) and other alcoholic drinks are men's domain. As foreign women, we were treated as honorary men and welcomed almost everywhere. The one exception was mosques, where we had to cover as Turkish women do, although sometimes at mosques I passed for male, in which case covering did not apply.

The men are good friends with one another and women are very peripheral to this picture. In the raki restaurant in Izmir, we saw intense, animated talking male duos and groups. On a boat trip in Kas, we met four Turkish college students, in two heterosexual couples. The men spoke to us in English. The women didn't speak to us. During the entire trip, the two male friends talked non-stop. The women sat at the far ends of the group and were silent. At swim stops, in the water, we occasionally heard them giggle or speak softly.

At one point when we tired of hearing the guys hold forth, we descended to the lower deck where we found one of their two women friends who had perhaps also tired of listening. She had ordered a beer, was smoking a cigarette and was actively communicating on her smartphone.

We visited a private home in Pamukkale. The guy who worked at our hotel drove us to his uncle's place. We sat on a beautiful carpeted porch overlooking the dry, cactus and scrub-speckeled mountains. A welcome cool breeze was blowing. The uncle's wife wore a scarf and spoke no English. She smiled and brought us all tea and almond cookies which she did not serve herself. I noticed that inside she removed her headscarf, but repositioned it when she came back to the group. Mostly, the two men spoke Turkish with each other and Deborah and I did the same in English.

In Izmir, we inadvertently booked a hotel in the red light district which was conveniently located between the bus and the train station. It was a lively neighborhood with reasonably priced bars and restaurants and not at all scary. Next to our hotel was a brothel. The women in the open front of the place wore tiny, gold lame bikinis. One had died blonde hair and loads of interesting, tribal style tattoos. I smiled at her warmly and she smiled back, surprised.

We sat on the chairs outside the front of our hotel. It had been a sizzlingly hot day, so many people, read "men," were  sitting out on the street too. A man from the brothel came over to me and asked in broken English, "Do you want to be with sister?" I laughed and told him we were staying in this hotel and just getting some air but it was clear that I could have purchased some face (or other bodily part) time with the blonde if that's what I'd desired.

Later that evening the police were called to the place because a screaming fight broke out between one of the girls and a john. She was going after him and definitely landed a few punches. Most of the men on the street stepped in to intervene and try to keep them apart. 

The Secret Sisterhood

Turkey is a world of whores and madonnas, similar to the USA of the sixties before the women's movement. It is a place of great warmth and compassion but also a country plagued by gender division and women's second-class status. The rate of domestic violence against women is higher in Turkey than anywhere else in Europe. Islamic fundamentalism is growing and I saw many more covered women this trip than when I visited in 2002. At that juncture, it was illegal for women to wear their scarves in universities or government buildings.

Now, even the Prime Minister's wife is covered. It was heartbreaking for me to see these women wearing headscarves, long sleeves, and loose-fitting black coats over their clothes in temperatures that often reached the high nineties and low hundreds. In general, these women were sweet to us and we often went to them for directions. We joked that they ran a secret sisterhood, and whenever we had the opportunity to patronize a business that they ran, bakeries often fell in this category, we did. These interractions made us feel cared for and welcomed in a way in which the male-run establishments could not equal.

Transgender Rights Push Us All Toward Equality

The archetypal blushing bride with her handsome groom is an anachronism in today’s society. Part of the reason for this is a newfound fluidity of roles that men and women assume in today’s world. Another component is the increased occurrence and visibility of lesbian and gay couples but the third, and arguably most powerful factor, is the coming of age of the openly transgender community.

The gender binary is dead. Now gender has become a continuum which, like that of sexual attraction, is individually perceived and defined, so much so that even putting forth the concept of transgender identity as a unilateral entity comes with inherent problems. The transgender community has traveled a great distance since the days of Christine Jorgensen when the word “transsexual” narrowly referred to a man who had specific surgery to invert his penis into a vagina, took hormones to build breasts and sometimes had surgery to minimize protruding facial features.

