sinister wisdom 35..1•passingSinister Wisdom 35
Summer /Fall 1988
Editor and Publisher: Elana Dykewomon

Editorial readers and advisors: Arlban, Barbara Ruth, Betty Dudley, CathThompson, Dolphin Zelda Waletzky, Gloria Anzaldua, Grace Harwood,
Jasmine Marah, Joan Drury, Kirsten Lindquist, Laura Israel, Laura Post, Louise
Rafkin, Naja Sorella, Rhea, Susan Jill Kahn, Valerie Stoehr
Contributing Editors: Gloria Anzaldua, Irena Klepfisz, Melanie Kayel
Kantrowitz
Typists and proofreaders: Cath Thompson, DeeAnne Davis, Joan Drury, Susan
Goldberg, Valerie Stoehr
Office help, correspondence, ads and accounting: Joan Drury, Nina Wouk,
Sheila BrushThanks to Bobby Rothschild and Rebecca Kutlin of Tamed Technology; and Ellen
Gavin of BRAV A! Women in the Arts.
Distribution, moving and mailing: Anita Schriver, Betty Dudley, Caryatis
Cardea,Cath Thompson, Debbie Fier, Dolphin Zelda Waletzky, Elizabeth Fides,
Jasmine Marah, Leslie Baker, Lisa Carlin, Sonja Erickson, Susan Jill Kahn, Tavie
Tipton,ValerieStoehr
Reader for the Womyn's Braille Press: Judy Freespirit
Cover design: Louise Rafkin
Cover art: Pacha Wasiolek: The cover art for 5 W #35, On Passing, was done bythis artist with a couple of thoughts in mind: passing is essentially about living
in a hostile world, resulting in betrayal. You betray the hostile world, which it
deserves. You betray your peers, which is disheartening. And lastly, you betray
yourself, which is incredibly painful. The results seem the same as those of any
abusive relationship, you can hardly avoid doubting or disliking yourself. Passing is about silence and powerlessness. Hooded, watchful eyes, empty hands,
empty words.
SINISI'ER WISDOM, founded 1976
Fonner Editors and publishers: Harriet Ellenberger (aka Desmoines)
and Catherine Nicholson (1976-81)
Michelle Oiff and Adrienne Rich (1981-83)
Michaele UcceIla (1983-84)
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1983-87)
Copyright © 1988 Sinister Wisdom All rights reserved to individual artists and authors.

tSSN: 0196-1853

Sinister Wisdom· P.O. Box 3252 • Berkeley CA 94703

A Journal for the Lesbian Imaginationin the Arts and Politics_________________________________ Contents
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6
7
8
T2

15
16
18

Elana Dykewomon • Notes for a Magazine
Notes on the Themes (upcoming issues)Contest winners; Correction
D. A. Clarke • and everywhere unicorns (poem)
Terri Jewell • Call to Black Lesbians (essay)
Judith Barrington • La Bruja del Suefio (poem)
Ute M. Saine • Annie Wauneka's Story (poem)
Victoria Rosales • The Earth (poem)§§§
19 Elizabeth Clare • Think Twice Before You Call Me
Courageous (essay)
24 Cheryl Marie Wade • I Am Not One Of The (poem)
25 Adrienne Lauby • Job Description: Disabled (3) (poem)
27 Caryatis Cardea • class (poem)
29 Jasmine Marah • Fanny Finds Out (narrative)
33 Jano· Stalin's Big Brush Mustache (poem)§§§
35 Minnie Bruce Pratt • #67 To Be Posted on 21st Street,
Between Eye and Pennsylvania (poem)
37 Minnie Bruce Pratt • #65 Parked Down by the Potomac(poem)
38 Ruthann Robson • Closure (poem & prose)
43 Stephanie (CS) Henderson • TEXAS '52 (narrative)
46 Marilyn Frye • Lesbian "Sex" (essay)

§§§
55
57
58
59

Susanna J. Sturgis • The Bullfight Sonnets (poems)
Barbara Ruth • I Go To Work In Drag (poem)
Rose Romano • Finding Out (poem)
Sondra Knight • Sisters (poem)

61
65
66
67
69

DeeAnne Davis • We Come From Iowa (poem & prose)
Betty Dudley • White-Trash Cooking (poem)
Marti Hohmann • Ledger: After (poem)
Amanda C. Gable • Fragments (narrative)
Naja Sorella • A Moment From the Years (prose)§§§
72 Laura Rose DancingFire • On Lawyering, Passing andPornography (essay)
75 Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz • My Jewish Face (narrative)
85 Linda Frances • Family Ritual (poem)
86 Kore Archer • This Great Drama (essay)
95 Carolyn Gage • The Second Coming of Joan of Arc (play)§§§
117 Carolina Delgado • Compaiieras: Latina Lesbians(An Anthology), edited by Juanita Ramos (review)
117 Rebecca Ridgely ·Past, Present and Future Passions, by
Barbara Ruth (review)
120 Grace Harwood • Making a Way: Lesbians Out Front, by
JEB (Joan E. Biren) (review)
122 Barbara Ruth • A Restricted Country, by Joan Nestle(review)
126 SDiane Bogus • Loving Her, The Black and White of It,
Say Jesus and Come to Me, by Ann Allen Shockley (review)§§§ART
cover Pacha Wasiolek • Passing (drawing)
14 Joan E. Biren • Colevia Carter (photograph)
26 Barbara Johnson • Jean at the Gala (etching)
60 Joan E. Biren • Elvira Williams (photograph)

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Nates far a Magazine

On Passing"
PaSSing is an enormous word that seemed simple to me until I
started writing about it. By simple I mean, it's clear we all pass insome way or another; the world we live in requires it. You can get
killed for being the "wrong person" in the wrong place; you canbe ·refused the basic necessities of life. Passing is about appearing
to be who you're not; about being acceptable or invisible to those
who exercise power over you. But it's not simple. It works on ahundred levels at once, and it shifts, from moment to moment.
Either by experience, instinct or analysis every womon
knows we live in a brutally unjust world. That brutality is aimed
at us: for our color, sex, sexuality, class, religion, eth~city, size,
ability, age. Most of you reading this have worked to undo theseinjustices actively, for large portions of your adult life.
And still, you must have the experience, as I do, frequently, offinding yourself passing. Passing on your job as straight; passing(as whatever you can) when you apartment hunt; trying to pass
as younger or older; passing by tone of voice, choice of words,
assumptions you don't challenge, beliefs you don't actively
defend. Passing, sometimes, without choosing it - because it's
been granted, someone in power has deemed you "ok."The ways we pass (or don't) aren't necessarily equal. Amonglesbians, to pass is either to present yourself as a man or as astraight woman. Among people of color, passing is often aboutreflecting "whiteness,"M of second-guessing those in power. For
working class and poor women, adopting the language andsymbols of the middle class are foims of passing. But to pass or
not have the option of passing based on skin color is not the same
•These notes corne from many conversations with many different women. I wish
I had transcripts of the conversations to print, but in their absence I want toacknowledge the input of Rhea, Michal Brody, Gloria Anzaldua, Susan Jill
Kahn, Laura Rifkin, Monifa Ajanaku, Vivienne Louise, Caryatis Cardea, Leslie
Levy, Dolphin Waletzky, Barbara Ruth and the SW editorial readers andadvisors, among many others. What I've written, however, should not be taken
as a representation of any of their individual opinions on these issues .
.. A billboard near my house reads "The Bay Area's Faded Beauties" above a
picture of two thin, young, light-skinned Black w omen, with "Porcelana FadeCream" underneath.

3experience as being able to pass or not as heterosexual. For awomon to try and pass as a man is nothing like what it was forjews to try and pass as gentiles in nazi Germany. If you can passas heterosexual, it may not matter, in a given situation, that you
are clearly working class.
It may not matter. You might get by. No one may notice. Get
a nose job, go on a diet, straighten your hair, use a strong
deodorant, bind your breasts, go to a good college, mind yourmanners, learn to speak with or without an accent, shave yourlegs, wear blue contact lenses, get a face lift.
We pass to survive. We get used to the privileges we get bypassing and we forget to question ourselves on the cost of thoseprivileges. We forget we get privilege, because passing is so built
in. The dominant culture wants to assimilate as many marginal
people as it can into its middle-management positions, in order tohave shields for its actions. If light-skinned, non-white women
can be convinced to identify as white' it cuts them off fromidentifying with the struggles of women of color as well as theircultures of origin. The more we pass within the boundaries ofpatriarchal society, the more we are identifying with that society,shoring it up. Whether we mean to or not.
Often, if we experience oppression in one area of our lives, we
can't focus clearly on the benefits we get by being allowed to passin another area. Sometimes we feel as if those benefits "make up"
for the other ways we can't pass. A young, white diesel dyke may
be promoted over an old, black straight woman, and never get
why her dykly-ness got passed over. Sometimes our major
struggle to survive makes other privileges seem trivial (a thin,working class dyke may feel the ability to get clothes in her size
anywhere is meaningless if she can't buy them; she may dismiss
the barrage of hatred that fat women get as small potatoes next toclass divisions, not experiencing that hatred as effecting her).
We may get angry at each other around passing issues. A
latina may have no patience for a bearded womon saying she
can't pass because of her beard - you can always shave off abeard. Some of us believe any lesbian could look straight if she"had to."Others believe there are many lesbians who'd getburned at the stake before anyone thought they were straight.
'Historically, jews are often placed in this position; in North America, it often
happens to other semitic groups, light-skinned native americans and latinas.
4

There are obviously profound differences between what's visible, what we can alter and what we can hide, within groups aswell as between them.
, Of course, in any given situation or historical moment, some
oppressions will be much more threatening to a womon's survival than others. We have to be able to make the fine distinctions
between what is crucial to our individual survival at a given
moment and what is not - and no one can decide that for us. It
seems to me that one of the by-products (or purposes) of passing
is_to keep us focused on ranking oppressions. But we have theability to judge situations. It wastes our time to make an absolutelist of what's most important - there will always be exceptions,and a new list. Many of us are not able to forget the privileges we
get from passing, and when our passing is "successful" we may
feel anger or grief, a sense that we are betraying our communities
and ourselves.
Passing is handed down, generation to generation: how to be
acceptable to men; how to pass for white if that's an option for us,
how to pass as acceptable to whites if it's not; how to hide adisability; how to avoid looking old; how to be good girls. But I
don't want to start in blaming mothers. Many work hard to havetheir daughters value their own cultures, often while trying to getthem to pass in some other way. Mothers, after all, must want
their children to pass through the world with as little danger, as
much power and security as they believe their children can get.
The essence of what our mothers, schools, tvs, government
teach us is that in an out-of-control world, the way we, as women,can (and should) exercise power is by how we control and present
ourselves. Someone else holds power over us - and the constantmessage is that we must appease him. We must know how tohide whatever trait is dangerous in a given situation; and if we
can't hide it, we must know how to hide our anger, our understanding of what's going on. We must try to defer, to appear asinconsequential as possible, so marginal we wouldn't even makea good victim. Do we have a choice? Choices?
Sometimes. We have to understand how much pressure there
is on all of us to pass all the time, and understand that pressure which makes each of us "the other," "the outsider" - as a crime
against our natures. We have the choice to present ourselves as
who we are, sometimes. But in order to make that choice, we have5

to know who we are, and where. It sounds almost silly to say that.
But I spent years saying "my parents were jewish, but I'm not."If I know, for instance, that this culture sees old womyn as asexual, then I have to make sure I keep presenting myself asclearly lesbian as I age - unless I choose to pass. We may makecom-promises. But we have to keep understanding why.
The trouble is passing tends to wear away our centers. It
makes us doubt our own realities, our sense of our culture, it feeds
on our self-hate. It's too easy to believe we are making thoughtful
or necessary concessions and end up compromised instead.
We need not to blame ourselves or each other, nor to rankbut to understand what goes on, how complex and deep it is,
how it cuts us, how it fragments and depresses us. One of Sinister
Wisdom's primary purposes is to encourage every kind of lesbian
to work towards conscious personal resolution as well as community identification and resolve: a motion towards hope: towards the ability to feel individual purposefulness supported bycommunity progress. In order to do that work, we have to bevisible to ourselves and to each other as who we are.
This issue explores some of the facets of passing, in manydifferent forms. There's room for a lot more work, questions anddiscussion. We encourage your response.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Notes on the Themes#36. Surviving Psychiatric Assault/Creating Emotional Well-Being.
How these issues affect lesbian lives individually and in community.
Due out in December.
#37. Open. We get a lot of good material that doesn't fit into the theme
issues, and we get writing that's been sparked by one of the themes.
Here's a space for that work. (Deadline: October 15).
#38. Italian-American Lesbians. Guest edited by Rose Romano: ''What
does it mean to be an Italian-American Lesbian?
There's an Italian-American culture, distinct from the Italian as wellas the American, yet many non-Italians don't seem to have noticed-including some Lesbians, who make a special effort to recognize and respect other forgotten cultures. Why?
Italian-American Lesbians remember the witchcraft of their grandmothers and mothers and still wear evil-eye horns, yet are thought by
non-Italian Lesbians to be followers of a woman-hating church. Why?
6

Non-Italians consider Italian culture to be patriarchal, yet mostItalian-American Lesbians grow up in families run, without question, by
women. Why?
'Non-Italians believe a Lesbian is never tolerated in an Italian family,
yet the Italian-American Lesbian most often finds herself accepted as
Blood according to Italian tradition, only ostracized by families trying toAmericanize themselves. Why?
What is the difference between north and south? What does it mean
to be Sicilian? What is Omerta.? Omerta. American-style? How does it
combine with Lesbian silence? What is l'Ordine della Famiglia? La bella
figura? La miseria? II Mezzogiorno? La via vecchia? n mal occhio? Lacommare? Why don't you know how to speak Italian?
Given the strength and self-sufficiency of the Italian-American
woman; her place of importance in the family; her memory of the Black
Madonna; the tradition of Sappho in Sicily; and her determined urging
of guests to eat, don't you think she's a natural as a Lesbian?
Basta! Write!" (Deadline: February 15, 1989)#39. An issue on Disability. (Deadline: June 15, 1989)
See the inside back cover for submission guidelines.

______________ Contest results
One year's subscription goes to Marjory Nelson of San Francisco forbeing the first to identify the quote we were looking for on p. 5 of #34.
"In education, in marriage, in everything, disappointment is the lotof woman. It shall be the business of my life to deepen this disappointment in every woman's heart until she bows down to it no longer."-Lucy Stone, 1855

Other lesbians who identified the quote: Tina Gomoll, Madison, WI;
Karen Scholz, Dorchester, MA; Sara Karon, Malden, MA; Elliott, Madison, WI; Joyce Treblicot, St. Louis, MO; Susan Goldberg, Oakland, CA;
Ryn Edwards, Gambier, OH. The poster was published by Times
Change Press in 1970; both A Room of One's Own Bookstore in Madison
and New Words in Boston appear to still carry it.
Thanks, all, for sending not only the quote but such positive notes.

_________________ Correction
The painting "Diptyk, Tari Pennu: Mandala/We are all part of theWhole" by Sudie Rakusin on p. 8 of SW #34 came from a photographby Beth Karbe (© photography by Beth Karbe 1984), which weneglected to credit. We apologize for this omission.
7

D.A. Clarkeand everywhere unicorns
1.

In the passenger seat of my father's car, passing
through the deliberate ugliness of south los angeles I see
suddenly that I have been mistaken:
there are no lesbians.
There is less sign of our existence here
than there is of unicorns: the unicorn appears
ubiquitous on plastic boxes, expensive posters, t shirts; nowhere
do lesbians appear.
I move irritably in the crowded store,out of my depth, far from my own lairs and trails;
fear is corked securely in my stomach,
I do not shove people aside and run.
My face congeals beneath their stares, only my peripheral vision
catches heads turning. I imagine whispers,
ponder giggles.
I look at every short-haired woman
eagerly, as sailors they say used to strain their eyesto the thin blue promise of shore; but disappointed
I count up the necessary feminine articles,
my eyes are evaded.
I see no woman unaltered, undisguised, in all this human variety
no variety; no naked face looks back to mine,no unvarnished nails scoop up my dollars, no broad behind
strides past me in uncompromising denim.
I see shoes not made to walk in, clothes not made to work in,
women not meant to last.
My hair is buzz-cut to fur; with heavy boots and hips
and face uncamouflaged, with my missing smile
I trail behind my parents, a dancing bear
blinking and confused on its length of familial chain,shuffling awkwardly through this curious
8unfriendly crossfire of eyes.
Trying for defiance I feel my faceassume a familiar grim nonentity. I pretend
to myself that I am a foreigner, a tourist,
entertained by quaint customs, safe in the glass globe of myculture,just visiting. But
I have no country.
My language is this language, my parents
fade respectably into the human haze, my belief
is bent as iron filings court the magnet. Though I look hopefully
at any two teenage girls together, I remember not to look.
Is it alarm I read in their acceptable faces, is it disgust?
Ugly, I read in their faces, and the years of my youth
repeat it bitterly to me, ugly.
I cling to the dialectof my own, my nonexistent country:
handsome, says my lover. My people, I tell myself,
say butch. Not ugly. My people,
I tell myself, reaching for an untaught history,
for the simple dignity of a foreigner in this place.
Somewhere in LA tonight are women together without men(but you'd never know it);
I pass the bright magical images of rock heroes,
little dragons glitter under glass at the jewellery counter,
Santa Claus beams at me from all sides and the god of theChristians
proclaims his pain from pendants, from lacquered
laminate clock faces; and everywhere unicorns.
So many pictures and none of lesbians.

2.
My country is invisible as the hidden landscapes
under leaves, wide plains of moss across a stump,
towering cliffs of a crumbled log, massive cumulus of blown
foam,
neon cities of wet web slung between twigs, the vast sky
9reflected in common puddles, the artistry of eachindividual pebble.
My country is concealed
in its minute details, lesbian beauty hidden
somewhere in this jumble of stucco and cement,
revealed only to a special lens.
In individual houses, in obscure restaurants,
at unlisted numbers, behind mailboxes bearing only initials,
in the back rooms where customers won't have to look at us,
my people are lurking unnoticed as the perfectionof the plain flowers that grow along the freeway.
Under disguises so clever even we can't see through themmy people are running scaredlaying low.
My country shimmers into existence at the magiclevel meeting of eyes across a room, at a bold or shy
grin, a nod, the flash of a pinkie ring, the sightof some arcane talisman.
My country rises around me when something about two women
shopping together, sitting together, the quiet undistracted
connection
between them, conjures ancient realms, unproven warriors, thelost lands:
we have been homesick all our lives.
Two Barbies in suggestive poses, the mythic lesbians ofcenterfolds
inhabit men's eyes. I mourn my country
defoliated monthly on their newsstands,
vanishing in the dust under their loud tires,
evaporating in the killing radiationof ten million TV sets tuned to their truths.

3.
My country
fades around me. In this my childhood room
I find books of dragons, books of monsters,
pictures of angels and devils and gods
and none of lesbians.
10In the eyes of my younger self as they lookcoolly from the projeciton screen, at my mother's lens, out of time,
I see exile.
Somewhere in LA tonight are women together
in love or struggle, but first in each other's lives(but you'd never know it); like Peter Pan and Wendy
I mutter to myself tonight,'I do believe in lesbians'tdo believe in lesbians ... ' while headlights search my ceiling.
This whole cluttered, desolate shore of my past I have walked
again
looking for a bit of wood bearing the name of some ship,some obscure script curled tight in the dim heart of a bottle,
for the footprints of something once half-seen, for evidence.
And in the face of failure and of long knowledge
well-taught, that there are no lesbians;that what I am is different, yes, but nameless;that I have no country; in the teeth of the evidence
I do, I do, I do believe in lesbians.
Even in los angeles, in myoId room,
in my father's car,in the bathroom mirror.
While headlights hunt my ceiling I lie stillworking magic; I conjure Whileaway
and Lesbos and Valencia Street, I build my country
brick by brick out of thin air, create myself
and all my untaught history, I conjure my loverand our friends. With no passport,
no license, no documents and no evidence, in desperate alchemy
I stir stale lies and dusty griefs,
transmute them to defiance.
My country endures or falls by such unnatural actsof faith.

Reprinted from To Live With The Weeds by D.A. Clarke, 1985
(Herbooks, P.O. Box 7467, Santa Cruz, CA 95061).
11

Terri L. Jewell

A Call To Black Lesbian Sisters
Despite the many Feminist treatises and perspectives written
during the past decade by Black Lesbians concerning issues thatkeep Sisters separated, a conscious "skin condition" still pervades among us. Though this topic has been discussed fervently
in many arenas, treatment has been cursory in that we Black Lesbians are reluctant to face the nitty-gritty of our personal vulnerability when dealing with this particular issue.
This piece is in response to "casual conversations" addressed
to a light-skinned Black Lesbian friend of mine by darker-skinned
Black Lesbians at a 'Woman of Color Dance". The lighterskinned dyke was asked by one darker-skinned newcomer to thecommunity whether she was Cape Verdean Portuguese or not.
When the light Sister said no, the darker Sister insisted that she
MUST be Portuguese "or something" to be so fair-skinned andstill have the "grade" of hair (coarser than expected by thiswoman) that she had.
During a later "casual" conversation, this same light-skinned
Lesbian was addressed by an intoxicated and darker-skinned
friend as a "half-breed" and a "redbone".
The darker Sisters seemed to have no idea of the pain they had
inflicted. And as a result, the light-skinned Sister silently withdrew from them. I was alarmed by the ease with which thedarker-skinned dykes essentially excluded my friend from being
Black by emphasizing her light skin color. All 4 of us were in our
30's. When I attempted to explain to the dark-skinned dykes thatthey had hurt the light-skinned Sister with their labels, they eachdenied any malicious intention.
Unfortunate occurrences such as this are commonplace.
Admittedly, oppressive forces surrounding standards of beauty
and acceptability are at work and continue to wear Black womenout. Nevertheless, we must stop using this as a convenient excuse
to avoid the extraordinarily difficult work of setting ourselves
free. Unlike white people, who refer to distinctions among12themselves by hair and eye color, we do indeed use our many skincolors as an initial reference point. This is of no consequence until
we begin to attach malignant judgements and prejudiced perceptions to our own diversity.
We Black Lesbians are all too aware of one another's miseries:. ''Who does that high-yellow bitch think she is? Too pretty totalk to me?""I am the darkest one in my family and I was always made tofeel ugly and apart from my lighter sisters.""I see my fair skin as the mark of the slave master and I amvery ashamed of that.""She was a beautiful woman but too dark for my tastes.""1 feel more comfortable with white Lesbians. With my lightskin, I do not stand out as much as I do with other Black Lesbians."''When I go to the women's bars, only the other dark-skinned
dykes ask me to dance. We are usually relieved we can 'accept one
another long enough to enjoy dancing together."
These comments and a wide variety of others on the same
theme indicate that we Black Lesbians carry some level of selfloathing that may never leave us unless we undertake someserious self-examination and honest sharing. We bring thesenegative perceptions into our relationships with one another,living them out in acts of emotional and sexual game-playing,and "cannibalism" in which we consume the ones we claim tolove most in instances of treachery, gossip and deceit.
It is important we begin to really listen to how we speak of andrefer to other Black Sisters, how we critically judge by color before
we give ourselves the precious chance to learn what miracles weall are. We must cease addressing our skins first as others outside
our culture do and strive toward self-understanding and selflove. This can be quickly gained if we only take a step toward thatgoal on our own.
we must make totems
how else can the spirits feel us
how else can they know we must reachfor them in ourselves/ our spirits
roam the skies the soil & the seas
not unlike other deities/we require13homage sacrifice & offerings
those things we must give ourselves .. ..
- from "Box and Pole" by Ntozake Shange
As Black Lesbians, we must begin a hard journey toward ourselves. The excuses of the past grow weaker for us as the present
time advances. We cannot afford to continue the dance into thefires of misconception and psychic self-mutilation. White Lesbians cannot carry us. All that is required of white Lesbians is theirrecognition that we are also dykes but of a culture and spirit
different from their own.
All that is required of us as Black Lesbians is the recognition
that a Black dyke with very, very light skin is STILL BLACK andbelongs among us, and a Black dyke with very, very dark skin is
STILL BLACK and also belongs among us. We must stop waging
war against ourselves. There are too few warriors among us andmuch too few lovers. We do not have the numbers to be socareless with our own.

© 1987 JEB (Joan E. Biren)

Colevia Carter(from Making A Way: Lesbians Out Front)
14

Judith Barrington

La Bruja del Sueno*
She has one eye, slightly on the leftof her face, which is an egg.
She looks at you balefully with this eye
when you tum the cornerby the blue-white wall, where sunlightbleaches her patch of dust.
You know you should be afraidof her one-eyed stare
but you can't remember why. Does she know
about the cold springthat erupts in your belly and the outer limits
like precipitous horizons,
which you cannot yet approachand sail across, proving
once and for all you are the explorer
you claim to be?
So what if she sees all this? Still,
you wonder, why be afraid?
It must be, you think, because one eye

is considered insufficient
to see both past and future. But
she looks at you carefully
as you round the angle of the walland you know it is not so.
She sees, with her one good eye,
who the explorers are.
You fear the horizons - she will tell you so,and chuckle too, sometimes maliciously.
''But you will sail towards the edge," she says,"when the tides are right.""'The Witch in the Dream15

Ute M. Seine

Annie Wauneka's Story
Ha 'aat' iish nanina, we asked
what are you coming here forwhat are they coming here forwe asked. White man's education
like snow coming down
white sheets of paper
over our heads our hands
and never at our feetpaling the sky over the reservation
pens impaling the whitenessin a winter of reading.
A need to reverse, they saidlearning to wear white man's shoesthat strange thing, learning to turnthat strange thing that is called a bookletters on pages pressed like dead plants.
But white man is not the other
if only it were that simple
two minds two tongues
and one that is forked
but no matter, is that what we, too
become in school
do the bright ones get out estranged?
And then still nothing about
the dead Navajos at Fort Sumnereight thousand began
the long walk to submission
unlike in China where I have lived
and decimated we returned
to go on with the matter of living
after five years of nothing.

16

And then a livestock reduction
the verdict was overgrazing
from Washington, the great whitearbiter over nature, and I
reluctant but meek, translated
the papers which at first
they mistook for my voice.
Then a killing illness, TB
how did it get into the people?
Through breathing in. The bug
the white man brought was living now
in our dirt, was going into our lungs
was killing us. No healing way of ours
could kill their disease. It took
the pencil-like filaments of penicillin
to wipe out the bug. And I told the storyof the bug in every hogan until all thosebugs were dead.

Dr. Annie Wauneka is the only Navajo woman to ever sit on the Navajo
Tribal Council (she is no longer on it). She traveled to China to study
health practices and was instrumental in ridding the Navajos of tuberculosis.
17Victoria Rosales

The Earth

I want to step over
the ''No Trespassing" sign
to hide in the wheat field
where the sun shines high at noon
I want to roast
my naked bodyfeel the earth
I'm a landless Indian
drunk with one glassof cheap vodka and ice
confinedin a pair of new tennis shoes

18

Elizabeth ClareThink Twice Before You
Call Me Courageous Again
Glass walls. For the first six weeks of my life, I lived in an
I would scoot myself into a corner, jamming my headagainst the glass wall, and scream until a nurse moved me. My
parents watched from the door of the preemie ward; they didn't
hold me until I was four weeks old. Early on, a nurse told them,''You can always tell which ones will live. Your baby, she's afighter. She'll live."
I didn't walk until I was two or talk until I was three. So when
I was two-and-a-half, my parents took me to Fairview State Hospital to find out what was "wrong" with me. In flashes I remember long corridors and doctors' white coats and being on a physical therapist's table, so afraid of falling off and of what he'd do tome. As a result, they told my parents that I was "dull normal toretarded." A couple years later when it was clear that I wasn't"retarded," Grandma would tell me, "God made you smart tocompensate for your handicap."
Age 12, I went to Cripple Children's Division for more testing
and finally learned that I had cerebral palsy. Until then, we didn't
know what caused my shaking or lack of coordination. We
always simply said that I had a handicap, which for a long time I
thought was a word my family made up particularly to describe
me. I can still hear the silence in that room after the physicaltherapist said the words cerebral palsy.
But I don't want this to be a memory piece where I put my life
into chronological order. I didn't have the words cerebral palsy
until I was 12 or the word ableism until a few years ago. What do
those words mean? Where does honesty lie now that the silence isriding its way out?
For years the words brave, courageous, and inspirational filledthat silence. I sit here at my typewriter and stare at my face in thenight-black window, trying to explain those three words. All mylife as I have written or run or done door-to-door fundraising ori~cubator.

