The women’s presses that emerged in the early 1970s had a function similar to the music, speaking not only to women in organized lesbian-feminist communities in big cities, but also to women isolated in the hinterlands. The periodicals they produced were often modeled on the hippie underground newspapers of the 1960s, but the focus was almost exclusively on lesbian and feminist issues. The papers proliferated because lesbian-feminists believed they must control the words written about them, since they could not trust the establishment press. The periodicals, which were usually put together by a collective of women who had learned to print just so that they could contribute to the movement, were touchingly marked by their youth, energy, innocence, and good faith. Throughout the 1970s the publishers made every attempt to keep costs down so that poor women could buy their newspapers or magazines. Lesbian Connections, which began in 1974, was even circulated for free, until the mailing list surpassed five thousand and the publisher was forced to request a small payment “from those who can.” Other periodicals also stated (under a usually very modest asking price of fifty cents or a dollar), “More if you can, less if you can’t.” Such idealism often meant that a periodical went under after a year or two of publication, though others soon sprang up to take its place.
Like the newspapers and magazines, lesbian-feminist book publishing houses were often run collectively, with decision making not in the power of a hierarchical head, but rather of a group of women. Their growth and distribution was aided by the formation of businesses such as Bookpeople, a distributor specializing in women’s books, and women’s bookstores that featured such work. Lesbian-feminist readers were wildly enthusiastic about the new literature. What made those books so appealing was that the authors portrayed becoming a lesbian as connecting a woman with power. In exhilarating contrast to the 1950s novels where love between women led to defeat, in the novels of the 1970s it led to freedom. Many of them echoed the major interests of women’s music: the characters not only created themselves anew through their love; they also created a woman’s community and a woman’s culture that mirrored the ideal images that lesbian-feminists were trying to construct in their own lives, a world where, as Elana Nachman described it in Riverfinger Woman (1974), “all women are strong and beautiful … [and] unafraid to give to each other, one to one, in specific ways, and more than one to one, in groups, in the new ways we are learning.”14 Also like the music, women’s novels in the 1970s were crucial in promulgating the new values and in helping to affirm the lesbian-feminist in her conviction of good sense in having chosen to love women.
Although lesbian-feminist publishers aimed their work at a committed lesbian-feminist readership, their books and lesbian-feminism itself presented such an interesting new phenomenon that the attention of the establishment press was attracted. The New York Times, for example, ran a major feature article on lesbian-feminist publishing, “Creating a Woman’s World,” and the staid Library Journal presented a full-cover portrait of Jill Johnston with the title of her new book, Lesbian Nation, blazoned across the cover in 1973. Establishment publishers were now bidding for books that dealt with lesbianism, and they provided insurmountable competition for most of the small lesbian-feminist houses, which were plagued by financial and management inexpertise and could not hope to match the big commercial houses in terms of advances, advertising, and distribution.15
Because of such difficulties, most of the women’s houses of the 1970s eventually failed. There were more lesbian novels published by women’s publishers in the mid-’70s than at the end of the decade. Nevertheless, although most of the lesbian-feminist publishers did not have the business savvy to make sufficient profit from their enterprises, they were instrumental in encouraging lesbian-feminist authors to depict their lives as happy or hopeful and in pointing the way to commercial publishers, who saw that there was a market for literature about love between women that did not present the lovers in perpetual despair, speaking only in whispers and dwelling only in twilight. Because of the breakthoughs by the lesbian-feminist houses, by the end of the 1970s virtually every major New York house had published at least one novel or nonfiction book that presented love between women in a sympathetic and informed light. The counterculture publishers had contributed to a genuine metamorphosis among mainstream publishers with regard to the lesbian image in print.
Taking Care of Our Own: The Body and the Soul
Many lesbian-feminists envisioned a rebirth of the great matriarchies that they were certain held sway in the eras of prehistory. Toward a realization of the new day they insisted on the necessity of bonding with other women to create not only a material society that would function according to what they set forth as matriarchal ideals, but especially a spiritual society. Their vision was of a totally self-sufficient community where lesbian-feminists would be able to take care of their own.
