Sinister Wisdom 67
Summer 2006

$6 US

sinister wisdom67

Lesbians and Work

Publisher: Sinister Wisdom, Inc.

Sinister Wisdom 67
Summer 2006

Editor: Fran Day
Layout and Design: Kim P. Fusch
Board of Directors: Judith K. Witherow, Rose Provenzano, Joan Nestle,
Susan Levinkind, Fran Day, Shaba Barnes.
Coordinator: Susan Levinkind
Proofreaders: Fran Day and Sandy Tate
Web Design: Sue Lenaerts
Mailing Crew for #66: Linda Bacci, Fran Day, Roxanna Fiamma,Casey
Fisher, Sheridan Gold, Dianna Grayer, jody jewdyke, Susan Levinkind,
Barbara Link, Moire Martin, Kim Rivers, Stacee Shade, and Sandy Tate.
Special Thanks to: Roxanna Fiamma, Alix Greenwood and Rose
Provenzano.
Front Cover Art: “Woman Welder” San Francisco, 1976 by Cathy Cade.
Back Cover Art: “Lola, Carpenter” Chicago, 1994 by Cathy Cade.
SINISTER WISDOM, founded 1976
Former editors and publishers:
Harriet Ellenberger (aka Desmoines)
And Catherine Nicholson (1976-1981)
Michelle Cliff and Adrienne Rich (1981-1983)
Michaele Uccella (1983-1984)
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1983-1987)
Elana Dykewomon (1987-1994)
Caryatis Cardea (1991-1994)
Akiba Onada-Sikwoia (1995-1997)
Margo Mercedes Rivera-Weiss (1997-2000)
Sinister Wisdom is a multicultural, multi-class, female-born lesbian space.
We seek to open, consider and advance the exploration of community
issues. We recognize the power of language to reflect our diverse experiences and to enhance our ability to develop critical judgement, as lesbians
evaluating our community and our world.
Copyright © 2006 Sinister Wisdom, Inc.
All rights revert to individual authors and artists.
ISSN: 0196-1853. Printed in the U. S. on recycled paper.

Sinister Wisdom, Inc. PO Box 3252, Berkeley, CA 94703, USA

www.sinisterwisdom.org

Submission Guidelines
Submissions and correspondence for SW #69/70 and #72 should be sent tofran@sonic.net or mailed to SW c/o Fran Day, POB 1180, Sebastopol, CA
95473-1180. See page 4 for details. Also see page 4 for information about SW#71. Please read the submission guidelines below before sending material.
Everything else should be sent to Sinister Wisdom, POB 3252, Berkeley, CA 94703. Check our website at www.sinisterwisdom.org.
Submission Guidelines: Please read carefully.
Submissions may be in any style or form, or combination of forms.
Maximum submission: five poems, two short stories or essays, or one
longer piece of up to 2,500 words. We prefer that you send your work byemail in Word. If sent by mail, submissions must be mailed flat (not folded)
with your name and address on each page. We prefer you type your work
but short legible handwritten pieces will be considered; tapes acceptedfrom print-impaired women. All work must be on white paper. Please
proofread your work carefully; do not send changes after the deadline. A
self-addressed stamped business-sized envelope must be enclosed. If you
want acknowledgement of receipt, enclose a separate self-addressed stamped
postcard. GRAPHIC ARTISTS should send B&W photos or drawings(duplicates) of their work(no slides.) Images sent electronically must havea resolution of 300dpi for photos and art, and 600dpi for line drawings.
TIFF’s and PDF’s are preferred. Please do not send large files electronically – send each photo separately. Include a short biographical sketch
written exactly as you want it printed. Selection may take up to nine months.
We publish only Lesbians’ work. We are particularly interested in workthat reflects the diversity of our experiences: as Lesbians of color, ethnic
Lesbians, Jewish, Arab, old, young, working class, poverty class, disabled,
and fat Lesbians. We welcome experimental work. We will not print anything that is oppressive or demeaning to Lesbians or women, or that perpetuates stereotypes. We do intend to keep an open and critical dialogue
on all the issues that affect our lives, joy, and survival. Please contact us if
you have a new theme you would like to see explored. We are looking for
guest editors for future issues.
Sinister Wisdom, Inc. is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization. We provide free subscriptions to women in prison and psychiatric institutions(20% of our mailing list), as well as reduced price subscriptions for Lesbians with limited/fixed incomes. * Enclose an extra $10 to $50 on yourrenewal to help cover publishing costs (larger donations accepted.) * Give
Sinister Wisdom for birthdays, holidays, and special occasions.

summer-2006

1

A Journal by and for LesbiansContents
Notes for a Magazine .............................. Fran Day ................................ 3
Upcoming Issues: Call for Submissions ................................................... 4
Piecework ................................................ Joan Annsfire ......................... 6
Nickel and Dime ..................................... Joan Annsfire ......................... 7
Let Sleeping Dogs Lie .............................. Jamie R. Okulam ................... 8
The Best Way Out Was Through ............. Sheridan Gold ..................... 10
The Textile Factory .................................. Judith K. Witherow ............. 13
Working................................................... Marjorie Norris ................... 16
Sliding Through Fog Walls
and Other Demons .................................. Nisa Donnelly ..................... 17
The Fine Print ......................................... Becky Banasiak Code........... 20
What Is It Worth? .................................... Sierra Lonepine Briano ........ 25
A Boy in the Sea ...................................... Susan Hagen ....................... 26
Lesbians at Work...................................... Cathy Cade ......................... 31
The Scholar’s Groceries ............................ Bonnie Morris ..................... 32
Help Wanted ........................................... Ida VSW Red ...................... 41
A Celebration of Women Who Work ....... Ida VSW Red ...................... 42
A Labor Play ............................................ Carolyn Gage ...................... 46
Subtext .................................................... Mary Meriam ...................... 58
alone: a senryu sequence .......................... Mary Meriam ...................... 59
Sustenance ............................................... Mary Meriam ...................... 61
The Bitter Side of Flatbroke ..................... Mary Meriam ...................... 62
The Countess of Flatbroke ....................... Mary Meriam ...................... 62
Our Cause Shouldn’t Be Clouded With
Our Own Intolerance .............................. Rose Strong ......................... 63
Paying My Ironworker Dues .................... Sue Lenaerts ........................ 67
Worrying About How To Pay All My Bills .. Chrystos .............................. 73
A Place Where Everyone Belongs ............. Susan Saxe ........................... 74
Lesbians and Work ................................... Jean Taylor .......................... 78“Work,” Defined by Lesbians in
a Man’s World .......................................... Shewolf ............................... 80
Dangers in the Workplace ........................ Lee Lynch ............................ 82
Dyke Physical Education Teacher ............. Roxanna N. Fiamma ........... 84
Land, Work and Disability ....................... Raven .................................. 85

2sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Work: You Name It, I’ve Done It ............. Lilith Rogers ........................ 88
Sometimes at Play .................................... Lynn Brown ........................ 91
Contributors’ Notes .............................................................................. 93
Books Received ..................................................................................... 98
Book Reviews/Reviewers:
Writing Our Lesbian Lives in Poetry ....... Julie R. Enszer ..................... 99
The Temple at Landfill ........................... Lori L. Lake ....................... 101
Freedom is Your Human Right! Acceptingand Honoring Yourself ........................... Lilith Rogers ...................... 103
Persimmons and Other Lesbian Erotica ... Dianna L. Grayer .............. 104
Beyond Recall......................................... rainbow williams ............... 106
Native Storyteller ................................... Meredith Pond .................. 107
Ads ..................................................................................................... 109
Correction .......................................................................................... 117
Back Issues .......................................................................................... 118
Subscription Form .............................................................................. 119
Sinister Wisdom News ........................................................................ 120
Submission Guidelines ............................................................. Back coverART
Photo of Woman Welder ......................... Cathy Cade .......... Front CoverPhoto of Gail and Kate ............................ Cathy Cade ........................... 5
Sweat Shop .............................................. Sue Lenaerts ........................ 15
Photo of Kate, Mechanic ......................... Cathy Cade ......................... 31
Graphic of Lesbians Working Sign ........... Kim Fusch ........................... 45
Pen and Ink Drawing ............................... zana ..................................... 60
Photo of Sue at Work ............................... Judith K. Witherow ............. 66
Photo of Roxanna N. Fiamma ................. Fran Day ............................. 84
Photo of Lola, Carpenter ......................... Cathy Cade ........... Back Coversummer-2006

3

Notes for a Magazine
As Lesbians, how do we cope with heterosexism, lesbophobia, ageism,
racism, classism, ableism and other oppressive policies and attitudes at work?
How do we maintain our integrity (asserting our needs, defending our rights)
without being penalized or losing our jobs? How do we cope with work that
we find degrading, unethical, boring, stressful, dangerous, disabling, and/or
unsatisfying? How do we cope with the myth that there is meaningful, wellpaid work out there for everyone if we only try hard enough? What experiences have we had with successful alliances with other Lesbians at work?
What positive experiences have we had at work where we felt we were doing
something useful, where we were acknowledged for our unique contributions, and/or where we had a reasonable workload, healthy working conditions, and adequate compensation and benefits?
These were some of the questions we asked in our call for material forthis issue on Lesbians and Work. We also suggested other topics which included unions, workaholism, exploitation of workers, having to work as achild, while chronically ill, or while caregiving a sick/disabled partner.
Understandably, many of those who planned to write for this issue foundthemselves too exhausted from working to do so. Some reported that they
had just been laid off and had to put all their energies into finding otherwork. Nevertheless, many thought-provoking pieces found their way into
our mailbox. The contributors to this issue of Sinister Wisdom explore thecomplex issues Lesbians encounter at work with imagination, creativity,
compassion, grit and determination.
“Sisters, let us put our heads together and create ways to improve the worldof work for Lesbians and all oppressed people. Let us explore ways to sustain
ourselves and each other outside the patriarchal work world. Sisters, take heart,
unite, support each other, form alliances, and find courage and solidarity in ourlove for our kind...”Tanager,
Sister Courage (Unpublished manuscript)

Fran Day
Sebastopol, California

4sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Upcoming Issues: Call for Submissions#68 Death, Grief, and Surviving
Forthcoming Fall 2006
Guest Editors: Judith Witherow and Sue Lenaerts#69/70 Sinister Wisdom’s 30 th Anniversary Celebration Double-Issue
Deadline: August 1, 2006
Editor: Fran Day fran@sonic.net
Reflections, Reminiscences and Remembrances
Reflections on thirty years of Sinister Wisdom and the lesbian feminist
movement. Remembrances of experiences that shaped your life as a Lesbian
feminist. Tributes to Lesbians (living and deceased) who touched your life
and influenced your thinking. Interviews encouraged. Photos must be taken
by Lesbians.
#71 Two Spirit Women of First Nations
Deadline: March 1, 2007
Guest Editors: Chrystos (Menominee) and Sunny Birdstone (Ktunaxa)
Colonialization has marginalized Indigenous women (as well as men), making Native Dykes almost completely invisible. We celebrate the survival of Two
Spirit Womenof First Nations in this issue. Submissions may be in any format taped interviews, dialogues, as well as fiction, poetry, etc. Please respect certain
definitions, which have often been violated - ie. we ask for work from lesbians
who are Native in this lifetime only, recognized by their tribes or communities(although a BIA number is not required) and willing to use their name rather
than a psuedonym (this is to help prevent submissions of non-authentic work).
We define Indigenous Dykes as coming from the Americas, as well as the Pacific(Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia), with a land base (ie. reservation, ranchero,etc.) and a tribal affiliation (Maori, Koori, Cree, etc.). Government recognitionof tribal status is not necessary (ie. we recognize the Duwamish). We are particularly interested in stories from dykes who were in residential schools, Elders,incarcerated, & in honor of those who have passed on (Barbara Cameron
NationShield, Smiley Hillaire). Edited by Chrystos (Menominee) and Sunny
Birdstone (Ktunaxa). Megwetch.
Submissions, inquiries etc. for #71 only should be sent tosbirdstone@hotmail.com, or to Chrystos and S. Birdstone, 3250 S. 77th
#8, Tacoma, WA, 98409#72 Utopia
Deadline: August 1, 2007
Editor: Fran Day Details at www.sinisterwisdom.org

summer-2006

5“Gail and Kate” by Cathy Cade 1973.