Now, transgenders and intersexuals (the less stigmatized term for hermaphrodites) of both female and male origin are making decisions such as whether or not to pass as one discrete gender, how much surgery to undergo and what level of homones to take. Unlike in days gone by, these decisions emanate more from an inner voice instead of outward pressure to from social norms and sanctions.

This is an important distinction. In Iran the government will pay for transgender surgery. This is not because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his chronies have a high regard for LGBT rights. In fact, Mr A. went so far as to deny the existence of lesbians and gays in Iran in a speech he gave at Columbia University. In his country, surgical gender transformation is granted for the most reactionary of reasons. Not only are cross-dressing and transgender people allowed to have reassignment surgery, they are compelled to have it. Once it has been performed all documentation of that person is changed to the new gender. For all practical purposes they can now live their lives as heterosexuals. It totally diffuses the problem by simply eliminating same-gender couples. However, a person who desires a sex change to pursue relationships with people of her/his own identity would, obviously, not qualify for gender reassignment.

The rainbow gender continuum in the United States has implications that resonate far beyond the issue of marriage into the very fabric of society. The first thing everyone is told about us, before birth, is our gender. Baby clothes come in pink and blue and, it could be argued, that all the colors of life are painted with this same brush: In our very recent past job opportunities, voting rights, inheritance rights, the right to serve on a jury, financial rights like the ability to hold a mortgage or have a credit card, all of these options and more were denied to women simply because of anatomy. Discrimination against women is not only a phenomenon of the Middle East and Africa. It is still alive and well, flourishing in the western world.

Transgender sexuality and indeterminate sexuality of all kinds, by their very definition crush stereotypes. What are we to think of a person who comes across as a mélange of gender, not quite male, and not quite female? Well, after we get past the feelings of discomfort and move beyond knee-jerk prejudice, what we think will depend solely on our connection, or lack of it, with any given individual; nothing more and nothing less.

As all shades of gender expression flower, not only is the issue of one man, one woman marriage made irrelevant. The entirety of sexism itself loses all viability. It is the transgender population that will help push us all forward into a future where each person’s individual character traits and preferences carry more weight the shape of their body parts, a new world that transcends the narrow limits of gender and could well be the culmination of the feminist dream.

U.S. Women Have More Options Now…

There is a notable dichotomy that we occidental types fall back on when speaking of women’s rights and issues here at home. We all know that in countries like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan women play an extremely limited role in society at large.We tend to forget things about our own society that are part of our own very recent history.

I was in Mexico this past summer. There, as in many countries, women play a limited role in the work world. Employee wanted signs in shop windows specify often that they want a female employee who is unmarried and around 28 years of age. This is a completely legal request, as it was in the USA up until the mid-sixties. The work that young women do in Mexico now and in the U.S. of the recent past, centers around receptionist, hotel-clerk, salesgirl and other low-level often clerical or service jobs. And sometimes those women with some foreign language skills can procure employment in the travel industry.

Growing up in the fifties and sixties, I was told in so many verbal and non-verbal ways, the work that I could do. The most important job was to marry and reproduce but, beyond that, my choices were limited to teacher, nurse, librarian, secretary and possibly for the strivers, something like social worker. A woman required tremendous external support combined with inner resources to move beyond the confines of her situation. 

And a generation earlier it was even worse. My mother, who was quite a bit smarter than my father, worked for Kelly Girls as a secretary. She had been a business major in college and the highlight of her working life was when she lived in New York City and worked as a buyer for Bloomingdales. The pay scales for male buyers were much higher than for female ones because those guys “had to support a family.”

She could not get her own line of credit or secure a mortgage loan to buy property. Those rights were not extended to women. To be sexually assaulted or raped carried with it a major stigma of shame. Women who were violated were routinely questioned as to why they were in the place where they were attacked and what provocative clothing were they wearing.