Their goal of self-sufficiency included all aspects of life, from food co-ops, such as the New York Lesbian Food Conspiracy where food was sold at cost, to women’s credit unions, which were run by members for members. Lesbian health care, especially good gynecological care, became available in various parts of the country through free lesbian clinics. Since they felt they could not hope to get the establishment courts to understand them and take their relationships seriously, lesbian-feminists even explored the possibility of creating their own quasi-legal system, like the independent Jewish courts of the shtetl in pre-World War II Eastern Europe. One proposal suggested that they should make contracts and accept arbitration by a “Lesbian Fairbody” made up of peers from the lesbian community agreed upon by the litigants. “In this way,” they said, “we legitimatize ourselves … [and] we elevate our own capabilities to determine justice for ourselves above those of a male, patriarchal court system.”16
In many lesbian-feminist communities, resource centers were established to provide programs in “self-development,” job placement services, twenty-four hour hotlines, and places for women to meet one another and discuss political and personal problems in groups. Lesbian archives were established in several big cities to preserve a record of what was happening then and to try to gather a record of what had happened in the past. Although most women in the lesbian-feminist community were young, some had the imagination to envision themselves and their friends old, and they began to draw blueprints for lesbian old age homes, such as a 1975 proposal that suggested that lesbian-feminists start incorporated nonprofit organizations in their communities in which dues would be invested to buy and run large houses as retirement homes for those who had no money or no one to take care of them. Wealthier lesbian-feminists would be encouraged to leave their money to the organization in their wills. The blueprint even suggested the establishment of nationally coordinated pension plans for lesbian-feminists.17
To many, the care of the lesbian-feminist soul was as important as the care of the body. But lesbian-feminist spirituality had to have a political base as well as a mystical base. Lesbian-feminists were concerned that their spirituality not be simply inner-directed and a mere palliative, a revision of Christianity—from God the Father to God the Mother, with all the attendant problems intact. Their idealized models were those ancient cultures, whether in myth or reality, in which women held secular power along with religious power. Lesbian-feminist spirituality was to resurrect the matriarchy, which would eliminate all of the destructive institutions of patriarchy—economic, political, sexual, educational—and return society to the maternal principle in which life is nurtured. But how was women’s spirituality to be translated into political action? Workshops at spirituality gatherings often struggled with the philosophy and logistics of reconstruction. Conferences were held with names such as Building the Lesbian Nation, which, the organizers hoped, would “contribute to the rebirth of the matriarchy.” However, plans for the implementation of reconstruction were more vague than the conception. Some suggested that spirituality would automatically spark a mystical special fire such as had always smoldered q
uietly within women, which would work to help them transform themselves and society. More extreme elements wanted more concrete magic, believing that since women lacked both muscle and money, they would have to develop their psychic abilities in order to accomplish the task of obliterating the patriarchy through spells and curses.18
Lesbian-feminists who were involved in women’s spirituality in the 1970s were enamored with the theories of Elizabeth Gould Davis, author of The First Sex (1971). Davis’ work was a call to arms for the new matriarchy. She exhorted women to remember a glorious past and create an equally glorious future, and she gave them fuel for their ambitions and fantasies:
So long has the myth of feminine inferiority prevailed that women themselves find it hard to believe that their own sex was once and for a very long time the superior and dominant sex. In order to restore women to their ancient dignity and pride, they must be taught their own history, as the American blacks are being taught theirs.
Recorded history starts with the patriarchal revolution. Let it continue with the matriarchal counterrevolution that is the only hope for the survival of the human race.
Matriarchal religion, Davis insisted, had succeeded for ten thousand years in keeping men’s bellicosity and superior physical strength in check and in giving women the peace and power to develop agriculture, weaving, architecture, science, and art. Its resurrection would restore such happy benefits. Davis’ matriarchies became a dream model for the woman-identified societies that spiritual lesbian-feminists wanted to have a hand in recreating.19
Matriarchal mythmaking, drawing on various cultures (American Indians, witch religions, Greek depictions of Amazons) for images to ignite the imagination, became a popular subject even in lesbian-feminist comic books. Small groups sprang up, such as the Matriarchists, a New York organization that was committed to “working for a society which would be fashioned after the ancient matriarchies.” They believed that their nurturing powers would eventually transform society, ridding it of racism, classism, and imperialism. When Merlin Stone, author of another influential 1970s work, When God Was a Woman, suggested that in 8000 B.C. women were still powerful and goddess worship was the reigning religion, many spiritual lesbian-feminists adopted a new system of calculating time, rejecting the Christian calander and instead counting forward from 8000 B.C. (for example, 1978 became 9978).20
In contrast to the matriarchal longings of lesbian-feminists, lesbians who were part of the gay movement and felt the need for spiritual sustenance helped to organize mixed gay groups within established churches, such as Dignity in the Catholic Church, Integrity in the Episcopal Church, and various small groups within Judaism; or they joined the newly formed gay Metropolitan Community Church, which was established by Troy Perry, a homosexual fundamentalist minister. But lesbian-feminists felt that no matter what reforms were attempted in traditional organized religions, the churches and synagogues still perpetrated patriarchy. One lesbian-feminist tells of visiting a Metropolitan Community Church and feeling compelled to walk out when a man shouted, “Let Jesus come into you!” She remembers: “I stood up and said, ‘How can you lesbians listen to this?’ “21 The Metropolitan Community Church did nothing to satisfy the “womanspirit” of radical lesbian-feminists who, craving the occult, the unconscious, the intuitive, employed tools such as tarot cards, astrology, I Ching, numerology, laying on of hands, herbal-ism, dreams and visions, and women-identified rituals.