6

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Joan Annsfire

Piecework
We shared more than the heaters at our feetthat winter we worked
in the warehouse on 3rd.
Five women learning the detailsof each other’s lives
while performing our daily routinewith a practiced and hungry fervor.
The radio kept us moving,
memorizing the words of popular songs,
each tune bringing forth new conversation
to the beat of our own rowdy music.
Each took her turn rolling lace patterns
cutting the pieces like cookies
into sheets of wet clay.
Hand-crafted wind-chimes
that we would stringand hang from driftwood boughs.
For the last lap,
all pieces were aligned in order of assembly,
all work spaces arranged
for maximum speed.
Cold fingers flew
in the quest for numerical superiority,
attempting a new record,or just outdoing a personal best.
Blood rushed to our blue fingertips,
each knot tiedwith repetitive certainty.
Each of us envisioning
a sumptuous meal or a new leather jacket,
as clay dust settled over our bodies
like snow.

summer-2006

Joan Annsfire

Nickel and Dime
I travel a well-worn path to work and back;each day rising at sevento wash, eat, dress, drive and ride.
chances are, no land mines
are hidden to disrupt my journey,no enemy armies prepare silent ambush.
Instead, I arrive unscathedin a place of computers and fluorescent lights
where I perform daily tasks with quick efficiency
leaving all traces of “real life” just hours,
yet light-years behind.
My fingers race over the keyboard,of that bloodthirsty miracle of technologythat cramps my shoulders,cripples my hands, blurs my vision,and keystroke by keystroke,eats away my life.
When I was young, I asked my father,“how can you go to work eight hours one day,then get up each morning to do it
over and over again?”he replied simply, “you get used to it.”But you don’t get used to it,
you just get used,become numb,surrender.
Tomorrow,
there will be no death squads trying
to break down my door,
no bombers flying overhead to send explosives
raining down on my house.
I will rise early,
let my working woman’s legs propel my weary bodyback to my job once more,
my eyes fixed on some unyielding pointon the distant horizon.

7

8

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Jamie R. Okulam

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
I was angry. But now it’s not the kind of anger I had then. It’s the kindof anger you put away in a box — on a shelf in the basement — like amemory.
Mr. Harrington told our seventh grade class to pick out a career tostudy. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I told him I wanted to
be a writer and an artist. He smiled. I didn’t understand the concept of
patronizing then.
Like the rest of the kids, I threw myself into learning about my chosenjob. All during the term my best friend Kathy (the other tomboy) and I did
all the art projects for the class. I was really beginning to see myself as an
artist. Just the word, artist, was sacred to me.
One day Mr. Harrington told me he wanted me to watch some movies
he had chosen just for me. I thought, cool, maybe I’ll get to see a movie
about Michelangelo or Vincent Van Gogh.
He led me to a small room next to the principal’s office. He told me tosit in there and wait for him to come back. I was going to see two films. I
had been excited but now I was in that special place children who have been
raped know — a kind of hyper-alertness — a knowing of what might come— but a cynical satisfaction that says – yes — I was right.
He started the film projector and left the room. The black and white
images reflected back into my eyes. I did not blink. I didn’t turn my head. I
wanted to remember all of it.
The government issued film about how to be a janitor was very professionally done. I learned how to dust. The deep narrator’s voice said, “Lookwhat happens when you dust with a dry rag; the dust just flies about theroom and lands on other surfaces. Use a wet dust rag instead.” I learned thatyou never put a washrag on a faucet because the little germs know how to
crawl up the faucet and get into the nice clean water.
I have always believed Mr. Harrington assumed I was guilty. I was guilty
for being the daughter of an American Indian. True, my mother was white,
but being mixed is bad too. My little sister was dark. Mr. Harrington probably thought I was lucky to take after my mother.
I’ve spent most of my life living like a woman of color — a kind of guiltby association. Like most of the women in my father’s family, I became anurse’s aide. My sister became the other thing my father dreaded — a hair-summer-2006

9

dresser. He told me just before he died when I was seventeen, “ Don’t eitherof you girls ever become this or that!” But we did.
All the stories you hear about being a nurse’s aide are true. Yes, people
even ask you if you can read. It isn’t a question meant to patronize you
because someone is angry with you for making a mistake. It’s an inquiry,
because, “Well, I didn’t know that folks who did your kind of work could
read.”
I’ve been offered higher pay than the “colored” girls because I am supposedly smarter. Well, I am just bigger. My anger at Mr. Harrington guaranteed I would not be subservient. Rich clients could relate to me. They felt
less guilty because I was Brunhilde and not Ethel Waters.
My life partner, my lover, my spouse — no matter what the government says about the legality of our marriage — is a musician. When we are
getting ready for a party, we clean the house. She persists in using a dry rag
to dust. I watch her little fingers smear the dust. I watch the dust fly aroundher head sending her into sneezing fits. When I try to teach her to use a wet
rag, she quips, “Leave me alone!” I do. She led me to a new world. I am
grateful.
What would Mr. Harrington think if he knew that the American Indian was not really my father at all? He was the man who saved my southernborn mother from starvation when she was abandoned by my real father —the one born in Denmark. I guess Mr. Harrington would still think it was
guilt by association. White trash is another popular epithet.
My mother would say, “Let sleeping dogs lie!”
Can’t do it. Mr. Harrington. Remember the tall fat girl, you know, theIndian’s kid. Yah! Yes, the Dyke who was in love with Kathy. I am also
illegitimate! Umhumm!
I am an artist and writer. Would you like to come to my graduation? I
am getting a master’s degree in creative writing with a concentration on
publishing.
Film to follow.

10

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Sheridan Gold

The Best Way Out Was ThroughSometimes when you are holding a secret, you hold so much energy
trying to hide the secret that the hiding keeps you prisoner in your own
mind. You can’t say certain things, you always have to censor what you dosay, and you are always going back and forth in deciding what to say, depending on who you are talking to. When I first started teaching, this is
how it was with my students. My students were in Alternative Education,i.e. expelled youth and kids locked up in Juvenile Hall. As the community
was extremely intolerant towards these kids who fought, cut school and did
drugs, so were my students intolerant of anyone who was different fromthem. They were the most homophobic students I had ever run into.
Every morning I would hand out newspapers and we would discuss thecurrent events of the day. However, every morning before I handed out
newspapers, I would scan them to see if there were any articles about gays inthe military, gay marriage, or even gay bashings. If there were any of thesestories, I’d choose not to pass out the newspapers, and we’d go to the next
activity. This way I could have some kind of control over the conversations
and to my delight, no student ever questioned why we weren’t reading thenewspaper on any given day.
The years passed by and I was somewhat comfortable in the closet. The
kids got the message that I was not open to discussing anything gay related
and the subject rarely came up as a class discussion. However, there’d always
be the whispering, the gossip about their lesbian teacher, and the questions
followed by laughter about such things as the meaning of the rainbow or
what my husband’s name was. “What does the rainbow mean, Ms. G?” “I
don’t know other than what comes out in nature after the rain,” I would
reply, my heart racing and my breath becoming shorter. “Are you married,
Ms. G?” “No,” I would sternly reply, even though I was in a 20-year relationship. My stern reply gave them the message I was absolutely not into
sharing my personal life with them.
Then Matthew Shepard was murdered and my life has never been thesame. I was stunned as was the rest of the world and I knew I could nolonger be comfortable in my silence. My students needed to see a real live
lesbian, somebody who was happy and healthy and making a difference inher students’ lives. It wasn’t easy, coming out. I didn’t accomplish it in thesnap of a finger. What my students thought of me was terribly importantsummer-2006

11

and I wanted to be accepted and liked and respected. But what kept goingon over and over and over in my mind besides the constant censoring of “totell or not to tell,” was that if Matthew Shepard could go through what hewent through, I certainly could come out and say, “Here I am, I am gay, andI am happy.”
During the time of Matthew’s murder, I had been teaching for five
years. I was in a Master’s program creating an in-service to help make schools
safer for LGBTQ youth. The tragedy reminded my professors and me just
how important my in-service had now become. Matthew’s murder broughthome the importance of my work to a much higher level, not only for potential victims, but especially for potential gay-bashers. Matthew’s murderers were recently out of high school. I taught high school, and my colleagues
taught high school, and we were all responsible in some way for the choices
our students made. It was all of our responsibility to create a safe learning
environment, free of name-calling and violence. If I could impact these teachers to stop the homophobic slurs, the bullying, the laughter, the gossip,
perhaps I could transcend something positive out of all the horror.
I started my in-service with an original monologue about my life growing up as a youngster, amidst all of the homophobia around me. I start out
as a very joyous, smart, and lively girl, and end up as a taunted, terrorized
dropout. There’s not a dry eye in the audience at the end of the twentyminute performance. It’s my hook and the teachers grab on. From there, theteachers are open to receiving statistical information about gay youth andthose perceived to be gay and they are stunned at what they hear. We allleave the four-hour in-service changed people.
Although in giving my in-service to other teachers and seeing its impact
I grew stronger, I was still guarded. On the first day of school in my ninth
year of teaching, one of my students asked me a question that set me free.
“Hello everyone,” I said. “Welcome to the first day of school.” Before I
could continue, a returning student raised his hand and asked, “Ms. G,
aren’t you going to tell everyone your secret?” “What secret?” I asked innocently, knowing full well where my student was going with his question.
“You know, Ms. G,” he continued, “your secret.” “Oh!” I exclaimed. “Youmean when I was a kid I had a pet rat I let out every Saturday morning andlet her run under my covers and snuggle up while I read?” The students
shrieked and squirmed as I uncovered “my secret.” “No, Ms. G. Your secret.
You know, your secret?” “Oh!” I exclaimed, “You mean that I am Jewish?”“No, Ms. G,” he said as a smile spread slowly across his face. “That you aregay.” I looked at my student and said with a laugh, “That’s no secret. Every-

12sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Workbody knows I’m gay. Do you have any concerns about that or is there anything I can help you with?” He became mute and shook his head. We
moved seamlessly along to the next subject.
I came into teaching unable to tolerate my students’ homophobic views.
However, now in my eleventh year, I help kids understand why homophobic
slurs are hurtful. When they reply that there aren’t any gay people aroundso why would it matter, they may laugh when I tell them I’m gay. I understand they are uncomfortable. But because it’s out in the open, there is no
more whispering or laughing behind my back. There is no longer the gossip I once heard. I am out of my prison of silence. It’s not always easy tocall them on their homophobia, but I continue to remind myself that I
am the adult, and my students are here to learn from me. Maybe they’ll
remember math facts, maybe not. But I know they will always remember
they had a gay teacher who was strong, kind, open, funny and accepted
them for who they were. Who knows, maybe the next time someone isintolerant of them, they’ll remember me and my strength, take hold and
let it become their own.
A version of this piece was printed in One Teacher in Ten: LGBT Educators Share Their Stories, edited by K.Jennings (Alyson 2005.)

summer-2006

13

Judith K. Witherow

The Textile Factory
I was raised in the northern Appalachians Mountains. After graduatinghigh school in 1962, I went to work at one of the local factories. The factthat I was seventeen didn’t deter the ones in charge from hiring someone
underage. My mother, sister, and two aunts were employed at this particularsportswear factory. It was the natural progression for many female family
members as we entered the workforce.
Anyone who has ever worked in one of these sweatshops can attest to its
mind-numbing, back-breaking nature. The noise, fiber dust, stale air, andnonstop pressure to work faster on the assembly lines was intense. It washell on earth, but it was a means of survival until hopefully something better came along. “Hopefully” rarely happened once you got caught up in thisunending nightmare.
During the two years I worked there more than one woman suffered amental breakdown. Their screams would make the hair on the back of yourneck stand up. Other women would carry the broken woman out, and hardly
a moment of work would be lost. I guess we thought slowing down mightallow the Spirits to catch us next, or the bosses would find a way to get rid of
someone else who wasn’t producing to their satisfaction. It was a hellish
place for a naive teenager.
For the most part, men held positions of authority. As a teenager, I was
ill equipped to deal with adult men.
Back then there was no term for sexual harassment. The word “fresh”
was meant to cover all forms of abuse. It was accepted as just the way things
were, and you kept quiet to protect your job and your reputation.
When one of the line supervisors started hitting on me, I was shocked.
He was old enough to be my father. I was worried that even with the noiseof the sewing machines, and cutting equipment the other women would
hear what he was saying, and believe I had done something to encourage hisadvances.
Among many things, he told me was that virgins were a pain in the ass,and he would be doing me a favor by “busting my cherry.” I thought if I
worked even harder he would see that I was someone worthy of respect.
Needless to say it gave him permission to embolden his tactics.
There was a union at our workplace, and I decided to file a grievancewhen nothing I did would stop his dreaded behavior.

