Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers

by Lillian Faderman

  All of these women were part of a growing class of what Phyllis Lyon has described as “hippies” (lesbian yuppies). The phenomenon was even reflected in lesbian fiction of the ’80s. Numerous novels presented characters who were less concerned with exiting from the patriarchy, as they were in the ’70s, than with buying Gucci luggage and French calf boots, furnishing their living rooms to look like those in Architectural Digest, driving Mercedes 450SLs or Buick Rivieras that “shine like a polished panther,” going to “snooty French restaurants,” and sporting twenty-four karat gold cigarette lighters. Some of those novels created fantasies and dream images of wealth merely to amuse the reader, comparable to heterosexual Harlequin novels, rather than to set up a model for reality. But in the ’70s they would have been trashed for being politically incorrect; in the ’80s there was little criticism of their characters’ penchant for conspicuous consumption.10

  There were even a number of very wealthy women who identifed fairly openly with the lesbian community and helped to support it in the ’80s, further bridging class gaps and bringing in the money that was requisite to making the community more substantial. Wealthy lesbians helped form organizations such as Women With Inherited Wealth and sponsored monthly meetings in which philanthropy toward lesbian and women’s causes was encouraged. They donated money for the purchase of the Women’s Building in San Francisco; they bailed lesbian publishing houses out of the red; they even provided meeting spaces for lesbian groups by throwing open their own residences. Coming from largely conservative backgrounds, those women may have been fearful of identifying themselves as lesbian in earlier eras. But despite the signs of social conservatism that reemerged in the ’80s, the battles of the preceding decade had helped more of them to feel free to live as they pleased and let it be known that they had ties to the lesbian community. The increased wealth and professional status of women in the visible community altered its face in spite of the sentimental attachment some women retained to more radical times.11

  Those who remembered the earlier years sometimes feared that all had been in vain. They bitterly regretted the demise of their dreams for an Amazon world. Looking superficially at the new face of the community, what they saw was a disappearance of the old concerns and institutions and an interest among lesbians in resembling mainstream society. They despaired, for example, that in Austin, Texas, where women’s music had been such a living force in the ’70s, concerts were losing money in the ’80s, and young lesbians were buying mainstream music. Kasey, who was in her ’40s, lamented:

  Someone’s got to replace me for the Cris Williamson concerts. I’ve heard her twenty times. Where are the young lesbians? They don’t know how hard we all struggled to get such things going in the ’70s. The young people think no matter what happens it will continue to exist, and they can go once in a while if they feel like it. All they really want to do is make money and have a good time.

  Kasey also despaired that in Kansas City, where she had lived during part of the ’70s, the Women’s Liberation Union was defunct and the Women’s House where they met was sold; a radical Austin women’s radio program that was started in the ’70s was off the air; young women had gone back to the bars—more than five hundred of them, all under thirty, usually gathered to dance at an Austin lesbian bar called Nexus on weekend nights in the late ’80s—instead of going to women’s events.

  But while the quest for a Lesbian Nation had surely been lost by the ’80s, lesbianism as a lifestyle and the lesbian community were far from dead. Kasey also had to admit that despite the losses, there were some significant gains: Kansas City no longer had a Women’s Liberation Union, but lesbians were openly welcomed in Kansas City NOW and a new young lesbian and gay group emerged out of the 1987 Lesbian and Gay March on Washington. Austin lesbians who wanted to go dancing on Saturday nights were not limited to Nexus; they could even dance at the Unitarian Church, which made a place for them in the ’80s. If they wanted to go to a concert they had a choice not just of “women’s music” but music by “crossover” entertainers such as K. D. Lang and Melissa Etheridge, and they felt no need to be shy about holding hands with their women lovers in the theater lobby, despite the fact that half the audience was heterosexual. Lesbians in Austin were no longer doing a radical radio program, but young lesbians were joining the Austin Blood Sisters in order to give blood to people with AIDS; they were part of the Austin Lesbian-Gay Political Caucus, from whom candidates for local offices sought endorsements; and they succeeded in pushing through an Austin antidiscrimination ordinance for lesbians and gay men.12 To the extent that Austin and Kansas City were representative of fairly large lesbian communities in the 1980s, radicalism was defunct, but in its place there was a new lesbian and gay male unity, an increased acceptance of homosexuality in liberal circles, and even some manifestation of a growing political clout in that part of the mainstream that was not insensitive to the civil rights of homosexuals.