19

walked across the country with the Great Peace March, people
have called me brave or courageous or inspirational because I
have CPo In response, I usually tell them that I simply live in the
body I was born into and do the things I want/ need to do just as
they do, that I don't believe much in courage, and that theirpatronizing isn't welcome. But I wonder if anyone really listens
to me. Most people end up trying to hide their discomfort behindvery set and determined definitions of courage, bravery, and inspiration. In doing so, they never see me as a peer but as someone
who has "overcome her handicap."
When I think of the word overcome, I think of the years I spent
avoiding mirrors and my reflection in night-black windows. I
didn't want to be reminded of my hands that don't bendsmoothly or move with any grace. I wished to be - or at least to
appear - "normal," meaning people wouldn't stare in restaurants, banks, grocery stores, meaning I wouldn't have to ask formore time on timed tests because I write very slowly, meaning I
wouldn't have to explain why my hands tremble, why I talkslowly, don't enunciate clearly. One day I wished I could cut off
my right arm so it wouldn't shake. Overcoming is amputation.*
I think of a story Mom tells: when I was a year old, Grandmacame from Michigan to take care of the family while Mom recovered from a kidney operation. Every afternoon Grandma tried torock me to sleep. I would cry and wrestle to get off her lap, but she
insisted on holding me. After weeks of this, I finally let her rockme. I clearly see myself as that little girl's inheritor, not letting
anyone hold me until I can't resist needing the comfort anymore.
To be held means letting another person feel my shaking, the way
tension rises with the shaking, and how it locks into my back andshoulders and right arm. Sometimes the tension is worse whenpeople touch me. Somewhere I learned tp.at I had to hide theshaking, to pass in the world and to myself. Now I want to learn
how not to pass, how to crack the glass walls. Overcoming isliving behind those glass walls .

.. After I wrote this line, I started to think about people who have had limbs
amputated and how for them amputation must mean something entirely different, possibly akin towhatCPmeans tome.

20

I think of a camping trip we took when I was nine. I stood in a
fie14 surrounded by playmates from the night before. They
taunted me, ''Monkey, retard, weirdo." I couldn't do anything,
couldn't convince them that I wasn't, and couldn't run fastenough to get away from them. Finally Dad came along, and thekids scattered, leaving me sobbing and feeling like a monkey. I
didn't let anyone comfort that out of me. Overcoming is tellingthat story so matter-of-factly that I forget how my nine-year-old
self felt.
More recently something else has happened with the word
courageous that is totally unconnected to the word overcome.
Women whom I love and respect have called me courageous, andI have listened, maybe because they're listening to me, not just to
my disability or their own discomfort. From my journal:l/20-Still at Woman Share. A thing from yesterday: thatman who came looking for the Johnsons while M and I werealone in the main house, he was obviously lost and needed
directions. He couldn't/wouldn't understand me; eachtime I spoke to him, he'd turn to M and ask her to repeat what
I had just said, basically asking her to translate for him. M
refused, telling him to ask me. Later M came up to my cabin,
and we talked for a long while in the loft. There is part of me
that is overwhelmed by her listening and noticing. When I
talk to her about ableism, I begin to see my own growing
honesty and understanding. To explore my self-doubt, tocall it self-doubt, to hear M say, "I think he was discounting
you," to hear her talk about moving away from the word
handicap, all amazes me.
I have accepted the word courage from M.
I wonder why her listening feels so new and unfamiliar, andthen I remember high school. I ran long-distance on the crosscountry and track teams. I was a slow runner with a great deal of
endurance and came in last in many races. Afterwards strangers
would frequently come up to me and put an uninvited arm
around me and tell me how brave or inspirational I was. Some ofthose invasions left me close to tears, not knowing what to do or
how to react. When I came home, still upset with these incidents,
my parents would tell me that I had to accept people's "compli21

ments." Their answer always left me unsettled, angry, and feeling like they weren't listening, that no one really listened. But I
could never explain. I grew to believe that I half-deserved thepatronizing and had to accept people's inevitable reactions, nomatter how invasive they felt. In the end my discomfort became
my personal problem rather than a reaction to someone else's
ableism.
In contrast to those years, there are whole days now of listening where I stop believing the lies. Last week I ate dinner with afriend who probably knows pieces of this story as well as I do, andas usual our conversation turned to the personal politics of beinga Black lesbian and a disabled lesbian in this world. She had acouple of stories about racism, and I had a few about ableism.
They weren't new or unusual stories but ones that we don't telloften. I was telling her about a woman who had called me "dear"
but so clearly meant "cripple," and she said, ''You could easily
insert the word nigger there." Somehow we started laughing
hysterically at the thought of "dear nigger, dear cripple." Neither
word is funny, but we both knew exactly what the other meant.
As I tell the stories and see women listening to the abelism andlaugh and cry with them, the cracks in the glass wall grow; I begin
to look steadily at ableism and learn not to pass. My father said
once in a restaurant as people stared at me, "It is their problem,
not yours." He was right and still is, but my answer then was topretend that the staring didn't exist, which meant that I could
pretend that I didn't have CP, that I was "normal." Now I am
learning to stare right back at those people, not hiding my hands,
until they stop calling me a courageous cripple with their eyes oruntil they ask me an honest question. I still can't do it every time,
but it is a long way from the girl who pretended to be "normal"
while quietly and unconsciously absorbing all the stares. I want
to see the glass walls shatter into splinters.
But passing is also about my own discomfort, not just otherpeople's. Lying with a new lover after making love, my right arm
begins to tremble, and I pull away, trying to stop the shaking, so
she won't feel it. Tension rises through my arm and shoulder. I
don't know what she thinks of my body, of the trembling, of myhands that don't travel smoothly over her body. I want to hide, topass yet again. Then she turns to me and asks, 'What does the22trembling feel like?" She asks this as she has asked many questioI;lS in the past three days. Her words push at the glass wall andtell me, "1 can see through this glass wall, but I want more. I want
to be on the other side with you." To answer her will take a longtime, but I want to begin. Later she says, "1 like when your hands
tremble over me. It feels good, like extra touching." The glass
wall has shattered; the splinters will demand my attention later,
but for the moment let me remember that passing isn't evenfuhctional here. If I pass, or even try, I do it because of mydiscomfort, not hers.
In the end, not passing means telling the truth, wearing myself, a lesbian woman with disabilities, as strongly as I can. If
there is any courage in me, it isn't in what I do but in living withthe words courageous cripple and laughing and being angry. It is adaily, ordinary kind of courage.

a lesbian quarterly
Stories, journals, graphics, essays, humor, poetry,autobiography, and more . ..
The experiences and ideas of common Lesbians.
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COMMON LIVES

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23

Cheryl Marie Wade

I Am Not One of The

I am not one of the physically challenged
I'm a sock in the eye with gnarled fist
I'm a French kiss with cleft tongue
I'm orthopedic shoes sewn on a last of your fears
I am not one of the differently abled
I'm an epitath for a million imperfect babies left untreated
I'm an ikon carved from bones in a mass grave at Tiergarten,
Germany
I'm withered legs hidden with a blanket
I am not one of the able-disabled
I'm a black panther with green eyes and scars like a picket fence
I'm pink lace panties teasing a stub of milk-white thighI'm the Evil Eye
I'm the first cell divided
I'm mud that talks
I'm Eve I'm Kali
I'm The Mountain That Never Moves
I've been here forever I'll be here forever
I'm The Gimp
I'm The Cripple
I'm The Crazy Lady
I'm The Woman With Juice24

Adrienne Lauby

Job Description: Disabled (3)"Must be able to effectively imitate enjoyment
of enforced isolation."In the long days
when the wolves of pain
are the only ones
to share your home,
Lie still.
Twisting leaves you tired.
Make your face blank.
Hide bitterness though
the cost is laughter.
The third time you call wolf
no one comes but the wolves.
Others say they really can't
and if
The wolves were so terrible
surely by now
you'd be eaten.

25© Barbara Johnson

Jean at the Gala
26

Caryatis Cardea

class(to white feminists of class privilege)•

1 move among you as though i belong
i have matched my vocabulary.to our mutual skin color
you layout your assumptions
like cushions for me
but for me to recline on the comfort of your memories
is a lie betraying all the broken springsof my past
for all my years in your movement i have heldclosely guarded in my breast pocket
what is too heavy for my heart to carrya treasure of strength and pain
an embarrassment
a perverse pride
the memory of poverty
dinner for nine from a box of com flakes
sleep sought on a mattress atop an old bureau
my mother's smilea straining of muscle
threatens to crack tissue and bone pulled
ever downward
by the anvil-weightof weariness
you brew your collective goals
and pass the cup to me
how can i share your dreams
tepid though they are they would steep away
my rough edges
leaving a shell polished to reflect your own
27

but we do not mirror reciprocallyas a child you slept on linens
laundered by my motheryour discards even
were too fine for me to wear
while you cultivated a shuddered responseto the words
shit
and vomit
i cleaned up their realities
at what point do our lives
touch
how will we survive the crossing
my coarseness will scar you
as your smoothness has wounded mecourage will be required of you
not as of a cloak
but as of a nakedness
if you will know my life
but hear thisless courage than i've needed to live it
i will move among you and belong
to myself.

28

Jasmine Marah

Fanny Finds Out
a true story
Fanny stood in front of the mirror, hiking up the starched-butnot-ironed skirt of her white cotton nurse's uniform. She'd always wanted to be a nurse. A pin here to hold up the hem ought
to do. It was getting late - almost six 0' clock. Ridgeview Manor
Nursing Horne was out in the country, and the bus that went
there only passed her corner once an hour. She ran out into thepale Kalamazoo dawn. The July day would stearn up later, andher curly, wild hair would really frizz. But for now it was cool andsweet out.
Kalamazoo! What a name! Fanny hadn't believed it, sittingin hip L.A. in 1964. When her boyfriend suggested that she should
corne with him so that he could go to school, she hadn't believed
it. Thought he was joking. Thought Kalamazoo went with Timbuctoo - rhyme words in a children's story. Three weeks later,
she was back in the 50's in Kalamazoo. That was three months
ago.
The bus carne. Fanny remembered her marna's advice when
she heard where her daughter was going to go. Be careful. In the
Midwest they think Jews have horns. But Fanny hadn't a clue about
how to be careful.
She still winced when she remembered Miss Peadon's voicefrom the sixth grade. Miss Peadon had called her "Jew" as though
Jew was her first name. "Jew, it's your turn to read - don't
slouch. Jew, can you do that problem? Write neatly."
Later, in high school, her gym coach snarled, ''You, Fanny, getout of the shower. You Jews always take more than your share."
She couldn't believe it could be worse anywhere else.
Fanny had been relieved to get the nurse's aide job at
Ridgeview. It was a real step up from the factory jobs she'd held
previously. She worked nine hours a day, for a dollar an hour.
Her schedule was fourteen days in a row, two days off and thenanother fourteen-day shift. There were no male employees, so all
the care of the male patients was done by the "girls." A nurse's
29aide had the care of the bodies and rooms of seven patients who
were too disabled to care for themselves. There were no Jewish
patients and no other Jewish workers.
She thought that the other aides working there, mostly black
wi min, were her friends. She got along with them. The whitesupervisor, Miss Louella Jones, had been a perfect bitch and nag
the whole time. Her voice was shrill sometimes, gruff other times.
If Fanny fed a patient carefully, for sure Miss Jones would pipe,"Hurry up, Fanny. You've got behind on your work as usua1."
When Fanny mopped the floors, Miss Jones might snap, "Lesswater, Fanny. It's not a swimming poo1." So Fanny used a barely
damp mop and Miss Jones snarled, "This is a hospita1." (Itwasn't.) ''You've got to get the floors wet to get them clean."
Or take Monday's fiasco. Miss Jones approached Fanny all
smiles, and Fanny wondered what was coming. ''What's thematter, Fanny? Dontcha like me? All the other girls call me
Louella." So at lunch that day, Fanny said, "Uh ... Louella, could
you please pass the salt?" Suddenly Louella growled in a rage at
Fanny, ''Who do you think you are?! I'm your supervisor. You're
to talk to me with respect. It's Miss Jones to you."
Outside of that, Fanny liked the work, and learned quickly
from Mary, an older black womon who expressed genuine pleasure at the younger womon's deferential, respectful attitude
towards her. Mary was soft and warm and efficient. Often she
would come to Fanny and say, "Come on and team up with me,
gir1."
Fanny was happiest on these days for she and Mary worked
side by side all day, first doing Mary's patients and then Fanny's.
The patients loved Mary. She never seemed to keep anyone
waiting, yet gave each one her special pat or word. Fanny had totrot to keep up with the stately womon, yet Mary seemed togently glide everywhere. Mary's voice was low and clear, neverharried. She didn't say much, just moved with sureness throughthe day.
At eighteen, Fanny was the youngest womon working in this"convalescent" home for the upper middle class. Fanny couldn't
figure out the convalescent part. As far as she could see, no one
there ever got wel1. They either died at the "Home" or went to thehospital and died there.
30

Fanny got off of the bus with about 15 minutes to spare before
her ~hift. She went into the dining room and sat at a table with theother nurse's aides from her shift. They were all smoking andtalking and drinking their pre-shift coffee.
Miss Jones offered Fanny a Winston.
"Come on, Fanny, have one of these - it's filtered."
She was immediately suspicious, knowing that Miss Jones
disliked her. Miss Jones would never share anything with her.
-''Yeah, Fanny. What you smoke those Camels for? They a
man's cigarette," added Teresa Lynn, an aide Fanny had neverworked with.
Fanny blushed. The truth was she smoked the Camels because Miss VanClaire, a rich old womon in a private room, gavethem to her. Miss VanClaire was a retired professor and quite
independent. She always held a cane in one hand which she used
to poke the girls with when they didn't do what she wanted. One
day Fanny was fixing Miss VanClaire's hair and attempting to
avoid the cane when she felt a hand reach up under her uniform
to pat her on the bottom and feel her garters. She looked down inshocked surprise into the wickedest grin she'd ever see on theface of an adult. Fanny would never have told, but Miss
VanClaire believed the Camels were a bribe for her silence.
Everyone at the noisy table became unnaturally quiet. Usually four conversations went on at once, but now everyone waslistening to Louella and Teresa Lynn. Fanny had been the last to
sit down and she was suddenly aware that she had been gossiped
about; she was frightened. She thought of her wrinkled uniform
and frizzy hair and knew they could rag her about her messy.
appearance.
All of a sudden, Teresa Lynn said, "Fanny, you not white. You
a colored girl! You just trying to pass for white. You trying topretend you not one of us. You don't fool me."She felt like she was outside, watching the scene. Fanny's
surprise was palpable. All her life she had disliked and mistrusted white people. She had never wanted to be white and had
never considered herself white, but had been called white alongwith other European Jews.
''No ma'am!" Fanny spluttered, deferential as always to theolder wimin.
31

She floundered. "I'm not trying to pass. I'd never do that. I'd
be proud if I were black""Oh yeah. Sure, sure," they all chuckled, as they rose anddrifted off to their work
Left alone, she realized that, to the the wimin she'd thought
were her allies, Jews didn't exist. They couldn't understand thatanyone would be their ally who wasn't "one of them." Fanny got
up and went to work The next morning she quit.

"With thanks to Cath Thompson for computer games and the Jewish
Lesbian Writing Group for critique.

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32

Jano

Stalin's Big Brush Mustache
Jeannie,
I write you to make sense of those 2 1/2 years.
Dogmatism ate us raw
Chewed the gristle off our bones:
What made us give up our sexuality
And me, my art and Jewishness?
Remember Alix from Seattle?
We met here at Big Sur this weekend,
Six years ago, we argued at Point Reyes
She wouldn't read Origins of the Family"It was written by a man"
I tried to cram it down her throat
She wouldn't swallow: of course she was wrong
I ended it there.
Now we meet again at Big Sur
Last night we camped in a field of allergies
I woke up soggy and sneezing remembering our old fightYou know, THEY told us"the heterosexual family is the correct form in this period"
How did Alix resist
While we took it in?
Having no lover, it was easier for me.
Yet you, Jeannie, jilted your lover for a line.
But all the correct politics in China
Could not ease the pain of going straight
No political re-education in the countryside like the Chinese
You and Margaret gave in to attraction
Stealing kisses at the beach
Guilty, you turned yourselves in
To lengthy meetings and long reports
The sea lions are barking here on Point Lobos
Welcome dogs
Ochre and burnt sienna playing with the fog
33

Then, we heard shrill barking dogs
They gave us few choices
Remember when I questioned my leader'What about Stalin?
Look what he did to the Jews."
She angrily scolded me for doubting the line
After all
"Stalin was 70% correct"
So he grabbed the other 30%
Rolled it tightly into a broomstick
And swept the Jews and Kulaks away.
Guilty too, I buried my Jewish past
Overlooking any radical tradition
Ignoring antisemitism
Seeing only Jewish shopkeepers in minority neighborhoods
As if passing for Anglo
Would make me guiltless
And somehow international
The cypress are sturdy here on Pt. Lobos
like rough green fingers knuckling the ocean
My green painting - is it still on your wall?
I remember you let it hang "politically incorrect" all those years
You know, it's been five years since I pushed all my abstract
paintings into a dumpster
Forced to give up my "class privilege"
I threw out art with the bourgeoisie
As if no art would better "serve the people"
Why, Jeannie, did we think that way?
What made us give up everything
our sexuality
and me my art and Jewishness?

34

Minnie Bruce Pratt#67 To Be Posted on 21st Street, Between
Eye and Pennsylvania
Take this poem down. You can take it andread it. I wrote it for you passing by, you
standing at the grey plywood construction
wall where it happened. If you'd been here, what
would you have done? Believe me, it was not fun.
And I had been happy, supper at the Trieste
around the corner, that nice Italian place,cheap cheese ravioli. Was pleasantly handin hand with my lover, walking to Eye and 21st,back to the car. Happy despite hard glances.
angled eyes of two women, next table, unused
to seeing two people together like us. But
we went on, happy. It was a triumph of love.
Holding hands in the street's raw pink glow,
a little like the movies, slow motion angle
on us stepping into the flimsy sidewalk tunnel,
tunnel of love, wedding arch, arc de triomphe
after the war, secret passage, honeysuckle
arbor, except it was us in the blunt echo
off the boards, laughing, at walk in the city,
Saturday night.
When some young white men
passed and began to talk at us, derisive.
University, not hard hat, if that's what you
are thinking. Or maybe you're one of them,reading this now. Why did you try shame?
The mock: I can't believe it. Can't believe
it. They're holding hands . Six to us two.
A tongue's scratch scratch, trying to get at
our hearts. Like a movie, sudden threat.
Predictable. I get so tired of this disbelief.

35

My tongue, faithful in my mouth, said: Yes, we are.
The shout: Lesbians. Lesbians. Trying to curse
us with our name. Me louder: That's what we are.
Around the corner, empty street. Nobody carnewith rocks, or dogs. Alone and glad of it,
still holding hands. Around the corner screamed
a car, the men, shouts: Dykes, dykes. Have you
ever tried to frighten someone out of their life?
Just having a good time, like shooting at ducks
down by the Bay, or at the office telling jokes.
Nothing personal except to the ones getting hit,other side of the threat.
But this is a poem
about love, so I should say: In the torn silence
we stood, in the night street, and kissed, solemn,sweet as any engagement party or anniversary,stern as the beginning or end of a country's war,in the risk of who knows who might corne and see
us in the open, isolate, tender, exchanging a kiss,a triumph like no other.
I hope you, here,
have read through, didn't crumple or tear thisup the middle at lesbian. I hope you carefully
took this poem down and read it. Now it' s a poem
about you, about how there can be a triumph of love.

for Joan

36

Minnie Bruce Pratt#65

Parked Down by the Potomac

We don't say we're too old for this.
Instead I pick you up at your house, slide
over to passenger, and you're driving
me around at midnight, straight scotch,
bourbon and water in glasses engraved
B, from no wedding of ours.
Parkeddown by the Potomac, we drink and talkabout football and politics by the greygreen cold molten luminescent water.
Your tongue probes my mouth, hot, hotter.
Making out down by the river, like back home,no truck, but you in your baseball cap, toughand dykey like no one else who ever droveme anywhere. Your wide small hands cover
my side, hot.
Covering me: was the beginningthen? We disagree on how to count the years,
but here we are by one of our calendars,
end of the summer, September, starting up again.
The crickets complain, somewhat pitiful,
and we don't care.
.
We drive off, windows
down, you with bare forearms, sleeves rolled up,
seductive with hidden soft inner elbows.
Your hands turn and glimmer on the wheel.
We talk and I watch, wanting your hands on me,
wanting you to turn me over, over, turn me.

for Joan
37

Ruthann Robson

closurePerhaps it is because I've never been athletic, preferring to sit on
the sidelines watching women's legs; preferring to be among theperceivers rather than among the perceived;
Perhaps it is because at thirteen, I could look between nine andnineteen with the right eyeliner and modeled for Seventeen
magazine;
Perhaps it is because my hair is so blonde, so curly, so childish andit still grows so quickly;
Perhaps it is "just because": the rationale of the cornered when
all is disconnected;
Or perhapt it just is;
Or perhaps it isn't.
What makes me think it is:
Skipping down the boardwalk, holding hands. I am always thebolder one. I stroke her hip, kiss her mouth. I think she is more
beautiful than the ocean.
But it is always me the summer boys grab. They push her away,
telling her I am too pretty to be one of her kind. They do not claim
me as one of their own, rather as something owned.
What makes me think it isn't:
The Women's Hospitality Lounge is crowded with professionals
sipping coffee, networking, looking each other over as if we are
not competitors. She swaggers toward my table, cruising whilebalancing the thick cup and saucer.
After bed, I ask her what made her walk over. She says: "My kindof dyke is one who knows how to apply eye make-up. I learned
cosmetology in prison."
What makes me think:It's a gay "mixed" bar in Miami and I'm dancing dirty with mygirlfriend Felipa and feeling safe and slightly drunk and sweaty
with passion. I'm trying to focus my eyes deep into her irises in38

the dank light, so I don't see whoever they are until they are
already dragging me outside. They tell me my kind doesn't
belong in a place like this and slap my face with the back of large
ringed hands and tear my tropical-weight jeans, laughing at myabsence of underwear.
Ice on my cheek, I ponder my transgression: was I too Anglo? tootight with my Cuban lover? too queer? not queer enough?
Vision is often equated with perception: as if the only sensewere sight.
Only my lovers smell me, touch me, taste me.
Only the waitresses at my usual breakfast place listen to me.
Everyone else looks.
And when lovers and waitresses look at me, I cringe ..
Inside.
Outside, I am impassive.

What lovers ask:
when I wear eyeliner: are you trying to pass, girl?
when I dance: are you like that in bed, woman?
when I leave: what are you so afraid of, child?
What waitresses say:when I wear eyeliner: you look nice today.
when I sit down: you'll have the usual.
when I leave: see you tomorrow.
Inside and outside of the restaurant;
inside and outside of the bedroom;
the sense of closure wraps itself around me as if it believes it
is protective.
But I do not want to be protected.
Usually.
That seventh sense, closure, allows people to impose their
expectations upon their perception of me.
People see what they expect to see.
I become enclosed;
encircled.

My lover and I are at the skating rink on a rainy Saturday
39

afternoon with our children.
Yes, we have children.
We hold the children's hands, supporting them.
We hold each other's hands, steadying ourselves.
We skate the oval, first one way and then, as instructed, theother: around & around & around . .
I like to pretend that people are so involved with the turning of
their own wheels that they do not see us: my own seventh sense
involves much unrealistic expectation.
It's my sixth sense that is relentlessly realistic: as the people
order and reorder their worlds as they look at us;
as they reject one hypothesis because of the children and thenresurrect it as I pat my lover on the ass.
The skaters look and then pretend they are not looking.
Someone looks, but doesn't pretend he is not looking.
I look to check that the exits are still where they were a halfminute ago.
My lover looks at me and I look back; knowing that we need toprotect the children from more than falling;knowing that in certain spaces the children protect us;
knowing that stereotypes travel under their own power.
There are stereotypes that travel through time.
And if I could travel through time?
I know I don't look like a Fifties femme: I don't shave my legs
and my bones are too large and I can't pluck my eyebrows andpumps make my feet swell in summer.
I know I don't look like a Fifties butch: I can't drink beer andI don't shoot pool and my nose bleeds during fist fights evenwhen I win.
In the last lights of the Eighties, I become preoccupied with thestereotype I'd choose - or which one would choose me - if I'dbeen loving in 1954:a year I wasn't born.
I don't want to look back.
I don't want to look.
I don't want to be looked at.
I am afraid to be invisible.
40

I am afraid of photographs,of every photographer I have ever known,of the techniques of posing and being posed,of the formulas for chemicals which birth images.
I want to dismember photographs into such tiny flecks it will be
as if the shutter never clicked,
but I know there is no need to destroy that which never was.

a photograph from her exhibit:
Ocean in background.
A full term pregnant nude open mouthed kissing another naked
woman.
Caption: they must be old friends .
In the feminist gallery, I don't know whether I am relieved or
annoyed that no one seems to recognize me, not even thephotographer with her glass of drambuie.
A man I've never seen before walks up to me and tells me I'm themost stunning woman he's ever seen. I tell him I'm atransvestite.
a dark place, not alone
I've often thought that if I closed my eyes, I couldn't be seen.
He hired my lover and me for "studio work," but then brought
out video equipment. I objected.
He told me to keep my fucking eyes open.
She kissed me. She spread my thighs.
He locked her in a closet. He fucked me.
There was not enough light for any lens yet invented.
Still, I always expect to see a still-shot of myself in every
porn-shop window;
on the dresser of a woman not-yet-met;
in a Christmas card from a relative.
undocumented memory
We set the timer on the Nikon in hopes that we'd get aphotograph of the three of us. We have been friends and former
lovers for a long time. One of us is dying. We each live in
different parts of the country. We met at Garvey's house almostby accident. We want to document this event, which might be ourlast time together.
41

We pose. We clown. We imagine that we look like lesbian angels.
Only after we have all driven at least a day away, one of us will
discover there was no film in the camera. The other women will
not be told; not yet.
When our second baby was born, the fontanels of her skull
refused to close. The soft spot on her head stayed soft; open.
There were forms from hospitals, doctors, insurance companies- forms that had lines in the wrong places.
There was some confusion: but not on our part.
There was something that resisted closure: long after the spot on
her head became solid enough to risk roller skating.
We never take her photograph;never send it to long lost relatives on holidays.
We never wonder what people see when they look at her;
what people think of her.
We never tell her what she looks like;or think about her before she was born;or dress her in clothes the color of heavily creamed coffee.
We never tell her to wear eye make-up; we never tell her not to.
We take her to our usual restaurant.
She is talking so loudly about her jump-shot with a half-second
remaining during last night's basketball game that we cannot
pretend people do not notice us.
But this morning, we are too hungry to be concerned about
perceptions.
The food finally comes.
"Close your mouth when you chew," we tell her.
Defiantly, she opens her mouth round and wide as a pancake.

42

Charlene S. Henderson

TEXAS '52
Texas was a fat, blonde whore that summer, who smoked cheap
cigarettes and wore brassy make-up; who stood under a street
light and beckoned to strangers - and you and I - well, she'dgotten in our blood.
We drove around in a candy-apple red Lincoln, brand newconvertible with the top turned down - me, Jimmy Dean, all
duck-tail and denim; you - Marilyn-alcoholic innocence. I'dsteer with one hand while you sat with your back to me - my arm
around you, hand cupping your breast, while you crossed yourlegs and stuck sandaled feet out the window.
We'd drive across the desert tankin' up on Bud and Schlitz,
every twenty minutes pullin' over to the side.
"Nature call!" you'd giggle and squat behind the open car
door.
"Now, don't look!" you'd warn me - and I'd jump over andleer at you and shout at nobody in particular: "Hey! Gotta lady
over here takin' a leak!" Then you'd hurry and stand (as if
someone was comin'!) and I'd watch you tryin' to pull up yourdrawers ...
And if you could see yourself, little girl in woman package,heels all muddy from pee and sand - tryin' to wriggle up into
these size too small drawers - then, you'd know why I lovedyou.
I remember makin' love under a big black cauldron thatsomebody had poked with pin-pricks of silver. Wasn't nothin'
bigger than a Texas sky, nothin' sweeter than my breasts against
yours; my ass against sky, your ass against leather.
And when the hiway patrolman caught us by surprise, you
whispered in my ear, "Don't say a word ..." and you held me sotight that I couldn't breathe, " ... and for God's sake, don't let him
see your tits!"''Well, what we got here?" I could hear his soft drawl.
You gave him your sweetest smile (I'd have killed for thatsmile), and hugged my face to your breast.
43

"Well, offisuh," you drawled in an Ann-Margaret voice, "he'sjust a baby boy. Can't blame this boy for a little lovin'; not undera moon as big as this one - not under a sky as huge as this - canya? I mean . .. perfect settin' for your first time."
He rubbed his chin and looked at the moon.
"Yeah," he said, sorta soft and low, like maybe he knew firsthand 'bout a night like this, "First time oughta be like this foreverybody, with the moon lookin' down and the sky for a ceilin'."
Then, he grabbed your breast and tweaked, and you held me
down and smothered my protest.
"Don't get greedy, sonny!" he called as he left us, thenclimbed into his car and drove away.
I held my head up, mad as hell, and sputterin'.
"Why, that goddam bastard! I'll break his fuckin' neck ... "And I could feel your body shakin' under mine, laughin' (ortryin' hard not to).
"Aw, c'mon - SONNY!" and you pulled me to you, and thenI started gigglin' .. .
.. .and making love that night was a place just short of Heaven- wasn't no thin' ever as good as you that night. The moon got big
and bright and filled up the whole sky; that moon was as big as
Texas itself. That moon was a Goddess lookin' down at us
laughin' - pleased with our gift of sweat and come. And when
we screamed ...
I ain't never felt a scream like that.
That scream started at the base of my spine, crackled up to myshoulders and spread down my arms; and I thought I was hurt in'you, I was squeezin' so hard - and you was cryin', I was cryin',bodies shakin' like we had the D.T.s .. . that scream cut throughthat prairie night and swallowed it.
When it was over, the sun was inchin' up. You'd gone to sleep
under me, and I'd woke with a start, 'cause I'd always pictured
you this tiny, fragile thing. But as I lay playin' with this wisp ofyour hair, kissin' your eyelids and smilin' (at this gaudy-assed
lipstick you insisted on wearin' -rememberin', jeez, it musta' been
all over my face, between my thighs, on my tits), I got to thinkin'.
An' I thought about how I was s'posed to be so damn butchy- with my denim, and leather, and studs, and my ducktail; andyou, with your heels, your make-up, and skirts; your soft-talkin',44

the way you pouted your lips when you wanted your way; theway you tQuched your hair when you talked . . . you, so very
much, this hot smoldering woman ...
I got to thinkin'.
Thinkin' bout the time when we didn't have no money an'needed gas, and you tore out the station with the nozzle in thetank.
Thinkin' how you made me git out on the floor an' dance withyou at the sweetheart dance - didn't care who saw we was two
women - you threw your arms around me and ground yourbody against mine. And when somebody murmured, "fuckin'bulldaggin' dykes", your body went rigid, your eyes flashedlightnin', and you grew what seemed to be ten feet tall- and you
read that cowboy like he was the Morning Times, til he couldn't
do nothin' but turn red and fidget; and everybody called you"m'am" after that (didn't know quite what to call me, but that wasokay) and took their hats off when we walked by.
Well, I got to thinkin' bout all that, and got to thinkin', maybe,
this butch/femme stuff wasn't quite rule of thumb-maybe
leather didn't make you a tough broad, or silk a sissy; got torealizin' that maybe I was always on top 'cause you let me be, andhow soft and warm you made me feel, like sometimes I wanted
to wear long, flowin' skirts, and look pretty just for you.
I kissed you softly. Your eyelids fluttered open, and you
stretched and held me to you. Gettin' dressed was a dance of coy
looks and blushes. The sun was gettin' brighter in a hot, red sky.
I looked at you applyin' that last touch of mascara, puttin'your lipstick back in your make-up kit, and I remembered thenight.
Then I reached for the keys in my cowboy jacket pocket;
raised your hand to my mouth, placed a kiss on your palm dropped them in your outstretched palm, and said, "this time you drive."

