Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers

by Lillian Faderman

  She chose to drop out of the movement rather than tolerate perpetual scrutiny.

  Even sex was scrutinized for political correctness. Lesbian-feminists pointed out that men ruined heterosexual sex by objectifying women and being goal-oriented. As one writer complained in a 1975 essay, “Nobody Needs to Get Fucked,” she, like most lesbians-feminists, had learned her sexuality from “The Man” and thus thought in terms of couples and of orgasms as the main goal of sex. But lesbian-feminists had to unlearn such values, she proclaimed, and construct their own way of loving that would be different:

  Lesbianism is, among other things, touching other women—through dancing, playing soccer, hugging, holding hands, kissing…. [Lesbians need to] free the libido from the tyranny of orgasm-seeking. Sometimes hugging is nicer.

  If we are to learn our own sexual natures we have to get rid of the male-model of penetration and orgasm as the culmination of lovemaking.

  Holding hands is lovemaking.

  Touching lips is lovemaking.

  Rubbing breasts is lovemaking.

  Locking souls with women by looking deep in their eyes is lovemaking.

  Mutual sensuality became more politically correct than genital sexuality, which might too easily imitate the exploitative aspects of heterosexual sex.27 For some lesbian-feminists, love between women was not very different, despite the space of a hundred years and at least two “sexual revolutions,” from that of their “romantic friend” predecessors.

  Because butches seemed to imitate men, they and their sexuality were considered politically incorrect. Lesbian-feminists protested that the butch image was created by males so that “the female homosexual was groomed to appear as a burlesque of licentious, slightly cretinous, ersatz men” and that some lesbians had accepted that image because they had been saturated with it and believed it was the only way to feel authentic. But lesbian-feminism would rectify that delusion. Both partners in a sexual relationship would take turns being soft and strong, since both qualities were female. There were to be no more “‘male-female’ shit-games. It’s all feminine because we are,” they insisted.28

  Lesbian-feminists were sometimes revolted at signs of what they regarded as excessive sexuality among a few lesbians, and they took a moralistic, Carrie Nation-like stance. When Albatross, a lesbian satire magazine, dared to print some explicitly sexual words, the lesbian-feminist editor of another publication wrote Albatross an outraged letter canceling their exchange subscription agreement:

  Terms such as “cunt” and “pussy” degrade and devalue women’s sexuality; I can’t imagine why use them. Likewise, phrases such as “love at first lick” are not only repulsive aesthetically but also carry an implication that lesbian sexuality is psychiatric, rather than the warm, close, emotional, spiritual expression we know it to be.29

  They would tolerate nothing that resembled the raw sexuality of male eroticism.

  The lesbian-feminists’ rejection of monogamy (a permanent commitment to only one woman) was in seeming opposition to their deemphasis on sex. But the contradiction was more apparent than real. The idealization of nonmonogamy did not originate with the lesbian-feminist community. Early Utopias, such as John Noyes’ Oneida Community, which began in the 1840s, encouraged nonmonogamy in the belief that the “one love” concept was born of selfishness and jealousy. Noyes’ followers practiced “complex marriage,” in which everyone in the community had sexual access to everyone else. Hippie communal life in the 1960s was frequently modeled on that ideal. In the 1970s other progressive heterosexuals were questioning too close an adherence to monogamy, preferring “open marriage,” in which two people in a primary relationship gave permission to each other to be free to explore the various and separate paths down which their feelings led them. The wisdom of the day was not only that it was unhealthy for two people to own each other, but also that in a quickly evolving world, where personalities evolved quickly as well, it was unrealistic and unloving to force two people to be everything to each other. To sanction monogamy, the lesbian-feminists believed, could only bring grief to them as it had to heterosexuals.

  Lesbian-feminists were also convinced that monogamy was bad not because it inhibited wild sexual exploration, but rather because it smacked too much of patriarchal capitalism and imperialism. It was men’s way of keeping women enslaved. People are not things to own, lesbian-feminists said. No lesbian should want to have the right to imprison another human being emotionally or sexually. The most popular lesbian-feminist novels, such as Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle (1973) and June Arnold’s Sister Gin (1975), reflected the community’s distrust of monogamy, which the authors presented as inhibiting a free exploration of self and detracting from one’s commitment to the lesbian-feminist community, since it led to nesting rather than involvement in political work. Some lesbian-feminists (particularly those in the larger cities) even believed it a duty to “Smash Monogamy,” as their buttons proclaimed, sporting a triple woman’s symbol (), and rejecting the notion of the lesbian couple ().