14

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and WorkI had always heard wonderful things about unions, and it didn’t hurtthat my aunts were officers in the local chapter of the Amalgamated Ladies’
Garment Workers’ Union.
When I told them what was taking place they were outraged. I was too
embarrassed to tell them everything, but they knew and trusted me as aperson who would not lie to elders.
They went to management with what I told them, and all hell brokeloose! These were two women who would not back down from anything.
The fact that the victim was a young family member fueled their anger
higher.
An earlier sit-down strike in the factory over another issue had beenvery successful, so I’m sure the shop knew my aunts wouldn’t hesitate to calla strike over such a just cause.
The man who harassed me tried to say I was lying. When that tactic
didn’t work he tried to convince me that I had misunderstood what he said.
With my aunts’ strength and backing I refused to allow his intimidation tocontinue. It was truly scary.
The ones in charge at the sportswear factory held a closed meeting andagreed that he would be fired immediately. The matter was settled without
further action.
Everyone in charge agreed to the situation being handled in this manner. My aunts, who were usually fun loving women, found nothing funnyin the disrespectful way their niece had been treated. I was surprised then at
the outcome and even more surprised today in retrospect that management
took what happened to me so seriously. The backing of my aunts and theunion made the difference.
They were feminists before the term was known or understood. Credit
goes to my aunts for teaching me how to fight and win when someone
makes you feel uncomfortable and you believe what he is doing is wrong.
The memory of that incident has always remained with me. It taught
me to look out for other women who might not have gained a voice. Youngor old, we all need others to believe us and stand together.
Years later I ran into the harasser. He was parking cars in a small town.
(No exaggeration.) His actions cost him a good-paying job, and hopefullytaught him a lesson that remains with him to this day.

summer-2006“Sweat Shop” by Sue Lenaerts

15

16

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Marjorie

NorrisWorking
You knew that working was what would help you to make the world,
You did not see it as making yourself, you were yin, and here you were,
Trying to go to college and working in an insurance office, then
Quitting to work part-time as a factory clerk. In the mid-sixties,
The rules were very clear, you were on time, you dressed modestly,
You listened to your (all male) bosses, some were even kind, but
That was not the tradition. You also listened to your female
Manager, but she was an extension of a patriarchy you had
Never paid attention to before, but now you were paid to pay
Attention, to her, her quirks, her patronizing extensions of help,
A paper clip or advice. You must listen, and though the bosses
Were giving breaks out in the factory to former inmates,
This was not extended to women, they did not deserve a break,
They could always overcome, and if not, overcompensate.
If you got pregnant, you stayed for half the pregnancy,
And then quit, no benefits, no insurance, and no potential
Comeback. Freud, their master, said, a person could
Be measured in their capacity To Love and To Work, andYou were conditioned to do both from an early age. Your
Mother had encouraged you to learn to type because thisWould Always Help You As a Woman, and you did learn,
And it did pay for your books, tuition, the room, including
The hotplate, but later, with good breaks, you would
Fall in love with work, fall in love with the field of Social
Work (of course you were a lesbian!) and the whole
Field of compassion would open itself to you, palpatingYour chest as if the inner heart, and you would reelAnd reel in the delight of it, you would come throughBurnout as if through the Grand Prix, and you
Would come out the other side, seasoned in detachment
And Reiki and the burning of candles. Life was not
Built to understand the work of women or to understandThem, but you were built to understand the world as it
Was, to peek through its pores: loving its beauty, holding
Its angst. Seeing wickedness, you would feel it, hate it,
Only rarely and occasionally help transform it.
Love is transforming the world,
Or so you believe, in this, a season of letting go.

11/26/05

summer-2006

17

Nisa Donnelly

Sliding through Fog Walls and Other Demons
After nearly forty years, Denise and I are walking away from the nineto-five corporate cradles. There should be more drama, more tears, morejoy, more gratitude. Or maybe just a profound sense of liberation. Instead,
we are free-falling, shedding a part of our lives that cost too much and gave
too little. I am terrified; Denise is not. She does not understand why I am
frightened; I do not understand why she is not. It’s the conundrum of ourlives, of our very different ways of looking at and of being in the world.
Work, for me, is who I am. It has been my identity for most of my life.
When I had nothing else, there was always work. Others were good at family, at relationships, at being effective in changing and challenging the world.
I was good at work. “Who are you?” various shrinks would ask me over theyears. I am a writer, I would tell them. But who are you? No answer. I am
what I do; it is the only identity I have ever known. I understand why, even
how this came to be. The only child of a workaholic father, I learned early
that work was more important than family, than lovers, than god. I havewalked out of hospital rooms, where people I loved lay broken, to go backto work. I did not look back. I have stuffed tears and torment to make it to
the next meeting and the one after that. I can no longer remember what
those all-important meetings were about, only the bile that would bilge up
in nightmares that came stealing across the darkness. I did not sleep throughan entire night for more than fifteen years, did battle with demons at threeo’clock every morning, and six hours later was at my desk for another eightor ten or twelve hours. I have worked seven-day weeks at jobs I hated. Mademen I despised look smarter, more talented, more astute than they ever
could have managed on their own. I lived on crumbs swept from the corporate table because no matter how many hours I invested, how much emotional blood I shed, the men I worked for claimed the real prizes, the promotions, the fat bonus checks, the accolades. They told me I was not yet“ready” and that I needed to work harder, faster, smarter, that they would“take care” of me when the time came. All lies, of course. But when you
believe you are what you do, lies are easier to digest. I never imagined walking away, but I am. I have.
For Denise, work is not the end into and of itself. It is what she does,
not who she is. It facilitates achieving what she needs. It provides currency,
but is not currency. She has never let herself be seduced by lies and corpo-

18

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Workrate promises. When she looks at retiring, she sees liberation, freedom, away of being in the world that no longer involves punching time clocks, or
putting up with the whims of indecisive bosses, or the dangers of the heavyequipment she operates breaking another bone, or another noxious chemical leak burning her lungs and leaving a poisonous time-bomb somewhere
deep in her cells. Work paid for her land, the house, the rental properties sheowns that will supplement the small pension plans she can now tap into.
That was what she worked for and she has always imagined walking away
and never looking back. And now she is celebrating the same freedom that
I fear, reveling in the very idea of days that stretch out open and filled with
opportunity. She knows that she is more than what she does. I am still
struggling to find out who I am, who I will be, what I will become when thecorporation is no longer assigned the role of providing me with my identity.
In truth, the corporation has abandoned me. I no longer served its purpose well enough. I began to question the purpose, to answer the questionthat my shrinks had posed so many times over the last thirty years: But who
are you? I am no longer willing to walk out of hospital rooms to go back towork. No longer willing to lie, to step aside, to spend the currency of mysoul on yet one more meeting, one more project, one more campaign. I
have looked behind the corporate veil and found nothing there for me any
longer, certainly not my soul, certainly not my self. I do not yet know theanswer of who I am, but I know where it cannot be found.
When people ask why I am retiring ten years ahead of what I had always
imagined, I have become both glib and profound. “Once the mortgage isgone,” I tell them, “the incentive to put up with a lot of b.s. evaporates.”
And that is true enough, so far as it goes. To some, I say that Denise wants toretire this year and she encouraged me to do the same. Occasionally I say
that I am a writer and I have the opportunity now to write full-time. The
truth is harder to explain. It slammed into me one night when I was driving
hundreds of miles again to get from one corporate office to another. Exhausted, with fog swirling in front of the headlights, I saw a concrete walllooming ahead. The brakes locked as I stood on them, and the car skidded
sideways on the wet January pavement, my hands in a death grip on thewheel. In a moment I expected to hear the crunch of metal, the shattering ofglass, the air bags to inflate, my legs to be crushed. Time slowed then expanded, as the car sped through the wall then slowed to a stop on the secondary road. It had all been an optical illusion, a gift of fog and frustration.
Sitting there by the side of the road, reclaiming my breath, I could no longer
remember why I was driving two hundred miles at midnight, why I hadsummer-2006

19

driven literally tens of thousands of miles at midnight over the years to get
to one more meeting, to launch one more project, to make one more boss
look good. I hit a wall and was never again able to get back to believing inwhat I did or the people I did it for. I was stripped of my faith.
I hold Denise’s hand in this free-fall from the corporate cradle. Late atnight, I whisper against her sleeping back that I am afraid, that I do not know
who I am if I am not what I do, that I am a failure for never having learned
how to work harder, smarter, faster; that if I had been a success I would havereaped more corporate rewards and now it is too late to make the changes I
should have. She reaches out and squeezes my hand in her sleep. She is notafraid; there are too many real dangers and demons to fear walls built from fog
and illusion. She understands the truth. In time, I may learn.

20sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Becky Banasiak CodeThe Fine Print
48 hours notice need not be served before entering this small pantry ofa life you’ve leased from Me. Lessons in patience and sensitivity may comedisguised as ants, in-laws, or the woman you love. Frustration in not having
enough time to write is part of the bargain to keep you hungry – daily
deposit required. No satisfaction guaranteed. Terms and conditions subject
to infinite change.
I’ve been pretty angry at God lately – which is an improvement overbeing pissed at my partner, although if you ask her, she says it still feels thesame. She’s such an easy target being the last one I see before I sleep and thefirst when I awake. It’s so convenient to blame her when I don’t get things
my way, when little things like life interfere with my plans to write that day.
Sometimes when I want to write more than anything else, it seems thatevery obstacle in the universe gets thrown in my path, and I feel like apinball in a never-ending bonus game. Recently it was teeny tiny ants thesize and color of brown sugar grains streaming up our pantry and cupboard
walls. We had to bag up all the food and pots and pans and move them tothe other side of the kitchen for almost two weeks. I already hate grocery
shopping; now I had to take extra time to guess what food we already had
hidden within paper bag #1, bag #2 or bag #3, 4, 5 or 6. Before we foundout about liquid ant traps, we (I) made the mistake of drenching the pantry
with Raid, which soaked into the drywall and almost made us pass out every
time we opened the door. To get rid of the Raid smell, we (I) decided tocover it over with semi-gloss paint – country white – which ended up taking
two coats (more time away from my writing) and giving me a headache
from working in a non-ventilated space. I should start painting in the nude
- I don’t know how I managed to get country white in the armpits of myfavorite olive green Grand Teton National Park tee-shirt but I did, thenspent hours over the next few days trying to scrub it out with Spray-NWash. I suspect that my partner somehow had a hand in all that, too, creeping down to the laundry room in the middle of the night to dab morecountry white onto my tee-shirt just to drive me crazy – and to keep mefrom writing - but I could never catch her in the act.
Last month, in the free time I thought I’d have before teaching summer
school, my partner’s sister and her husband dropped in unexpectedly for asummer-2006

21

visit. After that, it was her other sister visiting for a week. And it’s not merely
the precious time sacrificed on the altar of social obligations - there’s always
the white-glove housecleaning that my partner insists we do even before theplumber comes to fix our leaky faucet. We’ll spend days vacuuming, dusting, polishing the furniture, washing the floors while I grind my teeth at thewaste of time that could be spent writing. Her family, her fastidiousness, theant invasion - how many more plagues will I have to endure before I am freeat last, free at last? How long will I have to wander the desert of distractions
before I can enter The Promised Land of writing?
Note: Real writing is accomplished on clean bond paper, crisp 8 1/2 X
11s, typed up smooth with even margins, computer-generated with page numbers in the upper right-hand corner. Real writing is published in fine journals
or slick magazines with colored photographs. If it’s not eventually published
as a book, then it doesn’t really count: it’s just a hobby, a pastime, a therapeutic
exercise. Even a book is not enough: it must have national distribution and beprominently displayed in the front window of Borders or Barnes and Noble.
Real writing goes on cross-country book signing tours, is featured on NPR,
and has a guest appearance on Leno. It receives critically acclaimed reviews in
The New Yorker, endorsements by Oprah, and is discussed in book clubs andincluded on reading lists for English majors everywhere.
Good thing I don’t have any obsessions.
I thought I had negotiated a deal in good faith when I resigned myfaculty position three years ago in order to become a writer: I’d give up myfaux (note the fancy literary word) career as a neurobiologist in order tofollow my heart. I’d let go of my research program and graduate students,
my associate professorship with its steady income and dental, my carpeted
office with windows facing the quad, and God would provide me with everything I needed to write: at least four hours a day of unobligated, uncommitted time with my door closed, the phone off the hook, with no one
around to bug me, in order to write about – oh, I don’t know - how toconnect with those around me perhaps.
Maybe I jinxed myself when I first resigned, praying to God that writing wouldn’t turn into another high pressured, publish-or-perish, soul-sucking
job that I had to drag myself to every day. I didn’t figure that God would beeavesdropping. Where are HIPAA* regulations when you really need them?
All these distractions often make me wonder whether I should be writing at all. Maybe I’ve deluded myself into thinking this is what I’ve reallybeen “called” to do. After all, I fantasized that I was a scientist for almost
twenty years before I gave myself permission to dabble in creative writing.

22

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Maybe I’m just hearing voices in my head and every sharp object - pens andpencils included - should be locked away from my reach.
If God really wanted me to write, shouldn’t there be a tongue of flame
over my computer? Shouldn’t I be bestowed with the power to make lifegiving words flow from a rock and with an abundance of time to do it gracefully instead of feeling like I need to steal minutes here and there between
grocery shopping, doctors’ appointments and oil changes? And why do I feelguilty telling my partner that my errands took more time than I’d expected
when I was actually writing at the public library or at the Village Bakery? It’s
like sneaking off for an afternoon tryst – writing is my secret lover.
Perhaps I just assumed I’d morph into the perfect partner as soon as I
unpacked at her place, like becoming an instant millionaire with a scratch-offlottery ticket. The deal I struck with God when I walked away from my husband, our house, our retirement with its balanced portfolio, and everything
except what I could cram into the back of my Honda station wagon in orderto quit living a lie, in order to be with her, was that God would transfigure me
into a more compassionate, sensitive and supportive person than I was when
I was married. Instead, I’m all too frequently body-checked with my partner’s
perspective of what she got in the bargain when I moved in: someone whohides God-knows-where writing all day with her cell phone turned off, who
leaves her to deal with the bills, the landlord, the unsolicited phone calls, yet
who expects her to be waiting for me when I finally finish for the day – whenever that is. Someone who wants it both ways, my way, always.
You’d think that as often and as early as I tear out of the house every
morning, I’d remember how scary an open-ended writing day can look like:the terrifyingly white abundance of an empty page, the paralyzing endlessness of a blank computer screen with its infinitely blinking cursor. It’s likestaring into the face of God (albeit one you created in your own image andlikeness) and being reminded that this is what you bargained for - a whole
day to write, and you’d better not waste a minute of it. So you push andkeep pushing yourself until you’re dangling over some narrowly defined ledge,
praying to be rescued by that creative spirit that was inadvertently crematedin the heat of your kitchen argument with her that morning but is now
nowhere to be found. And you feel so dried up and prunish, so hanging-bya-thread empty.
***
Sometimes I can’t tell if I’m more distraught over being labeled a lesbian
or a slacker; a wild swinging-from-the-chandelier sexual pervert or a lazy
not-able-to-hack-it bottom-dwelling slug. And I’m not so sure that they’resummer-2006

23

not unrelated. On rare days when I am writing at home, my panic cangallop with nostrils flaring and pupils dilated imagining what my neighbors
must think about my car still parked in our driveway at 9 a.m.: “Whatmakes her so special? How come she doesn’t have a real job?” Or a real husband, or a real marriage, or a real...? Painting myself into the mainstream’s
8-to-5 corner at least makes me appear more respectable, more like everyoneelse. Doesn’t it? And then there’s this fantasy of seeing my work in print, of
having my writing publicly recognized as worthy of respect. Funny though,either way it still feels the same: always having to prove myself to the rest of
the world, always never quite good enough.
Oh, I can read all the Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg books about
how the creative spirit can’t be pigeon-holed into modules of time-efficiency
or mass-produced on an assembly line. I can nod my head and shout “Amen”
when they point out my time-is-money mentality and my Wile E. Coyote
pursuit of something that’s always been right behind me if only I would turnaround and open my eyes: abundant little gifts of time to write - like now, andright now, and now again - and gifts of books to remind me of such abundance. And I can even feel my heart melt into a quivering little pool when I
remember that it was my partner who first shared such books with me.
Julia Cameron suggests there may be a divine unimaginable plan for me
and my work that goes well beyond bottom-line corporate definitions ofsuccess. But when that alarm clock rings, I’m not so sure I can trust my day(let alone my life) to some eternally faceless I AM WHO I AM, some Donald
Trump on a bad hair day. Who even on a good hair day still seems to holdall the cards and wants nothing you can give - just everything you are. So
you hedge your bets, always holding back just a little, and stream off likesome vapid Father Knows Best to that narrow cubicle of faux security thatyour daily work agenda affords.
I know it’s a rare luxury to finally do the kind of work that feeds my souland nurtures my spirit, and if you ask my partner, she’d probably agree: all too
often my I’ve-got-work-to-do’s feel like I’m waving the key to the executive
washroom in her face. And when that anvil finally falls on my head, when that
Wile E. Coyote bomb of enlightenment explodes in my face, I really feel likesuch a short-sighted ass, such a perfect clone of Dilbert’s boss.
***
It’s difficult to acknowledge that our seemingly universally accepted sacrosanct mantras can make other people feel so second-class, so never-quitegood-enough, especially when they make you feel so superior. And it’s painful to admit – let alone honestly examine - the damage that subtle forms of24

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

“incorporated” homophobia can inflict on our loved ones, on our closest
relationships, on ourselves. Yet I can’t seem to quit micromanaging my life,
to quit blaming something – or someone – from keeping me from the work
I’ve stipulated for myself in black and white.
Perhaps one of these days I’ll truly wake up to the words of Cameronand Goldberg ringing in my ears. Maybe I’ll even learn to accept – andaccept unconditionally - all those annoying little non-negotiables that comestreaming into my day trying to stretch me beyond my limited terms andconditions.
Perhaps one of these days, but not today. Today, my inner Pavlovian
bell is ringing – tolling - and I am a scared, stiff-necked people. Sorry Love,but today I gotta write.
* HIPAA is a huge set of federally mandated regulations that went into
effect at doctors’ offices and hospitals last year in an effort to protect the privacy of patients: lots of forms to read and sign now when you see a doctor.
© 2005 Becky Banasiak Codesummer-2006

Sierra Lonepine Briano

What Is It Worth?
What is it worth.
Splashing colors on cardboard
Old wood
Canvas
While falling snow is cut into squares
By ancient windowpanes I hung myself.
What is it worth
To feed chunks of wood into belly of stove
She crackles and gobbles them up,
Warming my fingers to bend around brushes.
What is it worth
No time clockNo time
No harsh lights, telephones
No humming, buzzing, ringing, clatter
Clothes caked with years of my trade
Hour upon hour, stacking up
Like the snow outside my window
What is it worth.

25

26

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Susan Hagen

A Boy in the Sea
We stand around the firehouse during our morning break, with hotcoffee in paper cups. There are twenty-eight of us here today — emergency
medical technicians (EMTs) with local ambulance companies, two EMTs
from the Coast Guard, another who works at a professional raceway. Someof the students are full-time firefighters, a few are sheriff ’s deputies, and therest of us are volunteers from coastal and rural fire departments throughout
Northern California. I am one of only six women, and at forty-three, among
the oldest in the class. Looking around me, I’m also pretty sure I’m the only
gay person here.
Today is the last day of a four-day training to recertify ourselves as EMTs.
It’s also the Spring Equinox. The skies are clear, the views are spectacular,
and down below the firehouse, traffic on the Coast Highway is heavy withpeople coming out to spend their Sunday at the beach.
From the parking lot of the modest wooden firehouse, we watch a small
sailboat take the swells. “We’ll probably get called on that one,” says one of
the local boys, gesturing with his paper cup. The water has been rough anddangerous for the past several days, he adds, and even as we watch, a twentyfoot breaker slams the coastline from the open sea.
Today is a perfect day to spend at the beach; but for us, it’s a day to hole
up inside the firehouse, studying pediatric emergencies. After the break, wereturn to the classroom for a review of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
There’s no good explanation for SIDS, we know, and nothing we can do. A
baby is healthy one minute and dead the next.
Halfway through a video about how to handle the call, a young man
gets up and leaves the room. Yesterday, during lunch, his wife brought overtheir four-week-old son. We passed the baby around and practiced feelingfor the brachial pulse on the inside of his arm. “How many of you havebeen on SIDS calls?” the instructor asks. Half the hands are raised.
In the small coastal California town where I live, ours is a grassroots fire
department with eight volunteers and a pair of engines parked in what used
to be somebody’s barn. Nobody here cares that I’m a lesbian. Nobody caresthat I go home after a midnight run and crawl into the warm bed of mywoman lover. What they care about is that I take my training seriously.
They care that I show up with everything I’ve got to give whenever mypager goes off. They care that I took it upon myself to return to school atsummer-200627

age 38 and did the hard work of earning my Class B Drivers License so I candrive the engines when someone calls for help.
Together my crewmates and I have responded to every kind of humantragedy: vehicle accidents, heart attacks, house fires, even a horse who’d fallen
into a well. Five years ago, when I joined the department and started mytraining as a firefighter and emergency medical technician, no one promised me an easy time sleeping at night. No one said my life would go on as
if I hadn’t been there to witness these things, hadn’t tried to help.
But already I’m credited with helping to save two lives. One of them, aneighbor of mine involved in a high-speed auto accident, still calls me her“angel” when we see each other around town. The other, a young girl witha serious head injury, has written several letters thanking me for giving her asecond chance at life.
Just before lunch, the local firefighters are called out to the beach for awater rescue. We watch Kevin and John thrash through the classroom, seethem strapping on their helmets inside the cab as the engine pulls out onto
the street. Ivan, a sheriff ’s deputy who works on the rescue helicopter, isalso in our class. He makes his way up the embankment to the waiting
chopper, where the pilot and paramedic are already preparing for flight.
Although this isn’t my district and it’s not my call, I feel adrenaline surging
through me, a tightening in my gut, the instinct to react. I know I’m notthe only one in the room who feels this way.
Once the chopper is in the air, the instructor calls our attention to thenext video: a two-year-old has been badly burned on his back and buttocks
by a pot of beans that’s fallen from the stove. The scene is shot live, and thechild screams as a voice-over instructs us how to communicate with sick andinjured children. Behind me, I hear the soles of boots shifting on the floor,
young men clearing their throats. Many of them are fathers with little kidsof their own. The child screams as the paramedic holds his tiny hand in her
palm and establishes an IV. “David,” she says as she tapes the tubing down.
“David, it’s going to be okay.”
There are emergency procedures to learn and medical techniques to
employ, but the instructor reminds us that much of what we bring to our
EMT work are the tools that we were born with: our eyes, our ears, ourvoices, our hands. These, in fact, are the only tools I have used on many of
my own rescue calls.
I think it helps to be a woman. I know there is a wisdom in my hands
and heart that has passed through generations of women who lived close to
the earth and knew instinctively how to birth babies and care for the sick28