45

Marilyn Frye

Lesbian "Sex"l

The reasons the word "sex" is in quotation marks in my title are
two: one is that the term "sex" is an inappropriate term for what
lesbians do, and the other is that whatever it is that lesbians dothat (for lack of a better word) might be called "sex" we apparently do damned little of it. For a great many lesbians, the gap
between the high hopes we had some time ago for lesbian sex andthe way things have worked out has turned the phrase "lesbiansex" into something of a bitter joke. I don't want to exaggerate
this: things aren't so bad for all lesbians, or all of the time. But inour communities as a whole, there is much grumbling on thesubject. It seems worthwhile to explore some of the meanings ofthe relative dearth of what (for lack of a better word) we calllesbian "sex.">
Recent discussions of lesbian "sex" frequently cite the findingof a study on couples by Blumstein and Schwartz 2, which is perceived by most of those who discuss it as having been done well,with a good sample of couples - lesbian, male homosexual,
heterosexual non-married and heterosexual married couples.
These people apparently found that lesbian couples "have sex"
far less frequently than any other type of couple, that lesbian
couples are less "sexual" as couples and as individuals thananyone else. In their sample, only about one-third of lesbians inrelationships of two years or longer "had sex" once a week ormore; 47% of lesbians in long-term relationships "had sex" oncea month or less, while among heterosexual married couples only
15% had sex once a month or less. And they report that lesbians
seem to be more limited in the range of their "sexual" techniques
than are other couples .
• When I speak of "we" and "our communities," I actually don't know exactly
who that is. Iknow only that land my lover are not the only ones whose concerns
I address, and that similar issues are being discussed in friendship circles andcommunities other than ours (as witness, e.g., discussion in the pages of the
Lesbian Connection). If what I say here resonates for you, so be it. If not, at least
you can know it resonates for some range oflesbians and some of them probably
are your friends or acquaintances.

46

When this sort of information first came into my circle oflesbian friends, we tended to see it as conforming to what weknow from our own experience. But on reflection, looking again
at what has been going on with us in our long-term relationships,
the nice fit between this report and our experience seemed not so
perfect after all.
It was brought to our attention during our ruminations on
this that what 85% of long-term heterosexual married couples domore than once a month takes on the average 8 minutes to do.3
Although in my experience lesbians discuss their "sex" lives
with each other relatively little (a point to which I will return), I
know from my own experience and from the reports of a few
other lesbians in long-term relationships, that what we do that, on
average, we do considerably less frequently, takes, on average,
considerably more than 8 minutes to do. It takes about 30 minutes, at the least. Sometimes maybe an hour. And it is notuncommon that among these relatively uncommon occurrences,an entire afternoon or evening is given over to activities organized around doing it. The suspicion arises that what 85% ofheterosexual married couples are doing more than once a monthand what 47% of lesbian couples are doing less than once a monthis not the same thing.
I remember that one of my first delicious tastes of old gay
lesbian culture occurred in a bar where I was getting acquainted
with some new friends. One was talking about being busted outof the Marines for being gay. She had been put under suspicion
somehow, and was sent off to the base psychiatrist to be questioned, her perverted tendencies to be assessed. He wanted toconvince her she had only been engaged in a little youthfulexperimentation and wasn't really gay. To this end, he questioned her about the extent of her experience. What he asked was,"How many times have you had sex with a woman?" At this, we
all laughed and giggled: what an ignorant fool. What does hethink he means, "times?" What will we count? What's to count?
Another of my friends, years later, discussing the same conundrum, said that she thought maybe every time you got up to
go to the bathroom, that marked a "time." The joke about "howmany times" is still good for a chuckle from time to time in my life
with my lover. I have no memory of any such topic providing any
such merriment in my years of sexual encounters and relation47

ships with men. It would have been very rare indeed that wewould not have known how to answer the question "How manytimes did you do it?"If what heterosexual married couples do that the individuals
report under the rubric "sex" or "have sex" or "have sexual
relations'" is something that in most instances can easily be
individuated into countable instances, this is more evidence that
it is not what long-term lesbian couples do ... or, for that matter,what short-term lesbian couples do.
What violence did the lesbians do their experience by answering the same question the heterosexuals answered, as though it
had the same meaning for them? How did the lesbians figure out
how to answer the questions "How frequently?" or "How manytimes?" My guess is that different individuals figured it out
differently. Some might have counted a two- or three-cycle
evening as one "time" they "had sex;" some might have counted
it as two or three "times." Some may have counted as "times"
only the times both partners had orgasms; some may havecounted as "times" occasions on which at least one had anorgasm; those who do not have orgasms or have them far more
rarely than they "have sex" may not have figured orgasms into
the calculations; perhaps some counted as a "time" every episodein which both touched the other's vulva more than fleetingly andnot for something like a health examination. For some, to countevery reciprocal touch of the vulva would have made them countas "having sex" more than most people with a job or a work would
dream of having time for; how do we suppose those individuals
counted "times?" Is there any good reason why they should notcount all those as "times?" Does it depend on how fulfilling it
was? Was anybody else counting by occasions of fulfillment?
We have no idea how the individual lesbians surveyed werecounting their "sexual acts." But this also raises the questions of
how heterosexuals counted their sexual acts. By orgasms?
Bywhose orgasms? If the havings of sex by heterosexual married
couples did take on the average 8 minutes, my guess is that in avery large number of those cases the women did not experienceorgasms. My guess is that neither the women's pleasure nor the
women's orgasms were pertinent in most of the individuals'
counting and reporting the frequency with which they "had sex."
This is the term used in the Blumstein and Schwartz questionnaire. In the textof their book, they use "have sex."48

50, do lesbian couples really "have sex" any less frequently
than heterosexual couples? I'd say that lesbian couples "havesex" a great deal less frequently than heterosexual couples: by thecriteria that I'm betting most of the heterosexual people used tocount "times," lesbians don't have sex at alL No male orgasms,
no "times." (I'm willing to draw the conclusion that heterosexual
women don't have sex either; that what they report is the frequency with which their partners had sex.)
It has been said before by feminists that the concept of"having sex" is a phallic concept; that it pertains to heterosexualintercourse, in fact, primarily to heterosexist intercourse, i.e.,
male-dominant-female-subordinate-copulation-whose-completion-and-purpose-is-the-male's-ejaculation. I have thought thiswas true since the first time the idea was put to me, some 12 years
ago. 4 But I have been finding lately that I have to go back oversome of the ground I covered a decade ago because some of what
I knew then I knew too superficially. Fot some of us, myself
included, the move from heterosexual relating to lesbian relating
was occasioned or speeded up or brought to closure by ourknowledge that what we had done under the heading "having
sex" was indeed male-dominant-female-subordination-copulation-whose-completion ... etc. and it was not worthy of doing. Yet
now, years later, we are willing to answer questionnaires that ask
us how frequently we "have sex," and are dissatisfied withourselves and with our relationships because we don't "havesex" enough. We are so dissatisfied that we keep a small army oftherapists in business trying to help us "have sex" more.

We quit having sex years ago, and for excellent and compelling reasons. What exactly is our complaint now?
In all these years I've been doing and writing feminist theory,
I have not until very recently written, much less published, aword about sex. I did not write, though it was suggested to me
that I do so, anything in the 5M debates; I left entirely unanswered
an invitation to be the keynote speaker at a feminist conference
about women's sexuality (which by all reports turned out to be an
excellent conference). I was quite unable to think of anything but
vague truisms to say, and very few of those. Feminist theory is
grounded in experience; I have always written feminist politicaland philosophical analysis from the bottom up, starting with my49

own encounters and adventures, frustrations, pain, anger, delight, etc. Sometimes this has no doubt made it a little provincial;
but it has at least had the virtue of firm connection with someone's
real, live experience (which is more than you can say for a lot oftheory). When I put to myself the task of theorizing about sex andsexuality, it was as though I had no experience, as though there
was no ground on which and from which to generate theory. But(if I understand the terminology rightly), I have in fact been what
they call "sexually active" for close to a quarter of a century, about
half my life, almost all of what they call one's "adult life,"
heterosexually, lesbianly and autoerotically. Surely I have experience. But I seem not to have experiential knowledge of the sort I
need.
Reflecting on all that history, I realize that in many of its
passages this experience has been a muddle. Acting, being acted
on, choosing, deSiring, pleasure and displeasure all akimbo: notcoherently determining and connecting with each other. Even inits greatest intensity it has for the most part been somehow rather
opaque to me, not fully in my grasp. My "experience" has ingeneral the character more of a buzzing blooming confusion thanof experience. And it has occurred in the midst of almost totalsilence on the part of others about their experience. The experience of others has for the most part also been opaque to me; they
do not discuss or describe it in detail at all.
I recall an hours-long and heated argument among someeight or ten lesbians at a party a couple of years ago about SM,
whether it is okay, or not. When Carolyn and I left, we realizedthat in the whole time not one woman had said one concrete,
explicit, physiologically specific thing about what she actuallydid. The one arguing in favor of bondage: did she have her hands
tied gently with ribbons or scarves, or harshly with handcuffs orchains? What other parts of her body were or weren't restrained,
and by what means? And what parts of her body were touched,and how, while she was bound? And what liberty did she still
have to touch in return? And if she had no such liberty, was it partof her experience to want that liberty and tension or frustration,
or was it her experience that she felt pleased or satisfied not tohave that liberty ... ? Who knows? She never said a single word
at this level of specificity. Nor did anyone else, pro or con.
I once perused a large and extensively illustrated book on

50sexual activity by and for homosexual men. It was astounding tome for one thing in particular, namely, that its pages constituted
a huge lexicon of words: words for acts and activities, their subacts, preludes and denouements, their stylistic variation, theirsequences. Gay male sex, I realized then, is articulate. It is articulate to a degree that, in my world, lesbian "sex" does not remotely
approach. Lesbian "sex" as I have known it, most of the time I
have known it, is utterly inarticulate. Most of my lifetime, mostof my experience in the realms commonly deSignated as "sexual"
has been pre-linguistic, non-cognitive. I have, in effect, nolinguistic community, no language, and therefore in one important sense, no knowledge.
In situations of male dominance, women are for the most partexcluded from the formulation and validation of meaning andthereby denied the means to express themselves. Men's meanings, and no women's meanings, are encoded in what is presumed to be the whole population's langu9-ge. (In many cases,
both the men and the women assume it is everyone's language.)
The meanings one's life and experience might generate cannot
come fully into operation if they are not woven into language:
they are fleeting, or they hover, vague, not fully coalesced, notconnected, and hence not useful for explaining or grounding
interpretations, desires, complaints, theories. In response to ourunderstanding that there is something going on in patriarchy thatis more or less well described by saying women's meanings are
not encoded in the dominant languages and that this keeps our
experience from being fully formed and articulate, we haveundertaken quite deliberately to discover, complete and encode
our meanings. Such simple things as naming chivalrous gestures"insulting," naming Virginia Woolf a great writer, naming ourselves women instead of girls or ladies. Coining terms like"sexism," "sexual harassment" and "incestor." Mary Daly's new
book is a whole project of "encoding" meanings, and we can allfind examples of our own more local encodings:*1 picked up the word "encoding" as it is used here from the novel Native
Tongue, by Suzette Haden Elgin (NY: Daw Books, Inc., 1984). She envisages
women identifying concepts, feelings, types of situations, etc., for which there
are no words in English, and giving them intuitively appropriate names in awoman-made language called Laadan.

51

Meanings should arise from our bodily self-knowledge,
bodily play, tactile communication, the ebb and flow of intense
excitement, arousal, tension, release, comfort, discomfort, pain
and pleasure (and I make no distinctions here among bodily,
emotional, intellectual, aesthetic). But such potential meanings
are more amorphous, less coalesced into discrete elements of acoherent pattern of meanings, of an experience, than any otherdimensions of our lives. In fact, there are for many of us virtuallyno meanings in this realm because nothing of it is crystallized in alinguistic matrix:
What we have for generic words to cover this terrain are thewords "sex," "sexual" and "sexuality." In our efforts to liberate
ourselves from the stifling woman-hating Victorian denial thatwomen even have bodily awareness, arousal, excitement, orgasms and so on, many of us actively took these words forourselves, and claimed that we do "do sex" and we are sexual andwe have sexuality. This has been particularly important to lesbians because the very fact of "sex" being a phallocentric term has
made it especially difficult to get across the idea that lesbians are
not, for lack of a penis between us, making do with feeble andpartial and pathetic half-satisfactions.- But it seems to me that theattempt to encode our lustiness and lustfulness, our passion andour vigorous carnality in the words "sex," "sexual" and "sexuality" has backfired. Instead of losing their phallocentricity, thesewords have imported the phallocentric meanings into and onto
experi-ence which is not in any way phallocentric. A web of
meanings which maps emotional intensity, excitement, arousal,
bodily play, orgasm, passion and relational adventure back onto
a semantic center in male-dominant-female-subordinate-copulation-whose-completion-and-purpose-is-the-male's-ejaculation
has been so utterly inadequate as to leave us speechless, meaningless, and ironically, according to the Blumstein and Schwartz
report, "not as sexual" as couples or as individuals of any othergroup.
'Carolyn Shafer has theorized that one significant reason why lesbian SM
occasioned so much excitement, both positive and negative, is that lesbians havebeen starved for language - for specific, detailed, literal, particular, bodily talkwith clear non-metaphorical references to parts of our bodies and the ways they
can be stimulated, to acts, postures, types of touch. Books like Coming to Power
feed that need, and call forth more words in response.
"Asserting the robustness and unladylikeness of our passions and actions,some of us have called some of what we do "fucking."

52

Our lives, the character of our embodiment, cannot be mappedback onto that-semantic center. When we try to synthesize andarticulate it by the rules of that mapping, we end up trying tomold our loving and our passionate carnal intercourse into
explosive 8-minute events. That is not the timing and ontology ofthe lesbian body. When the only things that count as "doing it"
are those passages of our interactions which most closely approximate a paradigm that arose from the meanings of the risingand falling penis, no wonder we discover ourselves to lido it"
rather less often that do pairs with one or more penises present.
There are many cultural and social-psychological reasons
why women (in white Euro-American groups, but also in manyother configurations of patriarchy) would generally be somewhat less clear and less assertive about their desires and about
getting their satisfactions than men would generally be. And
when we pair up two women in a couple, it stands to reason thatthose reasons would double up and tend to_make relationships inwhich there is a lowish frequency of clearly delineated desires
and direct initiations of satisfactions. But for all the help it might
be to lesbian bodies to work past the psychological and behavioral habits of femininity that inhibit our passions and pleasures,
my suggestion is that what we have never taken seriously enoughis the language which forecloses our meanings.
My positive recommendation is this: Instead of starting witha point (a point in the life of a body unlike our own) and trying to
make meanings along vectors from that point, we would do
better to start with a wide field of our passions and bodily
pleasures and make meanings that weave a web across it. To
begin creating a vocabulary that elaborates and expands ourmeanings, we should adopt a very wide and general concept of"doing it." Let it be an open, generous, commodious concept
encompassing all the acts and activities by which we generatewith each other pleasures and thrills, tenderness and ecstasy,
passages of passionate carnality of whatever duration or profundity. Everything from vanilla to licorice, from puce to chartreuse,from velvet to ice, from cuddles to cunts, from chortles to tears.
Starting from there, we can let our experiences generate a finertuned descriptive vocabulary that maps and expresses the differences and distinctions among the things we do, the kinds ofpleasures we get, the stages and styles of our acts and activities,53the parts of our bodies centrally engaged in the different kinds of"doing it," and so on. I would not, at the outset, assume that allof "doing it" is good or wholesome, nor that everyone would likeor even tolerate everything this concept includes; I would notassume that "doing it" either has or should have a particularconnection with love, or that it hasn't or shouldn't have such aconnection. As we explain and explore and define our pleasuresand our preferences across this expansive and heterogeneous
field, teaching each other what the possibilities are and how tonavigate them, a vocabulary will arise among us and by ourcollective creativity.
The vocabulary will arise among us, of course, only if we talkwith each other about what we're doing and why, and what it
feels like. Language is social. So is "doing it."I'm hoping it will be a lot easier to talk about what we do, andhow and when and why, and in carnal sensual detail, once we've
learned to laugh at foolish studies that show that lesbians don't
have sex as often as, aren't as sexual as, and use fewer sexualtechniques than other folks.

1. In its first version, this essay was written for the meeting of the Society for
Women in Philosophy, Midwestern Division, November, 1987, at Bloomington,
Indiana. It was occasioned by Claudia Card's paper, '1ntimacy and Responsibility: What Lesbians Do," (published in the Institute for Legal Studies Working
Papers, Series, 2, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Law School, Madison, WI
53706). Carolyn Shafer has contributed a lot to my thinking here, and I am
indebted also to conversations with Sue Emmert and Terry Grant.
2. Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz, American Couples, (NY: William andMorrow Company, 1983).
3. Dotty Calabrese gave this information in her workshop on long-term lesbian
relationships at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, 1987. (Thanks to Terryfor this reference).
4. By Carolyn Shafer. See pp.. 156-7 of my book The Politics of Reality (The
Crossing Press, 1983).

54

Susanna J. Sturgis

The Bullfight Sonnets
but you might remember
Whether I cheated my father for you
and tamed the fire-breathing
Brazen-hoofed bulls ..."
1/ • • •-Euripides' Medea

1.

Inrazzle dazzle gold brocade he flicks
his hips and flaunts his cape before
His Majesty, the Bull. The matad~r
is teasing anger from his beast with tricksof red muleta, dancing hands, and love.
The judges, cool, care most for grace,for elegance of form. From death's embrace
they cut an ear or two, a tail, -and givethem to the hero. Novelists extol
the crowd, the sun, the blood, the kill, the roleof manhood challenged and found worthy. I
am less enthralled. Instead, I wonder why
cerebral critics desperately admire
heroes who hold their shit when under fire.

2.
The horned god, cloven-hoofed god, god who diesto fertilize the land: These bulls are raisedfor war, for fierce and noble spirit praised,admitted to the plaza, given rightto charge a man in front of other men.
In razzle dazzle gold he flicks his capebefore you. Do you know you can't escape,55

that if you kill, they still won't let you win?
This turf they chose for you; it isn't yours.
It's just a stage. Enthusiasts devour
each act and howl for more, more tails, more ears,
more bulls, and if the matador is gored,
there's more suspense. Safe behind tl:le fence,
they thrive on blood and killing elegance.

3.
A poem should stand on footnotes, not on hooves.
Unyielding as an uncracked code, a poem
should float above the crowd, opaque, alone,till critics can elucidate its truths.
Professors tease entendres from the words,
insist no line can mean just what it says.
To earn attention, poets acquiesce
and write obscurely; sonnets fall unheard
beyond the tiers of educated men.
Admitted to the ring, a chance conferred
to wield the cape, a woman undeterredby challenge yet is disconcerted when
her new position calls for killing bulls.
She hones her sword. She knows who makes the rules.

56

Barbara Ruth

I Go To Work In Drag

I go to work in dragDisguised as someone
LighterWhiterAll to teach some kids
There's more to poetry
Than dead white men.
The principal complains
That their poems are too bizarre, too
Sad
These children have seen deathIn the jungles of Cambodia
And Tijuana
And East San Diego.
I smile at the principal
And refrain from telling her
What I learned last week from Quyen:in Vietnam
The butterflies are poisonous.

57

Rose Romano

Finding Out

They found me out in Brooklyn,
where I was bornand grew up;
where I learned to speak English
with a genuine Brooklyn accent;where I watched Looney Tunes
and wore genuine Mickey Mouse ears;
where I read comic books
and ate Twinkies;
where I watched American Bandstandand wore genuine dungarees;
where I listened to the Beach Boysand hung out on street corners;
where I watched I Love Lucy reruns
and wore genuine dress-for-success suits;
where I read the Daily Newsand ate Velveeta on white bread.
Italian genes found my chin in Brooklyn
and made little stubby black hairs grow on it
just like the little stubby black hairsthat grow on the chinsof genuine Italian women born and raisedin Italy.

58

Sondra Knight

sisters

handmaids of mary. an order of nuns who happened to be
black. faculty members of st. aloysius. sisters. black sisters. blue
prints on black. as was one so was her other. like common thread.
the lasting cause. the dangling beads; markers by which prayers
were said. in whispers. soft hummings. these sisters camecoming. came walking, brave and defiant. through harlem. in
the bone-chill of winter. in the heatwave of summer. throughpolitical storms, hotter than hot. why harlem, this harem? whyharlem? why not?
like spirits of silence. shades of commitment. intent to fulfill their
missions of service. one michael: the mother (superior, indeed);young and ambitious. a creamy delicious no taste to ever know.
and jacinta marie: kind grace, her demeanor/the stickball she
played at noon-time recess. one stern intellectual filled with
diScipline and deep-chocolate resolve: sister dominick savio;
wire-rimmed glasses over piercing brown eyes. and beauty, most
lovely; one fair, black rose ... this sister/precious sister whosename rained music/ rang rosario.
down mean city streets. in the thic~ of their black. their quick,purposeful gaits. black-c1oud-linen-habits waving loosely behind them ... perhaps, to remind them?

59© 1987]BB (Joan E. Biren)

Elvira Williams(from Making A Way: Lesbians Out Front)

60

DeeAnne Davis

We Come From Iowa
nigger lovernolover of a man
the color of maple
lover of babies
babies to be the color of
wet sandpeach trees
in the summer
ripened firm - born bruisedmarkedfor the dual
mama is german english
my coarse locks twisted
like so much corn silk
africanmama breathes
her breasts filling the air
over and overshe does not throw
the tomatoes
rotting on the sillat this boy who came across the fence
marched about the yard
shook our hearts
withnigger lover
nigger lover
breeder of mongrels
traitortraitorshe does not caress61

or hold me
cringing child at the window
places her handon my crown - a cloud
maybe sifting
first direct rays
her touch is a shaky shelter
the light funnelling love
her back
bends but does not snap
her raw country handcoarse like my hair
Mama. Mama was soft boobs, tummy and thighs. Green eyes
flecked with amber. I've been held with those eyes, in the cushionof her lap. When I was an infant, she played peek-a-boo andDinah Washington for me, rocking me in that old, creaking chair.
Swam at my side at two, her strength holding up my ribs against
the pull of the water. Sung the alphabet song for me at three. And
at the park with the caves and the muddy water for canoes, we ran
hand-in-hand through fields of milkweed and dandelions. WhenI was five, she sent me off to school. Once in the car, the second
time walking, the third time with a black and white map of streetsthat looked like rivers and stick houses I would recognize.
"Here's the pretty purple house - remember it? And look, I
drew the house where that nasty dog lives. The one that barks
every time we go by. Are you scared to go by yourself? No?
Good. Good girl."
It was there in the surrounding of white children and teachersthat she allowed me to roll off her palms and onto the earth. Withfear etched in her forehead, she prayed I would survive the briar
patch into which Daddy had taken us, considering a white
education a rose garden. Mama saw the stares of the children as
she left me in the hands of yet one more white teacher. She
imagined the long quills I pulled out of my sides daily, but feelingpowerless to alter my predicament, she let me become strong in
the flappings of the wind. Mama was resigned to save herself thefull agony of a woman who regrets bringing babies into a cruel,divided world.
62

That relationship between me and Mama? Anger. Anger at
her for being powerless. Leaving me. The children flipping my
dresses to see if the color of brandy they saw in bottles at theirhomes stretched all the way up my legs and covered my stomach.
Anger at her for being helpless. Leaving me no space for breathing inside a smile or outright giggle. Not knowing how to stop
two grown folks from bouncing my Cheerios onto the waxed tilesof the kitchen floor. Acting like they didn't see me sitting in the
middle of the long veneer slick table backed into the wall. So I
imagined myself absent from the room and ceased to cringe fromthe solid whacks of maple strong hands against wilting birch.
Stomach constipated with screams, teeth and balled fists to comebetween them. And tears. Tears for myself. The self that felt
powerless in her own presence, unable to make room, stop theanger of hands that wrecked Scooby Doo mornings. I blamed
Mama for handing me a stacked tray of nothingness. It was her
fault. She wore the guilty face. And I punished her with aninvisible game of tug-of-war, controlling the tension of love andhate. Pulling on the rope from her stomach.
It's been awhile. Mama and Daddy have been going theirseparate ways for over fifteen years now. And me? Growing
older, mostly. Now Mama kneads my naked muscles rubbed
with oil. All-body-health-practitioner is what they call masseusesin California. Then again, we come from Iowa. She came west
seeking freedom from that boy who grew into the men andwomen who continued to call her nigger lover - because of her
brown children. They wouldn't take her back since she'd been
under the water and walked around on the other side. And I cameto California looking for her. My mama. I'd grown into the shapeof that rope. Pulled along by its strangle hold strength. Stretchedtautly between the choices: Black/White. Good/Evil. Truth/
Lies. Mother/Father. When I was twelve, my Grandma J. toldme: "You a well-developed, wavy-haired, black & white mixed
colored girl from the other side of town. That ain't ugly or cute;it's just who you is." I'm still a well-developed-wavy-hairedblack-&-white-mixed-colored-girl. That's just who I am. There is
no choice. I finally found the power waiting for me in all of thosewords. It came to me about the time I realized my limbs would
not unfold without a rip or crack, and I took myself back into the63kitchen, slithered beneath the veneer slick table still vivid in mymind, groped my way to the corner leg. There I rocked into myknees, softening my fragile frame into a fetus . The tears that weresand lodged in my throat seeped into my eyes. I heard the stiffled ,sniffles of my mother in the other room and quietly I whimpered:"Mama. Mama. Mama. Mama ... "'Mama. I love women."
You know, the way you love a community of women which
ain't just gay /lesbian/ dyke/bulldagger or some other one-more::definition-word. I love a world of women. I especially love the one
who looks for my smile coming around the corner, up out of myheart. But this isn't a love poem for my woman. Not the woman
whose breast I hold when we sleep, always on the same side of thebed, always tucked in . . She fits me. It's a love poem for Mama.
Who knew that my loving women is about loving myself enoughto fill my tray. The one she handed me with trembling fingers andsilence. A platter of women made of hugs to hold me. Made ofgold, really. Women. A woman. Whose back bends with myswaying, but does not break. Whose hands are coarse like myhair.

the radical femin ist

magaZine~
cwJ

ISSUE 11r.h'
• Feminism and AIDS• Interview with Janice Raymond• Taking direct action: women rise in resistance• Against nationalism: the betrayal of Algerian women• The new defeatism : Is tile Fu ture Female? reviewed• Writing our own history: Northern Ireland• and the start of a new series: women's reflections on
the state of the movement"I

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64

Betty DudleyWhite-Trash Cooking

I am one fat, white, working-class bitch
Upwardly mobile enough to be in a room with you.
I watch you - white, middle-class, literate women How uncomfortable my words make you feel.
Like a vegetarian served raw meat.
And if I were black,Or of another culture,
My words would be oh, so important to you.
If you could not quite swallow them whole
You'd take them and throw them in
A nice, hot pot of liberal stew,
Delicious, nourishing,
As if they were meant to satisfy your hunger.
But I am white,
If not like,

Not enough unlike you.
So you want my words to be
Palatable,
Cleaned-up,
A grade above stew.
And I want to say
My momma did not raise me to cook for you.
She choked on middle-class.
And if this is something I have learned not to doWell, sister, I still will not choke
Down my own words,
To salivate and regurgitate
Making baby food
To be digested by you.
If you want to hear me,

I suggest you sharpen your teeth and learn to chew.
65

cringe.