  The goals of lesbian-feminism and the tenor of the community it established had come to seem too narrow and unrealistic. In the 1980s lesbians often sought ways to engage themselves politically that would not compromise their ideals but would be less parochial than what lesbian-feminism had permitted. Some of them maintained the Utopian vision they had developed as lesbian-feminists but brought it to bear on larger issues. Others rejected Utopian visions and wanted to find realistic ways to improve the world. In her novel Valley of the Amazons (1984), Noretta Koertge dramatizes the disillusionment with lesbian-feminism and the new yearning for action that might bring some results. Tretona, the lesbian hero, wanders from one lesbian group to another, discussing lesbian identity, nonmonogamy, witchcraft as a religion. But she comes to believe about those “Utopian” and visionary lesbian-feminist groups that

  All [they ever do] is trash what there is and dream about perfect little doll houses in the big separatist sky. I think it’s time we started with the here and now and started thinking about alliances and working to really change things instead of trying to define perfection.

  Like many women who left lesbian-feminism, Tretona rejects the segregated lesbian-feminist community and works to create a unified gay and lesbian political community.13

  Such interest in working to solve the problems of the here and now that were often broader than the lesbian community was reflected in many of the novels of the 1980s. In Maureen Brady’s Folly (1982), the lesbian characters are concerned with fighting corrupt factory owners. In Barbara Wilson’s Ambitious Women (1982), the lesbians battle urban terrorism. In Chris South’s Clenched Fists, Burning Crosses (1984), they fight the Ku Klux Klan.14 The novels mirrored real life.

  “There is nowhere to run from nuclear ruin or chemical waste,” lesbians said in the ’80s. Those older women who maintained their gender chauvinism remained cultural feminists. They had been convinced by lesbian-feminism in the 1970s of women’s superior moral perceptions, and through that conviction they now developed the confidence to lead movements whose base is a Utopian social vision. They often became the backbone in “direct action” peace and environmental movements: for example, they helped organize the Seneca Encampment to protest the army depot in Seneca Falls, from which cruise missiles were being sent to Europe; they were central in the Women’s Pentagon Action, in which the protesters wove shut the doors of the Pentagon with brightly colored thread.15 Their radicalism of the ’70s was thus modified and diverted to different uses. Though the vision of a separate Lesbian Nation disappeared, some lesbians began to attempt in the ’80s to bring their own values and presence to the broader nation.

  Other manifestations of the shift in mood during the ’80s were less global and had more to do with lifestyles in the dominant lesbian community, which came to reflect mainstream lifestyles much more than they had in the past. The ’80s saw a certain sobriety settle over the dominant lesbian community with regard to issues that had been treated more lightly in the ’70s, such as nonmonogamy (the efforts of the sexual radicals notwithstand
ing) and drug and alcohol use. “Marriage” and “clean and sober” lifestyles became “in” among lesbians, just as they did among heterosexuals in the ’80s.