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Workand injured. When I am tending to a patient or comforting a family member, I feel that ancient knowledge working through me as I touch and holdand speak to those in my care. It’s as if I were born with it, my birthright asa woman.
The chopper lands on the helipad behind the firehouse as we are finishing lunch. The downdraft from the blades stirs the chips on our plates, anda tornado of paper napkins skitters across the picnic table. Yesterday, Ivan
demonstrated rescue techniques from the helicopter. Attached to a hundred-foot line, he plucked two firefighters from the roof of the firehouse,
and the pilot set them down gently on the lawn. I was in awe of the precision, the practiced expertise. I envied Ivan’s job and found myself wishing
I’d started in this profession at a younger age in order to have had more
exciting opportunities like that.
But today I do not envy Ivan. He emerges from the aircraft in a wetsuit,though he hasn’t been in the water. The parents were sitting ten feet away,
he says, when a sleeper wave snatched two boys from a rock. “The father
got the six-year-old out, but the older one... we couldn’t find him.” Anhour at best, he says. An hour in the sea at this temperature, and the boy
would die of hypothermia if he hadn’t already drowned. That hour wasgone.
From the patio behind the firehouse, I hear the call of gulls, the rhythmof the sea like a drumbeat. Last year, six people were sucked into the ocean
from this stretch of coastline, including a pair of young lovers and a threeyear-old girl. I think about the families of all those people lost, the parents
stricken this very afternoon. Even though I didn’t respond to the call myself, Ivan’s story paints the picture in my mind. Always it’s the little details
that come to live in my psyche: the torn pink shorts on the little girl who
fractured her neck in a trampoline accident; the big, bony knuckles of a sickold man who ended his pain with a shotgun; the boy we found overdosed in
an abandoned farmhouse, his swollen purple hands like fists full of blueberry pie.
Despite the fresh loss we feel this afternoon, we retrieve the scatterednapkins, fill the recycling bin with soda cans, and spend the rest of the day
practicing rescue scenarios: a motorcycle accident, a diabetic coma, a pulmonary embolism, a gunshot wound. Larry, my partner these four days, is closed
up inside himself and awkward with the oxygen cylinder when it’s our turn torescue. On Friday, his little nephew died of leukemia, and he’s made arrangements to fly to Canada tonight after we take our written final. “We’re a very
close family,” he tells me. “It’s hard not being there with them.”

summer-2006

29

The instructor shows another video, this one shot by a news crew at an
accident scene in which a car has sheared off a power pole. We watch as theparamedic gets out of his rig and approaches the vehicle, steps onto a live
power line, and falls to the ground in seizures. His partner tries to revive
him with a defibrillator and manual CPR, but it’s too late. “Personal safety
is your first priority on every scene,” the instructor reminds us. “Every callhas the potential to make you the next victim.”
Last week, during a rain storm, I responded to two vehicle accidents a
couple of hours apart on the same dangerous curve: an elderly man injured
in a solo rollover, three people hurt in a head-on collision. The sky wasdark, the rain coming down hard. On either end of both scenes, firefightersheld up stop signs and took turns waving traffic along one lane. Even so,
our lives were endangered by every driver who gawked at the accident instead of watching the road. I know rescuers who’ve been slugged, bitten bydogs, had guns pulled on them. These realities keep us vigilant on every
call.
It’s getting late; I’m tired and spent. The instructor hands out our written exam. I worry over the questions, confuse the signs for hypo- and hyperglycemia, can’t remember what to do with a prolapsed umbilical cordduring emergency childbirth. I’m the third one finished, and out of two
hundred questions, I’ve missed only six. The instructor shakes my hand,
and I’m certified for another two years.
It’s five o’clock, and there are still a few hours of daylight left. I headnorth through town, and a few miles up the coast, I pull into a parking lot
on the cliffs above that long stretch of beach. A Coast Guard cutter istrolling the waters, and an orange chopper flies low over the breaking surf.
They’re looking for a body now — not a boy in the sea.
I park in an empty spot and get out of my truck, lean against the hood,and look down on the beach. A group of teenage boys plays football in thesand. Picnickers are packing up their ice chests and starting up the trail.
Along the water’s edge, unsuspecting tourists trust their little ones to a sea
that, earlier in the day, had stolen a family’s son. Everywhere along this stripof coastline the signs are posted: Danger! Sleeper Waves! Shore Break! No
one wants to believe that something so beautiful can also be so deadly.
The chopper flies over again. Soon the search will be called off due todarkness, and tomorrow, deputies and park rangers will comb the shore
looking for the body. If the sea is calm enough, Kevin and John will launch
their inflatable dinghy and poke around the rocks. Maybe they will find
him tomorrow, and maybe he will never be found.

30

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and WorkA few cars over from mine, the family is gathered together, waiting.
Someone new has arrived, and the mother is telling the story.
“The boys are on the rocks,” she says in a flat voice. “They’re hunting
for mussels. Then a big wave comes and it sweeps over them and they’re in
the water and they’re struggling. I’m screaming, ‘Swim! Swim!’” She’s
crying now, as she tells how the father goes in, reaches both boys, but loses
his grip on the older one as another wave hits.
“I can’t see Steven,” she cries. “I see his shoe floating, but I can’t see
Steven!” She goes to the open back of a mini-van and holds up a wet, sandyboater. “This is his shoe,” she says, and she breaks down. “This is his shoe.”
The grief that fills this parking lot is my grief, too. What happened
here today belongs to all of us who were in that classroom together, whose
hopes went up with Ivan and out with Kevin and John, whose arms haveclosed around parents like these in our own districts, on our own calls. For
all our training, for all the skills we practice, sometimes there is nothing we
can do but witness the loss, the sudden absence of life, the passing of a childfrom one world into the next.
Tomorrow my partner, Larry, will grieve with his own family in Canada.
Ivan will dangle from the underbelly of his rescue chopper and pluck someone from a cliff or ravine. Others of us will be called to the scenes of accidents, package up the victims, watch each other’s backs in the street.
It is the Spring Equinox. This night will be as long as the day. The
people knotted together here are wrapped in a package of sorrow they canscarcely contain; and from the center of their huddle, wailing. At somepoint, they will have to go home, will have to leave their child to the sea.
They will have to go somewhere other than here, with that shoe in the trunk
and an empty space in the back seat where Steven used to be.

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Cathy Cade

Lesbians at WorkI started photographing in 1970. It was no accident that I became aphotographer the same spring I came out as a lesbian, for up until then I
actually believed that I couldn’t learn photography skills because I was awoman. I was greatly enabled by the example of other lesbians going in towhat we called then “non-traditional” jobs and many of my first pictures
were of these lesbians. In the 1990s when I was photographing many areasof a lesbian mother’s life, I had an opportunity to photograph more lesbians
at work.
[Editor’s Note: Cathy Cade’s photographs grace the front and back covers of this issue, as well as page 5.]“Kate, mechanic” by Cathy Cade, 1976.

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Bonnie Morris

The Scholar’s Groceries
I. Power“And what do you do?” is the first question at any Washington
gathering; this is a town built on power dynamics and political conquests, Senators Only elevators [and, within my own lifetime, Whites
Only bathrooms at the Pentagon], appointees who flow in and out
with changing administrations, legions of think-tank temps.
“What do you do?” Top-level security folks can’t answer that question directly, but then again I don’t often drink with the CIA in myradical circle of lesbian pals. At formal events, however, my own cheerydisclosure—”Me? I’m a women’s studies professor”—invokes any number of responses, few of them neutral. “So you’re one of them,” hissed
a gentleman at one low-level embassy function; “Is that still a field?”
was another’s surly remark. Cab drivers offer cross-cultural views on
gender, assuring me that none of my professional achievements could
possibly be as fulfilling or as sanctioned as staying in the home with ahusband telling me what to do. And the best remark ever, though notuttered in D.C. but by an academic dean interviewing me for a faculty appointment elsewhere, was “Do you think we’ll still NEED
women’s history five years from now?”
As my younger pals Lauren and Noa would say with the sweepingly sardonic hand gestures unique to their generation: “Whatever!
Bold! Italic!” Indeed, the derision, stereotypes, political backlash andpoor pay scale allocated to academic feminism does, both separately
and altogether, suck. I teach part-time at Georgetown, as well as at
George Washington University, and at Georgetown’s more conservative Jesuit campus the backlash against the women’s studies program
can be breathtaking: every year some right-wing kid writes a slam editorial calling women’s studies bogus. [One guy who had never so muchas visited my classroom, read my syllabus, perused my resume or investigated my assigned booklist referred to my sold-out Athletics andGender course as “crap” in a newspaper article.] The backlash comesfrom young women, too: one student arrogantly interviewed me before registering for my class, firing off questions about my scholarly
standing and level of expertise, and whether I prevented male-bashingsummer-2006

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and biased ideology from dominating my classroom; in other words, I
had to prove I was worthy of her respect before she would stoop to amodicum of deferential good manners. All this upon meeting me forthe first time. [I threw her out of my office and told her to come backwhen her attitude improved.]
But to love what one does for a living, to integrate in perfect harmony one’s principles and one’s workday, to watch formerly alienatedstudents become administrators of battered women’s shelters worldwide— oy, vey. It’s heaven on a budget.
This is my town, pardner: or so I feel as I walk, not cowboy-bowlegged but scholar-knock-kneed, down Connecticut Avenue to my job.
In one block I nod to Betty Friedan, who is dining in the open window of Bistrot Du Coin; I wave at Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder;
I exchange news with the President of the National Organization for
Women, Patricia Ireland. This is my town because I teach women’sstudies, and have taught so many young women for so many years
that I stand a good chance of running into them everywhere I go,
beautiful and thoughtful and ambitious young women who sigh when
they see me, “I loved your class. You changed my life. Hey, I’m a Title
IX lawyer now! Here’s my card!”
So I am the pipeline between Betty Friedan and the two Patricias;teaching the history of American feminism to the next generation offeminist activists and politicians. This, too, is Washington, a D.C.
somehow unseen or jeered at in the halls of power—women learning
women’s history from women, leadership with a double-X chromosome, mentoring by example, women storming the Capitol steps todemand the addition of a ladies’ restroom “within a bladder’s distanceof the Senate floor,” as Patricia Ireland said.
As a well-known women’s studies professor in D.C., I’m on call—for quotes, PBS interviews, Post interviews, my classroom and students
filmed for talk shows and documentaries; even the military calls me up
when they need a speaker during Women’s History Month. If “feminist
Washington” sounds like an oxymoron, it’s because most activists andprofessors are as dress-for-success and workaholic as our right-wing peers.
We’re “changing the system from within,” we hope, and meanwhile, it’s
expensive to live here; the cost is far more than a protest-march weekend. Progressive movers and shakers who come to town and stay have toearn some kind of grown-up salary. I knew, when I came back to D.C.
to teach women’s studies in 1994, that I had accepted a non-tenure-34