  Although most lesbians had been conditioned to monogamy by the parent culture and had sought it in their own lives with varying degrees of success, the big city radical lesbian-feminist community and the precedence of heterosexual rebels now provided support to explore new ways. “What could be more natural,” they asked, “than surrounding oneself with a group of loving individuals, carefully chosen for their congeniality?” or “Why can’t one of the dyad bring in another person, add this person to the couple, and love this person as well as the other partner? Why can’t the other person do the same if she is so inclined?” “Forever” and “only you,” the staple words of lovers’ talk, came to be seen as limiting and even corrupt terms that needed to be excised from the lesbian-feminist vocabulary. “Monogamy” came to bejeeringly called “monotony.”30

  Some radical communities even put pressure on lesbians to break out of the dyad pattern of relationships. Those who were not at ease with changing became convinced that it was their own “hang-up,” which they had to get over. As one woman confessed in the 1970s, “It’s hard for me to think of Sheila relating to other people, but that’s a distress born of my insecurities that I can counsel on to get rid of, and I do.” Another woman now wrily remembers the pressure she felt to be nonmonogamous because monogamy was “part of the male power structure we didn’t want to buy into.” But she says it led to confusion and hard feelings and was eventually responsible for destroying a long-term relationship. Her lover, Marsha, would sleep with another woman on Sundays and Thursdays. Once she and Marsha had sex with two other couples. “It was like our political duty to do this,” she says. “We wanted to create a new society, to carve out a niche in history, though I don’t think anybody was very comfortable with it—and it just didn’t work.”31 The efforts required to adjust to nonmonogamy were heroic, since even radical lesbian-feminists had been socialized by a monogamous parent culture. Although their belief was born of idealism, few women could endure it for long, and by the 1980s nonmonogamy became passe in most lesbian-feminist communities.

  But the sexual issue that tyrannized the most over lesbian-feminists who wanted to be politically correct in the 1970s was bisexuality. Ironically, at a time when bisexuality became quite acceptable to liberals, it became unacceptable among lesbian-feminists. Jill Johnston called it a “fearful compromise” because half the bisexual woman’s actions were “a continued service to the oppressor.” Women who were bisexual were accused of “ripping off” lesbians—getting energy from them so that they could “take it back to a man.” Bisexual women were the worst traitors to the cause, lesbian-feminists believed, because they knew they were capable of loving women and yet they allowed themselves to become involved with men and neglected their duty to help build the Lesbian Nation. Bisexuals were especially suspect because they received all the heterosexual privileges—such as financial and social benefits—whenever they chose to act heterosexually. Although lesbian-feminists recognized that hu
man nature was indeed bisexual, they pointed out that the revolution had not yet reached its goals and women who practiced bisexuality were “simply leading highly privileged lives that … undermine the ferninist struggle.” It was suggested that, at the very least, those bisexuals who could not ignore their heterosexual drives should put the bulk of their energies into the political and social struggles around lesbian-feminism and keep secret from the outside world their straight side so that they would not be tempted to fall back on their heterosexual privileges.32

  Lesbian Nation of the 1970s was far-flung across the country, yet the abundant literature that reached everywhere and the influence of hippie and Left values guaranteed a certain amount of conformity in doctrine, whether among lesbian-feminists in Georgia, Boston, Idaho, or California. But the list of what was politically correct and politically incorrect grew as the decade progressed. The most committed lesbian-feminists preferred to believe that there was nationwide unity and general consensus with regard to their principles. That belief seemed to mandate an inflexible dogma that was often violated by human diversity among them and necessarily led to frequent unhappy conflicts.

  Factions and Battles

  The uncompromising stance and rhetoric of rage that many women adopted in the movement was bound to bring about bitter feelings and factionalism. Perhaps rage was an inextricable part of lesbian-feminism, because once these women analyzed the female’s position in society they realized they had much to be furious about. But their anger was sometimes manifested as a horizontal hostility in which members of the community were constantly attacking other members, either because they had strayed from some politically correct behavior or because the diversity within the growing groups was not sufficiently recognized to appease everyone. As the decade progressed, the core groups tended to get smaller as factions multiplied and splintered and become more and more insistent in their demand to be heard or in their conviction that they alone were the true lesbian-feminists. Attacks were often brutal, combining what one victim described as “the language of the revolution [with] the procedure of the inquisition.”33

  Like the Left, lesbian-feminists believed that the revolution meant change—women changing themselves as well as changing the world. Criticism and self-criticism were thus crucial in order to perfect themselves in their quest for Utopia. It was to the credit of lesbian-feminists that they wanted to provide a platform for criticism in the name of improvement, but criticism often became vituperation. This was particularly true when the community opened itself to criticism from all minority voices. Old lesbian-feminists as well as teenage lesbian-feminists complained that they were being patronized; lesbian separatists as well as lesbians of color complained that they were being compromised; radical socialist lesbian-feminists complained that they were being co-opted; fat lesbian-feminists, working class lesbian-feminists, disabled lesbian-feminists, all complained that they were being oppressed by their sister lesbian-feminists.

  Women felt freer to complain within the lesbian-feminist community than in the more oppressive heterosexual world, where their mistreatment was by far worse. Not only did community doctrine mandate listening to criticism by all members, but also they felt the community was or should be family and they were claiming their rightful place in their family. But the word “oppression” was then tossed around so loosely as an accusation that it came to be devalued. Criticism too often became crippling. It seemed that every move one made was sure to be found politically incorrect by a dozen others. While there were frequent attempts to reconcile differences—such as the establishment in Los Angeles of an Intergroup Council of lesbian-feminists after a pitched battle took place among various factions—vast amounts of energy were wasted on conflicts.34

  Although most lesbian-feminists were middle class by virtue of their education, which tended to be much higher than that of women in the general populace, class became a major divisive issue among them. As radicals, lesbian-feminists generally shared the intellectual Left’s romance with the working class. Women who had the skills to make a living at nontraditional jobs—carpenters, house painters, welders—were far more politically correct than professionals, who were seen as having to compromise themselves in the system in order to advance. A mystique developed that could be used as a guilt-inducing bludgeon on those who had been raised in the middle class.

