Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers

by Lillian Faderman

  In their idealism they resembled the cultural feminists of the beginning of the century, such as Jane Addams, but instead of hoping to transform patriarchal institutions as the earlier women often did, they wanted to create entirely new institutions and to shape a women’s culture that would embody all the best values that were not male. It would be nonhierarchical, spiritual, and without the jealousy that comes of wanting to possess other human beings, as in monogamy and imperialism. It would be nonracist, nonageist, nonclassist, and nonexploitative—economically or sexually. It would be pro-women and pro-children. These women believed that such a culture could only be formed if women stepped away from the hopelessly corrupt patriarchy and established their own self-sufficient, “women-identified-women” communities into which male values could not infiltrate. Those communities would eventually be built into a strong Lesbian Nation that would exist not necessarily as a geographical entity but as a state of mind and that might even be powerful enough, through its example, to divert the country and the world from their dangerous course. Their visions were Utopian. Lesbian-feminists were true believers and destined, as true believers often are, for fanaticism and eventual disappointment.

  They found themselves in conflict with working-class butch/ femme lesbians whose roles they considered an imitation of heterosexuality and hence heterosexist. But they were in even greater conflict with lesbians who maintained what the lesbian-feminists scoffed at as bourgeois lifestyles, and those women often returned their disdain. By the 1970s a number of middleclass lesbians felt that they had made a sort of peace with the establishment world, which had many rewards to offer if one were willing to practice a modicum of discretion. They deplored the radicals’ funky and flamboyant style. Although some middleclass lesbians worked within the feminist movement, they would never refer to themselves as lesbian-feminist. They found the radical lesbian-feminist philosophy naive and thought that the radicals were giving lesbianism a bad name. Although middleclass lesbians usually did not feel free to represent lesbianism to heterosexual society, they unrealistically hoped that someone who was more in their own (idealized) image would represent them. As one woman observed:

  The public is still not seeing that there are good and bad in this life, too. And, unfortunately, the ones they’ve seen aren’t the ones I’d run around with either, at least some of the ones I’ve seen on television. Why, they’re not the caliber that I would associate with—you get a lot of mouthy women up there, who go hollering around and they’re obnoxious. … I guess they are out there fighting the battles for us, but I’d rather see some women up there who look like women, presidents of companies that had responsible jobs saying their piece, on a little higher plane.3

  In their turn, lesbian-feminists criticized middleclass lesbians for benighted behavior, believing that if they saw the light, they would come to understand that their bourgeois capitalism and all its social manifestations were corrupt. Most frequently lesbian-feminists tried to ignore the existence of both working-class and middleclass lesbians, appropriating the term “lesbian” for themselves as being synonymous with “lesbian-feminism” and thereby excluding all lesbians who were not a part of the movement. The split that developed between lesbian-feminists and lesbians who just loved other women could be as virulent as the split between the classes and generations in the 1950s. But despite detractors and the philosophical obstacles they represented, the radical lesbian-feminists forged ahead to create a unique community and culture. While their community encompassed only a fraction of American women who loved women, it was their image of lesbianism that dominated the 1970s, since they felt freer than the other women to present themselves through the media.

  Blueprints for a Lesbian-Feminist Culture

  The Utopian world that lesbian-feminists envisioned was based largely on socialist ideals and reflected the background many of them had had in the New Left. But those ideals were filtered through lesbian-feminist doctrine, which sometimes led to extreme convictions such as the importance of separatism to attain their goals: some lesbian-feminists thought it necessary to exclude all heterosexual and homosexual males as well as heterosexual females from their personal and political lives, just as militant blacks had urged separatism from whites. Not all lesbian-feminists agreed on that issue, or on any other issue, for that matter. But though varying from the start with regard to the extent of their radicalism, lesbian-feminists believed in the beginning of their movement that the commonality of committed lesbianism would be sufficient to help them build a unified lesbian community. Such unity seemed easy to attain, since there appeared to be a consensus among them about what the broad configuration of the Lesbian Nation would finally look like: a Utopia for women, an Amazon dream.

  Lesbian-feminists sometimes called the culture they were building “women’s” rather than “lesbian” culture, perhaps because they felt that it was the nurturing, loving values associated with women that they wanted to emphasize in their communities. They also chauvinistically believed that all the women who were producing anything worthwhile—books, music, women’s centers, abortion clinics, women’s garages, women’s restaurants—were lesbians and hence “women’s culture” and “lesbian culture” were synonymous. So “women’s books,” for example, meant books by, for, and about lesbians.