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

track job. But: “Aren’t you tenured yet?” scream my well-meaning students, as we jump up and down on the dance floor on Ladies’ Night at
Badlands, their ideals of success so linked to dollar signs in this era of
profit and stock options; and with $2.85 in my pockets on any given
Saturday, I just grit my teeth and smile.
II. Money
Quality of life, I got. The feminist labor historian Alice KesslerHarris, who was my professor in graduate school, wrote in her Introduction to the reissue of Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers that for mostJewish women immigrants, “America held out the promise of love andsatisfying work.” I have had both in large measure. The love of mystudents, the pile of thank-you notes and grateful cards at the conclusion of each semester—you can’t buy that stuff, nor do most Washingtonian policy nerds leap out of bed each day genuinely delighted to go
in to work. Is it a living, though, as well as a life? Salarywise? Kinda.
Sorta. Mostly. Yeah, I make ends meet. Let’s not go there, shall we?
But I can’t avoid that discussion—it’s all around me. It’s part ofthe package of bohemian living, the beatnik babe as starving artist
living in a garret, the starving writer teaching part-time and writing
her novel. I grew up internalizing that romantic “alternative” myself,
and, after six years of grad school in Binghamton, New York, a town
where a $5,500 graduate assistantship actually covered the rent of a
two-bedroom apartment with sun porch and mountain views [withinwalking distance of six lesbian bars and a synagogue], I realized:
Hmmm. I can live well on almost nothing; my criterion is to have acommunity of hip women artists.
I still have the same grad school furniture from those years in
Binghamton: scarred vanity table with mirror [my altar, of course!], apal’s coffee table, a long work table handmade by some cool undergrad
carpenters. Nor am I in “starving artist” context, as a popular teacher
renewed annually, though at varying rates; I gained ten pounds living
amid the cream-in-your-coffeehouse ambiance of gay Dupont circle.
The beloved broke radical without health insurance, reading poetry
in a dimly lit cafe by night, indoctrinating wide-eyed students by day?
Yes and no. Yes and no.
For eight years now, I have lived in an economic ghetto not easily
summed up in a soundbyte. My status is now typical of the academic

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job market. I am not tenure-track, at either George Washington or
Georgetown; I am “adjunct,” and hence I earn a salary half that ofcolleagues my age, for a workload far more demanding. I teach all of
the introductory courses required for the women’s studies minor andmajor at GWU, including a quite large survey course involving one
hundred and twenty-five students and two graduate teaching assistants. I counsel and grade perhaps two hundred or more undergraduates per year, and also grade the annual M.A. comprehensive exams ofsome graduate students. I’m faculty advisor to one or two campus
groups, work with our top-ranked women’s basketball team, and as aresult of my visibility [and high teaching evaluations] have elicited anincreasing number of students to enroll in the minor and major. Twice,
I’ve been nominated for top teaching awards, and my courses consistently fill or overfill. I’ve published a book a year for six consecutive
years. But except for two fabulous years when I was bumped up to
full-time pay [because other faculty took leave], I earned either $3,000
per course or a flat “half-time” rate of $18,000 a year. Thanks to theintervention of my new chair, I moved up to $20K and won healthcare. Finally, I came to $30K.
This brings me back to that cocktail party or the dance floor at
Badlands. Though I loathe, loathe, LOATHE the question, I explain
my untenured status as honestly as possible whenever someone asks,
resisting the implication that because my position is “dead end” I havesomehow chosen a life in the academic underclass. Yes, I should be
earning more at my age and for what I contribute and publish. No,
there are no tenure lines in women’s studies at GWU. Yes, I have dutifully applied elsewhere. No, I have not been offered a position elsewhere, though I’ve been #2 in the finals of four tenure-track job
searches. Yes, for now, I am staying at GWU for whatever they’ll pay:academically, I am far more engaged in my program’s teaching andresearch goals than many university faculty are in theirs. Situatedmarginally, however—never knowing from year to year what my rehired status will be—I’ve had the opportunity to observe the growingclassism within academia. And I’ve been surprised to find that feminists are just as prone to embracing an hierarchical outlook as otherprofessors.
“So, are you ever going to look for a REAL job?” a colleague
hailed me once. “Or are you just going to keep hanging out here for awhile?” Those words, spoken with the friendliest intentions during

36

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Workan end-of-term university party, illustrated to me the weird new etiquette nadir in academia: everyone expects women’s studies faculty toexperience backlash from conservative students [and colleagues], but
no one predicted a class split within women’s studies based on theincreasing gap between tenured and part-time faculty. Solutions tobridging this gap lag far behind, and collective embarrassment continues to impede the scholarly atmosphere. More Ph.Ds than ever before are now resigned to competing for adjunct, rather than tenuretrack university positions, with young and not-so-young scholars eking out professional careers on piecemeal contracts sans benefits, offices, or possibility of advancement. Regardless of one’s determination of the causes [a saturated job market, burgeoning rates in recent
humanities doctorates, depressed university budgets], at present thehiring trend at many universities includes the use of adjunct faculty[at flat rates per course] for both introductory and advanced elective
courses. Institutions thus save thousands of dollars while fully upholding their academic mission to place qualified scholars in the classroom, and neither students nor their parents are alert to the issues of
instructor pay scales.
If my students are blissfully indifferent to the salaries and statusof their favorite instructors, however, snubs and insults to adjunct faculty from administrators are legendary: ranging from one university
which “honored” its part-time faculty by giving them coupons for free
hot dogs at a basketball game, to a campus call for student nominations of excellent teachers with the stipulation that nominees be “tenured faculty only.”
Such mixed messages betray the irony of today’s hiring practices.
Most universities are guaranteed an extraordinary level of talent among
even their most poorly paid lecturers, since positions are competitive.
Moreover, in the eyes of the adjunct, a half-time position at a prestigious institution hardly constitutes shame or intellectual disenfranchisement, particularly when tenure-track colleagues at smaller, isolated colleges may feel far more cut off from the mainstream of research, conferences, and interdisciplinary debate. The greatest challenge for the moment, barring the magical extension of benefits and aliving wage to all faculty, is improving the atmosphere of collegiality.
It is cost-free to upgrade respect.
A starting point is the way in which adjunct faculty are hailed atsocial events, as illustrated by my party anecdote. The implication

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that the adjunct does not have a “real” job is grossly insulting, since
said adjunct may in fact be teaching two, three or four courses, a schedule more extensive [and demanding in syllabi preparation/grading time]than that of some tenured faculty. In academia daily work has lost its
relationship to merit, since a heavy teaching load suggests, instead, alack of the prestige which accompanies time off and sabbatical leave.
Curiously, a “real” [tenure-track] job means less teaching and morewriting time, certainly attractive in its promise of research support,
but an unflattering definition for adjuncts who genuinely love teaching.
The next question frequently lobbed at adjunct faculty is “Do you
have any plans to move on?” Again, at a social occasion this questionis patronizing in its implication that the adjunct has “settled” for theincome and status usually befitting a graduate student. It is easy forthe tenured to suggest there are better positions available elsewhere,
but the adjunct is quickly on the defensive, forced to choose between
A] disclosing the number of jobs she may have applied for that year
alone or B] equivocating that the present job is satisfying in its sheer
connection to the university at hand. As one insightful friend of mine
put it, the ability to thrive in a nontenured climate is in itself culpability, an adaptation viewed with suspicion.
Then, the starkest [or rudest] inquiry of all. “How do you live?”—or the more imperative “You can’t live on that income.”
How does one live? In a lifestyle similar to that of any other professor: a schedule including reading, writing, lecturing, grading,
Xeroxing, forming ties to students and colleagues, giving papers atconferences, publishing, thinking, eating, traveling—but on a smaller
budget. The mindfuck, if you’ll forgive a pithy but apt expression, ishaving very prestigious social class standing [a college professor!] while
earning working-class pay [can’t afford to attend my own field’s academic conferences without financial aid.] How does one live? Carefully. And, if one truly loves education, serving as an educator, one
may also live joyfully, just without frills. As my old friends often pointout with baffled admiration, I always manage to live like a movie staron an extra’s wages.
YES, one can attain bohemian nirvana on an adjunct contract.
Consider that a writer’s main needs [and supplemental expenses] arethose fulfilled by any tangential university association: free e-mail,computer access, laser printing, paper, envelopes, outgoing mail, long-38

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Workdistance calls, pens and disks and paper clips. It’s like living at “Staples.”Then there’s the access to the athletic facilities. GWU recently madean unconscionable shift to $300+ annual gym fees for all faculty, but
for seven years I had free use of a huge swimming pool and [for an
additional twenty bucks] splendid aerobics and kickboxing courses.
Then there’s academic letterhead—which means free desk copies ofinteresting books. Oh, baby. Free books. Oh, baby.
I don’t smoke cigarettes, drink more than once a week, cook meatat home or have other expensive habits. I get my designer clothes for$10 an ensemble, used, at Goodwill of Santa Cruz, California, whenever I go home to visit my retired parents. Three home visits a year
[Thanksgiving, Christmas break, July] and I’ve earned enough frequent flyer miles for a free trip somewhere else. My basic expenses arerent [for a small studio at a great address], car insurance [for the used
Honda my parents helped me buy from an ex-lover], and food—putting out all that energy teaching eight courses at two campuses, publishing a book a year, walking three miles a day between GWU andGeorgetown and my apartment, I’m always hungry. Hungry, hungry,
hungry.
So here’s the feminist scholar’s cheap grocery list: one loaf ofchallah, $2.39. Three cans of tuna and a head of Romaine lettuce:$4.50 total. Two red bell peppers, $2.00. That’s lunch for a week.
One container of cinnamon Coffeemate [my building and my university both provide free coffee], $2.00. Orange juice, $3.50. That’s breakfast for a week. Dinners for a week: broccoli, $2.00; Cajun rice mix,
$2.00; couscous parmesan, $2.00; tofu scrambled with spinach andsoy sauce, $3.00; mataar paneer Indian soup, $2.39; lemon angel hairpasta, $2.00; banana and yogurt smoothie, $2.00. Some Odwalla carrot juice: $2.00. Plus basic Jewish house goodies: gefilte fish, Shabbos
candles, cream cheese and sour cream, egg and onion matzo: $8.00.
Now add toilet paper, paper towels, Sheaffer ink cartridges for my
beloved fountain pen, and the small luxuries of buying a chai shake at
Teaism or a couple of Sea Breezes at Chaos, and you have my weekly
consumer budget: less than $60.
In these times of greed, there are those who look at my income
and hint that only an unambitious soul would be content. I’ve foundthat in some circles I get surprisingly little credit for putting effort
into an impermanent job; yet only effort, and merit, lead outwards
and “upwards”. But surely the academic environment is not enhanced