  To the more radical women who remained in the community it was not necessarily a positive sign to see lesbians who had once proclaimed the virtues of nonmonogamy and the excitement or enlightenment they got from highs suddenly become “conventional.” Some were fearful that the current war on drugs, sex, and other modern “evils” was really a hypocritical effort to rub out the culture changes of the past two decades by “masquerading as a caring crusade” about lesbian health. But many lesbians felt they had legitimate reasons to be concerned about their health. Lesbians as a group have the lowest incidence of AIDS in America; nevertheless, it is more frightening to them than to most heterosexuals because many of them have seen it up close among their gay male friends. Because of their concern, monogamy came to look attractive even to women who had been personally and ideologically against it in the past. Some of those who admitted to having been “promiscuous” said their patterns changed in the late ’80s. A San Diego woman reflected:

  I really enjoy sex and would like to sleep around. I used to do it with women I didn’t care anything about—after a few beers. But I haven’t been to bed with anyone since the AIDS virus became heavy here—it’s been years. I’m not infected with anything now. For a one night stand, if I get AIDS it just wouldn’t be worth it.

  Casual sex was never widely popular among lesbians, but AIDS made it even less so in the ’80s. According to one mid-1980s survey of lesbians, almost 80 percent viewed monogamy as “the ideal relationship.” Because of this renewed commitment to monogamy it is probable that the ’90s will see more “holy unions” or “relationship ceremonies” between lesbians such as those that were conducted in the ’80s by various liberal churches.16

  But it was not AIDS alone that made the lesbian community much more sober than it was in the 1970s. The “clean and sober” movement operated to help stem the party frenzy that many lesbians said they experienced in the 1970s. One study by Jean Swallow (Out from Under: Sober Dykes and Our Friends, 1983) said that 38 percent of all lesbians are alcoholics and another 30 percent are problem drinkers. Swallow concluded: “For a lesbian, those statistics mean you either are one or you love one.” While other studies suggest that Swallow’s statistics are inflated, there is no question that alcoholism as well as drug abuse were common in the lesbian community in the ’70s just as they were among heterosexuals. That the incidence should be somewhat higher among a segment of the lesbian community is not surprising, since historically so much of lesbian life was lived in the bars. As Diane, a Boston woman, recalls of the late 1960s when she first came out:

  Learning to drink played a big role. The whole culture revolved around the bars. It would be the main social event during the summers. We would just bar hop from one place to another—in Boston, Provincetown, Providence. It was just what everyone did.17

  The campaign to “just say no” and live “clean and sober” that was waged in the mainstream throughout the ’80s caught fire in the lesbian community. Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12 Step Program, and Living Sober groups quickly adapted themselves to the needs of homosexuals. For example, the patriarchal, Christian emphasis of AA literature was modified when presented to the all-lesbian AA and Al-Anon (partners of alcoholics) groups that cropped up around the country. Boston alone had eighty weekly AA meetings for lesbians in the late ’80s. San Francisco had ninety such weekly meetings. Living Sober conventions that targeted the lesbian and gay community attracted large, rapidly growing numbers. The Living Sober contingents were the biggest in the Gay Pride parades at the end of the decade. There were even all-lesbian and -gay residential programs for the treatment of alcohol and drug dependency, such as the Pride Institute in Minnesota, where patients were encouraged not just to deal with drug and alcohol abuse but also to think affirmatively about homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle.18

  Lesbians who participated in “clean and sober” programs were often euphoric in their enthusiasm. Janet said unabashedly:

  AA saved my life. I’m so different than I was a few years ago. I was going to die. I was spiritually bankrupt. I had no hope. I got to the point where the coke and the alcohol weren’t fun anymore. And then Living Sober AA came along and gave me a whole support group—a peer group. Ten years ago there weren’t such things as lesbian AA. I wouldn’t have gone in with all those hets who probably hate queers anyway. There was no place for me to go. Now there are even sober lesbian dances.19

  A whole culture of sobriety developed to replace the bar culture that had been so pivotal to the lives of many lesbians in the past. Women who, outside of the lesbian community, might not have identified themselves as being in need of “recovery” found support for such identification within the community, and “clean and sober” became a social movement for lesbians.