Marti Hohmann

Ledger: After

I used to keep a ledgerof everything I ate,every bit, bite, pieceof blood I devoured,
I kept a ledger
for my hunger
was greater than could be spoken
so it had to be written, recorded,studiously noted
my one meal of the day
was in shorthand
all the life I could have been living
and I was burning nothing but
calories66

Amanda C. Gable

Fragments
My aunt's hair was black and curly and cut short, short. I loved
the way it combed back in little layers on the sides. When I kissed
her she smelled like Jergen's hand lotion and Pond's cold cream.
Her pocketbooks were huge and leather and she had everything
in them. Leather billfolds with cash and pictures. Cigarette caseand Zippo lighter. Kleenex and pens and notepads. Gum andglasses case. Keys, change with bits of tobacco clinging to it.
I remember the mowed grass and flower smells in the backyardof my aunt's friend. Her friend was solid built and tall, wore jeans
and a soft, soft flannel shirt. Once when I was maybe five, she andmy aunt installed speakers outside her brick house so she could
listen to the hi-fi in the yard. Her garage had tools hanging allover the walls, neat and tidy. She and my aunt laughed a lot. The
woman held me firm by the wrists and swung me around andaround until both of us were dizzy. We lay on the ground andlooked up at the spinning sky. My aunt stood over us. "Sillies,
sillies," she said. With the speakers sounding out Bach, we sat inlounge chairs and I crawled in and out of their laps while theytalked softly to each other.
I was grown and visiting her. My aunt was wearing panties andone of my uncle's shirts. The Boston terrier was running aroundthe rooms of the house barking. My aunt sat on the floor next tothe bookshelf in the study thumbing through a biography of
Carson McCullers. She couldn't find what she wanted to show
me. She seemed sober.
When I was ten my parents had a tree-trimming party. My aunt
and I took tinsel and threw great clumps of it on the tree. The
silver strands hit the evergreen needles and separated, draping
themselves elegantly on the limbs.
Several years before she died she was tiny. All her life she'd been
heavy, stocky, strong. The family says I'm built like her.
67One night I picked her up off the floor and put her back in bed.
"You're strong," she said, "and I love you." There was nothing
but white wine in the refrigerator.
Before she was married we drove around in her Pontiac with thewindows rolled down and the hot summer air hitting our faces.
I knew when I grew up I wanted to be just like her.
She and my uncle came to my parents' house to exchange christmas gifts. I was home from college. Her skirt and shirt didn't fit,
didn't look like they belonged to her. Like a child she sat quietly
in a chair while the adults talked. She was across from me and I
saw when she threw up a little in her mouth and held it there. My
mother stood up and took her hand, murmuring something
about decorations in the hall. There was a tenderness in mymother's movements. When the two of them came back to theroom they were still holding hands. My aunt was laughing.
While she was still living I wondered if she'd ever been with awoman. I imagined visiting her and the woman with the soft, softflannel shirt and outdoor speakers. They would have a hugevegetable and flower garden and lots of dogs. They would sleep
together in a queen-size bed.
As a bed-time snack when I was eight she let me eat Cheez-its anddrink buttermilk. My stuffed rabbit was allowed to share. I wore
her pajamas safety-pinned at the waist when I spent the night.
By the time of her funeral I had been a lesbian for several years.
It was a communion service and I watched all of the congregation

one by one go up three steps and past the choir stall to receive
their wafer and wine. Women I hadn't seen since childhood filed
by one after the other. Women who now I nodded to and thought,
lesbian, lesbian, lesbian every time I looked and nodded. They
were her friends, I thought, and cried.
You look just like your aunt the family says, even though she wasdark and I am a blonde.

68Naja Sorella

A Moment From the Years
Present
Future
Past

I ~e never known what to write on forms that ask about numberof children. For medical forms, it feels important to answer
number of full term pregnancies. Then, of course, they know I've
had a child. Then, I have to explain that she was relinquished for
adoption, and no, I'm not raising her. At least not on the physical,
visible level.
Step inside my home, and it's evident I'm disabled, I'm a
Lesbian. Search every corner of my home, and there's still noevidence that I'm the mother of a teenage daughter. No fourteen
year old girl's clothes in the closet, no school books strewn about,no bedroom filled with teenage treasures / junk, no pictures of her
on the bookcase.
Though not a part of my external world, my daughter is amajor part of my private reality. No one sees the constant energy
I put into raising her. I spend hours that turn into weeks that
become years, wondering - is she ok, is she happy, is she even
alive? Are her adoptive parents loving and supportive - I wastold they'd do better than I could, that they'd be perfect. Please,please, no abuse, no incest. What does she look like, has she
inherited my illness, Where Is She? Parents, do you know where yourchildren are tonight? No, not tonight or any other night. No punkclothes or Michael Jackson posters acknowledge her existence,
only the holes ground into my guts after fourteen years of worry.
Fourteen years' worth of crying late at night, searching the universe for a clue to where she is. The years I barely talked about her,once or twice in eight years (only to trusted lovers), always
referring to her as "the baby." Not feeling/knowing I had a rightto call her "my daughter," thinking I had no claims to her at all.
As she neared ten, the shock had begun to wear off, I was
slowly thawing out, and then! - grief in torrents rather than theyears of trickles. I went to birth mother support groups, I confidedin friends, I finally told my parents, I started to say, "my69daughter." Those torrents never stopped swelling. This is not as
clean as a death. Death is a closure, a pain that heals with time.
Like other birth mothers, I was told to forget about her,pretend it never happened, go on with my life, it was all over withonce she was adopted. The truth is, losing my daughter was not
an ending, but a beginning - a beginning of a life time of grief
and trauma. A child stolen through adoption is a ripping at theheart that has no end.
My daughter'S nearing fourteen now, growing up, hopefully
becoming more independent, more self-reliant. I can only guess
she's like most teens, spending more time hanging out on thecorner with friends than she spends at home. Most likely, she's
less visible, less present to her adoptive parents. There's not a
moment she's not with me, that I'm not worried and concerned
about her. What other parents worry full time, with no hope forrelief in the future? She may not always be home, but they know
where she is, they know she's ok, they know she's alive. And ifthey didn't know where she was, if she disappeared suddenly,
family and friends would rally around, empathize with theirgrief, their terror at the not knowing. No one would be so cruel totell them to forget about her, pretend she never existed, and go
merrily on with their lives leaving the past behind. Every social
agency available would co-operate in searching for theirdaughter. I don't have the support so readily offered them. No
one can see my daughter. Her presence is fuvisible; as mydaughter, she doesn't exist to others. They can't know I'm amother distraught over her child's disappearance.
If I was a Lesbian mother, a disabled mother, or a disabled
Lesbian mother with custody of my daughter, there'd be those
who'd believe I'm unfit to raise a child. 1'd have stereotypes about
Lesbians and/ or disabled womyn to fight in order to keep mychild. There are many firmly entrenched myths and stereotypes
about birth mother for me to struggle against, yet not matter how
successfully I overcome the stereotypes, I wouldn't be any closer
to knowing the where-a bouts and welfare of my daughter, letalone gaining custody of her. As well, there are no courts available to me as a birth mother, as there are for Lesbian and disabledmothers, in order to wage my battle. There is no court in this70

entire nation willing to let me know if my daughter is alive andwhere she is, not even mentioning the question of custody.
My daughter, to me alone, you are my daughter. Within myown community of Lesbians and disabled women, I struggle
continuously to affirm my life-long bond to you as a viable partof my life. These are my people, where I feel safest, yet even here,
I remain mostly invisible. I don't always know how to continue
this ongoing, exhausting work. My daughter, you are family, mycommunities are family - how do I reach for both of you?

~~leSbian~.~Ethics
A forumforethicalissuesamong
lesbians.

Envisioning theWorld We Were All
Meant to Live In.
• ESSAYS• READERS FORUMS• REVIEWS/COMMENTARY

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71

Laura Rose DancingFire

On Lawerying, Passing and Pornography
As a lesbian separatist attorney, I was once asked to speak on
the issue of pornography. I was supposed to be the "nut" whospoke against it; rather like a modern day Carrie Nation, the voiceof censorship and prudery. Instead, I began to think of the silenceof wimmin attorneys on pornography. And that brought to mind
the matter of passing, which I think is inextricably related.
My focal point in considering this issue was the words of ananonymous black lesbian separatist, who wrote: ''Males haveirrevocable power, while wimmin have only revocable privilege." This statement caused me to consider how wimmin try tokeep their privilege by pleasing men. And one customary way of
doing so has been to copy them - to pass. When we think ofpassing, we may think of one race passing for another, or in
lesbian community, of wimmin passing as straight or wimmin
passing for men. But wimmin lawyers do so by fitting in, acting
male and not causing waves.
One womon lawyer I encountered recently showed me vividly how this could be done. Seated behind the counselor's table,
she looked passably male. She is tall, and had on a blue and whiteskirted searsucker suit, with the little fake tie. And she was doingquite passable work. She was representing a man who, in thewords of the law, "allegedly killed a womon."In truth, this killing was a butchering. She showed me thepictures of "the victim," a black womon who had been reduced
to raw meat. I could not help but wonder if the slicing and carvingof her took place before or after her death. Her face was a lavenderand blue mottle of bruises, and her wounds would havescreamed, had they had tongues. This unknown womon's pain
shocked my fingertips and brought tears to my eyes as I looked
into hers.
But my friend's attitude was passable. She only laughedshortly, in response to my long silence, and said, "That's pretty
bad, but you get used to it." Her job was to think solely of her male72

client's needs and the urge to be top cock by winning her case.
Passing, as a womon lawyer, involves much of this last
attitudinal shift. One must have a demeanor that fits in inoffensively, even when confronted with gravely offensive situations.
This womon was not standing in the courtroom, screaming to theheavens about this victim's brutal dismemberment. One might
wonder why.
Because to do so would give the womon lawyer a two-foldvulnerability: identifying with the victim and "standing out" asa hyster-ical womon. As womyn lawyers, we are told, subtly andloudly, that we should not align ourselves too closely withwimmin. And we definitely should not do messy, womonly
things like wailing in agony at the crimes against our sisters thatthe male legal system condones each day.
Still, in 1988, a womon has as little chance to get sanctions
against her batterer or rapist as a black in Mississippi has to getjustice against the Klan. The guys just wink at these little foibles
and sweep them under the rug. They do so' by running wimmin
through an endless board game of legal procedures that nearly
inevitably end in frustration. Batterers are not arrested In myarea, two out of a hundred will receive jail time for their crimes.
But wimmin lawyers should not be too pushy about this, should
conduct themselves as gentlemen, though we are not. Thus weare coerced, each passing day, into becoming more like thosewhom we should struggle against.
This theme extends over into the proper female civillibertarian response to pornography. Pornography also treats wimmin
as pieces of meat - both saleable and butchered. Wimmin are
depicted as trussed bundles of flesh. They stare back at me withwhip marks on their breasts, or nipples torn off with pliers, theirscreams smothered by latex gags. Like the Hustler image of a
womon's legs being stuffed into a grinder that turns out
womonburger, these images define unmistakably the status of
wimmin.
Wimmin lawyers, though, are taught in endlessly rarefied,abstract discussions, that to protest this cruelty is the doom of theconstitution and all democratic freedom. As a survivor of pornographic depiction, I say no to this theory. Nowhere does the firstamendment prohibit or discourage protest against oppression,73

economic boycotts, lawsuits against the harm done to subjects by
their pornographic panderers or expressions of disgust andrevulsion.
But again, wimmin lawyers are warned to be reasonable andinoffensive. We must fit in. Besides, to speak loudly aboutwimmin's defilement might cause someone to notice that wehave the same breasts and bellies, the same gagable mouths. The
same vulnerability to harm that elicits screams. Better to discuss
pornography as a detached, abstract "first amendment issue" inendless debates that remind one of medieval arguments on how
many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Maybe then thewomon lawyer can remain safe, even "succeed" in her chosen
profession.
To return to my separatist sister's point, though, the problem
with this approach to "success" is the revocability of privilege. A
womon is never really far enough from meat status to be safe.
Only denial causes her to believe such a lie. Her walk, her bodyand bones are still those of the object. If she doesn't have herbusiness suit on, how will a rapist know she is an influential
lawyer? Or will he care?
The ladder of success can never take us far enough away fromatrocity. Isn't it better, then, to see the pain in a butcheredwomon's eyes, in the way that my friend refused, to know that it
could be ours? Then we can make our allegiance to wimmin clear- and practice law to make a difference, not a sameness with themaster.
It is inevitable, when we pick up his sword of reason andvengeance, that we will have to process compromises. But only
when we know the pain of our people can we struggle against cooptation, align ourselves with others who are outraged and fightfor our own. Therein lies our real power as wimmin lawyers, notin passing.
This piece is dedicated to Garnett Harrison, a Mississippi lawyer "alleged to bea lesbian" who has risked criminal charges, grand jury investigation, surveilanceand enormous personal and financial losses in order to expose sexual assaults onher client's infant children; and to earnestly represent these mothers in theirefforts to resist further rapes of their babies. It is also dedicated to those in thesouthern underground who allegedly hid these children to protect them from
harm.

74

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz

My Jewish Face

It was the exact blend of rage and fun that got me hooked onpolitics in the first place: deciding something had to be done andforming a group and doing it - immediately. Like Abbie
Hoffman and Jerry Rubin - Jews and Yippies - used to say, Do
it!, and if Jerry Rubin ended up on Wall Street (a source of somehumiliation to those of us who measure Jewish safety by constantly counting which side which Jews are on), Abbie Hoffman,as it turned out, had been plugging along underground all those
years with his new name and plastic surgery new Jewish face: still
doing it.
We did it too - in this case, interrupted a performance wefound insulting and made the audience to some extent ours; amodest but nonetheless thrilling feat. What I remember mostvividly, though, is not what we did or even how I felt. It's Rae I
remember and it's her face I can see right this minute up on stage
in front of the cafe as the theater company was singing theirstupid finale. Because she was part of the company, one of"them," and when it came to her part, she betrayed them andannounced herself.
The story doesn't start that night in the cafe. For me, for the
rest of the group it starts in the afternoon around the lunch table.
For Fran and Bonnie it started the night before, when they hadgone to the cafe to see political theater. But for Rae it started when
she was an infant: orphaned, adopted, raised in a churchgoingfamily. At 17 she discovered that her grandmother was alive anda Jew, a survivor from Hungary. Rae had hitchhiked across thecountry to spend what turned out to be the last six months of theold woman's life with her. Then she hitchhiked back, came out asa lesbian, and hovered uneasily around her Jewishness like it wasa gorgeous book in a foreign language. She didn't know it but she
craved it. She was 19, tall and large-boned with high Slavic
cheeks, grey eyes, dark nearly straight hair: She joined the theatercompany.

75

It was her second show with them, early rehearsal. In one skit
was a joke about the Holocaust, scraping the bottom of the badtaste barrel, and you're probably wondering about the joke;
maybe afraid you'd find it funny. I wouldn't repeat it even if I remembered it, but it wasn't funny. In the same skit was a crack
about animals looking Jewish. Each unfunny joke reinforced theother and Rae felt queasy. She said so.
The director of the theater company, a nubile man-loving sortof woman named Janet, ridiculed her. No one in the company
stood up for Rae, predictably not even the one other Jew, who
instead spoke the line that should be engraved next to (the by now
somewhat hackneyed) when they came for the x's I said nothing
because I wasn't an x until finally they came for me. The line I'mtalking about is, I'm Jewish and I don't think it's anti-Semitic. So
much for solidarity. Rae was 19 and had been a conscious Jew for
two years. She'd had no Jewish education, no exposure to Jewish
culture or tradition, until the six months with her grandmother.
In this she was not so different from a lot of American Jews, except
for the six months part. She backed down and shut up.
And stayed shut up until that night on the stage.

But first comes afternoon, and at the lunch table Fran was
upset. It was disgusting, she gestured with her coffee cup, luckily
almost empty. There was a joke about the Holocaust and there was awoman wiggling around barking and meowing. The last line of the scene
is, "She looks Jewish, doesn't she?" About the dog-cat character, whichever it was. Fran waved her cup again, this time in dismissal.
Bonnie had taken off her glasses and was rubbing between
her eyebrows. The whole time I was saying to myself, "Is thishappening, am I being crazy?"
Where was this? Shelly was asking, a play, what kind of play?
And Zelda, Who are these people?
We were sitting in the cafeteria of a large Midwestern college
campus. Thousands of women had gathered for a feminist conference, a small group of us had coalesced just two days before in
the Jewish caucus. Women had come from the South, from theWest Coast, from the East, some it's true because they wereteachers and their schools were paying, but some because they
were dying for contact with other Jewish feminists and lesbians.
76

We came to feed our Jewish selves: those already wrapped in
scraps of knowledge, history, culture, religion, who came to piece
together something more whole, and the rest of us, like me, who
had only our Jewish names, faces, scattered memories, andhunger for more. We were delighted with each other, gathering
every day for lunch - we figured people would say we wereclannish no matter what so we might as well enjoy ourselves. One
day Zelda and Penny did Midrash about Ruth and Naomi, for
Shavuos, and I had never even known their story was connected
to Shavuos, nor that Ruth was a convert to Judaism and themother of King David. As a lesbian with a gentile lover, I was
moved by Ruth's devotion, a woman to another woman, and by
the idea that someone could join a people through love. Zelda, on
the other hand, hated the story, found the women weak andshadowy, cherished only for the sons they bore; she had beenmarried for 20 years and kept an orthodox home, this Zelda, andshe preferred the story of Judith, who chopped off Holofernes'
head. Never pigeonhole anyone, I reminded myself not for the lasttime.
Another day we learned songs, Yiddish from Shelly, Hebrew
from Fran, and we sang more and more vigorously until we were
grabbing each other's hands for a jumping kicking line dancearound the cafeteria, several minutes worth before the polite but
appalled manager asked us to stop. Still another day we talked
about the Middle East, the Israeli peace movement, icy tension
clamping down on everyone's temples and shoulders as ourfeared differences emerged. And there were differences. But still
we were talking.
Today it had turned into a meeting. The night before Fran andBonnie had gone into town to the local hip cafe where a politicaltheater group was performing the series of skits. After two daysof delicious Jewish pride, one skit's throwaway insensitivity andcontempt had so stunned them that they had sat there quietly
incredulous. They hadn't even thought of telling anyone. But
over lunch, when Zelda asked Bonnie in all innocence what she'ddone last night, Bonnie started talking, and then everyone wastossing questions on the table.

This is supposed to be radical theater, like the Mime Troupe orsomething?
77

Did anyone else seem upset?
What do you think they were doing?
What did they think they were doing?
Did you talk to the actors?
We went this morning, Fran said, to talk to someone, a couple ofthem were there Yeah, they spared us 3.67 minutes - Bonnie interjected.
We spoke with the woman who directed it, Janet - she wrote thescript, she played the cat/dog creature Bonnie: - watching her fawn and wriggle was bad enough, she's
just a bundle of talent What is this, Animal Farm?, Sonia stuck in.
Fran went on: Janet didn't know Nazi propaganda described Jews
as dogs. She thanked us for telling her, but of course she didn't mean
anything by it. The joke about the Holocaust wasn't supposed to makefun of the Holocaust. That isn't what she meant. Bonnie made a tightprissy face and we all laughed.

What she meant was - sort of va-ague - Bonnie's voice went up
and down - but something like we were all Nazis I can't stand that liberal bullshit - Shelly shook her head in
disgust - "If I'm Not OK, You're Not OK Either?"No, Sonia interrupted, it's an old game people play- "We're All
Nazis," you never heard of it?
Also known as - I broke into song, the tune "Clementine" "If Everyone's Guilty, No One's Responsible," linking my arm
through Sonia's, but Fran began again-

She kept insisting she hadn't meant anything - so we shouldn't feel anything, Bonnie snorted. Then she had togo. She certainly wasn't about to change anything just because we were
upset. She kept talking about artistic freedom - and we understood, she
was SO busyShe thought we were crazy. Fran looked depressed and I wondered if she'd been called crazy a lot.
Oversensitive, Bonnie corrected, making her funny little prissy
face again, and we all laughed on cue.
The cafeteria was nearly empty, the time allotted for lunch
was over and I could feel a restless energy perched in the middle

78

of the table. I have been an organizer on and off for more than half
my adult life - civil, rights, women's liberation; since I got
hooked, like I said. I recognized that energy. It was people
wanting to fight back but uncertain what to do. I know whenpeople want to fight and do nothing, what gets reinforced isfeeling helpless, like you can't fight city hall, can't stick up foryour friends or your people or your self, can't do anything.
Everyone's sense of possibility shrinks up a little. To me, that
restless energy is the sheerest temptation, whereas blocking thatenergy - out of fear, laziness or just plain lack of imaginationis my idea of sin.
What do you want to do? I asked. The word do hung in the air,an odd moment of quiet.
Carla broke it. We could go to the play and start a discussion when

it's over.
Tame, distinctly tame. Zelda wrinkled her nose.
We could just interrupt the performanc~ - we could give out
leaflets. Shelly was getting excited.
We can't get a leaflet together by tonight, I responded automatically and immediately felt ashamed: Why was I offhandedly
dismissing the idea? Who knew what we could do?
Let's picket - Zelda was piling her tray high with everyone's
dishes - I have to go do my workshop now. Someone let me know

what's happening, I'm up for whatever, ok?
Me too. I have to drop off Lila. Lila was Sonia's year-old baby,
on a breastfeeding break from child care. What about guerillatheater, right at the entrance, we could do our own play. I resisted theimpulse to say we couldn't get a play together so quickly.
Can you get childcare for tonight? Penny was asking.
Yeah, we'll all chip in, Zelda tossed off over her shoulder.
But Bonnie and Fran were beginning to feel contortions ofself-doubt.

What if we just took it wrong?
I can't remember exactly what gets said, what if we're being-- paranoid? I asked, and we all laughed, rather bitterly.
When are we sure, Shelly asked acidly, when they're marching us
to the showers? Or do we say, "Well, maybe we need to wash."
But they were adamant. The responsibility was too heavy.
They wanted the rest of us to see the play so we could act on our
79knowledge, not their feelings. We would attend the performance, paying for tickets - which annoyed the shit out of Shelly
and me but that's what people wanted to do - and, when (or if?)
offensive things got said, we would simply say what we thought,
force them to deal with our reactions.
So there we were, $6 a head. I have to say the show wasunbelievably unfocused and just plain vapid. There was a skit
about unemployment, a couple about TV and advertising really bold subjects; one about American racism unintentionally but distinctly racist; one about the Statue of
Liberty, in which poor Rae was the Statue, except we didn't know _Rae yet, she was just a large young woman, one of the actors:
them. Half the jokes revolved around parts of her body. The
overall message thrummed home with the subtlety of a buffalo
herd was, it's your own fault if you don't do anything (definitely avariation on the we're all Nazis theme).
So we sat in the audience waiting to be or not to be offended
enough to do something: It. There was Janet scooting aroundbarking and meowing and wiggling her small prized ass. There
was the not funny joke about the Holocaust, and I said to myself
in an affectionate but bossy tone, ok, honey, you encouraged everyone
else, you go first and I was on my feet asking in a very loud voice:

You think that's funny?
Shelly said later when she saw me start to get up and heard thewords come out of my mouth her heart began to pound so fast she
thought she'd have a heart attack. It's really happening, shethought, now we have to go through with it.
One after the other, we did. Shelly spoke next, with a slow
measured anger that was itself an irresistible force - I have to say

this very clearly, and I want everyone to understand it. The Holocaust
is not funny. There is nothing funny about it. Dead silence whilepeople combed the Holocaust for something funny. You could
see them not coming up with anything.
Do you know who's in your audience? Sonia was asking, Maybepeople who lost their families, or people who were tortured. You're
supposed to be against torture.
We are against torture, oh, of course, Janet the cat/ dog nodded
emphatically.

But your jokes add to people's pain, people who've suffered what no80

one should ever suffer. Why? Why would you want to make jokes about
this? Penny was asking with an inexplicable touching innocence.
People were - killed, tortured. By Nazis, or even now it's happening
in Salvador, right now - you make it trivial, what they go through.
Laughable. I know that's not what you want, she concluded sweetly.
I'm not sure they don't want that, Shelly quipped under her
breath, but I was crying. I was sure the audience felt it too, a gap
outlined in neon between the cheap shallow politics of the skits
and the depth of these women.
Zelda was talking now. Why are you saying a dog looks Jewish?
Do you know Nazi propaganda said Jews were dogs? Do you know
people, J~s, Gypsies, homosexuals, communists were treated likeanimals, worse than animals? and Bonnie, You're supposed to beagainst oppression. We're saying this skit is oppressive.
Janet, deprived of some dignity by her tail and whiskers, kept
saying, You don't understand what we're trying to do, let us finishand one of the men who'd played too . convincingly a creep
pawing the Statue of Liberty whined, We're on your side. Severalof the actors looked stricken, as if they couldn't quite believe ouringratitude.
It doesn't matter what you're trying to do - I put a hard edge on
the word "trying" - what matters is what you're doing. We're tellingyou it's not working.
The whole point of political theater is that people shouldn't bepassive, Carla was waving her arms, why do you expect us to sit quiet
and listen? You could feel at least half the audience mentally
nodding, Really!
So the actors insisted on their intentions, we counter-insisted
that intentions - in art as in life - were the least of it, and finally
we agreed to let them finish the show in return for an open
discussion with the audience as soon as the play ended. Whichdid not stop us - by now, imagine the adrenalin - fromcommenting loudly on anything that bugged us as the playproceeded.
Who remembers the rest of the skits? I was just waiting forthe show to end so we could have the discussion. At last carne thefinale. The cast gathered on stage at the front of the cafe to sing,each actor in turn, a verse about her or his character from the lastskit. Each verse ended with the line, see how you like my face, sung81

3 times, more or les$ musically. It was the tum of the large young
woman who'd played the Statue of Liberty, she sang her verse
like everyone else, concluding with see how you like my face, see how
you like my face - she tossed her head slightly, the w0rds camethrough clenched teeth - see how you like my Tewish-looking face.
She was crying, that was why she had clenched her teeth. You
could see a wave blip through the other actors like they hadn't
expected it, and sure enough Bonnie was whispering into myright ear, That didn't happen last night. The next actor took his tum
on the song, the whole cast onstage together, and the large young
woman walked right off the stage behind the screen they all
entered and exited from. After a few minutes she came back out
and sat down with us in the audience, next to Zelda who immediately took her hand and held on tight.
The play was over. There was weak scattered clapping. Theneveryone started to talk. The cast charged us with censorship andwith being deficient in our sense(s) of humor. We made all ourpoints again, several times, and some new ones too, including
Carla asking the company's one Black member how could she
stand the show's racism (as if assuming that none of the otheractors ought to mind a little racism here and there).
I watched the audience, mostly students from the college
town, quiet young women, blabbing young men; a few womenfrom the conference. The men were citing Marx and Brecht but
in sterile phrases betraying their thin experience and a fatal
snobbery - college radicals whose underlying theme seemed to
be not ''We're All Nazis" but "Ordinary Working People Are
Stupid." Their language, their faces conjured up late-60s Berkeley
in such thick nauseating waves that I could only wish for my deadfather's ghost to bellow disgusted judgment: theory-schmeory,
he'd say, in a construction I only two years ago learned was
Yiddish-derived. The same time Rae learned about her grandmother.
Maybe some people were thinking about the issues. The
discussion was lively enough, going on and on until the cafe
janitor showed up to clean and lock, and people moved out to thesidewalk, still talking, arguing, waving their hands around.
The next day over lunch we rehashed the details. We won82

dered about the young woman whose name we had learned wasRae. Shelly and Zelda were ecstatic, making lists of possible
targets, and Sonia too wanted to do it again and again. Carla kept
insisting she had done nothing wrong by making the one Black
responsible for the whole company's racism - that's not how she
put it, naturally - and we argued.
Fran brought up what everyone had noticed, that she had not
said a single word during the performance; she also confessedthat when we interrupted the play, she was mortified and hoped
people wouldn't know she was with us. She said this with an edgeof self-mockery, but the other edge was real discomfort - we hadgone too far - and I remembered what sometimes happens:
People pushed beyond themselves snap shut, a reflex of fear,
resentment and guilt. After that they stop meeting your eyes andavoid you altogether.
Carla's defensiveness and Fran's alienation struck two sournotes, as if to remind us change comes ha~d. But everyone else
was hooked on doing it: not a bad habit, as habits go.
Word got around the conference. All day women were asking
questions and, better yet, spreading fascinating rumors of
women barring the exits from the theater (the size of the cafe andnumbers of people grew sharply in these accounts), or forcing theentire audience into instant consciousness-raising groups on
Jewish issues. Someone had heard it was all about Zionism and
the PLO. A young graduate student who'd been there told eachof us at least twice she had never seen anything like it, membersof an audience taking power from the stage. She was pink withinspiration.
That night was the final event of the conference, a dance, andsometime towards midnight - I was punchy with fatigue - I
saw Rae heading our way across the huge ballroom. She'd cometo see us, and we gathered around her in a corner of the ballroom,and then around a table in the coffee shop, while she talked. For
hours. That's when we found out about her childhood, her
grandmother, her shame about knowing nothing Jewish.
You think you're the only one? Shelly asked.
Everything Jewish I know I learned in the last few years, Bonnie
stuck in, and I, my cheeks surprisingly hot, nodded. I could tellthis made Rae feel better.
83

Finally someone thought to ask what had happened with thetheater company. Janet the director had been in a rage, especiallyat Rae, but also at two women who tried to defend her. Afternearly twelve hours convulsed with fights, Rae had screamed
YOU may be a Nazi, I'm a JEW and I QUIT. (At this point we all
cheered.) Then she had gotten a ride over to the dance and here
she was. She wasn't sure what she'd do next, for work or
anything, but she was glad, she kept telling us that, we shouldn't
worry we had made it hard for her, she was glad.
By now we were all crying and hugging her and each other.
Then her ride showed up and we had to say goodbye, and we dug
through our bags for books, polaroid snapshots, our addresses,
Jewish strength we wanted to wrap her with, though the truth isshe had all she needed and more. Don't worry, she said again, I'll
be fine.
I was worrying, that's the down side of doing it, you maketrouble and people get swept up into it and then you leave andthey're stuck with trouble. Rae was out of a job, she had no Jewish
family or community.
But I looked at her face. She had herself. She had been brave,and courage is a mitzvah, for her and for us, then and now as I
remember Rae standing on stage, 19 years old, those large bones,
grey eyes, straight hair. I doubt she often got spotted as a Jew, andit seems she chose her Jewishness. When she was 17 and found
her grandmother. When she was 19, on the cafe stage. Maybe
she's still choosing, in different ways, her proud angry Jewish
face. Maybe I am too and that's why I remember.