  Language became important to them as an indication of political awareness and as a tool to raise consciousness. Sometimes lesbian-feminists changed the spelling of “woman” and “women” to “womyn,” “wimmin,” or “womben” in order to obliterate the root “man.” “History” became “herstory”; “hurricane” became “hisicane”; “country” became “cuntry.” Lesbian-feminists wanted especially to reclaim the word “lesbian” from the psychiatric and moral morass into which it had fallen, and they exhorted each other to use that previously taboo word and even the word “dyke,” understanding, as African-Americans had about “black,” that it was possible to take a word used by the enemy to hurt and reclaim it by giving it proud associations. The vocabulary of the old lesbian subculture was usually rejected as being counter to their politics. “Butch” and “femme” disappeared as far as lesbian-feminists were concerned, as did “gay,” which they saw as belonging to homosexual men. “‘Gay’ doesn’t include lesbians any more than ‘mankind’ includes love and sisterhood,” they wrote.4

  Their initial euphoria brought a great blast of energy and industry. By the early 1970s there were active lesbian-feminist groups in most states, scores of newspapers and journals that were predominantly or exclusively lesbian-feminist, and numerous bookstores that sold only women’s culture books. Even women who were not in the big city lesbian-feminist communities could take part in that culture through the written word.5

  The creation of economic institutions that would lead to financial independence was considered particularly crucial to the blueprint for a lesbian-feminist community. Such independence was necessary so that lesbian-feminists would not have to fear that they would lose their livelihood because they “came out.” They also felt that they should not waste effort that ought to go to the lesbian-feminist community in working for heterosexuals. As one writer phrased it, “Hopefully, we will soon be able to integrate the pieces of our lives and stop this schizophrenic existence of a straight job by day and lesbian political work at night. It keeps us in a state of permanent culture shock and drains our energies.”6

  They attempted to create economic cooperatives, child care centers, food co-ops, health clinics, halfway houses, and skills centers, and they dreamt grandiously about multiplying their institutions all over the country so that their values would eventually predominate. Borrowing from Daily Worker rhetoric, they declared: “Ultimately, women must be prepared to take over the power of the State and reorganize society. As long as power remains in the hands of men, we are at their whims and our lives will not be free.” They wanted to bring their ideals about integrity, nurturing the needy, self-determination, and equality of labor and rewards into all
aspects of institution building and economics. For example, they recommended that priority in hiring be arranged according to need, lower-class women and Third World women coming first. They were opposed to the concept of bosses and workers. All the “shit work” must be shared, they said. Everyone must be given the choice of learning new skills and holding different jobs in the company for which they work. Workers would not have to give up control over the quality and the politics of what they produced. Whatever they did would be nonoppressive and non-sexist.7

  But it was in the working out of the details and the day-to-day living that the blueprint broke down. It became apparent in the course of the decade that lesbian-feminists were as diverse a group as one might find in the heterosexual world. And those who were brought together by their general radical views were not immune to the factionalism that has beset most minority groups after the initial euphoria of discovering commonalities.

  Culture Building: The Media

  Lesbian Nation was doomed finally to failure because of youthful inexperience and inability to compromise unbridled enthusiasms, but nevertheless it helped to change the meaning and the image of lesbianism by giving love between women greater visibility and by presenting visions of self-affirmation through lesbian-feminist music and literature. In its success in reaching large numbers of lesbians, women’s music was perhaps the most effective of all the enterprises undertaken by the lesbian-feminist community in the 1970s. Women’s music attracted huge crowds at concerts and women’s festivals around the country and came into the homes of vast numbers of lesbian-feminists with self-affirming lyrics about lesbian politics, lesbian love, lesbian unity. The music, which was generally inspired by a folk art tradition, not only helped to create community by bringing women together, but it also proselytized for the cause. As one lesbian singer, Willie Tyson, observed in 1974, “We know about ten women who were straight before they came to the concert and were [lesbian-feminist] about two weeks later. The concert just blew their minds.”8

  Although in the gay bars of the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s lesbian singers like Lisa Ben and Beverly Shaw had performed songs “tailored to [the lesbian] taste,” as Beverly Shaw’s publicity blurbs touted, they were generally popular ballads that incorporated lesbian-specific words into heterosexual lyrics. For example, in “Hello, Young Lovers,” instead of “I’ve had a love like you,” the singer would substitute the line “I’ve had a butch like you.” During most of the 1960s, when, led by Bob Dylan, popular lyrics often expressed political consciousness, there was no attempt by lesbian singers to raise awareness of lesbian social and political difficulties through music. Under the influence of lesbian-feminism this changed. The first musician to perform publicly as a lesbian-feminist was Maxine Feldman, whose 1969 song, “Angry Atthis,” was about wanting to hold her lover’s hand in public. In 1971 Alix Dobkin began writing the lyrics that were finally collected on her album Lavender Jane Loves Women, which was heavily political in terms of lesbian-feminist consciousness. Songs such as “Talking Lesbian,” for example, warned that men cannot relate to a woman’s mind or a woman’s state and offered the “women-identified-women” solution of constructing a woman’s culture, which would be made possible only through lesbian love:

  If you want high consciousness, I’ll tell you what to do,

  You got to talk to a woman, let her talk to you.

  You got to build you a union and make it strong,

  And if we all stick together, girls, it won’t be long….

  Of course, it ain’t that simple, so I’d better explain.

  You got to ride on the lesbian train….

  Women lovin’ women is where it’s at…9

  It was soon clear that there was a wide audience for such entertainment.