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when the ideal, talented adjunct is supposed to be bitter, with one
foot out the door. A collegial atmosphere is compromised by any faculty who try to prove their value by radiating dissatisfaction with their
lot in life.
Thus I tell everyone—colleagues, students, strangers—that insteadof interrogating me about tenure, I’d love a better line of questions.
The following list may seem ridiculously obvious, but my point isthat many tenured academics who welcome these questions themselves
fail to ask them of their “lower-ranking” colleagues.
1. “What are you working on these days?” All of us love to
discuss our research, manuscripts-in-progress, and ideas.
2. “Where can I find your most recent publications?” A gesture of good faith that the adjunct has published and is continuing to
do so.
3. “How are your students this semester?” All of us have anecdotes in this area: it’s the great conversational equalizer.
4. “One of your students came to see me the other day...” Apleasant means of acknowledging that the shared student, who makes
little distinction of rank him/herself, is benefiting from the adjunct’s
influence.
5. “What are your other teaching interests?”
Both the adjunct and the tenured colleague initiating this question are probably teaching one or two required courses while mentallydesigning the ultimate specialized course syllabus; again, a chance toconfide scholarly ambitions.
In contrasting the rude questions with those of goodwill, I havestressed that reinforcing differences of lifestyle and professional income can only create friction, whereas questions opening up dialogue on common ground are too seldom utilized. Perhaps what wereally need is a “Miss Manners” for academics. I believe these areindeed feminist issues. My own situation [a part-timer in a women’sstudies program] has sensitized me to the laughable contrast between
graduate seminars on classism and sexism and the non-applicationof such feminist theories to daily collegial discourse. Where women’sstudies programs were, indeed, once infamous for left-leaning faculty committed to grassroots activism, both subtle and obvious
changes occurred during the Reagan years and the early 1990s. Demonstrating scholarly credibility in the face of right-wing backlash and40sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

cutbacks meant fresh emphasis on publishing and theory, and thisdovetailed with the postmodernist trend across the humanities. It
became possible to be a tenured feminist theorist, and with the subsequent shedding of “outsider” status, hitherto radical academics
joined an existing model of Ivory Tower hierarchy. While feminists
may justifiably point to the miniscule budgets for most women’s studies programs, budgets which virtually mandate part-time salaries, one
would hope a sisterly attitude might prevail—after all, women theworld over confront limited resources, and make do with material
poverty rooted in sexism. Finding patronizing attitudes toward mywork from more comfortably appointed feminist scholars, however,has been a wake-up call.

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Ida VSW Red

Help Wanted
When I was a full-time student or wife, homemaker & mother, I was apart-time worker, a paraprofessional, or a temporary, part-time, visiting, or
acting professional worker trying to balance my work with my full-timefeminine role as well as with my personal interests in reading, writing, acting, directing, & being political. Moving with my husband’s career, adjusting to my children’s schedules, I squeezed in whatever work I could find.
Often I was job-hunting, and this is how it appeared — Wanted: Part-time,
temporary, low status, low paid, or volunteer female [fill in the blank].
When I became a full-time worker, I was a part-time writer, actor, parent, & political activist trying to balance my work with my new role as
independent lesbian. Moving to join forces with other active feminists, I
still found it difficult to put my professional abilities to work. Often I was
job-hunting, and this is how it seemed — Wanted: Fulltime professional
librarian with master’s degree from accredited university, 2 years’ experiencein computer programming, additional MS in biophysics, working knowledge of Transylvanian dialects, ability to work independently under tyrannical male library director while balancing thirteen volumes of the Oxford
English Dictionary on one finger.
Soon I needed to become a full-time person integrating my work withmy feminism, my communication skills, my sexual energies, my vision for aworld in which I, my daughters, and you can choose our work, commit
ourselves to it, enjoy it, benefit from it, and see it benefiting others to change
the world. Still, I expected to continue my life’s work of job-hunting, looking for — Wanted: Strong, independent, artistic, literary, political dyke fora new full-time position: FACILITATING THE COMMUNICATION
OF LIFE EXPERIENCES AND UNDERSTANDINGS AMONGWOMEN. Finally, after retirement, I found the very job I’d been preparing
for my whole life - all I had to do was write the Want Ad for myself.
Ida VSW Red © 1980/2005 (Revised from piece performed with
Mothertongue Feminist Theater Collective in “Women and Work”)

42sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Ida VSW Red

A Celebration of Women Who WorkI celebrate the work of women
I want to declare support for and establish bonds with women who work
I rejoice in the lives of the strong women who
Work to support themselves and their dependents, andThose who work to actualize themselves as competent people
Those who endure alienating workplaces, andThose who are integrating their work with their personal politics
and philosophies—with their lives
Women who work in positions traditionally held by men, in positionsof tokenism, in positions still considered “women’s work”
Women who work inside the systemoutside the system
who make the system work for them
who work to improve the system
who plan to replace the system
I celebrate women who work in the home and demand respect forthis important work
Women who work at two full-time jobs—one at home, one at the office
Women who, instead, educate their husbands, lovers, children, andhousemates to accept responsibility for their own share oflife-preserving work
Women who still do more than their share of nurturing loved ones,
but who refuse to perform personal services for their bosses
Women who have such dignity on the job that people have ceased
to “boss” themThose who still make coffee for the office staff, but whoseclothes conform only to their own ideas of comfort and good looks
Those who dress to conform to office code or feminine roles,
but who do not answer to “girl,” “lady,” or other diminutives
Those who answer even to “hey, you,’’ but who suggest
replacing “Dear Sirs” with inclusive, nonsexist salutations:“Members of the Board” or “Sales Managers”

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Women who type “Gentlemen “ without a qualm, but who reportdemands for sex from their supervisors to the Fair
Employment Practices Commission
Women who still smile at humorless macho remarks at work, butspend their coffee breaks organizing a union on the job
Women who expose sexism within their unions, who serve oncommittees to study rights, pay parity, and safety
Who organize women’s caucuses within their professional andpolitical organizations
Who volunteer their services to politically and socially active groups
Women who spend their lunch breaks attending brown bag
seminars to expand their horizons
Who spend them alone, contemplating their lives, writing theirjournals, exercising their bodies, dreaming their dreams
Who spend them with other women, not discussing the latest
hair styles, but practicing self defense or sharing
their real concerns, taking each other seriously
Women who attend night classes to acquire the skills andcredentials that will enable them to use their abilities
Women who continue to pursue their political, artistic, cultural, andspiritual interests while they earn a living in less satisfying areas
Women who are unemployed, physically challenged, or unemployable
Women who have the vision to imagine job-sharing possibilities andthe energy to promote them through groups like New Ways To Work
Women who develop cooperative and collective alternatives tohierarchical, capitalistic organizations
Who advocate for affordable child care and adult day care
Who work with Advocates for Women, Displaced HomemakerCenters, and Options for Women over Forty to encourage women
who are reentering the workforce after raising a family
Who encourage all women to use their skills find their power
Women who take responsibility for the enforcement of equal
employment opportunity within their own firms by insisting on
affirmative action, filing complaints with the EEO Commission,and reminding employers that women are watching
Women who no longer keep silent, stay modest, avoid making waves
Who speak out on the job affirming their rights andencouraging movements away from sexism,

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

misogyny, racism, class privilege,ageism, homophobia, and physicalism
Who are willing to educate their coworkers on these issues andwho communicate their support for women who are
different from themselves
Women who uncondescendingly share their skills with lessprivileged women
Who serve as mentors and use their influence to form networks
of women
Who help children and students to acquire realistic job information
Women who work to maintain their minority cultures while
earning a living in the dominant one
Women who have achieved against all odds andThose who recognize their privileges and use them to benefit others
Women who make it a policy to engage women workers and support
woman-run businesses
Women who are willing to demonstrate in public against
discriminatory employment practices
Women who will not rest until ordinary women have opportunities
equal to those of ordinary men
Who will not rest until there is equality as well as an Equal Rights
Amendment
Who will not rest until nuclear arms are abandoned
Who will not rest until our economic and political system is changed toimaginatively utilize and replenish our natural resources—
Including the vast resource of the lives of working women
I celebrate women who accomplish collectively what is
impossible individually
Who band together to affirm that
We are not alone
We are not powerless
We are different people in different places, but wherever wework we can support and be supported by other women
Together, we can challenge one another to new awareness, growth,and action
I celebrate this work of women©1983 Ida VSW Red. This “rant” was given at a seminar of Feminist speechesorganized by Lani Silver at the Bank of America in San Francisco.

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

By Carolyn GageA LABOR PLAY
A One-Act Play
Caution: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that A
Labor Play is subject to a royalty. It is fully protected under the
copyright laws of the United States of America, and of all countries
covered by the International Copyright Union (including the Dominion of Canada and the rest of the British Commonwealth), andof all countries covered by the Pan-American Copyright Convention
and the Universal Copyright Convention, and of all countries withwhich the United States has reciprocal copyright relations. All rights
including, but not limited to, professional, amateur, recording, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and the rights of translation into
foreign languages are expressly reserved. Particular emphasis is placedon the question of readings and all uses of this play by educational
institutions, permission for which must be secured in writing fromthe author or the author’s representative. No amateur or stock performance or reading of the play may be given without obtaining, inadvance, the written permission of the Author.
All inquiries concerning professional and amateur performancerights should be addressed to the Author via her website atwww.carolyngage.com
Introduction to A Labor PlayThis play was a direct response to the infamous “Baby M” casethat was in the news at the time. I was very active in the Portland,
Oregon, chapter of the National Organization for Women, and it
had shocked me to find that one of our officers took sides with the
adoptive father who was forcing the “surrogate” mother to honor
her contract with him, even though she had changed her mind subsequent to the birth of her daughter. My friend felt that the issue
was one of accountability: The woman had signed a legal contract

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as a consenting adult, and it was irresponsible for her to go back onthat agreement, or to expect any sympathy from the courts. In fact,
my friend contended, it was anti-feminist to argue on her behalf,because to do so would be to buy into the stereotype that women are
irrational creatures, victims of our hormonal fluxes, and so on. I
had a very different take on the situation, maybe because I had been
separated from my mother for the first three days of my life, a traumatic estrangement that has had consequences which continue toreverberate across the landscape of my intimate relationships.
In my experience, the body has its own mandates, and we arearrogant to think that we can intellectually override these by framing them in dissociative paradigms such as the one that equates themother-child bond with legally-transferable ownership. This is thesame kind of arrogance that can manufacture artificial substances,label them“food,” and then expect that there will be no biologicalconsequences for ingesting them. This play was written in the late1980’s, but in recent literature, such as The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child, the truth is beginning to be told about
adoption and the trauma of separation from a birth mother. However “consensual” this arrangement may be among adults, it is neverwith the consensus of the infant, who suffers the consequences forthe rest of his/her life. And, indeed, many of these consenting birthmothers are beginning to tell their stories of unanticipated lifelong
grief and depression following their ceremonial, and even celebratory,“handing over” of their babies.
In A Labor Play, I wanted to attack this materialist, consumeristobjectification of a relationship that was, in my mind, a sacred andinviolable one in the natural world. Rather than argue against the“contract law” model, however, I decided to work within it, coming
at it from a Marxist perspective: If the mother is no more than aworker hired to assemble the components for a manufactured commodity (the baby), then doesn’t she have a revolutionary mandate tointerrogate the social conditions and economic forces that assign herthat status, and if these conditions are found to be exploitive andoppressive, isn’t she justified in attempting to seize the means of distribution that is, keep the baby?
I also wanted to make explicit the fact that this“job,” like prostitution, is only considered appropriate for women in the underclasses.