It’s true we still don’t have equal power or the kind of parity in government that we would like to see. In the United States women have never held top offices like they have in so many other countries around the world. But things have gotten better. It’s imperative that we hold our ground and not let them slide backwards to an era that is being somewhat romanticized. Those of us who lived it know the truth and it wasn’t pretty. 

Women Rise Up in India and Nepal

Protest in India

Internationally freedom for women often takes the form of simple survival. "honor killings," "bride burnings" and requiring a woman to marry a man who kidnaps and rapes her have been common practices in India. Groping and molestation has been dismissed under the benign sounding designation, "Eve teasing."

But now women in India are rising up against brutal conditions. The impetus for this uprising was the gang-rape and murder of a young medical student aboard a bus in Delhi. This incident has been a last straw for Indian women. Their nascent militance is reminiscent of seventies feminism in certain ways ie: the viewing of women and men as distinct social classes with women playing the subordinate, powerless role and completely unlike our early movement in others ie: socially sanctioned brutality up to and often including murder.

Protest in Nepal

Now, the women of Nepal are rising up as well. Their last straw is the case of a maid who says she was raped and robbed by government officials in an international airport there. The perpetrators were not charged and she was reimbursed with less money than was stolen. This one story has opened a Pandora's box of tales of horror involving women in Nepal. Often it is the travelers and tourists who have brought the problem of rape to light, click here to see a story involving an American tourist, simply because Nepalese women had become inured to these travesties.

But this former attitude of helplessness and acceptance has transformed into a militant uprising. We are sending our sisters love and support to continue their brave struggle and hope it speads throughout the world, even to the repressive reaches of the Middle East!

Why I'm a Bad Feminist...

A writer friend said to be a good feminist you just have to love women and show it. Although she is a lesbian, she meant this in a platonic, political sense not in a literal one. And suddenly I realized, ah there's the rub, the defining problem, the friction between me and feminism. Do I love women? That seems like an overly broad question, very much like: Do I love children? or Do I love Jews or Muslims? Do I love African-Americans? Of course the answer to all these questions can only be, I love some of them, feel indifferent to most and despise a handful. It all depends.

When I first identified as a feminist and a lesbian, it was 1970. Women's style included big hair, high heels, an Mrs. degree and almost no job options. The question of breeding was big in a racial sense but in a reproductive sense having children was not viewed as whether or not, simply when. I found women attractive and, for the most part, fabulous. They/we were also more powerless then. I guess the romance of oppression held some validity for me. We had each other's backs, we were fighting for a big slice of what I had yet to recognize as a moldy pie.

I conveniently ignored the "moral majority" women who hated my very existence. I wrote the women who supported the Nazis, the pogroms, fascism in all its forms out of my exclusive distaff cadre. Did I love the wealthy women matrons or high-level managers or princesses who treated me like dirt? In theory, we were all one sisterhood, rising up together to build a new world. Beautiful as this sentiment may be, it was and is not realistic. The fact of a limited degree of shared oppression doth not a kindred soul make. Jews know this, we fight one another like cats and dogs. Thereby the expression, two Jews, three opinions.

Queers know this. When our movement was young, gay men thought nothing of not including lesbians in everything from books to classes to strategy meetings. It wasn't until the AIDS crisis in the eighties that gay men and lesbians came together to fight jointly for anything.

And, believe me, people from all other minority groups know this as well. The powers that be skillfully pit us against each like rats in a cage fighting for crumbs.

I love some individuals and not others. As a leftist politico, I love the ideal of a just and humane society where the basic needs of all are provided for. I love worker's protections and freedom from prejudice. Do I love all other leftists fighting for the same objective? Let's just say I respect our joint struggle as well as each individual's good intentions, if they seem to have them. The same goes for women. My love is not unconditional. I'm a demanding taskmaster, a loose canon, an unreliable narrator, a bad feminist.  

Sexism Must Die!

It's undeniable that the Republicans are waging war against women. But just how are women faring in other political communities, for example that of the 99%? Has sexism been defeated in the sixty plus years since the emergence of second-wave feminism, dated roughly from the popularization of Simone De Beauvoir's book, "The Second Sex," first published in 1949, but translated into English and read widely for the first time in the fifties.