First published in Response magazine, 1988.

84

Linda Frances

Family RitualMy

grandmother's red hair,- braided down her back,clasped with tortoise oval,
brushed in silence while my grandfather
swayed from side to side,prayed to God Adonai
For Passover
she cooked all week
and served on plates with gold rims
Seder night we sat uprightaround a mahogany table
Its carved legs like paws
ready to stalk gameI waited
to pour wine
for the ancient plagues,
for my sins,
I listened to Hebrew syllables
and thought One, Two, Three O'Leary
A my name is Aliceand I come from Alabama

85

Kore Archer

This Great Drama"People live in direct relation to the sheroes and heroes they keep alive."- Maya AngelouIn

the mid-nineteenth century this country was a panorama ofcriss-crossing migrations. In the northern cities, refugees from
Europe funneled into kaleidoscopic streets and tenements.
Forced relocation was driving entire nations - the Cherokee, theSeminole, the Choktaw, the Creek - westward to the undeveloped territory in the center of the continent. Like prairie windshivering across amber fields, pioneer traffic rippled steadily
towards the Far West and on to the motherlodes of California.
Eastward from Asia carne a procession of railroad workers tobuild the Pacific artery of the vast rail system metastasizing
across the plains. From the cottonfields and canefields of theSouth streamed an underground current of slaves escaping to
freedom in New England and Canada. And from the cities andtowns of the North poured the blue battalions of the Union Army
to clash and retreat in a slow, bloody dance with their southerncounterparts.
In the midst of this enormous choreography were two
women, spotlighted in their day, all but forgotten now, two who
briefly starred in bold charades, who staked their lives for a visionand helped forge the chain of events that brought us all here
today. Though they never met, these two, their lives are symmetrical, like matched bookends: the black woman who might havebeen white, the white woman who might have been a man. Who
fled servitude to seek a saner existence up north. Who marchedsouthward, craving danger.

* * *[Bound for Charleston, S.c., December 1848] It was a mild, beautiful morning, and most of the passengers were on deck, enjoying the
freshness of the air and stimulating their appetites for breakfast. Mr.
Johnson soon made his appearance. He was a slightly built, apparently
handsome young man, with black hair and eyes, and of a darkness ofcomplexion that betokened Spanish extraction. Any notice from others
86seemed painful to him so to satisfy my curiosity, I questioned his servant,
who was standing near.l
Introducing Mr. William Johnson, alias Ellen Craft, fugitive
slave.

* * *Ellen Craft was born in Georgia in 1826. Her owner was also
her father, and her disturbing resemblance to her half-siblings inthe big house infuriated the mistress, who treated Ellen spitefully
until, finally, she "gave" the girl to her daughter, Eliza, as awedding present. This transfer of ownership traumatically separated the eleven-year-old Ellen and her mother, Maria.
Maria must have been light-skinned- probably, like Ellen,
the child of slave-rape, because Ellen herself was light enough topass as white. And so a decade later, when Ellen and her husband,
William, harbored a dream of escaping, it occurred to them thatperhaps Ellen could pose as a white slaveowner, William as her
faithful slave. Of course, for a lady to -travel alone - evenaccompanied by a slave - was unthinkable. So Ellen would
attempt to pass as both white and male.
The couple began elaborate, sly preparations for their flight.
Since public accommodations were segregated, Ellen would betravelling on her own for much of the I,OOO-mile journey; the hoax
would have to be faultless. They knew she would be expected tosign hotel registers en route, and she couldn't read or write, but
she could put one arm in a sling to account for her inability to signin. In an era when beards and sideburns were fashionable, hersmooth face might attract notice, so she would tie another bandage around her head, as if she had a toothache. High-heeledboots and a tall hat would bring her up to a man's height.
Pretending to limp would be easier than trying to imitate a man's
stride, she decided. And she would wear green-tinted spectacles,
to conceal from her fellow passengers any traces of alarm in her
eyes. If luck were with them, she would appear to be an eccentric,
sickly aristocrat. She dubbed this outrageous conjuration 'William Johnson."
And if their plan failed? They must have been well aware thatEllen's fair skin would fetch her master a pretty price in thebrothels of Natchez or New Orleans. At the very least, they risked
never seeing each other again. But both had already lost blood87

kin to slavery; too recently, their baby had been sold away fromthem. They agreed: they had more to gain then could be lost now.
During the five-day journey from Macon to Philadelphia,
Ellen's fortitude was repeatedly put to the test. As it happened,
her first seatmate was a good friend of her master's, who had
known her since childhood. She turned her head toward thewindow, feigning deafness, and somehow got by unrecognized.
Worse, on the last day of their trip, the Crafts were told it was
illegal to transport slaves across the border states without ownership documents. In desperation, they persuaded officials thatthe invalid's health depended upon his slave's assistance and at
the last minute they were let through. In between, there werenumerous nervewracking, tragicomic episodes; in an accountpublished twelve years later in England, William described one
interaction between ''Mr. Johnson," an elderly man, and thegentleman's two daughters:

The gentleman thought my master would feel better if he would lie
down and rest himself; and as he was anxious to avoid conversation, he
at once acted upon this suggestions. The ladies politely rose, took their
extra shawls, and made a nice pillow for the invalid's head .. .After he had
been lying a little while the ladies, I suppose, thought he was asleep; so
one of them gave a long sigh, and said, in a quiet, fascinating [sic] tone,"Papa, he seems to be a very nice young gentleman." But before papa
could speak, the other lady quickly said, "Oh! Dear me, I never felt somuch for a gentleman in my life!" To use an American expression, "theyfell in love with the wrong chap."2
From his fellow passengers in the Jim Crow car, William hadobtained the address of a colored boardinghouse in Philadelphia.
Disembarking, they hailed a cab and made a bee-line there.
The "City of Brotherly Love" was a hotbed of anti-slavery
sentiment, and as news spread of this latest brazen escape, Ellen
and William became overnight celebrities in the abolitionist
community. Persuaded by their new allies, they began to telltheir story to enthusiastic audiences across New England. 3
But their flight had not yet ended. Two years later, theFugitive Slave Law, upholding a slaveowner's legal right to his
runaway "property," was passed. The Crafts, well known
among their enemies as well as in abolitionist circles, stood out asa prime target for the teams of slavecatchers who began to comb88

the free states. President Polk himself announced that he would
employ military force for their capture.
England offered the safest refuge; there, the Crafts would be
legally free, since that country had outlawed slavery in theeighteenth century.4 With borrowed resources and letters of
introduction, the Crafts headed north, traveling at night, andcaught a transatlantic steamer from Canada. Ellen was the first
free Afroamerican woman England had seen since Phyllis
Wheatley's visit in 1770; again the Crafts made a sensation, andthey seem to have made friends - lifelong friends - wherever
they stayed.

* * *[Yorktown, winter 1862] It was a cold night, moonless andthreatening rain. Among the colored infantry sent to distribute coffee
and corncakes to the Rebel picket posts was one who carried a canteen of
whiskey along with the night's rations. Preferring to drink with the
Negro sentries for awhile, he let his comrade~ return to camp withouthim. Presently an officer came riding along the lines and spotted thenewcomer. One of the pickets explained that the stranger had helped tocarry out their supper and was waiting until the Yankees stopped firing
before starting back. "You come along with me," said the Rebel officer.
He led the colored soldier to the petty officer on duty, some fifty yards
away. "Put this man on the post where that fellow was shot until I
return." The new man was given a rifle, told to use in freely in case hecaught sight of any Feds, and then seized by the collar and warned:"Now, you black rascal, if you sleep on your post, I'll shoot you like adog!" The Negro saluted; then, as hoofbeats faded from earshot, hedeliberately and noiselessly stepped into the darkness, headed toward theYankee encampment.
Introducing Frank Thompson, alias Sarah Edmonds, white spy
for the Union Army. .

* **Sarah Emma Edmonds was born in New Brunswick, Canada,
in 1841. When the Civil War broke out, she had already beenpassing as a man for two years. Her disguise may have been
inspired by her exposure to the novel Fanny Campbell, the Female
Sailor; a deeper motivation was her hatred of her father's tyranny.
He had wanted only sons, and Sarah was the fourth daughter; henever let Sarah forget that she was unwanted, and while she was89still a teenager he arranged for her marriage to an older neighbor,a man she detested. Before the forced wedding could take place,
Sarah climbed out of her bedroom window and fled.
In her new identity as Frank Thompson, she was hired as abook agent for a Connecticut publisher, and by 1860 was sellingbibles in Flint, Michigan, where she was later remembered as a"good looking, likeable, successful young man, who mademoney, dressed well, drove his own horse and buggy, and had
many lady friends."5 The same gifts that later ensured her successas a spy also enhanced her ability to sell; one of her male friends
recalled "Frank" as "glib of tongue, thoroughly businesslike,with an open, honest, persuasive manner that was particularly attractive."6Early in the spring of 1861, as "Frank" sat waiting in a train
station, she heard a voice in the street crying out the news: Fort
Sumpter had fallen, and Lincoln had issued a proclamation
calling for 75,000 volunteers. She later wrote:
War, civil war, with all its horrors seemed inevitable. It was not myintention, or desire, to seek my own personal ease and comfort while somuch sorrow and distress filled the land. But the great question to be
decided was, what am I to do? What part am I to act in this great drama?7
Eager to demonstrate her love for her adopted country,"Frank" signed up for basic training with the 2nd Michigan
infantry; though they kidded her about her tiny boots, the men
never suspected her disguise. On May 25, she was sworn in as a"male nurse" and was sent to Washington. As a medic she braved
enemy fire to rescue bodies from the field and risked exposure tovarious infectious diseases - typhoid, diphtheria, pneumonia,
smallpox - as well as the chance of contracting TB, malaria,
gangrene, dysentery or lockjaw. There was no such thing as immunization then, and working conditions were far from sanitary.
Early in 1862, "Frank" applied for espionage work and was
accepted into the secret service. Before the Battle of Fair Oaks she
penetrated Rebel lines masquerading as an Irish peddler; later,
before the second battle of Bull Run, she stole some classified
documents from a Confederate officer.
Her disguise as a mulatto soldier was accomplished by darkening her face with pigment. Because southerners were used toignoring slaves, talking of important matters in front of them as
if they couldn't hear or understand, this ambitious disguise gave
90

"Frank" - and the Union - access to important bits and pieces
of information about Rebel strategy.s "The colored soldier" returned with a detailed inventory of Confederate weaponry and a
sketch of Rebel fortifications tucked inside her shoe; she alsobrought the name of a Confederate spy who'd been hanging
around the Yankee camp disguised as a peddler; she'd spotted
him in the Rebel camp without being recognized herself.
During her enlistment, "Frank" was wounded several times.
Once, caught in an ambush, her horse was killed and she wasthrown. She pretended to be dead as an enemy soldier went
through her pockets, and lived to tell the tale. Another time,
while serving as a mail carrier, she was thrown from her muleand, though bleeding internally, refused medical attention, "forthe very first thing would have been an examination of my lungs- which to me simply meant dismissal from the service."9 (Thisinjury continued to plague her on and off for the rest of her life.)
Finally, late in 1862, she contracted malarial fever in the Chickahominy swamps. Rather than go to the Infirmary, she went
AWOL - deserted.
Once she shook off the malaria, Sarah began writing her
memoirs. Nurse and Spy or: Unsexed, the Female Soldier was an
immediate bestseller. lO During this time, Sarah changed her
identity; though she had risked death to avoid exposure of her
womanhood a few months ago, she now rejoined the army as
Sarah Edmonds. This about-face testifies to her patriotic fervordeserters were customarily shot; there was no way she could
have returned to military service as Frank Thompson. She
worked as a nurse until the end of the war and donated allproceeds from the sales of her book to soldiers' aid societies.
After the war, Sarah married; she bore three children, all ofwhom died in childhood, and later adopted two boys. In 1880,
still afflicted with recurring spells of malaria, she decided toapply for a government pension. Her old buddies, astonished tolearn who "Frank Thompson" really was, nevertheless showedno hesitation in helping document her claim, and the 48th Congress passed as act granting her a pension and honorable discharge.

* * *Meanwhile in England, Ellen had acquired an education and washaving babies - freeborn babies, four boys and a girl by 1867. In
91

that year she also succeeded in contacting her mother, who wasreunited with her in England. Still active in the abolition movement, Ellen now formed a "ladies' auxiliary" to raise funds forcharitable causes; when the colored orphanage in New York City
was burned in draft riots, a package of handsewn clothing from
Ellen Craft was among the contributions received.
In 1869, soon after the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment (supposedly guaranteeing voting rights for black men),
Ellen and her family returned to Georgia. Sherman's scars and themood of the people must have presented a depressing, frightening contrast to the cordial years among the British upper class.
Within a year the combination school and plantation they had
founded was burned to the ground by nightriders; later, white
enemies stirred up rumors that involved William in a long,draining libel suit. Still, within their community, the Craft family
remained well known and respected. ll* * *Sometime around 1891, already overlooked by history, Ellen
Craft died. She was buried near Savannah, at Woodville, thefamily estate, under a favorite pine tree.
Sarah died seven years later, after a last, long bout withmalaria. She was given a military funeral and buried in the
Washington Cemetery in Houston, Texas.

* * *You won't find Ellen Craft or Sarah Edmonds in schoolbooks(nor any mention of the fact that more than a few women in thosedays slipped into trousers in order to enlist in the Civil War or toelude slavecatchers).13 As far as "American History" is concerned, the notorious runaway whose determination, fluency
and dignity won sympathetic crowds to freedom's cause or the
one-time soldier whose secret missions altered Union strategy,
might never have lived and died. Deviants. Nobodies.
Nevertheless, their influence on their contemporaries is indisputable. Imagine the number of slaves inspired by Ellen'sstory to make a run for it, the numbers of "unsexed" womeninspired by "the female soldier" to rid themselves of their corsets
and behave like freeborn human beings.
92

There is a funny kind of reciprocity between past and future.
We're aware of our responsibility for the kind of world ourchildren inherit, but forget to look backward and re-member
what our ancestors have deeded us. Our survival depends on ourability to let their lives change ours, to retell the fragile, recurring
dream that haunts us all, to water our spiritual family tree. To
find our own way of saying "thank you" -lest it be said that our
sheroes risked their lives in vain.

* * *ENDNOTES
1. Dorothy Sterling, Black Foremothers: Three Lives. Old Westbury,N.Y.:
The Feminist Press, 1979, p. 15. Written for children, this is neverthelessthe most thoughtful and comprehensive account of Ellen's life that I've
found.
2. ''Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: or, the Escape of William
and Ellen Craft from Slavery," in Arna BoJ;ttemps, ed., Great Slave
Narratives. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969, p. 303. The Crafts' autobiography.
3. At this time women who spoke in public were stigmatized considered maladjusted and dangerous. Abolitionist women, in fact,
were beginning to understand how helpless they would be within the
movement until they first liberated themselves. However, Ellen'saudiences were so moved by her presence that they consistently begged
to hear from her until, finally, a brief address by Ellen was included in
the program.
4. ''The British antislavery movement, which had won liberty for theslaves of the West Indies and was now supporting the American
freedom struggle, was made up of 'the best people': titled ladies andgentlemen, members of Parliament, ministers, doctors, literary folk.
Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband, was president of the AntiSlavery Society, giving it the seal of respectability that the American
movement lacked. Instead of putting up at New England farmhouses,[the Crafts] stayed in big city hotels or fine country homes. Theirmeetings were held in large halls where thousands came to see them."(Sterling, p. 38)
5. Sylvia G. L. Dannett, Noble Women of the North. New York: Thomas
Yoseloff, 1959, p. 49. A well-researched collection of first-person accounts by women - mostly white nurses - who served on the battlefields of the Civil War.
6. "Sarah Edmonds ... Just One of the Boys," in The Wooden Nutmeg,
March 2, 1981, pp. 4-5,25. A useful article, in spite of its author's obvious

93homophobia.
7. Sarah Emma Edmonds, Nurse and Spy or: Unsexed, the Female Soldier.
Hartford, 1864; later reprinted in Philadelphia. Sarah' s autobiographical account of her wartime adventures.
8. Harriet Tubman, "the Black Moses," who spied for the Union as wellas leading thousands of her people to freedom, also took advantage ofthis self-destructive habit on the part of the Confederacy.
9. "Sarah Edmonds . . .," p. 5.
10. The term, "unsexed," as it was understood at the time, referred to
any woman who overstepped the boundaries of "a woman's place."
11. In 1883 a black newspaper commented: ''No colored family in thestate stands higher in the estimation of the people of Georgia than the
Craft family. They are well fixed in the world's goods and both of theboys are holding first class positions under the Federal Administration."(Sterling, p . 59)
12. Thus "Frank Thompson" received the recognition denied her sisters
who served the Union as women and later petitioned for compensation
for war-related injuries. ''In 1892, many of the women who had faithfully
served their country were old and destitute. Many had been in poor
health since the war ... A great number of the women died without
reward or recognition and in extreme poverty, despite the fact that the
Civil War soldiers w ere more indebted to these women than to any otherclass of people." (Dannett, p. 389)
13. No less than 400 women are known to have enlisted, or tried toenlist, in the army during the Civil War. ("Sarah Edmonds ... ", p. 25.)
Though the underground railroad was understandably more concernedwith the immediate safety of its passengers than with record-keeping,several cases of cross-dressing slave women are documented in William
Still's book, The Underground Railroad (New York: Arno Press & The New
York Times, 1968).

94Carolyn Gage

The Second Coming of Joan of Arc
A One-Woman ShowACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was inspired by Vita Sackville-West's incisive biography, Saint Joan of Arc. As a lesbian researcher, Sackville-West wasable to recover facts about Joan's life that make her experiences
relevant to women today, faced as we are with the same conspiracies of betrayal by army, church and state.

PROLOGUE~ay, here it is. Here's Compiegne over here. It's ours. And
there's Margny, over there. It belongs to the Duke of Burgundy's
men. Those are the French who are fighting for the English king ...
you know, the "enemy." And here's the river in the middle. And
over the river is a bridge, right from Compiegne to Margny. And
the bridge is not guarded. All we have to do is cross over, surprisethem, and Margny's ours. Nothing to it, right?
So that's what we do, almost. We cross, we attack, they retreat.
And then suddenly off over here we see more of the Duke of
Burgundy's men coming from the next town across the way.
Well, I mean that's not good news, but it's not the end of the world
either. I say to myself, "Well, this is going to take a little longer
than I thought." But my soldiers, they see these reinforcements,
and what do they do? They lose it. Completely. They take off
running back across the bridge to Compiegne, and I'm yelling atthem and trying to get them to stand and fight, but there's no way
to stop them. Every try to stop a scared man? So I do the next bestthing. I stay behind and cover their retreat.
So here I am, on my horse, fighting backwards to get acrossthat bridge, with all my soldiers streaming past me. And suddenly, I hear this terrible noise. The worst noise in the world. You
know what that is? That's the sound the drawbridge at Compiegne makes when it's being raised. By my own men.
So here I am, cut off, surrounded by enemy soldiers. Of
course, I'm "captured." Ditched is the word.
95

You know, when you are locked in a cell for eight months withnothing to do, you have a lot of time to ask yourself questions ...
questions like WHY THE HELL DIDN'T THEY WAIT TO RAISE
THAT LOUSY DRAWBRIDGE? Don't tell me they didn't know
where I was. The entire army had to run past me on the bridge to
get to Compiegne. And don't try to tell me they thought I could
take care of myself. Me against five hundred soldiers?
I mean, what were they thinking? You know what I decided?
I decided they weren't thinking at all. Which in itself is a statement. They were scared; they were in a hurry. They saw me
fighting on the bridge, but they didn't think about it. They didn't
think about what would happen to me if they raised the drawbridge. It was irrelevant.
There is a term for the chapters about women in your highschool history books: "nonessential information." In the brains ofthese men, the textbook of their personal history has two essential
chapters: the one on fraternity and the one on chivalry. The
fraternity chapter tells them how to act around other men, how to
be a team player, a loyal comrade, an esteemed colleague. It tells
them to close ranks against outsiders and never to desert abrother officer in the heat of battle. The chivalry chapter tells
them that if they are on a sinking ship, to make sure that the
women and children are saved first.
But the problem was, I was neither a brother, nor a helplessfemale. In the textbook of their brains, the section on me was justan insert, with a border of little cannons around it, and a headingin flowery letters: "The Maid of Orleans." It was nonessential
information. They would not be held responsible for it during atest. So, with the enemy bearing down on them, they stuck to theessentials. The image of me still fighting on the bridge wasentered into their programs for fraternity and chivalry, but nothing turned up ... so they raised the drawbridge.
Now, in case you're thinking that this kind of thing only
happens to butch women - I say, look again. I submit that every
one of you is an insert in the textbook of your country. I look out
over this sea of nonessential faces, and I see the little borders
around your lives, individually and collectively. You are inserts
in the lives of men. You are inserts in the history of your nation.
You are inserts in the roll book of your government. And when it
comes down to the real issues, you will be missing from the96

program.
What I am here for tonight is to take the border off "Saint Joanof Arc," and put my life into the main text. My story is not asidelight of history, a piece of local color, or optional reading. My
story is the story of all women, and my suffering is identical to
yours. My trial is the trial of all women. My misguided crusade is
all of our misguided crusades. My enemies are your enemies. My
mistakes are your mistakes. The voices I hear are your voices.
And the voices you hear are my voices.
PART I
In the first place, my name is not Joan. It's Jeanne. So how did"Jeanne" get to be "Joan"? It got lost in the translation. In five
hundred years, a lot of things about my life got lost in the translation.
In the second place, "of Arc" makes it sound like I come froma town called "Arc." I don't. I come from Domremy. There's nosuch place as "Arc." It's a poor translation of my father's name,and besides that, I never used his name. I went by my mothers
name: Ramee.
And in the third place, I never gave anybody permission to
make me a saint. Think about it. The same boys that burned me at
the stake turn around and try to make me a public relations officer
for their church. Right ... over my dead body.
So I'm not Saint Joan of Arc. I'm Jeanne Ramee. Big deal,
right? Who cares? I care. Joan of Arc is not my name, and "saint"
is just another word for a woman who got burned, and it's time
we woke up and stopped letting other people change our names
and it's time we stopped thinking it's an honor to be tortured bymen. Most of all, it's time we started telling the truth about ourown lives. These myths are killing us.
So ... soldier, martyr, hero, saint. All between the ages of seventeen and nineteen. That's when I died, nineteen. I had justthose two years. Soldier, martyr, hero, saint ... idiot.
It was my death that really did it. The beautiful young girlclutching a makeshift cross, eyes lifted up to heaven, as she
disappears in a cloud of fiery smoke. That was the death of Saint
Joan of Arc. Tonight I want to tell you how Jeanne Ramee died.
The beginning of the end was on Easter, 1430. I was all ofeighteen. The city of Melun had just surrendered to me, which97was very exciting. It had belonged to the enemy for ten years. I
was standing on the walls of the city, and the soldiers and thepeople were all cheering me, and the bells of the church wereringing for Easter. I couldn't have been happier. The king had
been crowned; I was a national hero. Everything was possible.
And then I heard my voices.
My voices. Everyone always wants to know about my voices.
When do I hear them? What do they sound like? Do other people
hear them too? And - here's my favorite - why do they speak
French instead of English?
My voices weren't all that special. Everybody hears voices.
Everybody's got somebody leaning over their shoulder andwhispering in their ear what they should do and what theyshouldn't do ... "Get the hair out of your face ... " "Put your knees
together." That's what civilization's all about, isn't it? Listening
to the voices of those who lived before you did. That's what keeps
the machinery going. No, the real problem for civilization comeswhen a woman decides to invent her own voices and then believein them. See, that's almost like thinking for yourself.
You're surprised to hear me say I invented my voices? Let's
put it this way ... I heard what I believed just as much as I believed
what I heard. Think about it .. . Where is the reality in the voices
you hear? Is it "out there," or do you make it real for yourself? Just
where does the authority come from? Hey, we all invent our
voices. Mine were just more blatantly fictional, that's all. That's
because I didn't like the selection available to young women in
Domremy.
There was my father's voice: "Jeanne, a rich young man will
come and marry you and you will go and live with him and hewill help your poor old father take care of his sheep." And thenthere was my mother: "Jeanne, a nice young man will come andmarry you and you will have lots of children and then you will
understand just how I feel." And don't forget the priest: "Jeanne,
God has called you to give yourself to him, and you will enter aconvent and say prayers all day long that things will get better."
All the voices in Domremy were more or less variations on these
themes.
But then one day, I'm walking in my father's garden and I
hear, "Jeanne, you have been chosen by God to ride at the head of
the French army, to take the king to be crowned, and to drive the98English out of France." Yeah! Now, that's what I call a voice. It
was the voice of St. Michael, and I liked it so much a few days laterI heard st. Catherine and St. Margaret.
So why saints? And why these particular saints? Well, youhave to remember that Domremy was a pretty small place, andgood role models were hard to come by. I mean, outside yourfamily and your neighbors ... you were pretty much looking at
the sheep. If I wanted another point of reference, I was going tohave to use my imagination. And I did. There was a statue of St.
Margaret in our church, and there was one of St. Catherine in the
church across the river. And everybody knew who st. Michael
was, because he was the patron saint of the district. So, not too
surprisingly, these were my role models, my "voices."
Let me tell you about them. There was St. MichaeL He led thearmy of angels out to battle against Satan, and kicked him out ofheaven. He was our Catholic cowboy, our superhero saint. He
always wore armor and carried a sword.
Then there was St. Catherine. She was arrested and put on
trial for her religion. Fifty old men asked her a lot of trick questions, but she outsmarted them all, which wasn't so smart, because it only made her sexually irresistible to the Emperor who
had arrested her in the first place. And of course when she turned
him down ... well, he had to do something to save face, so he cut
off her head.
And there was St. Margaret ... she ran away the night she was
supposed to get married, and she cut her hair real short andpassed herself off as a monk for many years. Then some woman
accused her of getting her pregnant, and Margaret decided it was
better to take the rap and spend the rest of her life in solitaryconfinement than to admit she was a woman.
Some role models, right? Michael, Catherine, Margaret .. .
And guess what? I grew up to lead an army, to dress like a man
and to stand trial for my religious beliefs. No, my life wasn't
original at alL I copied my role models just as faithfully as anyoneof you copies yours. Mine were just a little more flamboyant.
We have got to stop and take a look at our role models. Maybe
just spend two minutes thinking about the people we're going tospend the next fifty years imitating. Take me for instance ... I had
two female martyrs, both beheaded, and one male conquering
hero. I should have noticed that the only happy ending was the99