  Class was determined not by the usual American indicators such as schooling or even present salary. “You can have a college education, but you don’t stop being working class,” “working-class” women (many of whom had been to college) attested with pride. They observed that women who tried to stop being working class and sought upward mobility risked oppressing women who could not be anything other than working class. As one lesbian-feminist writer lamented about her earlier behavior when she left the working class into which she was born, “The most oppressive attitude I had accepted was that because I had become middle class, worked my way ‘up,’ I was better than other working-class women who were still down there.” The working class was seen as superior to the middle class, at least partly by virtue of its poverty, which attested to its moral innocence in a corrupt society. Lesbian-feminists who had been raised in the middle class and had been willing or unwilling beneficiaries of their fathers’ corruption were regarded among “working-class” lesbian-feminists in the same way that light-skinned blacks were during the era of black militancy: their past was not quite honorable.35

  Middleclass lesbian-feminists were thus constantly on the defensive. “You are an enemy of lower-class women,” they were reminded early in the movement, “if you continue destructive behavior based on your sense of middleclass superiority.” “Destructive behavior” might even consist of using big words that would show off a superior education. When one lesbian-feminist writer admitted her pleasure in “the art of conversation,” she felt she must hasten to add, “Lest you think I’m suspect, my father was a barber, my mother a housewife, and I only pay $1.00 for my food stamps.”36 Since they generally adhered to radical ideas about the corruption of hierarchy, many “middleclass” lesbian-feminists acquiesced to the burden of guilt and felt they had to drop out of the middle class. They became nouveau pauvre or at least downwardly mobile.

  Another major source of conflict within the movement came from those who wanted to push radicalism even further than other lesbian-feminists were prepared to go. Lesbian separatists were at the forefront of this battle. Borrowing from the example of black separatists who believed that blacks were impeded by any relationship with whites—even the most liberal and beneficent-seeming—lesbian separatists argued that Lesbian Nation would never be established unless lesbian-feminists broke away not only from men but from all heterosexual women as well. They believed that now, while they awaited the millennium when a true Lesbian Nation would be born, they must establish outposts to the future, tribal groupings of a fugitive Lesbian Nation, and not vitiate their energies, in trying to reform the present hopeless structure of patriarchy. They put out a call to all lesbian-feminists to “explore with fact and imagination our dyke/ amazon culture of the past, before there were parasitic male mutants, and to work toward our dyke/amazon culture of the future, when only xx’s exist.” They had blind faith that their withdrawal from heterosexuals in itself would hasten the dissolution of the patriarchy and the advent of a Utopian dyke/amazon world.37

  Although many lesbian separatists had come to lesbianism through feminism, they quickly dissociated themselves from the feminist movement, which was involved in issues the separatists believed to be irrelevant, such as abortion, child care, and shelters for battered wives. In impassioned rhetoric they exhorted other lesbians:

  Quit begging our straight sisters to let us be their niggers in the movement, and stop taking all the insults and shit work the pussy cats and their toms can heap on us. If we can step forward, we should do so with the intention of working for our own cause. Either way, we Lesbians are going to get it right between the legs in a
sex war unless we realize soon the folly of our Pollyanna relations with straight sisters and gay brothers and especially Big Brothers.

  The separatists felt they had to be perpetually alert to other lesbian-feminists’ confused priorities and commitments, which would vitiate their program. They wanted to impose a purity of vision on the community by refusing energy not only to straight women, but even to lesbians who befriended straight women. Lesbians’ needs had to come first, they insisted, even if it meant giving up relations with heterosexual relatives that one might love. To avoid psychic contamination the separatists demanded women-only spaces, both at home and when they went into the community for social or political events.38

  Some lesbian separatists formed living and working collectives in the cities. But since it was harder to be purist in their practices if they lived in a city, many separatists established communal farms and became, as one of their 1970s journals called them, country women. The country was, anyway, preferable to city living, they said, because the city was a man-made world where lesbians’ energy was diverted in a struggle to survive and live true to their principles. There were even attempts to establish land trusts that would be available to all women “at all times, forever,” and there was a “women’s land circuit,” which consisted of individual women-owned farms where lesbians could drop by to work and stay for days or months or even years.

  Their Utopian quests were reflected in women’s science fiction novels written in the 1970s in which the characters usually took refuge in distant countrysides, away from the evils wrought by men, who had mucked up most of the world so it could not be lived in anymore. In Sally Gearhart’s The Wanderground, women are able to wander the grounds in the country under the protection of nature, unlike in the city, where they are men’s prey. In Rochelle Singer’s The Demeter Flower, nature obliges the women by wiping out the civilization of men “because it threatened her and her children” and women can start from scratch.39