I wish I could report back that the Occupy Movement is free of sexist bias, but honestly, I can't. It is undeniable that many young women, as well as young gender non-specific types, are stepping up with competence and assuming power, but an alarming crisis of self-esteem and bias still persists in the meetings I have attended. Women are still hesitant to speak up and will undercut their statements with phrases like,"I don't know that much about this but..." There is often a preponderance of males in meetings and when it comes to stepping up to summarize goals and lead groups, men still dominate the proceedings.

A Workers Assembly meeting I attended this weekend was about two thirds male to one third female in composition. This probably occurred because union membership is skewed to favor higher paid, better jobs, which are primarily held by males. This is not to imply that women are silent at these gatherings. Women my age (fifties and sixties), for the most part, don't seem to have problems speaking out. Some younger women are taking leadership as well. But more pervasive overall patterns of discrimination and even self-suppression are apparent and more difficult to erase.

Last night I attended a second small meeting of an Occupy spin off that was a small group of boomer males with only a couple of women. A very articulate woman took notes at the last meeting and she was drafted again, somewhat against her will, as note-taker at this one. Of course, that was after all the males refused to volunteer and their gazes turned toward me. I replied, just as the men had, that I didn't have a laptop or know stenography either! I didn't address the gender bias because I was caught off-guard. I thought we dealt with this in the sixties when we women walked out of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) because we didn't want to be secretaries and coffee fetchers.

I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same. The fact of the matter remains; this prejudiced behavior is unacceptable and it will only serve to undermine our movement. At this point I'm trying to pull together a presentation of sexism and homophobia that both young and old can understand. The very lifeblood of our movement depends upon it!

More Than Half the Sky

Women Holding up the Sky

When I was coming of age there were many jobs that were unthinkable for women to hold. My best friend wanted to be a disc jockey, although we'd never heard of a female disc jockey. A prominent newscaster stated publicly that witnessing a woman read the news would be just like listening to nursery rhymes. It was rare to hear of a woman doctor or lawyer. Now the law and medical school enrollments of women top the 50% mark.

Of course, women still earn less than men (about 77 cents to the dollar). In some Muslim countries, like Iran, women, by law, inherit half of what their brothers do and when it comes to testimony in a court of law, it takes two women to equal one man. Yesterday in Abidjan, on the Ivory Coast, seven women were killed when their protest was fired upon with live ammunition. From denial of the right to an education, "bride-burning," genital mutilation, flogging, stoning and enforced confinement in the home, women's suffering in the world is clear, our lot is still not an easy one.

Back here in the States feminism ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime. In the ridiculous category, there seem to be an new crop of television ads that feature only women talking about some aspect of washing clothes, vacuuming or some other facet of house cleaning. The strange addition of the title Ms. as a selection in multiple choice paperwork totally defeats the purpose of using it at all. The original intent was to utilize it as an all-purpose prefix before a woman's name. Universal and non-marriage specific the way that Mr. is, not as a third category for feminists.

But here as well, the stakes are high. Domestic violence is a deadly problem. The economic subjugation and deprivation of women takes a tremendous toll on single mothers trying to raise children. And stereotyping and and job discrimination is no laughing matter even in positions far below the proverbial "glass ceiling"  world of the management elite. 

The new generation of American feminists is quite different than the one I grew up with. Just yesterday I was reading a lesbian news blog, that is a well researched and serious endeavor. The desciption reads, " A gay girl's view on the world." It's ironic, that when I was 19, I was already demanding to be called a "woman." Girl was considered derogatory and belittling. I guess that's a sign of improvement, though. In the Germany of the thirties, I probably wouldn't have referred to myself as a Hebe or a Yid, but now I might, in jest. The moral here is that when you can relax a bit about your identity, it signifies that things have improved.

So keep on keepin' on girls, gals, babes and women. Whatever you call yourselves, I celebrate our day with the pride of being one of your number!