  Olivia Records was established in 1973 by ten women who had already been members of lesbian-feminist living and working collectives. The company ultimately became the leader in women’s music, with albums that sold in the hundreds of thousands and nationwide tours that attracted huge audiences. As a result of the taste Olivia helped to create, large annual women’s music festivals proliferated all over the country. The festivals were modelled on the hippie be-ins of the 1960s, in which counterculture crowds, in various stages of undress, would dance, get high on LSD or pot, and listen to music.

  The women’s festivals, however, always had political overtones. Workshops were held that attempted to raise and solve lesbian-feminist problems; movement literature and paraphernalia were widely available; and the organizers attempted to be sensitive to all the issues: they provided day care, easy access for the disabled, vegetarian meals, sign interpreters for the deaf, “chemical free” areas for women who disapproved of substance use, sliding scale entrance fees so that the poor would not be excluded. Nothing was allowed at the festivals that was not “politically correct,” a label that was to become a benchmark of all judgments in the community, even judgments passed on lesbian-feminist entertainers. At the first National Women’s Music Festival in Champagne, Illinois, in 1974, singers who appeared too professional, too much like stars, got a cold reception. The audience wanted to see their own declassed, unslick image on the stage. Making a mistake, being “human,” was better than being perfect. As Meg Christian, one of Olivia’s most successful singers, observed, “There was a big difference [in audience reaction to] performers who related to the audience as if they were there and women who got up and pulled a shell around them to perform, which is essentially your male performing trip.” To be in any way like a male professional was to be politically incorrect. In fact, “professionalism” of any kind was considered undesirable hierarchical behavior: it represented artificial and destructive categories, barriers set up by the patriarchy that limited the possibilities of women “creating a vision together.” Professionals were as suspect in the 1970s as they had been venerated in the 1950s.10

  Women’s music companies also proliferated after the success of Olivia. By the mid-1970s they were scattered throughout America and women’s distribution networks were often able to get even establishment stores to set up women’s music sections and FM stations to play women’s music. The effect of women’s music in rousing and consciousness-raising was tremendous, both in private homes and in public settings. At the end of many concerts in the 1970s the all-women audiences stood up spontaneously, locked arms, and sang the refrain, which they had learned through records, from the entertainer’s finale—usually a number that was meant to inspire politically, such as Margie Adam’s “We shall go forth,/ We shall not fail,/ Bringing together all we know.” Through the self-affirming lyrics women were made to feel good about love between women. The music reached out even to lesbians who were not a part of the radical community, communicating to them that they were not alone and that lesbianism was a noble choice. As one woman who became a lesbian before the lesbian-feminist movement and was a teacher throughout the ’70s in a conservative Central California community now recalls:

  When I first came out I used to think that a lot of lesbians were misfits, and my lover and I were just exceptions. But the music changed my perception—like Cris Williamson. Her songs talked about serious issues. I knew for the first time that lesbians didn’t have to be flaky. And it drew me to concerts, which were a thrill. To be in Zellerbach Hall and know that everyone in that room would be spending the night with her female lover! And the variety of people! There was no way you could stereotype who lesbians were. It made me really feel for the first time that there were millions of us in this world. It was power-fid.11

  But despite all these successes, difficulties emerged quickly in lesbian-feminist music, just as they did throughout the Utopian-seeking lesbian-feminist world. Olivia Records’ problems were characteristic in the way their ideals could not finally withstand the crunch of reality. Olivia was conceived as one of the alternative economic institutions that would both produce a product that women would buy and employ women in a “nonoppressive situation.” The women who establi
shed the company believed they could operate collectively because, as Ginny Berson, a key founder, observed simply, “We trust each other politically…. We are all lesbian-feminists who see our present and future intimately connected with the future of all women.” They determined to pay women in their company “on the basis of need, instead of on the basis of male societal values, so that a bookkeeper with six children to support will be paid more than a soloist musician who has just inherited six million dollars.”12 There were to be no stars and no flunkies, only “cultural workers.”

  Because lesbian-feminists were encouraged to believe that the singers were “cultural workers” and that Olivia itself belonged to “the people”—the lesbian-feminists who supported it—they felt that the company must always be sensitive to them in making policy. However, the community was diverse enough so that Olivia’s policies were always bound to offend someone. When Olivia sponsored women-only events, they were attacked by some for excluding male children; when they opened their concerts to everyone, they were attacked for offending lesbian separatists. As Judy Dlugacz, a founding member and the present director recalls, “We couldn’t win.” The company found itself under the greatest attack in 1976 when it unwittingly hired a recording engineer who was a male-to-female transsexual “lesbian” and refused to fire her once her chromosomal sex was discovered. “A man is a man,” the lesbian-feminist community cried, accusing Olivia of trying to put one over on them, since the news had leaked only by chance. Olivia so constantly felt the brunt of anger, Dlugacz recalls, that the company rethought many of its earlier idealistic policies: “It forced us to back away; we had to become more defended because we were getting crucified.”13 Olivia’s original idealism and the hard lessons it eventually learned were repeated often in the lesbian-feminist community and caused a blurring of the community’s Utopian vision.