Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers (69 page)

36
. Nancy Myron, “Class Beginnings,”
Furies
(March/April 1972), 1(3): 2–3. Laurel Galana, “Conversation,” in Gina Covina and Laurel Galana, eds.,
The Lesbian Reader
(Guerneville, Calif: Amazon Press, 1975), p. 86. All studies I am familiar with that consider the question have shown that statistically lesbians tend to be far better educated than heterosexual women, but there is evidence to suggest that among lesbian-feminists the educational levels were extremely high, perhaps because the movement had considerable intellectual appeal: e.g., an
Amazon Quarterly
(1973), 1(4/2): 30–34, statistical analysis of lesbian-feminists included in a nationwide series of interviews showed that 88 per cent had at least some college education. The study also showed that over 60 per cent had fathers who were in business or the professions. Upper class women who became radical lesbian feminists had an easier time with regard to the class problem than middle-class women, perhaps partly because of their generosity in many cases, influenced by their socialist idealism, and partly because they were perceived as invulnerable. An Austin woman who inherited money from her grandfather, who had been one of the ten wealthiest oil men in Texas, declassed herself in terms of dress and lifestyle in the community but made no secret of her wealth: “I didn’t really get a hard time from people,” she remembers about the 1970s. “There were a group of us who had inherited money. If some person or some organization needed something they would come talk to us. We would always sponsor things. We would be billed as ‘your host committee’”; personal interview with Carla, age 41, Austin, Tex., March 31, 1988.

37
. “Separatist Symposium,”
Dyke: A Quarterly
(Summer 1978), 6: 31–41. Gearhart, “A Kiss Does Not a Revolution Make.” “Dyke/Amazon” quoted in Laurel Galana, “Distinctions: The Circle Game.” Galana, like many other women in the lesbian-feminist community of the 1970s, was at odds with such militancy. She scoffs in this article: “As of this writing it is no longer enough to be a feminist, lower class, and funkily male dressed in order to be a dyke. It is necessary to hate men with a passion and to want above all else to kill them.”

38
. Charlotte Bunch, “Learning from Lesbian Separatism,”
Ms.
(November 1976), 5. A. J. Loeson, “America and Women,”
Sisters
(November 1971), 2(ii):1–7. Red Dykes, “To Revolutionary Dykes,”
Lesbian Connections
(March 1976), 2(1): 14. Personal interview with Naomi, member of a Northampton, Mass, separatist community in the 1970s (interview in Berkeley), July 30, 1988.

39
. Sally Gearhart,
The Wanderground
(Watertown, Mass. F: Persephone Press, 1978); Rochelle Singer,
The Demeter Flower
(New York: St. Martin’s, 1980).

40
. Country separatism discussed in Flying Thunderwoman, “Notes of a Native Woman,”
WomanSpirit
(Spring 1976), 2(7): 24–26; Womanshare Collective,
Country Lesbians: The Story of the Womanshare Collective
(Grants Pass, Ore.: Womanshare, 1977); Womanshare Collective, “Communal Living,”
Our Right to Love,
pp. 66–69; advertisement for Oregon Women’s Land Trust,
Albatross,
Summer 1976, p. 10; personal interview with Carla, cited above. Joyce Cheney, ed.,
Lesbian Land
(Minneapolis, Minn.: Word Weavers, 1985), looks at many of the communes that were flourishing during the 1970s and reveals an assortment of reasons for their demise by the 1980s.

41
. Personal interview with Suzanne, age 39, Boston, July 3, 1987.

42
. Bunch. Personal interview with Paula, age 34, member of Woman-Space Collective in the 1970s, Omaha, Neb., October 10, 1988.

43
. Ann Allen Shockley, “The Black Lesbian in American Literature: An Overview,”
Conditions: Five, The Black Women’s Issue
(Autumn 1979), 2(2):133–42.

44
. Zulma Rivera, “Written Testimony,”
Our Right to Love,
pp. 225–27. The Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement,” in Zillah Eisenstein, ed.,
Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978).

45
. Personal interview with Leslie, age 41, San Diego, July 31, 1987.

46
. Pat Parker,
Pit Stop
(Oakland, Calif: Women’s Press Collective, 1973).

47
. Eleanor Hunter, “Double Indemnity: The Negro Lesbian in the Straight White World,” quoted in Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon,
Lesbian/Woman
(New York: Bantam, 1972), pp. 123–25. Gente discussed in “We Have to be Our Own Spark: An Interview with Gente,”
Lesbian Tide,
July 1974. See also “Open Letter from a Filipina/ Indian Dyke,”
Off Our Backs
(December 1978), 8(11): and Flying Cloud’s response to “Racism in the Women’s Movement,”
Tribad
(July/August 1978), 2(2): 5–6: Flying Cloud calls for lesbians of color to unite, complaining that at that time, “a fight for feminism is really a fight for white women’s supremacy.” Few Asian lesbians had developed bonds within either the Asian community or the lesbians of color community during the 1970s. Those who were lesbian-feminists tended to agree with writers such as Liza May Chan (“A Lesbian-Feminist Assesses Her Heritage,”
Albatross,
Summer 1976, pp. 24–25), who observes: “The entire Chinese culture has denied me my human rights, specifically, my right to choose ‘the kind of woman’ I want to be. … I identify myself with sisters of every race who are being ‘fucked over’ in the male dominated world with male dominated issues. … In dealing with our true foe—sexism, our real suppressors—we may be able to reconcile with and accept each other disregarding race, class background, and cults.” See also Willyce Kim,
Eating Artichokes
(Oakland, Calif: Women’s Press Collective, 1972), and Yee Lin, “Written Testimony,”
Our Right to Love,
pp. 227–29. Barbara Cameron, a Native American lesbian, organized a Gay American Indian group in 1974 in the conviction that Third World gay people’s needs and struggles were different from those of the gay white community; personal interview with Barbara Cameron, San Francisco, August 12, 1988. Formation of Latin American Lesbians of Los Angeles discussed in
Lesbian Tide,
July 1974. See also discussion of formation of the San Francisco Latina Lesbian Alliance in
Lesbian Tide,
July/August 1978, and the New York La Luz de la Lucha in
Tribad
(New York) (July/ August 1978), 2(2): 8.