The witch had particular appeal for lesbian-feminists as a spiritual-political model. As Jane Chambers suggested in her novel Burning (1978), the lesbian-feminist equivalent of former times was the witch who defied men, and lesbian-feminists of the 1970s identified with, and sometimes really believed they were, witches. Witches, lesbian-feminists said, had nothing to do with the evil that patriarchs attributed to them through fear of “wicce,” which meant “women’s wisdom.” Witches stood for life-oriented, women-oriented values. In lesbian-feminist vision and mythmaking, the coven, a group of women who considered themselves witches, came to be associated with “the great peaceful matriarchies of the past” and with goddess worship, which was the core of paganism. Z. Budapest, the founder in 1971 of the first feminist coven (Susan B. Anthony Coven #1), explains of the rebirth of witches: “Women lost their power through religion. We were determined to gain it back again through a religion that had always belonged to women.” They believed that witches of the past knew how to unlock the secrets of health and love, how to fight and how to live, and as lesbian-feminist witches of the 1970s, they sought to reclaim those powers through psychic experiences in the safety of feminist witch covens.22
Many lesbian-feminists sought a women’s religion simply for spiritual sustenance, but others had more complex needs. A Syracuse, New York, woman explains that when she became a lesbian through her feminist interest in womanbonding, she felt she had to find some legitimacy for lesbianism in terms of a history that went back more than a few decades or a century. She was able to do this, she believes, through her romance with witches, Amazons, matriarchies, and the Mother Goddess. “I desperately needed to validate my roots,” she says, “and that was the only extended history I could find.” Lesbian-feminist spirituality served those multiple purposes of nurturing, providing a history, and furthering the cause of cultural feminism by proclaiming women’s innate spiritual superiority.23
By constructing material and spiritual institutions to take care of their own, lesbian-feminists were convinced they could eradicate from their lives all the social corruption they attributed to patriarchy. Their ambitions were tremendous. Not only did they charge themselves with simultaneously creating a revolution and a counterculture, as June Arnold observed in her lesbian-feminist novel The Cook and the Carpenter, but many of them, who had previously lived as heterosexuals, had to learn at the same time how to be personally independent as well as how to trust and love other women, both emotionally and sexually. They had given themselves a huge task that required of them nothing less than constant effort and vigilance.
Being “Politically Correct”
For many women the desire for a Lesbian Nation was founded on so intense an idealism and required such heroic measures that fanaticism became all but inevitable. In their youthful enthusiasm, lesbian-feminists believed that they had discovered not just a path but the only path. Thus despite the movement rhetoric about love for all women, those who, by some infraction of the code, were judged “politically incorrect” were given cold treatment by the community. Being politically correct (“p.c”) meant that one adhered to the various dogmas regarding dress; money; sexual behavior; language usage; class, race, food, and ecology consciousness; political activity; and so forth. The values, once again, were not unlike those of the hippie counterculture and the New Left, but filtered always through a radical feminist awareness.
The concept of nonhierarchy became an inflexible dogma. Collective decision making was encouraged, as was communal living, in which privileges and responsibilities were to be shared equally. There were to be no leaders. When the mass media focused attention on one woman, the group often became concerned about “star tripping” and support for her sometimes fell away; this happened to Rita Mae Brown, who had been a great hero in the lesbian-feminist community before her popular success, but became the target of strong criticism after. It was even speculated that star tripping was the reason for the failure of ancient matriarchies, in which the queens eventually took too much power for themselves. The modern Lesbian Nation was determined not to repeat such a mistake.24
There were rules for everything, even acceptable dress. Makeup, skirts, high heels, or any other vestiges of the “female slave mentality” would arouse suspicion in the community and were shunned. The uniform was usually jeans and natural fiber shirts. Expensive clothing suggested conspicuous consumption and was inappropriate in a community where downward mobility was “p.c.” “Fancy threads” meant thrift shop elegance: vests, ties, fedoras or berets, pinstripes and baggy flannels.
25 Although butch-and-femme were “p.i.,” in the lesbian-feminist community everyone looked butch. But the goal was to appear strong and self-sufficient, rather than masculine: no matriarchy could function if its inhabitants had to run or fight in high heels and tight skirts.
There was eventually some bitter skepticism and rebellion against p.c. dogma in the lesbian-feminist community, particularly among women who were stung by its carping criticism. Nan, who lived in a lesbian-feminist community in upstate New York, remembers that aspects of radical life were very healthy for her: “I really felt I was developing and experiencing myself for the first time as an adult—picking up on the bold, independent personality I’d dropped when I was twelve years old.” But she came finally to reject the regimentation and constant demands:
You had to live in a certain kind of place, have certain bumper stickers, be anti-male and a separatist. I liked to throw dinner parties with the accoutrements I’d had left over from my marriage—linens, dishes, nice pieces of art and collectible items. The women in my community made me know it didn’t fit with a classless society. And I was too feminine for them because I liked to wear period clothes, Victorian and 1920s outfits—go out in drag and have a lot of fun with it—instead of jeans all the time. They decided I was an enemy of the people. I decided they were “lavnecks” [lavender rednecks].26
Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers Page 30