man's. I also should have noticed that a conquering male gets awhole different reception than a conquering female. The only
thing a woman is expected to defeat is herself. Anything else is
not victory, but castration. What I'm saying is that I should havenoticed I had a third act that wouldn't work. The lead was written
for a male.
What, and I mean what, is the happy ending for women?
Marriage, where the whole company comes on stage and joins
hands around the happy couple while they ring down the curtain? And they better ring it down at this point, because, as we allknow, that's when the leading lady retires from the stage.
Or is the happy ending those scenes where the fatallywounded or terminally-ill heroine sings her dying aria in thearms of a heartbroken lover? The bad news is she dies, but thegood news is he really did love her after all. Too little and too latemaybe, but who's keeping score?
Is there some happy ending for us that doesn't call for our
total spiritual annihilation? What if we all dropped everything ...
whatever we've got going right now? What if we just stopped
doing everything until we could figure out the happy ending for
women? Not just figure it out, but actually see it, feel it, touch it,
taste it. Because I'm here to tell you, you're going to paint what
you're looking at. And if we don't come up with something better
than all these martyred female saints - hey, we're all going to
end up at the stake. Today you women are allowed to go out andwork in the men's world. When I did it back in 1430, I was a real
freak. But the men haven't changed, the rules haven't changed,
and the institutions haven't changed. The fact that there are moreof you women doing it now just means an excuse for a bigger fire.
But getting back to the voices ... The first time I heard them, I
was thirteen. That's a good age for internalizing voices, isn't it?
The age of puberty.
Puberty. I knew all about puberty even before I got there,
because I had figured out it was the missing link in the story of mymother's life.
Isabelle Romee was my mother. I didn't see too much of her,even though I lived under the same roof with her for seventeen
years, if you know what I mean. By the time I was born, she hadalready had three other kids, and been married half her life.
When she opened her mouth, it was either mother-talk or wife100

talk. The only time I ever heard Isabelle speak with her own voice
was when she would tell us kids about her trip to Rome.
When she was a girl, her family went on a pilgrimage to see
the Pope. And they took her along. It was a big adventure,
traveling all that way, going into a foreign country, staying in adifferent place every night, camping out, and meeting all kinds ofpeople from all kinds of places. Whenever she told us thesestories, she would get very animated, and her eyes would shine,and she would literally turn into somebody else ... somebody I
never knew. Somebody who never had children. Somebody who
had lived another whole life in another whole world. This person
who had all these adventures and wanted to go back again andwas brave and independent and funny ... well, she was not mymother.
The only thing I could figure out was that something terrible- I mean really terrible, must have happened to turn this girl withall the big adventures into this woman who would be doing theexact same things tomorrow that she did yesterday. I didn't
know what this terrible thing was, until I saw it happen to my big
sister. In one year, she went from being full of crazy ideas and lotsof fun, to being somebody serious and boring and busy. The
terrible thing was puberty, and I made up my mind it was nevergoing to happen to me.
Puberty. The beginning of periods, which means you canhave babies. The beginning of breasts, which means you cannurse babies. The beginning of feeling self-conscious aroundboys, because you have this opening between your legs that they
all want to stick themselves into.
Puberty is about loss of privacy. It's about living in a bodythat has become public property. It's about foreign invasion,
about occupied territory. One by one, my girlfriends surrendered themselves. I watched them go off with men and turnthemselves into foreigners ... Mengette, Charlotte, and even mybest friend Hauviette ... or at least that's what I thought at thetime, but that's a whole other story. Every day I could feel myfamily, my relatives, my neighbors laying siege to me. They
surrounded me, and they would not let anything in or out thatwould allow me to have my own life. They were isolating me,trying to starve the spirit out of me, waiting for little Jeanne toraise the white flag and throw open the gates for all of them.
101Andthen they would pour into my citadel, and they would takemy children hostage, rape my women, kill my men, seize anything of value, destroy what they couldn't use ... and then when
they were thoroughly in control of what life I had left, then theywould feed me.
I will tell you a secret. If you learn not to eat, they can't
threaten you with starvation. That's right. And that's exactly
what I did. I would eat as little as possible ... a piece of bread aday. And it worked. My body stayed like the body of a girl. WhenI died at nineteen, I had still never menstruated. I had found a
way to avoid puberty.
I love the body of a young girl. I love my body. My lean body,somewhere between men and women, somewhere where nobody can catch me. I'm a freak. There's a lot of pain in being afreak, but there's a lot of respect. People have to deal with you on
your own terms. They can't project their fantasies onto you.
There's dignity in being a freak. I was a freak. I still am. Let me tell
you something. There's no such thing as "eating disorders" in a
prison camp. There's only eating strategies. And mine was very
successful. I did not fall into the same trap my mother and mysister did. I did not die by millimeters, as if it were my own fault.
If I was going to die, at least the killers were going to have to comeout and show themselves. And they did.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. When I was seventeen, myfather engaged me to a nice young man. I said I had no intentionof marrying him, so the nice young man threatened to take me tocourt for breach of promise. I said, "Go ahead. It's my father's
promise, not mine." He thought he could call my bluff, but I
called his. We went to court and I won. Of course, I made a foolof my father, and after this, life at home was pure hell. And thenthe enemy soldiers came through Domremy and burned everything they could get their hands on. So this was a red letter year
for me. The year I was seventeen, my whole family turned against
me and the town where I had lived all my life was burned to theground. But these were just brush fires compared to the realcatastrophe. That same year, Hauviette, my best friend, got engaged. France's hour of glory had struck. I ran away from home.
One of the hardest parts of running away was leaving mymother. It was like in battle, when the soldier next to you gets his
legs blown off by a cannon. You don't want to leave him, but
102there's nothing you can do for him, and if you stay behind withhim, they'll get you too. So you leave. Like I left my mother. But
it tore my heart out.
The year before I left, she was always telling me to get married, to stop making so much trouble for my father. But way in theback of her eyes, underneath all those layers of wife and mother,
I could still see those embers of her trip to Rome smoldering in her
memory, like the remains of some sacred fire at the altar of her lost
girlhood. I wanted to take those embers of hers and fan them backinto flame, and then I wanted to take that flame, and live out mylife, not just one or two episodes, but my whole life, in the blaze ofthat hot, bright fire. I left without telling my mother I was going,but I felt, and I still feel, that I have her blessings. I rode out withthe standard of my mother's lost girlhood. I am the champion oflost girlhood dreams.
After I left home, I went to stay with my cousin. His wife was
expecting a baby and she needed some help. But I didn't staylong. I talked my cousin into taking me to'see the governor of thefort at Vaucouleurs. I wanted him to give me a military escort toehinon, where I could see the king.
There are a lot myths and theories about why this macho
governor gave me, a young female nobody, that escort. Somepeople say I convinced him with a supernatural prophesy. Others say that he believed some legend that a woman would save
France. Or some say that he was talked into it by other people.
And - here's my favorite - that he was just desperate enough totry anything.
The truth is that there is no man on earth who can stand in theway of woman who is utterly convinced of the rightness of heractions.
So why, since women are usually right, are we still stuck in the
Dark Ages? Because we don't feel like we're right. Well, if we are,why don't we feel like it? Because we're waiting for permission.
You will notice that my career began to slide after the king wascrowned and I began to need his permission. Before that, nothing
could stop me and my voices. But as soon as I started waiting for
permission, I lost my timing, I lost my momentum, and finally .. .
my confidence.
Anyway, I went to the governor and the governor gave me theescort, and I went to the king, and the king gave me the army, and103

I went to Orleans and I lifted the siege, and I won my battles, andI took the king to Reims to be crowned ... and all of these things
happened for the same reason: I was one hundred per cent sure I
was right.
Which brings me back to that Easter Day at Melun, the beginning of the end. Like I told you, I was standing on the walls of thecity. The crowds were cheering and the bells were ringing, andthen I heard my voices. And my voices told me I would be
captured soon.
My voices never lied to me. My father lied, the king lied, thegenerals lied, and the bishops lied. But my voices never lied. A
month after Easter, I was captured.
"1 was captured." Captured, hell ... like I told you, I was
ditched! Let's be honest. I can't even say I was betrayed. Thatmight actually have involved some forethought. No, I was
ditched.
So, there I was ... a prisoner of war. This was May 23,1430. I
was eighteen.
For the first few days, I actually believed I would be rescued.
I believed the king would send the army to get me. I would sit in
my cell and imagine I could hear the trumpets in the distance.
That was June. By July, I said to myself, 'Well, Jeanne, the king isholding back the troops. He is raising your ransom money."That was July. By August, I said to myself, 'Well, Jeanne, they
are negotiating. Charles is having trouble getting all the money
together. After all, you're not cheap." It never occurred to me that
he wouldn't save me. I was the hope and promise of France. I wasa national hero. Of course, the king would save me. I was evenmore popular than he was. Right.
So that was August. By November, I knew something was
wrong, but I didn't know what. The king was clearly not doing
anything, but why? Like a detective, I began looking for clues
among the details of my brief but spectacular career. I thoughtback a year earlier to the scene at Reims.
Okay, here it is. It's the inside of the cathedral of Reims,
Coronation Day. It's a beautiful July day, and the sun is streaming
through the stained glass windows, and the bells are all chiming,and the air is sweet with the smell of incense. The pews are full ofsoldiers, and officers, counts and dukes and knights ... and theirwomen, all dressed in satins and lace and velvet. There are priests
104and abbots and bishops, and the Archbishop of Reims is here,
wearing this beautiful robe made out of gold cloth. And here's
Charles, standing in the front of the church, dressed like a king,waiting to be crowned according to the sacred traditions handed
down by generation after generation of French kings. And there,
standing next to him, in the place of highest honor, is a seventeenyear old peasant girl in full armor.
What's wrong with this picture?
What everyone else knew and I didn't was that I had broken
all the rules. Here I was ... a peasant, strike one .. . a child, strike
two ... and a female, strike three. Actually anyone of those is an
automatic out, but I was all three at the same time. And if thatwasn't bad enough, I was also illiterate, outspoken and I dressed
like a man. I mean, we're talking about somebody so far out in left
field they're beyond the bleachers. But ... all the same, there I
was, right up there next to the king.
Alone in my cell, I began to consider for the first time thepeople sitting in the pews that day. These people had followed
the rules very carefully. They passed their property and titles
down to their oldest sons. And then they passed their daughtersdown to somebody else's oldest son. They arranged their whole
lives around their real estate. And this was considered high class.
And for the first time, I considered the high-ranking officers... the ones who were supposed to be driving the English out ofFrance - or, at least that's how I understood it. To them, the army
was a career ... which explains why we were still fighting theHundred Years' War. The first rule of promotion is, "Cover yourass." This means make friends in high places, never question
authority and above all, never ever do anything that involves
personal risk.
For the first time, I considered the men of God, the clergy.
They know the good Lord helps them that help themselves, sothat's what they did. They helped themselves to other people's
money, to other people's land and to other people's daughters.
The name of the game here was, raise the most money in the nameof the Lord, keep a low profile and be able to quote some authority
for all your actions, preferably the Bible, but anything in Latin
will do.
So here is this cathedral full of people who have devoted theirwhole lives to playing by the rules, inching their way along, one
105square at a time, and here comes this peasant girl ... this girl who
has taken a shortcut right around all their precious titles andbloodlines, and is right up there next to the king ... this girl who
has never held any rank at all, but she rides at the head of the army... this girl who belongs to a church where women are too sinful tobe priests, and yet the angels are talking to her ... ?
Obviously there is something wrong here. I mean, here they
are ... these people have spent their whole lives waiting in line tobuy tickets to see God. And they've made up all these rules tomake sure they get the good seats, while everyone else has to takestanding room in the back. And now, here's this little peasant girlnobody, walking right past the whole line of them, right into thetheatre, with no ticket at all!
There's two conclusions they can draw. One, they havewasted their whole lives. Their place in line is meaningless, thereservations made for them by their ancestors are meaningless,the fact they can afford box seats is meaningless: you don't needtickets to see God. And then there's the second conclusion. The
girls is wrong. Dead wrong.
In December 1430, on the eve of my nineteenth birthday,alone in my little prison cell, I finally figured out why there hadn't
been any rescue or ransom and why there was never going to be
any rescue or ransom. I was the enemy.
So that was December. In January, the Duke of Burgundy
turned me over to the church Inquisition. I was no longer aprisoner of war. I was a heretic. A woman who hears voices is a
lot more dangerous than a woman with an army. Keep that inmind.
PART IISo, how do you torture a woman? Well, you can tie her up on
the rack and rip her bones apart from the sockets. That's one way.
Or you can tear apart her mind and her body. There's two ways todo this: you can pry her body away from her mind, or you can pry
her mind away from her body. Either way, it comes out the same:
you paralyze the woman .. . she can think but not act, or she canact but not think.
To pry her body away from her mind, you need to physicallyhumiliate her. Of course rape is the most traditional method, but
it's not the only one, by any means. You can ridicule her body, or106make fun of the things she does. You can make her self-conscious
about her looks. You can make her strap her breasts in, you canmake her embarrassed about her periods. You can make herfrightened of puberty, frightened of sex, frightened of aging,frightened of eating. You can terrorize her with her own body,and then she'll torture herself.
Now, if you want to pry her mind apart from her body, youhave to make her believe she's crazy. I mean, you can put her in acourtroom and have all the experts certify that she's mentally
incompetent. But again, there's a lot of other ways to go about
this. You can just annul her. We all know how that goes ...
interrupt her, change the subject, ignore her, patronize her, trivialize her, dismiss her. You can deprive her of her own history, of
her art, of her spiritual traditions. You can limit her contact withother women. You can cause her to doubt her perceptions, andthen if she is unable to change the way she thinks, she'll believe
she's crazy. It's really not too hard to do, if you control all the
resources.
And if you're a real expert at torture, you can do both at thesame time. You can offer to love her body, if she'll just give up her
mind. Then you can offer love to her mind, and at the same time
reject her body. That's what I got. The Church had so much love
for my soul, they had to burn my body. On the other hand, they
promised to take care of my body, if I would give up everything I
knew was true.
You think the days of the Inquisition are over? Every woman
who's ashamed of her body is a victim of torture. Every woman
who doubts her own judgment is a victim of torture. Just how
many women do you know who aren't pulled apart?
Well. My torture. As I say, I got it both ways. In my prison
cell, they were after my body. In the courtroom, they were goingfor my mind.
I was moved to a castle in Rouen for the trial. My cell was dark
and cold and I was never allowed to leave it, except to go to thecourtroom. My feet were chained to a wooden beam. It was
uncomfortable, but it wasn't all that different from the otherplaces where I had been a prisoner for the last eight months ...
except for one thing. I wasn't allowed to be attended by women.
In this prison, I had a special detail of guards. There were fiveof them. English soldiers. Three in the cell with me and two107

outside the door, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, forfive months. They were animals. They insulted me, they threatened me, they molested me, they ridiculed me, they degraded
me. They never got tired of cruelty. They never gave me a minuteof privacy. They polluted every square inch of my cell.
They did everything but rape me, and that wasn't out of any
respect for me. There were two reasons they didn't: first, I was
difficult to get at, because I was wearing men's clothes. I had hosetied to the doublet at twenty points, and I had leggings whichwere tightly laced. And then, my virginity was an issue at the trial- you know, virginity being equated with credibility - so after
the court had me examined to certify my hymen, well, the guards
didn't dare to anything after that. Not because it would have beenrape, oh no - not at all. Because it would have been tamperingwith the evidence.
But rape, of course, is not the issue. The fear of rape, as men
have known for years, is just as effective as the real thing. The
woman is scared to live alone, to go places by herself, scared of thedark, always looking over her shoulder, waking up at the least
sound in the middle of the night. She is perpetually distracted,
self-conscious, subverted ... terrorized. She might just as wellhave been raped, which, of course, is the whole point.
In my little cell in Rouen, surrounded by my five guards, theatmosphere of rape was suffocating. And it had nothing to dowith sex. It had to do with degradation. They wanted me todespise myself. I chose to despise them instead.
Anger is a discipline. I practiced my anger like some people
practice piano. It takes energy to be outraged. It's hard work.
Especially when the abuse becomes routine. Some days I was
tired and sore and feeling sorry for myself. Some days I justwanted to pretend I didn't hear them, or that I was exalted
enough to forgive them. But I would always say to myself,"Jeanne, if you don't resist this abuse, then you accept it, and if
you accept it, then you deserve it, and if you deserve it, you're adead woman and that's exactly what they want." So, no matter
how sick, how tired, how weak, I would always rise to the occasion, throw back the insult, protest the abuse and demand myrights as a human being. Of course, this had no effect on them, but
it kept me alive.
I want to say something about my experience. I hear a lot oftalk about women forgiving men. I don't believe it. I have108

experienced almost every form of cruelty men can inflict on
women, and I am here to tell you that no human being can forgive
it or ignore it, and furthermore, no human being should ever try.
With abuse, you either resist it, or you accept it, period. Anythingelse is just fooling yourself.
So I fought for my body in the cell. In the courtroom, I had tofight for my mind.
Let me tell you about my trial. I had two judges, two officersof the court, three notaries and an usher to escort me back andforth from my cell ... AND ... thirty-two doctors of theology,
sixteen bachelors of theology, four doctors of civil rights, sevenmen with special licenses, five doctors of canon law, fifteen men
with licenses in canon law, seven medical doctors, eleven mastersof arts, sixteen assistants and expert witnesses, twenty-threepriests, five bishops, three abbots ... and a cardinal in a pear tree.
After all, you can't be too careful with these teenage girls.
The trial lasted five months. It focused on two issues: myvoices and my clothing. Now, that seemed strange to me at first,
because both of those things are so irrelevant. I mean, why would
all these important men be so interested in something so personal? I kept trying to skip over their questions or change thesubject, but time after time, day after day, they would always
come back to those same two things: my voices and my clothes. Of
course. My perceptions and my identity. They knew exactly
what they were doing. They wanted me to renounce my voicesthat is, invalidate my perceptions - and to wear women's clothing - that is, to change my identity to suit them. Of course.
Haven't we all?
So on and on it went. Actually, in the beginning, I was holding
my own pretty well. They'd ask, "Do St. Catherine and St. Margaret have hair?" And 1'd say, "You better believe it!" Or, 'Was
St. Michael wearing any clothes?" And 1'd say, 'What do you
think? God's too poor to give him any?" Lots of people in the
courtroom would crack up. In fact, I think a lot of them weresecretly rooting for me.
I think my judge, Cauchon, knew it too. I was supposed tohave two judges, but one of them never showed up. Really it was
Cauchon's baby. He told everybody he wanted to have a ''beautiful trial." It was going to be a big boost for him. You see, he wason a career track. He had gone to the University of Paris, and then109

they sent him to Rome, and then they made him the Bishop of
Beauvais, and he was moving right up the old ladder. But then heran into a snag with the war, and he had to choose which side to beon. Since all his rich friends in Beauvais were for the English, hedecided he was too, which was fine until I came along and theFrench began to win. Two years before this trial, all his hot-shotfriends got kicked out of Beauvais and he lost his territory. So
now this refugee bishop was going to use this trial to stage his big
come-back. That's why he invited all these prominent people tosee it. And here I was making a monkey out of him.
I'll tell you something about men. They can't stand to lose
face. It's hard for us women to understand how very, very
important this is to men, because we have never been allowed tohave enough face to lose. We tend to be more concerned withthings like the justice of an issue, or finding a peaceful solution.
It's hard for us to understand how the most important thing, evenin the case of war, is to find a way for all the men involved to saveface. It would almost be funny, how childish they are, except thatthese children are running the world.
These rules of face-saving are hard on women. When awoman challenges a man, it's not enough for him to prove she's
wrong. To save face he has to annihilate her. And this is what
Cauchon was out to do.
After my sixth day in court, he moved the trial to my little cell.
No more audience. Just him, a few assistants, and the notaries.
Things went downhill for me. Without the pressure of the spectators, I couldn't make them skip over the questions any more. I
had to give them what they wanted.
And when it was all over ... five months and hundreds ofpages later, this is what they came up with. Here are my charges:
one, disobeying my parents and causing them anxiety. Two,wearing men's clothes. Three, taking a vow not to have sex withmen. Four, listening to voices on the basis that they brought me
comfort. Five, believing in these voices without the church's
permission. Six, refusing to recognize the church's right to judge
my actions.
These were my crimes. And if you think they don't burnwomen for these anymore ... ask any dyke. She'll tell you.
So they took me out of my cell. They took me to a cemetery.
That's appropriate, isn't it? And there were two big platforms
110they'd built just for the occasion. This one here's for me. And that
one's for the judges. And over there is the little cart with theexecutioner, waiting to take me to the public square, where thestake is.
And I want you to imagine for a minute - all around you, allover this room, a sea of faces, ignorant, vicious faces. Faces ofpeople who have come just to watch you die. Faces that expect it,that insist on it. Faces that should be familiar. Faces from yourown neighborhood, faces of old women like your grandmother,faces of little girls like your sisters - human faces. And all ofthem are completely unrecognizable. There's not one glimmer of
sympathy, not one spark of compassion. They are all looking atyou, but they don't see you. They see their long-awaited revenge,
they see their promised entertainment, they see their reward forliving cowardly and conservative lives. The world owes them
your death and they're going to get it.
I had been in battle before. I had expected to die many times.
I had even tried to kill myself before. But-nothing in my experience even came close to this - these hideous faces. Fear is one
thing, but this was horror.
So while they were reading my sentence, I broke down andconfessed. I signed a statement renouncing my voices and agreeing to wear dresses. What happens to women when we finally do
break, which is usually after almost superhuman suffering? Do
we get a reprieve? Are we released, forgiven? Does the torture
stop, the pressure let up? I have seen all kinds of women give inin all kinds of ways ... to harassment, to guilt, to sex, to alcohol, tomental illness. And in every single instance -listen to me - theabuse increases. There is no mercy for women, because our crimeis our gender. We have to fight.
Well, so I confessed. And,like most women, I expected somereward for surrendering myself, for betraying my voices, fordenying my purpose, for completely selling out every scrap ofintegrity. I expected to be moved to a church prison with other
women prisoners and women attendants. But that didn't happen. They took me back to myoid cell, to my five guards. Only
now I had to wear a dress.
Meanwhile, the crowd with the faces was starting to get ugly.
They didn't care anything about heretics or laws or procedures orconfessions. All they wanted was to see somebody suffering111more than they were. When they realized they had been cheatedout of an execution, they were ready to riot. The political pressure
was building to find some way to make me break the terms of mypenance.
It was on Thursday when I signed the confession and they
took me back to my cell. On Saturday, the guards opened thedoor and let an Englishman into my cell. He was well-dressed,
and I thought he must be a lord or something. I stood up andfaced him to see what he wanted. He said my name, "Jeanne ... ""Yes?" Wham! "The Maiden ... " Wham! And I'm on the floor,
and he kicks me in the ribs, and in the stomach and I roll into a ball.
He's kicking my back and my legs. And then he's on the floor
over me and he's pulling up my dress. One hand. If I had beenwearing men's clothes, he would have had to use both hands. He
would have had to untie forty knots and two sets of lacings, withboth hands. I would have made him pay for it. You better believe
it. But with a dress - one hand, one movement. That's whatdresses are about, isn't it ... accessibility? I don't see where that'schanged much in five hundred hears. And neither has rape.
So he's got my skirt up and I'm lying on the floor, and l}e'ssmacking my face back and forth. Wham! Wham! Wham! And
he's taking his penis out with his other hand. And here's my
precious girl body. My own sweet body. My body. Me. It's me,
and he's jamming his big ugly thing into my sweet body. And theguards have all come in to watch. And he's slamming into mybopy. Wham! Wham! And I can't focus my eyes and my nose isbleeding. And he's talking between his teeth in a language I can't
understand. And then suddenly he's standing up and kicking me
again. In the uterus, in the back. And then he's gone. And theguards are standing there. And I think, "They're going to rapeme, too." But they didn't.
It's like a cat who plays with a crippled bird, pouncing andshaking it while it struggles to get away. But then, as soon as it
dies, the cat just drops it and walks away. The game is over. And
there I was ... raped, battered, broken. The game was over. After
five months, it was finally over. They stood there for a minute,maybe hoping I would show some sign of myoid spirit, so they
could pounce, but I didn't. So after a while, they walked away.
That was Saturday. On Sunday morning, I woke up to feel
one of the guards taking off my dress. He threw myoid clothes at112

me and told me I could go naked or put them on. Of course, it wasagainst the terms of my penance to wear men's clothes ever again.
I begged him to give me back the dress, but he wouldn't. They justlaughed at me ... and waited. I stayed in bed pleading with them
until noon, but then I had to get up and pee. So finally I put on the
men's clothes, my clothes again. And of course, the minute I did
that, the guards went to report it to Cauchon. And he and theother court officials came scurrying like rats to see for themselves.
And then the miracle happened. I had been raped and battered and broken. I had denied my voices. For three days, I hadn't
known who I was. But suddenly when I put on myoid clothes
again, my men's clothes - my human clothes - I came back tomyself. I knew who I was again, and I was all through withcompromise.
Nobody mentioned my swollen, bruised face, and I didn't
mention it either. I told them I was wearing men's clothing of myown free will. I looked right at those guards and told them that noone had made me wear them. I said that as long as I had to live ina man's world, I would dress like a man. If they would move me
to a decent prison where I could be with women, I would wear
anything they liked.
They asked me if I had heard the voices of of Catherine andMargaret since Thursday when I confessed. And I told them, yes,
as a matter of fact, I had. And my voices had told me that by trying
to save my life, I had condemned myself. They told me that every
single thing I had ever done in my whole life, I had done well andit was a lie to say anything different. Of course the notaries werewriting all of this down as fast as they could, and when I got tothat last part, they wrote "fatal answer" in the margin.
So that was Sunday. That was when I rose again from thedead. Rape is the crucifixion of women, and I am proof that there
is life after rape ... even more life. When a woman is raped, sheburies that part of herself that is accessible to men. Now, in a rape
culture, they'll try to make you think that's everything. But it's
not. She rises again with what no man can penetrate, her selfesteem. She is reborn, in her own image.
Wednesday morning they came to get me. I didn't have tomeasure myself against the world anymore. I was my own person, and I cried uncontrollably. They gave me communion andthen they took me out to the executioner's cart. This priest who
113

used to spy on me in my cell tried to climb into the cart and get me
to forgive him. They pulled him out and told him he better leave
town if he knew what was good for him. There were a hundred
English soldiers escorting my cart to the market square. Thistime, they had put the platforms in the same place with the stake.
They didn't want to risk another confession, I guess.
They put a hat on my head, with names on it ... "idolater,
heretic." And there was a sign on the platform where I stood:"Jeanne ... Iiar, sed ucer ... "Someone gave a long sermon. I wasn't listening. This time I
didn't even notice the faces that had bothered me so much a weekearlier. They hadn't changed, but I had. I had been raped.
They read my sentence. I remember they called me a dog
returning to my vomit. And they excommunicated me. I prayed.
People were laughing at me. Then I was turned over to the bailiff.
Two men shoved me over to the platform with the stake, and they
threw me up onto it. The stake was very high, so that everyone
could see it. Usually the executioner kills the victim, so they don't
actually have to burn to death, but the stake was so high in mycase, he couldn't reach me to do his job. I had a little wooden qoss
inside my clothes, against my bosom. A priest sent to a church inthe square for the ceremonial cross, and he held it up so that I
could see it. And they tied me to the stake and lit the fire.
Between the time they lit the fire and the time I lost consciousness ... was a long time. It was a long time to wonder where God
was. The God I had been taught to believe in wasn't any match formy suffering. My voices were still with me. They were always
with me, because they were part of me ... but where was thisloving Father with all the power to save people ... or at least makeme die quickly?
Do you remember when Dorothy exposed the Wizard of Oz,
and you heard the booming voice say, "Pay no attention to theman behind the curtain!" .. .? Well,let me tell you, when women
begin to expose the actions of men, we hear this sacred voiceurging us to protect and forgive. This voice is so ancient, so
powerful that we're overcome with guilt and shame ... eventhough we're the victims!
I'm here today to tell you something about that voice. That
voice telling you to protect and forgive men, that voice urging
you to be a little more patient, a little more tolerant, is not the voice114

of God. It's the voice of the men behind the curtain. The only
reason it sounds like God is because they amplify it and use a lotof special effects.
Tied to that stake, watching the fire come closer and closer, I
realized that God the Father was a lie. He was an invention of thegood old boys to cover their tracks and their asses. The closest I
had ever come to a real sense of God was alone with my voices orin the company of women.
I realized what a fool I had been to waste my time crowning a
man king, as if he had some divine right to rule ... what a fool I
had been for trusting a church run by men who didn't hear theirown voices, or even believe they had them ... what a fool I had
been to lead one army of men against another, as if it could makeany possible difference who won ... and what a fool I had been to
believe I would be saved from the actions of men by a god they
had created in their own image.
God the Father was a lie then and is a lie now, and all thehierarchies modeled after him ... the goyernments, the armies,
the churches, the corporations .. . are illegitimate. We will notconvert them. They will martyr us. We must fight for our own
causes, women's causes. We must clothe ourselves in self-respect, arm ourselves with our anger, and obey only the voices that
we alone can hear.
EPILOGUE
So. "Saint Joan of Arc." Twenty years later they had a second
trial to "rehabilitate" me. You see, I was holding my own as anational hero, and if there's one thing the Church can't stand, it'scompetition. Besides, the myth of a feminine, simple-mindedpeasant girl had begun to replace the memory of the cross-dressing butch with the smart mouth.
Well, this second trial was pretty much a formality without
the star witness. Everybody knew ahead of time what the outcome would be. Not much interesting ... except for one thing.
Hauviette, my best friend. She testified. I didn't think she'd evenremember me.
I remembered her. Hauviette and I had been very, very close,
until the year I ran away. We had grown up together. We took
our first communion together, which was a very special thing.
See, it was a custom for the girls who shared their first commun115

ion to sleep with each other. She would come over to my house, or
I would go over to hers. We would sleep in the same bed together.
Sometimes we would pretend we were on a very small boat in theocean and I had rescued her, and I would hold her in my arms andmy heart would be so full of tenderness it made me feel lightheaded. Or sometimes we would pretend that she had found me
wounded in the forest and had taken me to her cottage, where shewould bandage my wounds and cover me with kisses. Hauvietteand I were more than best friends. We were one soul. We knew
this and we had always planned to live together after we grew up.
But, like I said, there was this terrible thing, puberty. Hauviette got engaged. I wouldn't even speak to her. How could she dothat to me, after I went to so much trouble to break off myengagement? So I left Domremy. I left, and I didn't even tell her
I was going. I said good-bye to my other friends, but not to her.
Anyway, here she is twenty years later, testifying. And what
does she say? She says she cried her eyes out when she heard I
had left Domremy. She says she loved me because I was so good.
And then she calls me her "jacuit amorose," which is an expression for one's lover. She's forty years old and married, and standing in front of a room full of Catholic priests and judges, and shesays this about a young girl who's been dead for twenty years, agirl who left her without saying good-bye.
Hauviette. She had more courage than I did. It was easier forme to face the English army and the French Inquisition, and eventhe executioner, than to face her and say "I love you." There is one
crime I committed. It's one they overlooked in my trial, but it's
the one for which I suffered the most, and the one for which I
suffer every day. I confess it. I denied my love for a woman, andI denied the woman who loved me.
So there was no Saint Joan of Arc with her legacy of glorious
martyrdom. There was Jeanne Romee who tried to find a substitute in the world of men for the love she had experienced in thearms of a woman.