48
. Cherrie Moraga Lawrence, “La Guera,” in Susan J. Wolf and Julie Penelope Stanley, eds.,
Coming Out Stories
(Watertown, Mass.: Persephone Press, 1980), pp. 187–94. Moraga dropped the patronymic Lawrence shortly after the publication of this essay. Editorial on the need to broaden the base of the movement in
Women: A Journal of Liberation
(1972), 2(4): inside front cover. See also “National Lesbian Feminist Organization Spotlights Civil Rights,”
Lesbian Tide,
July/ August 1978, p. 23, regarding NLFO’s plan for a campaign to “increase the participation of women of color as planners, members and endorsers” of the organization. Personal interview with Suzanne cited above.

49
. Written communication from Eliza, age 44, San Francisco, May 11, 1988.

10. Lesbian Sex Wars in the 1980s

1
.  Colette,
The Pure and the Impure,
trans. Herman Briffault (1930; reprint. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967), p. in.

2
.  Alex Comfort,
The Joy of Sex
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972). Helen Singer Kaplan,
The New Sex Therapy: Active Treatment of Sexual Dysjunctions
(New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1974). How-To books on lesbian sexuality such as Emily Sisley and Bertha Harris,
The Joy of Lesbian Sex
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977), created little stir among lesbians. John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman,
Intimate Matters: A History of Sexualtiy in America
(New York: Harper and Row, 1988), ch. 14, “The Sexualized Society.”

3
.  Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz,
American Couples: Money, Work, Sex
(New York: William Morrow, 1983), p. 196.

4
.  Letitia Anne Peplau, “Research on Homosexual Couples: An Overview,
“Journal of Homosexuality
(Winter 1982), 8; Beverly Burch, “Barriers to Intimacy: Conflicts over Power, Dependency, and Nurturing in Lesbian Relationships,” in Boston Lesbian Psychologies Collective, eds.,
Lesbian Psychologies: Explorations and Challenges,
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 126–41. Regarding the sexual barrier theory see C. A. Tripp,
The Homosexual Matrix
(New York: McGraw Hill, 1975). On fusion and bed death see JoAnn Loulan,
Lesbian Sex
(San Francisco: Spinster’s Ink, 1985); Jo-Ann Krestan and Claudia Bepko, “The Problem of Fusion in Lesbian Relationships,”
Family Process,
(September 1980), 19:277–89; and Margaret Nichols, “Lesbian Sexuality: Issues and Developing Therapy,” in Boston Lesbian Psychologies Collective, pp. 97–125.

5
.  Personal interview with Pam, age 51, Fresno, March 5, 1988.

6
.  Robin Morgan, “Goodbye to All That,” (1970; reprinted in Wendy Martin, ed.,
The American Sisterhood
(New York: Harper and Row), p. 361. Robin Morgan,
Going Too Far
(New York: Random House, 1976), p. 169. Susan Brownmiller,
Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975). For works arguing that the Court ignored available evidence regarding the link between pornography and sexual violence see Irene Diamond, “Pornography and Repression: A Reconsideration of ‘Who’ and ‘What’” in Laura Lederer, ed.,
Take Back the Night: Women on Pornography
(New York: William Morrow, 1980), pp. 187–203, and Neil M. Malamuth and Edward Donnerstein, eds.,
Pornography and Sexual Aggression
(Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press, 1984), passim. While these works show a significant correlation between pornography and violence, others show that the evidence is still unclear: e.g., a 1983 study that concludes that pornography “stimulates sexual activity and sexual fantasy but does not alter established sexual practices,” cited in Thelma McCormak, “Making Sense of the Research on Pornography,” in Varda Burstyn, ed.,
Women Against Censorship
(Vancouver: Douglas and Mclntyre, 1985), pp. 181–205.

7
.  Sally Roesch Wagner, “Pornography and the Sexual Revolution: The Backlash of Sadomasochism,” in
Against Sadomasochism: A Radical Feminist Analysis
(Palo Alto, Calif: Frog in the Well Press, 1987), pp. 23–44.

8
.  Sheila Jeffreys, “Sado-Masochism: The Erotic Cult of Fascism,”
Lesbian Ethics
(Spring 1986), 2(1): 64–82. Kris Drumm, in “Sex: A Readers’ Forum,”
Lesbian Ethics
(Summer 1987), 2(3): 58–60.

9
.  Jesse Meredith, “A Response to Samois,”
Plexus,
November 1980, p. 8. Jeanette Nichols et al., “Is Sadomasochism Feminist?,” in
Against Sadomasochism,
pp. 137–46. Julia Penelope, “Whose Past Are We Reclaiming?”
Common Lives/Lesbian Lives
(Autumn 1984), 13: 16–36.

10
. Leaflet, “We Protest,” distributed by the Coalition for a Feminist Sexuality at Barnard College Conference “The Scholar and the Feminist.”

11
. Sharon Page, “The Festival Sex Debates,”
On Our Backs
(Spring 1985), 1(4): 13 +. Jeanne F. Neath, “Let’s Discuss Dyke S/M and Quit the Name Calling: A Response to Sheila Jeffreys,”
Lesbian Ethics
(Summer 1987), 2(3): 95–99. Personal interview with Monarch, age 54, Kansas City, Mo., October 15, 1988.