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. 

Here, Queer and Becoming Visible

Just 118 years after Oscar Wilde’s arrest for sodomy, the LGBT struggle is finally being validated as a worthy cause. The news is full of LGBT issues, from a lesbian military widow being denied spousal benefits, queers being thrown out of restaurants, denied marriage venues and wedding cakes, anti-gay prom efforts in the Midwest and the Associated Press Style controversy over whether the words husband or wife should be used for same-gender couples. Even Obama refers to us with some regularity, linking Selma and Seneca Falls to Stonewall.

This is not to imply that we are winning these battles, actually, in many instances, the backlash has become stronger. Soul-numbing slights have been an expected occurrence for queers for centuries. But it takes public validation for many heterosexuals to be able to see the forest through the trees. And, as in the Black civil rights struggle, people are coming of the woodwork claiming they supported us all along. Well, they say that hindsight is 20/20 and that is definitely preferable to total blindness.

In the bad old days, as an inveterate leftist, mostly what our community faced was invisibility. Bringing up the subject of our oppression would sometimes elicit accusations of “bourgeois decadence” or in some way imply that we were diverting attention from class and racial struggles as though we didn’t occupy places in all other groups.

When a brave non-queer stood up for us, more often than not the comment would have been preceded by an “I’m straight but…” disclaimer. Even in the early gay pride parades straight folks could, more safely, employ the option of marching together as “straights for gay rights.”

But we have persisted and in the geological timeframe of historical change. Will we eventually see full equal rights in this country and perhaps even in this world? I can only live in hope. Still, we have to brace ourselves for the end game struggle. The laps directly before the finish line tend to be the most draining and exhausting of the entire race.

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.  

Pride, Assimilation and History

I did a lot of parading, marching and observing this past weekend commemorating 41 years of open gay and lesbian pride. I attended the rally prior to the Dyke March as well as the Pride Parade here in San Francisco, as much out of habit as committment. The events were huge. Gone are the days when heterosexuals feel shame and fear that they may be mistaken for queer at events like these.

An article on salon.com by, what I assume is a young lesbian, (she refers to herself as a "girl" which, in my generation meant a female child under 12), who believes that "pride" is only applicable in situations where a person actually accomplishes something. After reading it I'm sure that I am very proud to be queer. It's true, I didn't choose it. But I have chosen to be open about it since I was 18 and 42 years of braving the winds of hatred and oppression is something to be proud of. So much has accomplished so much in my lifetime.The victory of same-sex marriage in NY signals that we are well on the road to full civil rights and societal acceptance.It makes me wonder if we will see the total of assimilation of queers into the social fabric.

Another minority community of which I am a member has assimilated considerably in my lifetime. At some point in the future, full-blooded Jews, like myself, will be very rare, almost non-existent. The religion will thrive, of course, but what of our angst-ridden, self-deprecating, humorous and intellectually overactive culture? It is already disappearing.

Will the Nelly Queen and the Stone Butch go the way of the Yiddish language? The toll of oppression and discrimination is overwhelmingly negative. But there are also positive aspects to outsider identity. Pinky rings, code words, belonging to a special club, these are the obvious ones. But viewing oneself as part of a larger whole, a strong community that has proven its mettle in the face of adversity can be something precious, yet somewhat inexplicable to folks who have never experienced it.

Queer folks still have a long way to go before we have to worry about this issue. Will anyone gay, lesbian, straight, trans or gender indeterminate have the right to a secure job in the future? A place to live? Enough to eat? I think the problems of the upcoming not-so-brave new world will defy simplistic and self-limiting labels.

Buddhism, a philosophy I respect greatly, stresses that we are all one and need to let go of our stories, our attachment to the trappings of the past that separate us from our universal humanity. I can see the rationale of this approach but also feel that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." In that spirit I am compelled to tell my story as well as listen to yours. With pride.