All rights in "The Second Coming of Joan of Arc" are s trictl y reserved. A pplications for performance, including professional, amateur, motion pictures, recitation, lecturing, public reading, broadcasting, television and rights of translation
into foreign languages should be addressed to the author, Carolyn Gage.

116

- - - - - - - - -_______ Reviews
Compafieras: Latina Lesbians (An Anthology), compiled and edited by Juanita Ramos, 1987, $8, Latina Women's Ed. Resources, P.O. Box 627,
Stuyvesant Sta., NYC, NY 10009.
When I met Juanita Ramos, three years ago, she informed me that
she was compiling a latina lesbian anthology. Being in a numb space
regarding my own Puerto Rican heritage, I did not understand theimplications of such a task. Today, having accepted my Puerto Rican
identity, I now understand what a courageous feat this was.
Compafieras was a mirror I was eager to look into. Written in Spanish
or English, by latina lesbians from various Latin American cultures, eachstory, poem, oral history, journal entry, and graphic filled me withmemories of the smells of my Abuelita's cooking. I could hear salsa,danza, bomba, ranchero, and samba music playing in my head and I
could see the lit candles in front of the santos. I felt like I was in mykitchen talking with family, sharing with my companeras. Feelingheartfelt warmth, pain, laughter, love, confusion, self-acceptance andmost of all pride.
Yes, Compafieras is a must read work of art. It is a loom wherecolorful threads are woven into soft blankets of truth validating thatlatina lesbians, whether in or out of "hiding," aware or unaware, are notinsane for loving women in whatever ways we choose. Furthermore, we
are not alone in our daily struggle to be who we are as individuals andas a culture. Compafieras makes clear that we, as latinas and as latina
lesbians, are a part of, as opposed to apart from, humanity.
For me, Compafieras touched a secret place where I have longed for
identification as a latina and as a latina lesbian. I was comforted to
discover, in more ways than one, that I belong.
Oye Juanita!, now we await Compafieras: Latina Lesbians (An Anthology), VOLUME II. Felicidades!
- Carolina Delgado

Past, Present and Future Passions by Barbara Ruth, 1987, $8.00, 213 pages,

available from HerBooks, p.o. Box 7467, Santa Cruz, CA 95601. To be
sold to and shared with women only.
The epigraph to this book could be a quote from one of the poems in
it: "I have spent my life / Searching for the words, the names / To tell you
who I am" ("The Eskimos"). It is as much autobiography as poetry, astory of survival close to the edge. Barbara Ruth is not an easy subject
for biographical writing: a "lesbian Indian Jew" (as she calls herself in"The Eskimos"), a fat woman, a political radical, a survivor of progres117

sive disabilities and medical treatments. The material demands originality. Because so much needs to be written that hasn't been put intowords before, it also demands clarity. Most of these poems have both.
The overriding passion of Past, Present and Future Passions is thewriter's need to create herself as an artist and a person. One of the firstpoems, ''!Live to Write," explains, " It' s what I salvage from my life / The
act that makes me who and what I am." The closing poem, ''Written toConsole Myself While Waiting in the Office of the County Board of
Assistance," reiterates "I have .. . invented myself / Again and again."Inventing oneself is something all Lesbians have to do, fighting alifelong war against countless kinds of denial- denial of history, ofcommunity, of legitimacy. It's something womyn have to do, reinventing the wheel each generation. Family secrets turn out to be poli tical, thestory of patriarchy's stranglehold, of female survival strategies: the aunt
whom no one ever called a Lesbian, the "illegitimate" older sibling, theabortion Grandma never mentioned except in a letter found posthumously. It's something children of assimilated parents have to do,forced to choose between living a whyte xtian lie and discovering, orinventing, their true inheritance. BR writes in "Familial Amnesia" thather parents did
Nothing to call attention to themselves
They (did) not remember
What holidays they used to celebrate
What candles lit
What dreams beatIn their childhood homes.
The triple denial leads to a triple necessity: Make someone ofyourself or die like a plant with no roots. Where Maxine Hong Kingston
and Monique Wittig create themselves by recreating the past, Barbara
Ruth does it in the present, repeatedly, in drastically changing circumstances. She has the gift and the skill of saying things simply, but thethings she says aren't simple.
There are poems about how we as Lesbians have to create ourselves,competent examples of an established genre. More exciting, and moreterrifying, are those about creating an identity as a disabled Lesbian:Chart me by my words
And by my silences . ...
Chart me by my scars
And by my stretchmarks
And by my hairline fractures
Chart me by the murmurs of my heart. (Bringing Light to Bear)I can't tell what I like anymore,
I don't know if my hands will work. ..
We don't fuck,
But yes, we make love.
(Intimacy, Disabled Style)118

No virgin now, I shun that altar
Called operating table.
(Machu Pichhu)
This is uncharted territory: How do sex,love and friendship changewith increasing physical limitations? What, if anything, lasts? How does
self-image mutate as illness and intervention become full-time work?
How can self-respect survive repeated surgical invasions and unwanted
condescending ad vice? The onIy answers are personal, close to the heart,close to the bone. The creative drive that forced poetry out of a suicide
attempt doesn't shrink from this either. The writer's anger, determination, even humor, make these stories more than merely painful to read.
Not all the poems in Past, Present and Future Passions challenge thereader's courage, at least not in the same way. Those about Emma
Goldman and Marie Laveau recreate moments of triumph. There aretender love poems, informal hymns to nature and the immanent goddesses, deftly original erotica:
your cuntlowersonto
my faceyour thighs
become seashells
I hold to
my ears
the ocean roars
and igrow gills
There are bittersweet memories of schoolgirls, swept briefly through ateacher's life and down the stream of time, and political manifestos,
joyous and enraged.
The bookis divided into section by subject: "The Ground of My Own
Being," "The Body Bodyful," "Where the Spirits Live," "Snuggling In,"
"Teacher's Edition," ''Why It's All My Faul t," ''Why It's All Your Fault."
The poems are also dated, allowing an alternative chronological order.
Whether intentionally or not, they are arrayed with much of the grimmest material in the first six sections, including an entire section,"Hymns to Kali," about addiction and obsession.
Most of the poems, grim, joyous, or inspiring, are "Blatant / Like afat dyke with a shaved head." (Poetics) The clear, precisely chosen
words say directly what needs to be said and subtly evoke secondary
meanings. Some poems are written to or about specific people but aremeaningful on their own terms. Notes in the back of the book, which
mention some of the individuals and place them in biographical context,
are interesting but not necessary. For other poems, the notes definewords - especiall y Yiddish,Nati ve American and Voodoo terms - andprovide needed historical background.
119For a few poems, however, the notes don't explain enough. The note
to one of these, "Bringing Light to Bear" explains, "This poem is full ofmany secrets, some of which I can't telL" Those that can be told add up
only to a frustrating series of half-connected hints, a poem not personal
but private. In others, such as "At the Old Age Home," gaps in meaning
between the verses suggest parts of the story still untold.
Even with some of the chapters unclear, this autobiography is worth
reading, both for the beauty of language and illustration and for the
hard-won truths it tells.
- Rebecca Ridgely

Making a Way: Lesbians Out Front. Photographs by JEB (Joan E. Biren).
Foreword by Minnie Bruce Pratt, 1987. $13.95, Glad Hag Books, P.O. Box
2934, Washington, D.C., 20013. Dist. by Spinsters! Aunt Lute, S.F.
When I was ten, my small illinois home town celebrated its centennial. I still have a special edition of the local newspaper, The Argus, fromthat commemoration. In that edition were photographs of every ownerand employee of every business, church (for there were no non-christianreligious institutions), professional office, and the managers of eachmanufacturing plant in the town.
My family was mentioned in several ways, the most important of
which was that my great-uncle, W. C. (Chauncey) Hooker, had inven ted
the rat trap, and, in fact was the man about whom it was said, '1f you
build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door." I felt
an unquestioned sense of belonging, deeply akin to that I felt when theold folks cemented our family history by talking through the stories
represented by photographs, and, sentence by sentence, agreeing on
what was true of us as a clan, as a people.
Since my grandmother made most of the pictures used in thatprocess, I thought she was a magician. I learned early on that, even
before naming, before thought, before feeling, before action, there isperception. And I observed that the decisions about who gets to say how
perception is interpreted and which images are valued fundamentally
determine how power is distributed on this planet. (I say "observed"
because I didn't really understand this, I juzt knew it.) In fact, the English
language is shot through with references to this basic truth: "I don't see
it that way," or "It depends on how you look at it," or ''Why can't you
see thus and so?" Or, for women, the deadly, ''Why don't you try to see
things his way?"
Perceptions do change, of course, which may be the only realistic
basis for hope for the human race. When I looked through the Argus
Centennial edition a couple of years ago, I discovered that not only theowners of the Argus, but the local florist, optometrist, the sole town
councilwoman, the librarian, a couple of my teachers, and other leading120

citizens were (well, I'll be damned!) thespians! I mean, Lebanese! And
then, thinking back, I realized there was my great aunt Nancy and ....
What had changed during the thirty years those newspages yellowed were my perceptions - and the degree to which I am allowed
them by the greater culture - because the only dyke I remember frommy childhood was a woman who rode around in jeans and a leather
jacket on a red Schwinn bicycle, and, while my mother talked to her
through the screen door, no one ever invited her in. And that, in 1957,
was the allowable public image of a lesbian.
As you might imagine, I came to Joan E. Biren's new collection of
pictures, Making a Way: Lesbians Out Front, with great delight. It's sucha terrific thing for young lesbian girls and women to have these 100 newimages from JEB (and those of so many others, such as Cathy Cade,Happy Hyder, Irene Young, et al.). Goddess knows, I'm sure hungry forthem.
We should note, of course, that the women portrayed (most ofwhom are in public service jobs, or who are self-employed) havepermanently foregone the protection of the closet, even one with a glass
door. But certainly allowing one's image and one's name to be used insuch a public way is both a personal act of rare.courage and a sign of what
has changed during the past decade. As JEB says, ''When more and morelesbians chose to step in front of my lens, I knew the atmosphere hadchanged and that we had changed it," (from ''Photographer's Notes").
One of the things I've discovered about making portraits is that it isa very rare thing for two people to make the same picture of someone;
people rarely see things the same. Nonetheless, a gifted portrait photographer captures the essential woman so that others recognize that
person they know in the image. So, one reason I value this book is that
I see the women I know very much as JEB presents them, which meansthat I trust the portraits of those I haven't met.
Technically, I would prefer that Biren use a larger format, although
I can certainly understand why she might not want to chase lesbians
around the country lugging an Omega View camera on a wooden tripod.
Too, there is much to be said in favor of using the 35mm black-and-white
newsfoto which is the journalistic format of choice in a project such as
this: just as people seem to believe anything they see typeset in 10 pt.
Century Schoolbook, they give credence to anyphotgraph they see in thenewspaper. My personal preference for JEB would be toward either alarger format or a crisper image (perhaps a sharper lens).
But that minor criticism aside, I would love to see women across thecountry donate copies of Making a Way to their local libraries so our next
generation will have easy access to these positive images. Each time I
look through this book, I feel a little more whole, more made real, morean accepted and acceptable part of the human procession. It is such a gift
for me, who's been plagued with chronic dreams of invisibility since I
was that small midwestern child.
121

Between the written statements each woman has written, Minnie
Bruce Pratt's wonderful prologue, and Biren's photographs, I would
love to simply sit - what my grandmother would have called "bide" with each of these women for a while, much as I need and love to sit insilence with the women in Santa Fe - simply share the same spirit space
for a time.
JEB has given us a wonderful rainy-day book we can look to - as mymother once searched through her college yearbooks - to recall who wereally are at those times when we cannot fully be ourselves in this worldin which we are so little honored.
- Grace L. Harwood (© 1988)

A Restricted Country, by Joan Nestle, 1987, 189 pages. $8.95, FirebrandBooks, 141 The Common, Ithaca, NY 14850.
It is a pleasure to see Joan Nestle's essays, narratives, stories andpoems collected. Her contributions as an archivist, historian and writer
form an essential aspect of contemporary lesbian life.
A Restricted Country, it seems to me, is an attempt to pull together all
the things which make Joan Nestle the kind of lesbian she is: Jewish,
working class, fern, civil rights and free speech activist, passionate.
These are the terms Joan sets. In the acknowledgments she thanks her"friends who have stayed with me through illness" and then later,
specifically acknowledges the Lesbian illness Support Group. And yet
nowhere in the body of the book does she talk about her illness. This isa book about how ethnicity, political activism, appearance, and sexuality weave together in a life. In the preface Joan tells us "my body mademy history - all my histories. Strong and tough, it allowed me to start
work at thirteen; wanting, resilient, it carried me the fifty-four miles
from Selma to Montgomery. Once desire had a fifties face: now it is more
lined. But still when I walk the streets to protest. .., my breasts and hips
shout their own slogans. As a woman, as a Lesbian, as a Jew, I know thatmuch ofwhatI call history others will not." She has shown us beautifully
how aging has varied her sexuality, particularly in "A Change of Life".
As a disabled lesbian, I find it hard to believe that illness has not also
shaped the way Joan works and loves. And I deeply miss her words on
this facet of her life.
I also wish this book told more about her work with the Lesbian
Herstory Archives (for instance, "Radical Archiving from a Lesbian
Feminist Perspective" which was first published in Gay Insurgent,
Spring, 1979 is not included here, nor any pieces from The Lesbian
Herstory Archives Newsletter). She tells us how her multiple identities led
her to join in founding LHA, but she does not talk about the ongoing
work, what it has meant to her to live with the Archives for so many
years. Much of Joan's contribution, for the past twenty years or so, has

122

consisted of valuing what others do not, preserving the work of people,
particularly lesbians, dismissed by the world as not being worth saving.
I wonder if she sufficiently values her own work as a historian andarchivist.
What I love about Joan's writing is the richness with which she
approaches her subjects, the "yes/ and" rather than "either / or." This isespecially true in the pieces about her relationship with her mother, inparticular ''Two Women". She shows us Regina Nestle as a compulsive
gambler, yet also strong and courageous; kicking Joan out of the housewhen she discovered her daughter in bed with a woman, then years
later, speaking at a panel called "Mothers of Lesbians" sponsored by the
Lesbian Liberation Committee where she described Joan as a beautiful
person whose choices could only be good ones. Regina gave herdaughter the gift of intimate communication few of us have with ourmothers. "She taught me laughter and endurance and the right topassion." She was a woman physically and emotionally abused by herlovers yet insisting on her sexuality and her pleasure "who kept alive her
right to sexuality when sex was killing her." Joan refuses to see hermother as deluded in her frank enjoyment of heterosex. Instead she
portrays her mother as both victimized by men and powerful in her
passion for them.
Joan gives many examples of people who wronged her in some way- her mother, her straight male friend in the civil rights movement, astraight woman who did to Joan what many would certainly call sexual
abuse (although Joan does not call it that). She does not dismiss thesepeople, does not dehumanize them. She says, yes, they did this bad
thing, and look, too, at the good there was about them. She often ends
with sadness about the ways we hurt each other, how intolerance contaminates our relationships, and how love redeems the. How joyful
sexuality, in its myriad shapes, is a celebration of what is best in us.
Joan has often described herself as "a fem from the fifties." Throughout this book she evokes the sensibility of that period. Writing about aworking class lesbian bar in 50s New York City, she says, 'We neededthe Lesbian air of the Sea Colony to breathe the life we could not
anywhere else, those of us who wanted to see women dance, make love,wear shirts and pants.:' (''The Bathroom Line") She insists on neverturning her back on what she learned there, or the women who populated her world. She squarely places her body and her words in opposition to the kind of lesbian feminist orthodoxy which both prescribes
lesbian behavior and excludes those who do not conform to the prescriptions. "As we change our names to commemorate the earth, we must
remember the women who changed their names to Frankie and Jo tocommemorate their woman-loving selves. And if we are tempted todismiss them for being male identified, we must reflect on how only theimprisoned know the kind of freedom they need the most." ("Voicesfrom Lesbian History")123

It seems to me that one of the most valuable things we can learn fromthe dynamics of butch and fem is an appreciation of difference; butchfem works because of the erotic energy inherent in the fact that we are
not all identical in our tastes and styles and self-presentation. Joan
Nestle certainly embodies this appreciation of difference; her admiration of butches is never coupled with devaluation of herself or otherfemmes. Joan says "My roots lie in the history of a people who werecalled freaks." ("Voices from Lesbian History") She is highly consciousof the risks for our movement in excluding lesbians who cannot or will
not be mainstreamed, who may prove an embarrassment as more"acceptable" lesbians come out of their closets. "By allowing ourselves
to be portrayed as the good deviant .. . we lose the complexity of our own
lives." ("Some Understandings") flOur battle is to be accepted in the
fullness of our difference and not because we promise to be like everybody else." ("Voices From Lesbian History")
Joan gives us wonderful models of feminist scholarship. She begins
a subject (censorship, prostitution) by placing herself squarely vis a vis
the topic. "My deep despair at the new antipornography movement andthe censorial atmosphere that is fed by it is the legacy of my history ....
I was a member of a group of students who protested against the House
Un-American Activities Committee. Iremember .. . the chair's words ...
'You people' - gesturing at us 'are the scum of the earth.'" Later, whenrecounting being asked by feminists if accusations about her sexual
practices were true, she says, "Only those of you who remember thecadence of those McCarthy words - 'Are you now or have you everbeen. .. ' can know the rage that grew in me at this moment."
I appreciate this emotional honesty and accept her point that because I do not have direct experience with McCarthyism, I cannot havethat particular emotional resonance to the issue. However, I find Joan's
analysis re: censorship occasionally simplistic. When discussing themagazines Bad Attitude and On Our Backs she says they have been
excluded from some women's bookstores because they were found to be"'prosadomasochis tic, antifeminist, antiwoman, anti-Semi tic and racist'.. . As a Jewish women, I find it ironic that Gentiles are in such a hurry
to protect me from myself." ("My History With Censorship") Although
Joan uses quotation marks she never attributes the quote to specificindividuals, Gentile or Jewish. Joan says the list cited above consists of"words that call for exile from our community, for there is no argument
possible when this code is used." Is this statement in itself an injunction
to avoid criticism of sexually explicit publications on these grounds? Shealso criticizes "the little white cards that popped up for awhile infeminist bookstores, warning the potential reader what to expect from abook." But if we have a commitment to doing women's and Jewish
liberation and anti-racist work in a way which Joan herself shows us by
example - deeply intertwined with our claiming and celebrating of oursexuality - is our only alternative to ignore oppressive words in those124journals which serve as vehicles for publication of sexually adventurous
writing? Should a feminist bookstore carry a book by a lesbian that has
passages that are, say, fat oppressive, without warning me, the potential
reader, before I spend my money on it? I reserve the right to criticize apublication for oppressive attitudes I find in its pages, while simultaneousl y supporting its right to exist. And I appreciate responsible criticism,
clearly revealing the cri tic's biases (as Joan does in her own scholarship),telling me what the criticfinds objectionable in the work in question, andchallenging me to draw my own conclusions.
There is a vital distinction between criticism and censorship which
is being lost here. We are clearly shown how painful it is to be attacked
by one's own people for that which makes you one of them. But here
Joan has fallen into the good lesbians vs. the bad lesbians trap, which isprecisely what I find so irritating about many women who work against
pornography. Yes, I understand why she places herself in the ranks ofthe bad girls, and I still say there is an oversimplification whenever weposition ourselves in one camp or the other. It is possible to have deep
concerns about the effects of both violent pornography and censorship.
The safety of lesbians can be threatened by both. We are sometimes
deeply hurt through sex, including lesbiaI} sex. It's also a source ofpotency and healing for us. A specific sexual act can have enormously
different meanings, depending on its context. I wish Joan had approached this subject with the "Yes/ and" philosophy ofinclusion whichcharacterizes many of the other pieces. And again, I appreciate thedelineation of her process in coming to the opinion she holds. "My
lesbian history tells me that the vice squad is never our friend even when
it is called in by women." ("Voices From Lesbian Herstory")
Joan Nestle is perhaps most famous for her reclamation of butch/
fern. She insists those who claim butch/fern relationships are solely ahistorical relic or only engaged in by "heterosexually defined lesbians"(''My History With Censorship") do all lesbians a disservice. Interestingly, I found "A Look at Butch/Fern Relationships" timid, apologetic
now in comparison to her later pieces. Yet I remember when it first
appeared in Heresies, how shocking it was and how affirming reading it
was to my own fern identity. It would generally be helpful to have eachpiece dated.
A careful comparison of the orginally published versions of some ofthese pieces with their current embodirnen t in this book shows how Joan
Nestle has grown as a writer, learned what to include, how to use her
craft with increasing certainty. I hope her next book will be even more
inclusive, more crafted. Perhaps my complaints concerning the omissions are in fact the subjects of a planned second anthology. To finish abook wanting more is not such a bad state of affairs.
- Barbara Ruth

125

Loving Her, $7.95;The Black and White of It, $7.95; Say Jesus and Come to Me,$8.95, by Ann Allen Shockley. The Naiad Press, Inc.
Ann Allen Shockley has begun, at last, to receive the just attention
that she is due. With the Naiad Press's republication of her three major
fictions: Loving Her, The Black and White of It, and Say Jesus and Come toMe, one can finally read Shockley as a process of discovery.
Thirteen years ago (1974), Loving Her was first published by BobbsMerrill and Company. A ''bold'' "ground-breaking book," some critics
called it, and it was. For it featured what was understood immediately
in the Afro-American and developing lesbian-feminist literary comm unities to be the first portrait of a contemporary Black lesbian character in
American literature, i.e. Renay Johnson, musician, mother, batteredwife, baby dyke. However, some early reviews were harsh. From theAfro-American literature camp came the offended homophobic remark,"This bullshit is not to be encouraged." From the lesbian-feminist camp
came the questionable pronouncement that the book was "racist" Ita bad
lesbian novel." These judments were to be followed by more conciliatory
and thoughtful appraisals by critics such as Karla Jay, Alice Walker, andLouie Crew, but a great deal of damage was done to the budding
reputation of then first novelist, Ann Allen Shockley.
Yet beyond the effects of racism, sexism, and homophobia, wereother factors that kept Ann Allen Shockley veritably invisible as a fiction
writer, though she was greatly known as the longtime Fisk University
librarian and archivist, and for her scholarly work as a library scientist,e. g. The Handbook of Black Librarianship (edited with E. J. Josey). The
factors that left her understudied are: first, reviews that appeared on
Loving Her continued to be published over a ten year period. Scattered
like this they provided no round or sound image of the wri ter nor of her
talents. Second, the reviews were published in slick publications likeMs, in scholarly publications, like Black World, in popular rags such as
The Gay Community News, and in low-budget periodicals such as So's
Your Old Lady (now defunct). Third, even though Shockley kept publishing and writing newer fictions, the reviews of Loving Her kept coming.
She seemed to get locked in a time warp that allowed her no advancement beyond the still reverberating Loving Her. Fourth, the reviews were
written by mainstream critics, by gays, by Black men and women, bystraights. They were written expertly, with profound insights, and by
fledgling reviewers with nothing guiding their pens but the hope forpublication, the experience of it, and the willingness to try. Moreover,
the reviews were slanted towards the audiences they served; so theyalternately met with the consternation and approbation of the given
readership based on the critic's politics, aesthetic, or editorial freedom.
The new result was an uneven hodgepodge of critical assessment mostof which failed to do more than react to Shockley's politics and writing
style. Not many seemed to know that this writer had been on the scene
since the 1940' s, and that Loving Her was Shockley's third novel written126

on lesbian themes (the other two with lesbian content remained unpublished due to the McCarthy fifties, and the American love affair with
Freudian psychology).
Meanwhile, The Black and White of It arrived (Naiad Press, 1980) six
years later, and Say Jesus (Avon books, 1982) nearly ten years after Loving
Her. The distance between the publications retarded the author's visibility as much as did the early criitical reception of her first novel because
many new lesbian-feminist critics came to Shockley with no knowledgeof her past work, and those critics who did come with knowing, such as
Lynne Reynolds, Beverly Smith, Barbara Smith, Merril Mushroom, andCaroline Streeter, rarely made any comprehensive assessment of Ann
Allen Shockley's work. As a result, the three major fictions were handled
in a vacuum, one by one, though occasionally, some would allude to thepast works of fiction. No one, it seemed, recalled that Shockley's work
had been appearing in such publications as The Negro Digest, (and laterBlack World, when the name changed) Umbra, Feminary, Freedomways, and
The Fisk Herald . They were primarily written about Black people andtheir struggles for civil rights, or about the relations between husbands
and wives, Blacks and Whites. It may not be an overestimation to say that
Shockley's turning to lesbian themes after years of writing mainstream
fiction, doomed her to conflicting and contradictory criticism. Below, I
cite paired critical remarks made on each of her major fictions as they
address her thematic intention and stylistic competence. Some critics
applauded her ''bold'' stance against oppression while others saw her
writing as proselytizing for gay rights - an intolerant reaction.
On Thematic Intention
Loving Her
I find the story to be so far reThe mere subject matter has a
moved from reali ty tha t even if its
powerful political and emotionalsole purpose was to entertain ...
impact that cannot be ignored.
some parts of it seemed totally
Evelyn C. White,absurd ... I lament the lack of poliBackbone 3, 1979
tics in the book.
(feminist publication)
Sheryl Kaplan, 1981
(unpub. women's studies paper). The Black and White of It
We were all very closeted in the
The ten stories ... are written as if
50s, afraid that anyone should
according to formulas .. .it createsknow or even suspect; and Ann
the impression that the stories
Allen writes about us and thehave not been clearly differentithings we did to hide our lesbianated each from the other ... Part ofism - the denial, the hiding andmy problem with these stories issneaking, the sex with men, thethat they seem terribly out of balgames, the signals, the deviousance. There is, in most of them, a127ness and deceit, all of which werenecessary because we were so intimidated by the threat of exposure.
Merril Mushroom,
Feminary, 1982
(lesbian/ feminist pub.)dearth of positive feeling whichmight have offset the absoluteprofusion of anguish, distress,
and painful awareness that comprise the predominant emotional
themes throughout this book. The
narrowness of this scope makes it
hard for me to place Shockley's
characters in the world.
Lynne Reynolds, Conditions
Seven, 1981 (les./fem. pub.)

Say Jesus and Come to Me
Its significance is the reason it
attacks the black church. The
church is presented as a mask fora certain type of black malepreacher who represented an inflexible patriarchalism which
thrives on the baiting, capturing
and sexual undermining of
women for his success .. . pushing
the system as far as it will go in the
direction of shunning homosexuals while capitalizing on andkeeping women in their places.
Rita B. Dandridge, Calla loa, 1984
(scholarly publication)
On Shockley's Stylistic CompetenceThis critic cannot understand
why Ms. Shockley wishes to makethe Black church an object of ridicule solely to support her belief
that all women are gay ... The
writer tries to convince the worldthat if you're not gay, you haven't
been to Heaven.
J.S.T., West Coast Reviewing
Books, 1982 (heterosexual pub.)