  All these phenomena illustrate the shift to moderation that overtook a community whose dominant tone in other eras had been far more extreme. While the general relative conservatism of the ’80s had an influence on the shift, there were additional factors that explain it, such as the influx of young, postfeminist women who saw no need for serious militance, the disillusionment of lesbians who had been around in the ’70s with the older lesbian lifestyles, and the realistic fears about health. But it appears to be warranted to conclude that the demeanor of the visible community changed primarily because of economic reasons. There were in the ’80s more women in the American work force who were pursuing careers than ever before, and more opportunities were opening up to them. Since lesbians have generally attained higher levels of education than heterosexual women because they knew they had to be self-supporting and they seldom have multiple children who could interfere with career advancement, they are more likely to be successful professionally. There was a significant increase in the number of lesbians who reached middleclass status through their work and who would have difficulty denying their middleclass socioeconomic position and values in the 1980s. Those women had fewer fears than their middleclass lesbian predecessors about becoming a part of the visible lesbian community. Thus their values gave a tenor to that community that connected it to the mainstream much more closely than it had been connected since lesbianism first became a subculture in America.

  Of course not all middleclass lesbians became part of the visible community. Some were still no more comfortable with being lesbian than their 1950s counterparts may have been. They saw their lesbianism as a problem for their careers and believed that exposure would do them great professional damage. A central California woman told of having regular “fire drills” with her lover, who was employed in the same public institution where she worked: “We made up a complete story. Like if anyone would accuse us we would absolutely deny it. We practiced answers about why we weren’t married, why we had gone somewhere together (just in case anyone saw us), why we have to share a home. We know how we would answer everything.”20

  In the 1980s some lesbians still went to such lengths as to ask gay men to “front” for them at work-related social functions, or they constructed a second bedroom so that they would not be suspected of sleeping together if heterosexuals came to visit. As one San Antonio lawyer said, “We don’t exactly live in a gay ghetto here. Texas is twenty years behind the rest of the country unless you’re in Austin. So we even have to hide our Lezzie library. You just don’t display it here. Our housecleaner would faint, and I have clients coming over.” But thanks to the sexual and social liberation of the ’70s, the need to hide was not a foremost consideration for many women who loved other women in the 1980s. While they tended to be closeted in some situations, they did not feel that they must disguise their affections at all times, as their counterparts did in more conservative eras. On the whole they were free to be—as psychologist Barbara Sang described a group of lesbian career women she studied—“self-actualized,” “self-confident,” “self-accepting.�
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  Validation of Diversity

  The San Francisco Gay Pride Parade of 1987, which commemorated the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion, ended in front of the City Hall area, where three stages were set up in order to accommodate a variety of speeches and entertainment, all going on simultaneously. Three separate stages had been erected not only because the organizers despaired of being able to communicate anything to an audience of a third of a million people with only one stage, but also because after almost two decades of parades and “Gay Pride” they realized that there is no such entity as “the gay” or “the lesbian” and speeches or entertainment that would be welcomed by one segment of the community would be irrelevant to another. The parade organizers’ strategy was, as the lesbian president of the parade board of directors announced, “to offer diversity to a diverse community.”22

  The sexologists who first described lesbians seemed to believe they were mostly all alike, and the heterosexual world allowed itself to be cognizant only of the most obvious stereotypes. Even many lesbians themselves have preferred to see all women who loved women as being from the same mold, such as the butches and femmes in the 1950s and ’60s and the dykes of Lesbian Nation in the 1970s. But lesbians have always comprised a diverse community or, more specifically, diverse subcultures. As more women in the 1980s dared to join the visible lesbian community and to demand a place within the definition of the lesbian, the extent of the diversity became clearer. Paradoxically, the community’s shift toward moderation actually encouraged that diversity. It muted the passion for conformity that had characterized lesbian communities, and the peripheries felt more able to make themselves visible, since the dominant community was generally not as violently critical of all who did not fit its mold. Although significant conflicts still erupted in the ’80s such as the sex wars, the end of the decade seemed to promise more acceptance of diversity within the larger lesbian community than at any other time in the past. Peripheral groups and the dominant community sought ways to coexist and to merge whenever it was mutually helpful.