Loving Her
Jerome Lee is a familiar brute ...
But in Shockley's rendition ofhim, he is without a single unbrutish quality. This causes him
to seem less realistic as a certain
particular Black man, though his
type is perfectly credible ... Terry is
guil ty of "congeni tal innocence"
because she lacks any hint of racial prejudice. By being so "suspiciously perfect," Terry is rendered unreal.
Alice Walker,
MS Magazine, 1975
(popular feminist mag.)Renay, the heroine, is good. Her
husband, Jerome Lee, is so insensitive, so purely physical and stupid that I can only surmise he is a
caricature of someone the author
dislikes .. . one wonders why [she]didn't just dress him in black ...
twirling his mustache wickedly.
Terry, the white lesbian ... is everything one might want a lover tobe - kind, generous, sensitive ...
Every woman in the book is afigure for admiration. Jerome Lee,on the other hand, has one wholedimension. 0, he is nasty.
128

Frank Lamont Phillip,
Black World, 1974
(schol. Afro-American journal)

The Black and White of It
Her prose style is well-defined
The short story is one of the mostand highly readable. Her sense ofdifficult forms to write. The writer
pacing and rhythm produce
has to do more than present situations and sketch characters inprose that never falters or arrests
the reader from understandingorder to be successful in thisthe subject.
medium. Shockley's stories are
Cynthia Patton,
rarely more than cliches.
Sojourner, 1980 (les. / fem. pub.)Debra Morris, Off Our Backs,
1981 Oes./fem. pub.)
Say Jesus and Come to Me
This peculiar dreadfully written,
yet somehow fascinating trashy
novelis about a lusty, vaguely evil
lesbian minister ... Those who ask
for consistency, meaning eveneroticism, would do well to lookelsewhere.
Helen Eisenbach, New York
Native, 1982 (gay male pub.)A charismatic, articulate andbeautiful Black lady ministernamed Mrytle Black is the welldelineated central character ... as
the novel unfolds, the subordinate themes of homosexuality,
prostitution, drug addiction, racism and male chauvinism are
explored through intriguing, if
sometimes desperate, characters.
Shockley has woven a fascinatingstory about Music City in wellmeasured prose.
Donald J. Joyce,
The Tennessean, 1982

Judging by these former critical remarks on the fiction of Shockley,
one can see that she offers an excellent study as a Black woman writer
who has taken on lesbian themes only to have that body of work
alternately welcomed or dismissed based on the critic's point of view.
What this all means is that Shockley is a writer who has been greatly
misapprehended, understudied, and sketchily examined.
For the lack of a neat pigeon hole within which to place her, Shockley
has suffered because her fictions do not meet with the politically correctframework for the still-developing lesbian-feminist aesthetic - one
point of which is Caroline Street's belief that the only authentic portraitof a Black lesbian character will be drawn by a Black lesbian writer. A
premise with which I soundly disagree, as I see such a notion disqualifying the classic fictions written by other than one's own racial, ethnic,129

or social group, to say nothing of those written by those people of adifferent gender than one's own. What are we to do with insights gained
from great literature which captures moments in human being thatspeak to the heart of our mortal existence? Are we to limit our artists
with the arguments of political ideology? Are we to dismiss creative
freedom, and the authority of authorial imagination. I should hope not.
I realize that sometimes others presume on our rights to represent
ourselves or misrepresent how we, in fact, are. But that is the nature of
the beast, and must naturally occur in the scheme of creative things.
But beyond these points, what has been restrictive to the appreciation and development of Ann Allen Shockley is the belief that she is alesbian. Without fail, even the most assiduous critics from Louie Crew
to Alice Walker and Karla Jay have surmised that Shockley is a lesbian,and hence, her interest in lesbian themes, but this is not the case. In 1974
after Karla Jay's review of Loving Her appeared, in which she intimatedthat Shockley was a lesbian, Ms. Shockley wrote her publisher at BobbsMerrill complaining bitterly against his releasing such information (asShockley thought they had given to Jay, but they hadn't). But theassumption was already in place, and to this day, Ann Allen Shockley iscalled ales bian when it is a life-s tyle that she denies. In an interview wi ththis writer in December of 1984 she reiterated the fact.
It is hardly worth arguing as there is no reason for Shockley to denybeing gay if writing about the same has brought the same result as
coming out would. Personally, I believe she is entitled to her privacy,
and if she were woman-loving, that would be her business. Still, given
this state of affairs, it would have been unlikely that Shockley would
have gained her curren t level ofrecogni tion were it not for the effect that
Black American writers are having on American literature. The work ofToni Morrison, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara,
Audre Lorde, Gayle Jones, and Paule Marshall has revitalized a traditionof American writing once given to the unemotional and imaginative
darkness. Understood to be "women speaking for themselves," defining and particularizing their own experience in ways that empower
rather than divide, it was only a matter of time until Shockley would berecognized for her contribution and her particular genius. Articles that
discuss the revolution in Afro-American writings by women, unlike
major anthologies before, now include Shockley. Calvin Hernton, Evelyn C. White, Margaret McDowell, Bonnie Zimmerman, and Dr. Rita
Dandridge have in recent months discussed Shockley. Aside from therepublication of Shockley's fictions by the Naiad Press, an annotatedbibliography of all of Shockley's writings is now available from Greenwood Press. Further, a doctoral dissertation, "Portraiture and Vision in
the Fictions of Ann Allen Shockley," has been completed by myself.
These occurrences will certainly reopen the dialogue on the work of Ann
Allen Shockley. Now is the time to purchase the entire Shockley canon
and begin to think about her particular markings and subjects as
130

traceable units (if not to simply get some reading enjoyment).
Since this review brings to bear former critical dialogue, one candivine from my remarks what the books hold in store, but I will venture
to say that Shockley's work has a central moral vision, full of highidealism and the hope for harmonious relations between otherwise
opposing forces in life. Her fictions from Loving Her to Say Jesus are
populated by characters from all walks oflife: ministers, children, teachers, students, soldiers, militants, pimps, prostitutes, poets, musicians,
singers (she loves the black female singer) husbands, wives, couplesgay, straight, and racially mixed - the old, the young, the middle-aged,
even animals (dogs show up a great deal in Shockley's fiction). She has
spoken of vanity and of humility, of hatred and of love, of war, of fraud
and of fidelity, of pain and of joy, of belief and of distrust, of passion andof apathy, of alienation and of community, of friendship, of family, of
possibility. These abstractions ar~ the fiber of Shockley's vision.
Sometimes she writes hurriedly, disconnectedly, seemingly superficially: she has much to say; much that she sees, much that she understands to be the dynamic of everday living. She compounds all of thisseeing with the inherent oppressions of sexism, racism, classism, abuse,
homophobia. Her stories and novels are intensely layered. I invite you
to reach Shockley freshly, if you've come to her just now, or if you havereturned as an old follower of her fiction. She has something more tooffer than has heretofore been examined. What you discover in Shockley
this time around will serve to further the new dialogue.
- SDiane Bogus

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Books R e c e i v e d - - - - - - - - - - - - - A Burst of Light, not-to-be-missed essays by Audre Lorde, $7.95, Firebrand Books, 141 The Common, Ithaca, NY 14850.
A Letter to Harvey Milk, nine short stores about being lesbian and Jewish
by Leslea Newman, $8.95, Firebrand Books.
More Dykes To Watch Out For, cartoons from "the life" of the 80s by Alison
Bechdel, $7.95, Firebrand Books.
The Fires of Bride, lesbian legend and mystery on a Scottish island by Ellen
Galford (Moll Cutpurse), $8.95, Firebrand Books.
Bulldozer Rising, lesbian oldwomen fight the tyranny of the young andstraight in a wonderfully comic SciFi adventure by Anna Livia, £3.95,
Onlywomen Press,38 Mt. Pleasant, London, WCIX OAP, England.
Lesbian Couples, a psychological study by D. Merilee Clunis and G.
Dorsey Green, $10.95, The Seal Press, 3131 Western Ave., Suite 410,
Seattle, WA 9812l.
Miss Venezuela, new and reprinted short stories by Barbara Wilson,$9.95, The Seal Press.
Cows and Horses, ending a 10-year lesbian relationship by Barbara
Wilson, $7.95,8thMountainPress, 624 SE 29th Ave.,Portland,OR9 7214.
Ice Mirrors, lesbian love & sex poetry by Fire, $4, Shu Publishing, Worcester, MA.
Sensual Rhythms and Purple Bats, lesbian poetry by Esther Heggie andVirgina Rubino, $6, Shu Publishing.
Messages: Music for Lesbians, a tape of very dyke-identified music withlyrics & notes by D.A. Clarke, Her Books, P.O. Box 7467, Santa Cruz, CA
9506l.
The Lesbian in Front of the Classroom, writings by five lesbian teachers,$6.50, HerBooks.
Artificial Insemination and the Unmarried Woman: Legal Rights and Responsibilities, by Julie A. Waltz, J.D, $29.95, Opportunity Press, P.O. Box 1821,
Dept. 21, Aiken, SC 29802.
The Ethnic American Woman: Problems, Protests, Lifestyles, a classroom text
edited by Edith Blicksilver,$12.95, Kendall/Hunt Publishers, Dubuque, IA 5200l.
Walking to New Zealand, a Black woman's travels, poems, stories andrecipes by Viki Radden, $3, 815 Oak, SF, CA 94117.
The Other Side of Venus, a romantic lesbian love story by Shirley Verel,$8.95, The Naiad Press, P.O. Box 10543, Tallahassee, FL 32302.
To The Lightning, a lesbian "Robinson Crusoe" adventure by Catherine
Ennis, $8.95, Naiad.
Cherished Love, lesbian love story by Evelyn Kennedy, $8.95, Naiad.
132

Yellowthroat, Margarita, bandit, kidnaps Julia, by Penny Hayes, $8.95,
Naiad.

Searching for Spring, recovering love by Patricia A. Murphy, $8.95, Naiad.
The Sky Blew Blue, exercises in writing and poem making by Cora VailBrooks, $4.95,New Victoria Publishers, Box 27, Norwich, VT 05055.

Rural Women in Latin America, Experiences from Ecuador, Peru and Chile, $8,
Isis International/Isis Internacional, Casilla 2067, Correo Central, Santiago, Chile (available in English and Spanish).
Naming the Waves, Contemporary Lesbian Poetry edited by Christian
McEwen, £5.95, Virago Press, 41 William IV St., London, WC2N 4DB
England.
The Courage to Heal, a source, exercise and healing book for womensurvivors of child sexual abuse by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, $14.95,
Harper & Row.
We Are Everywhere, writings by and about lesbian parents edited byHarriet Alpert, $8.95, The Crossing Press, P.O. Box 1048, Freedom, CA
95019.
Love, Struggle and Change, an anthology of twelve short stories (straight& lesbian, multi-racia!), edited by Irene Zahava, $8.95, Crossing Press.
Dreams and Dream Groups: Messages From the Interior, a new approach to
dream interpretation by Eva Renee Neu, $7.95, The Crossing Press.
Letters to Marina, a lesbian seduction in letters by Dacia Maraini, awardwinning Italian author, trans. by Dick Kitto & Elspeth Spottiswood,$8.95, The Crossing Press.
Over the Hill, Reflections on Ageism Between Women , by Baba Copper,$7.95, The Crossing Press.
Colors and Crystals, A Journey Through the Chakras, by Joy Gardner, $10.95,
The Crossing Press.

The Womansleuth Anthology, Contemporary Mystery Stories by Women,edited by Irene Zahava, $6.95, The Crossing Press.
Sappho, poems & fragments, trans. by Josephine Balmer, $6.95, Meadowland Books, 120 Enterprise Ave., Secaucus, NJ 07094.

Rediscovering History: Bringing a Name to Life - Nellie Langford Rowell
1874-1968; Equality in Sports: Perspective; Pay Equity: Perspectives, are 3
new pamphlets available from the Nellie Langford Rowell Library, $2ea., $5 series, + $1 postage. 202C Founders College, York University,
4700 Keele St., North York, Ont. M3J 1P3, Canada.

133

Contributor's Notes __________
Kore Archer: my journal has been my best friend for years, but it wasn't
until August '86 that I took my writing seriously enough to send it to a
publisher. My essay, "Lavender & Silver, "was published in the HerBooks anthology, The World Between Women, and ever since then, I've
been claiming my craft. I am 42 years old, an actress, hystorian, recluse
and fairy godmother. I am currently tutoring writing at the Univ. of
Calif, Santa Cruz.
Judith Barrington is the author of Trying to be an Honest Woman andcurrentl yworking on her next poetry book, History and Geography, which
will be published in Spring, 1989. She is also translating the poetry of the
Uruguayan poet, Christina Peri Rossi, who is now exiled and writing inSpain.
Joan E. Biren (JEB): having finished Making A Way: Lesbians Out Front,
I'm working on a new multi-image presentation, For Love and For Life: The
1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights (which will beavailable starting in June, 1988) while traveling around the country withmy current slide show, Out of Bounds: A Lesbian Journey.
Dr. SDiane Bogus is a poet and fiction writer who lives in Modesto, CA
and is a professor of American Literature at University of California,
Stanislaus. She is also editor and owner of WIM Publications, SF.
Caryatis Cardea is a 37-year-old working class separatist dyke living inBerkeley. Her major writing block arises when faced with the necessityof a contributor's note.
Elizabeth Clare: I am a poet and activist currently living at the Seneca
Women's Peace Camp in upstate New York. I grew up on the south coastof Oregon and dream of living there again in a community of dykes.
D.A. Clarke: I was born in England in '58, emigrated involuntarily to theStates in' 62. In 7th grade I was sure I was a stranded Martian; on leaving
college I was able to name myself more accurately as a lesbian. I make aliving tinkering with large computer systems; I am a separatist, variously compromised; I like machines; I have written one book of verse
and recorded one album of music. At the age of thirty I am now beginning to wonder if I may not be, after all, a stranded lesbian from Mars.
Laura Rose DancingFire: I'm a country dyke working in the city as alawyer and social worker for battered women. I've done this work for ten
years, and I'm still amazed at the indifference of the legal system tophysically and sexually assaulted women and girls.
134

DeeAnne Davis graduated from the University of Iowa with a BA in
English and then hung out in the theatre department for a few years
doing graduate work in acting. Now a resident of Oakland, CA, she's
done some copyediting for women's presses in the Bay area as well as in
the work she does in her current j-o-b at Public Media Center. Writing is
the prose that is her poetry; acting is the passion that is her heart; runningkeeps her open; and D. keeps her strong.
Carolina Delgado: Gloria Anzaldua's writing class for women of color
has awakened a place in me that's always been there. Now I see life likea pool and I'm ready to dive in. First I must learn how to swim andwriting is one of the ways I'm learning.
Betty Dudley is a fat woman born and raised in small town Missouri. She
now lives and works in San Francisco because the Bay Area offers her
support for fat politics and the opportunity to swim with other fat
women on Saturday morning.
Linda Frances: I'm a special needs teacher. I delight in drinking coffee
and reading in coffee shops, hiking in the White Mountains, taking longwalks in Cambridge, recalling the colors of the southwest, living withmy lover, Dorothy, and writing poetry. I have recently had poetry
accepted for publication in Common Lives/Lesbian Lives, Backbone andProof Rock.
Marilyn Frye is a philosopher. She is in the 15th year of lesbian relating
to Carolyn Shafer (who is an artist now, a painter). She thinks she will
write more, now that she has a computer.
Amanda Gable is a native Georgian and among other things is working
on her Ph.D. in women's studies and American literature at Emory
University. She has published in Feminary and has a story appearing
soon in The North American Review. She is a feminist lesbian.
Carolyn Gage is a lesbian playwright in Portland, OR. She recently concluded a successful run of The Second Coming ofJoan of Arc at the Portland
Women's Theater and is currently touring with the show. Her play,
Coming About, dealing with women's loss of identity in marriage, was a
finalist for the Maude Adams Playwriting Award, a national award
given for plays about women's issues. Gage is currently revising a musical based on the life of the athlete Babe Didriksen. She is also the initiatorof the Women's Rape Museum Project, a project to establish the firstmuseum/memorial with exhibits to honor our victims and survivors.
Grace Harwood is a recovering lover who lives in Oakland, CA. Her
photographic images are available through WomanCrafts West on
Valencia St. in S.F. Her short fiction and poems have appeared in135

publications as diverse as Bridges, Chyrsalis, Christopher Street, Feldspar,
Prize Stores, Paragraph and Zyzzyva; her interviews and opinions regarding contemporary feminist fiction are often found in Mama Bears News &Notes and in The Bay Area Women's News.
Stephaine (CS) Henderson is a Black Lesbian, single mother of two anda recovering alcoholic. She is a Bay Area poet and author / producer of abook of poetry/prose, PACKING ...and other moves. She is a regularcontributor to Yoni Lesbian Erotica magazine, where ''TEXAS' 52/1 first
appeared.
Marti Hohmann lives and writes in Richmond, VA, where she is anactivist, educator, and buddy for the Richmond AIDS Information
Network. Other writings have appeared in Colby Library Quarterly,
Singles Unlimited Magazine, and Iris: a Journal by and about Women.
Jano is a writer, a union organizer, an artist and a very funny person (soshe sez). She lives in Oakland with her son Jonah.
Terri Jewell is a Black Lesbian Feminist poet and writer living in
Lansing, Michigan. She is 33.
Barbara Johnson: born in Chicago in 1949, I am a painter /printmaker,
residing in Northampton, MA. I enjoy doing portraits, stilllifes andlarge-scale murals and installations expressing a sense of mystery about
reality.
Sondra Knight is a transplanted New Yorker residing in Seattle, aspiring to meet the many challenges of motherhood, Blackness and coming
out.
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz is co-editor of The Tribe of Dina - A Jewish
Women's Anthology (Sinister Wisdom Books) and the author of Some
Pieces of Jewish Left and Other Stories. "My Jewish Face" appears in thatcollection.
Adrienne Lauby: born second in a family of ten children, I graduatedfrom Nebraska to travel as a hippie and organize for women's and gay
rights. I presently live as a disabled writer in rural California.
Jasmine Marah - enigmatic, eclectic, elastic, eccentric, enthusiastic.
Minnie Bruce Pratt is the author of two books of poetry, The Sound of One
Fork and We Say We Love Each Other. She is currently finishing a book of
poems about being the lesbian mother of her two sons.
Rebecca Ridgely gets turned on by the sight of 747s taking off and has
a great-sense of social responsibility.

136

BarbaraRuth: Iam41,fat,disabled,JewishandNativeAmerican,raisedin an alcoholic family which passes as white gentiles. Not surprisingly,
passing is one of the primary issues of my life. The poem, "I go to workin drag," is in my book, Past, Present & Future Passions.
Ruthann Robson lives in North Florida. A collection of her short fiction
is forthcoming from Firebrand Books.
Rose Romano is the editor of La Bella Figura. Her work has appeared in
Room of One's Own, Home Planet News, Earth's Daughters and has been/
will be in Common Lives, Rebirth of Artemis and Footwork. She has a shortprose piece about being an Italian-American lesbian mother in We Are
Everywhere, an anthology just out from Crossing Press. She is very
excited about being the guest editor of SW's Italian-American lesbian
issue and is looking forward to finding more commari.
Victoria Alegria Rosales: I am a struggling Mexican-Indian poet andnovelist,lost in the American system. Now, at almost 49-years of age,
I'm finishing my M.A. in special studies at SFSU. Just recently I havefinished the biography of my mother and father, dealing with theconflicts they had because of their difference in class: my mother, a white
upper-middle class woman; my father, an Indian peon.
Ute Margarete Saine, born in Germany, studied at Yale and has beenteaching French literature and language in the West, currently in
Arizona.
Naja Sorella: I'm a lesbian separatist, born 1952,1/2 Portuguese, 1/4
German, 1/4 English-Scotch, working class, severely disabled bychronic illness, birth-mother. During my able-bodied years I was adancer, potter, actress, poet, avid bicyclist, mountain hiker. Now I'm asometimes-writer, sometimes-artist when I'm lucky enough to get out ofbed. I have a beautiful lover of 4 years, wonderful friends, and lots ofrocks and stones. I currently live in Berkeley, CA, but I won't be here
forever.
Susanna J. Sturgis has published essays, reviews, and poems in avariety of publications from Hurricane Alice to the Vineyard Gazette. ''The
Bullfight Sonnets" began at the 1987 Feminist Women's Writing Workshops with someone's half-facetious remark that "the only suitablesubjects for academic poetry were bullfighting and war" - whereupon
several participants undertook to write poems about bullfighting. She
lives on Martha's Vineyard, MA, where she is working on a multi-genre
collection inspired by Euripides' "Medea" and editing an anthology ofwomen's science fiction stories for Crossing Press.

137

Cheryl Marie Wade: I am a forty-year-old straight woman. My hands
have been gnarled like fine old oak since I was sixteen, my feet are soft,
fat puppies, my spine resembles more than one letter of the alphabet. I
am an incest survivor, a suicide survivor, a survivor of medical experimentation. Pain is an intimate companion. I am not a euphemism.
Pacha Wasiolek is an artist and illustrator currently living and working
in the Bay Area. Her most recent efforts include the cover art for Outlook
magazine's first edition and the cover art for Cleis Press' Unholy
Alliances, edited by Louise Rafkin.

''Slro1lg, clear, a1ld OUI/ spoke1l. ..

-Common lives/ Les bian Lh'cs"~ry '(res slipped dOIV1I Ihe pages as
easily as I Imag/1Ied Ihls poet's eyesslippillg

dOllJlI

some handsome

1110111011 '5 bod)' willie 0111 011 a cruise. "- Feminist Bookstore Nc\\"S
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138

Announcements and Classified Ads ______CALLS FOR SUBMISSION
LA BELLA FIGURA - a literary journal for Italian-American women,with a special welcome for lesbians. Send SASE for writer's guidelines
and subscription information to: Rose Romano, P.O. Box 411223, SF, CA
94141-1123.
DYKES, DISABILITY AND STUFF, a start-up networking newsletter isseeking submissions in all forms from women with an an interest in
health, ability, visibility and disability, as well as financial support. Send
contributions to: UPE, Box 6194, Boston, MA 02114-6194.
SAGE: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women is soliciting manuscripts for a
special issue on Black Women's Studies (deadline: January IS, 1989). For
more information: P.O. Box 42721, Atlanta, GA 30311-0741.
CAMERA OBSCURA, the leading American journal on feminism andfilm theory, is now being edited at the Univ. of Rochester. For themes
and guidelines contact: Jana Carlisle, Camera Obscura, U. of Rochester,Rochester, NY 14627.
NEMESIS is an anthology seeking written work and photographs from
Separatists, Lesbians and Radical Feminists which tell our tales ofheteropatriarchal disruption and womyn-positive reality building. For
more information send SASE to: Nemesis, c/o Amber L. Katherine, P.O.
Box 417042, Chicago, IL 60641-7041. Deadline: December I, 1988.
LESBIANS OVER SIXTY: other lesbians want to know accounts of love
between women over sixty, by women over sixty, for an anthology fromour perspectives. Send your poems, short prose pieces, letters, diary
entries, songs, photos and drawings. Photocopies, please. Include SASE.
Send material to: Old Lovers, c/o Womanspirit, 2000 King Mountain
Trail, Sunny Valley, OR 97497. Deadline: Crones Day /Halloween, 1988.
FINDING THE LESBIANS - an anthology on the subject of how
Lesbians find each other in a society that wants us to believe we don't
exist, that each of us is "the only one." Send mss to: Julia Penelope andSarah Valentine, POB 606, Westford, MA 01886, with SASE. Deadline:
December I, 1988.
Interested in writing for, subscribing to, a FAT LESBIAN NEWSLETTER? We are looking for articles, announcements and a name. To give
input, advertise or for more information, write Jasmine Marah, 1442A
Walnut St., Box 357, Berkeley, CA 94709.

139

WIM PUBLICATIONS, woman- and Black-owned small press, WIM
welcomes poetry manuscripts April-Aug. from women, African-Americans, lesbian and gay writers, Send SASE (45¢ stamp) for info andcatalog to: SDiane Bogus, WIM,2215-RMarket Dept. PCP, SF, CA 94114.
DISABLED WOMEN'S NEWSLETTER in cooperation with Wry Crips
Disabled Women's Theater of Berkeley is seeking submissions. Send
work to: 2 Sun Lane, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601.

GENERAL
THE LESBIAN HERSTORY ARCHIVES announces its "Friends" Campaign to benefit its many projects and build a funding base for thepurchase of a permanent collection site. Donations to the ''Friends''
Campaign (from $25 to $1000 or more) should be made payable to the
Lesbian Herstory Educational Foundation, Inc. (or LHEF, Inc.) and aretax-deductible. P.O. Box 1258, NYC, NY 10116.
THE FEMINIST WOMEN'S WRITING WORKSHOP of Ithaca, NY, isseeking contributions to its Scholarship Fund. Contributions are now
tax-deductible. Send your contributions or get more information, from:
Katharyn Machan Aal, Director, FWWW, p.o. Box 456, Ithaca, NY
14851.
M.A.R.C. ,(Mothers Against Raping Children) is currently fighting thecourts in three cases where the courts have sent sexually abused children
to their abuser's (father's) custody. The women of M.A.R.C. and theirlawyer are under FBI surveillance and extreme harassment. They needorganizers, money, attorneys, publicity, reporting and support. For
more information or to send donations: M.A.R.C., Southern Wildsisters
Unlimited Bookstore,250 Cowan Rd., Gulfport, MS 39507 or Sanctuary,
P.O. Box 50476, New Orleans, LA 70150.
AUNT EDNA'S READING LIST, a monthly review of alternative books
for women, $10, Aunt Edna, 2002 H Hunnewell St., Honolulu, HI 96822.

JEWISH LESBIAN DAUGHTERS OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS meetfor support and net-working semi-annually. Write or call p.o. Box 6194,
Boston, MA 02114, (617) 321-4252 for information.
Voting? Check out LENORA B. FULANI'S campaign - the first Black
woman to get on the ballot as an independent presidential candidate inall 50 states, and the first Black woman to receive federal primary
matching funds. Consider casting your vote where the act of voting itself
might make a difference.

140

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THE TRIBE OF DINA:A JEWISH WOMEN'S ANTHOLOGYEDITED BY: MELANIE KAYElKANTROWITZ' IRENA KLEPF ISZ" T~ richnds and diversity of the lives of Jewish womenare stunningly documented in this new collection."-Women's Review of Books" A joyous celebration ". Sephardic and Ashkenazi. Israeli
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sinister wisdom
Current & Back Issues(partial list of contents)#34/Special Focus on Lesbian Visions, Fantasy, SciFi. Includes work on
separatism, disability, building and transformation• Katz, Ortiz Taylor, Hoagland, Allegra, Livia, Louise, R ios, Danaan, Marah •#33/Special Focus on Wisdom, Lesbians of Color, Non-violence, War Stories,
Incest, Leaving a Will, Assimilation, Fat Poems, Coming to Terms• Anzaldua, Ruth, Rich, Chrystos, Kaye/ Kantrowitz, Hardy, Gilmore, Brody, Rakusin •#32/Special Focus on Illness, Death, Mourning, Healing, the Disappeared,
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Comedy about Outlaw Lesbian Communities, Courage, PC / PI, Letter on #26• Clarke Heather Klepfisz Sturgis Gould Boucher Gomez Sardella Moran •#27 / Special Focus on Girlhood, Sexuality and Violence, Office Work, Navy
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Native American Roots of White Feminism, Palestinian, Haitian, Puerto
Rican Struggles, Jewish Radical Identity, Welfare Motherhood Sexuality, SciFi• Allen Cotrell Root Stecenko Love Paz Smukler Hall Lipstadt Brant •#24 / Violence Against Women & Resistance, Alcohol, Fighting Racism, Dyke
Culture, Black Lesbians, White Working Class Identity, Censorship• Harjo Derricotte Nestle Lynch Sylvester Pratt Moirai Parkerson •#21/ Separatism Revisited, Jewish Survival & Defiance, Black Lesbian
Writing, Photos of Dykes in Drag, Suicide, Bars, Letters about Anti-Semitism• Klepfisz Arobateau Segrest Simpson Tomes Addison justice Foley Crawford Wagstaff •#20 / Lesbians Getting Fired, Madness & Incarceration, Class Pain, Mirrors,
Fat, Dykes in the Army, Japanese-American & Jewish Lesbians, Dyke Buddies• Allegro Nestle zana Herstein De Araujo Moran Courtot •#19 / Vulnerability & Power, Anti-Semitism, Sobering Up, Coming Out,
Scars, Halfbreeds, Mothers & Sisters, Black Student / White College• Deming Gordon Miriam Smith Stevens Perez-Trevino Hoagland Gertler Katz •K~ 1o(flnifTERWlfDOmSince 1976 . ..

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Special issue on
Passing"Anger is a discipline. I
practiced my anger likesome people practice
piano. It takes energy to beoutraged. It's hard work.
Especially when the abuse
becomes routine. Somedays I was tired and soreand feeling sorry for myself.
Some days I just wanted topretend I didn't hear them,or that I was exalted
enough to forgive them .
But I would always say tomyself, 'Jeanne, if you don' t
resist this abuse, then you
accept it, and if you accept
it, then you deserve it, andif you deserve it, you're adead woman and that's
exactly what they want.' So,
no matter how sick, howtired , how weak, I would
always rise to the occasion ,throw back the insult, protest the abuse, and demand
my rights as a human being.
Of course, this had no effecton them , but it kept me
alive."-Carolyn Gage
" The Second Coming of
Joan of Arc"$5