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Nothing angers me more than middle-class intellectuals who argue
for the legitimacy of prostitution and surrogacy as “work,” when theywould never dream of allowing their bodies to be exploited in thatway. When the boss suggests that one of the manager’s daughters
might want to hire herself out for the manufacture of babies, themanager responds with shock, having obviously assumed that his classbackground would put members of his family beyond that consideration.
In the years since I wrote the play, the brokering of babies throughsurrogacy and adoption, especially foreign adoption, has burgeoned
beyond anything I could have imagined in 1989. Prior to the Korean War, foreign adoption may have been a private affair between
individuals of conscience and desperate charities, but since the 1950’s,
the picture has changed radically. Foreign adoption has become anindustry, one that is still largely — and horrifically — unregulated,shot through with corruption and intrigue, and with close ties tothe same interests that control prostitution and trafficking in girls
and women.
Critiques of surrogacy and foreign adoption are muted in themainstream, which aligns itself with the interests of middle-class consumers. No one wants to look too deeply into the conditions andcircumstances of these women who are supposedly “giving up” theirchildren so willingly and so beneficently. And, because the infantcannot speak and the birth mothers have no voice politically, a movement of adult foreign adoptees is, at present, one of the loudest voices
challenging these corporate, capitalist myths about adoption, andcourageously speaking out about the profound trauma of separationfrom the birth mother, about the atrocity of profiteering from theseseparations, and the horror of normalizing the globalization of thepractice.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Frank: the male CEO of a corporation, played by a woman
Joe: a male junior executive, played by a woman.
Mary: a teenaged woman.
Security Guard: a male, played by a woman.
Time: The present.

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Setting: The scene is in the office of the chief executive of a large
manufacturing firm.
AT RISE: FRANK sits behind his desk. He is reviewing the termsof a labor contract. JOE enters. FRANK and JOE are played by women.
FRANK: (Rising) Joe. (He extends his hand.)
JOE: (Extending his hand) Frank. (They shake hands, hitch theirpants, sit, lean back, and sigh in unison.)
FRANK: Now . . . what’s all this business about a strike?
JOE: Well, that’s what it is, sir.
FRANK: Fire them all. They’re not in a union.
JOE: Well, I’m afraid that’s going to cause some pretty unpleasant publicity. You see, the public hasn’t completely adjusted to theidea of . . .
FRANK: Right, right. I spoke too soon. You’re absolutely right.
This isn’t meat-packing, is it? We’ve got to move a little slower . . .
Give the man on the street a little time to catch up to the newtechnology. (He pauses, walks to the window.) Joe, we’re on the brinkof a whole revolution in industry. We, you and I, are in the vanguard of that revolution. Our company and its product are going tochange the way the world lives . . . the way it eats, the way it worships, the way it fights. We are going to change every single aspectof life in the twenty-first century. Right now it just seems like asmall innovation, but in the next five years, when we begin our phaseof corporate expansion, especially when we begin to set up branches
overseas, we are going to turn the world upside down and inside out.
This industry is going to set America back on course. This industry
is going to stem the tide of deficits to other countries. This industry
is going to bring the world to America’s doorstep. We are the future.
But there’s a lot of old-fashioned customs we’re going to have to50sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

work around before we gain acceptance. We’ve got to move slowly.
Now, what do the strikers want?
JOE: Well, really, there’s just one troublemaker. The rest are
just showing their solidarity.
FRANK: Good. Good. And what does their leader want?
JOE: Well, you’re not going to like this, sir. There’s clearly aMarxist influence at work in this. The workers say they want control over the manufactured goods . . . specifically, they want to control the distribution.
FRANK: (A grave expression) That’s to be expected . . . at least
for a while, until the public begins to understand the vital importance of this business to the community. We’ve got to move slowly
until we have the government on our side. Of course, they alreadyare, but they still have to be responsive to public opinion. Well,
normally, I’d say fire the worker, but I think in this case we may haveto make some concessions. Has the press got hold of this yet?
JOE: No, sir.
FRANK: That’s a surprise.
JOE: Well, sir, I think the workers are a little embarrassed about
contacting them, because of their part. You see . . .
FRANK:(Cutting him off ) Oh, yes. Well, naturally they might be. Good.
Good! That works to our advantage. Now, have you offered somecompensation in salary . . . maybe more benefits . . . say, someextended maternity leave?
JOE: I suggested that we might be open for negotiating, but theworkers . . . Well, sir, they seem to think it’s a question of . . . (Helooks down and coughs). . . love.

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FRANK: (Stunned for a moment. Neither men look at each other.)Love. Yes. Well, I suppose we might have anticipated this too. I’ma little new at all this, coming from Hormel. You’d never hear astriker there talk about their love of chili. (He laughs. JOE doesn’t.)
Of course, that was meat-packing. Not the same.
JOE: (Soberly) Not the same at all, sir.
FRANK: Well . . . so . . . . It’s love, is it? And how much is this“love” going to cost us?
JOE: That’s just it, sir. They say there’s nothing to negotiate
about.
FRANK: Nothing to negotiate! There’s always something to negotiate. Why would they strike if they didn’t want something? Comeon, Joe! You weren’t born yesterday. Of course they’ll negotiate.
They’re holding out for something.
JOE: (Looking at his shoes) They want to keep the . . . product.
FRANK: Well, they can’t. That’s company property. We have acontract.
JOE: They say they made it, so it’s theirs.
FRANK: Hogwash. We hired their labor, paid for the components, leased the facilities. Go ask their leader what she wants. (Heindicates that JOE should do it now. JOE takes a few steps towards thedoor, then suddenly he stops.)
JOE: (Turning to face FRANK) She wants the baby.
(Just then the door bangs open. A very young woman stands in theentrance, taking in the scene for a few seconds. She strides to FRANK’s
desk and throws down a wad of bills.)
MARY: There. There’s all the money you paid me for my food,rent, utilities, doctor bills for the last nine months. All of it. Everycent. I’ve changed my mind. I’m keeping my baby.

52sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and WorkFRANK: Miss . . .
MARY: Never mind my name. Just count the money. Then I’mgoing. I’m going to take my baby home.
FRANK: (He exchanges a look with JOE. JOE gets the message
and slides out the door.) Well, now, Miss . . . my friend . . . There’s
no need for me to count the money. I’m sure it’s all there . . .
MARY: With interest.
FRANK: . . . with interest. But you see, that isn’t the point.
Now, please sit down. (She doesn’t.) Please. I want us to understand each other. (She sits.) What if an assembly-line worker at theFord Motor Company decided to quit. Would he . . . or, she . . . beable to plunk down nine months’ salary and demand the removal of
all the windshields he or she had fitted in those nine months?
MARY: This isn’t a windshield. It’s a baby. My baby.
FRANK: Well, yes. I understand the difference.
MARY: Good. I’m the mother, and it’s mine.
FRANK: Wait a minute there. Hold your horses, Miss . . . myyoung friend. We have a legal agreement, you and I. A contract.
(He produces it.) You built that baby with nutrients supplied by ourcompany. You assembled that baby in a space leased by us. Your
work was supervised and inspected by our doctors. We own that baby,
my friend. We are the parents.
MARY: I didn’t build it . . . It grew by itself. You didn’t lease
my uterus. You can’t do that. It’s mine. And if I was desperateenough to sign some lousy piece of paper, that still doesn’t mean you
could lease it. People can’t sell their bodies.
FRANK: (Smiling) You women have been doing that for centuries.

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MARY: No! You men are just selfish and vain enough to believe
you could buy them.
FRANK: I’m not here to argue. The fact is you are an adult,
and you signed that contract of your own free will.
MARY: My own free will! Ha! Since when have I had my own
free will? I’ll tell you about my own free will! I was raised withmovies about waiting for Prince Charming. I played with Barbie
dolls. I grew up with magazines for girls which sold more space forads than they did for articles. Ads which told me to have softerskin, moister lips, silkier hair, bigger breasts, smoother thighs, higher
heels, lower necklines, and a scented vagina. I read books about
patient and loving women who waited hand and foot on unreasonable men, and were rewarded with his undying gratitude and love,
and a castle or two in England. I learned in church that I had to be
humble and obedient. I learned in school about the history of greatmen and the books of great men. At home, I learned my place. And
when I found a boy who said he loved me . . . a boy who asked me
to prove I loved him, where had I ever been taught that this wasn’t
my destiny? Where had I ever been taught to say “no?” Where had
I ever been taught that I had a right to a body which all my life I had
been grooming for this very moment? And then when I got pregnant, and he told me I was trying to trap him, where did I have any
practice with showing anger? Where had I ever learned that thismight have been someone else’s fault and not mine? Hadn’t I teased
him with my appearance, hadn’t I let it happen, hadn’t I neglected touse birth control, and hadn’t I wanted to make him stick aroundbecause of the baby? It’s all true. And because I live in a state which
has cut off the funds for abortions, I couldn’t afford one. And that
too was my fault. I’m poor. I can only make $.76 to the dollar thatmen make. Like half the women I know, I’ve had to change jobs
twice because of sexual harassment. I can’t afford a nice wardrobe
for the better secretarial jobs. I have to have a uniform job, so I
work as a waitress. I make less than minimum wage and depend ontips, but men still think they’re being generous to leave anything forme. I’m supposed to be flattered and grateful for my honest day’s
wage. I don’t even get to believe I earned it. And still this is all my54sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

fault. And since I can’t get an abortion, I have to have the baby. So
I read your ads for mothers who can’t afford their babies . . .
FRANK: Our ad states “Women who want to put their babies
up for adoption.”
MARY: It’s the same thing.
FRANK: Not at all.
MARY: To most of us, it is. Anyway, I couldn’t support myself
through the pregnancy, because at the restaurant where I work, I’m supposed to look sexy and wear a short skirt and a low-cut blouse, and so,of course, after I started to show, I knew I would be fired, because pregnancy spoils the illusion. Sex isn’t sexy when you connect it with babies. And I don’t have a car, or a phone, because I can’t afford one, andI knew that I wouldn’t get a job after I started showing, because everybody would assume that I was going to quit work after it came, although I don’t know what they thought I would live on. And, yes, I
wanted the baby to be healthy. So, I answered your ad, and I signed
your contract. But I did not sign it of my own free will. I have never had
my own free will, at least until now. And I want my baby.
FRANK: Well, I’m sorry, because you’re not going to have it. It
belongs to the company. Whoever’s fault it is, you signed away yourrights. The courts will uphold our contract. In fact, they alreadyhave.
MARY: The courts are wrong.
FRANK: (Smiling) The courts are the law.
MARY: The courts are men’s law.
FRANK: Always the victim, aren’t you?
(MARY gets up and moves towards the door. Just then, JOE appears in the doorway. He blocks her exit)

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MARY: Get out of my way.
JOE: (Restraining her) Where are you going?
MARY: To get my baby.
JOE: You won’t find it in the nursery.
MARY: What do you mean? (She stops struggling)
JOE: (Letting go of her arms) We have removed it to a special
security area.
MARY: Where?
JOE: I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.
MARY: (Turning to FRANK) Where?
(FRANK just smiles kindly at her. She rushes towards his desk andlunges for him. JOE restrains her, as FRANK steps into the hall andsummons the SECURITY GUARD, a male role also played by a woman.
At the sight of the GUARD who is armed, MARY stops struggling)
FRANK: The security guard will escort you off the premises.
(He goes to the desk and picks up the wad of bills and extends it towardsher) I suggest that you take your wages. You have earned them.
There’s no reason not to take them. And we might be able to arrange some termination pay . . . (She spits in his face. FRANK turns
abruptly and puts the money back in a drawer in his desk. MARY is ledout of the room. JOE stays. There is a moment of silence after her removal) Get an injunction to keep her off the property no publicity,of course. I think we should find a buyer for her unit as quickly as
possible.
JOE: No problem. We’ve got more orders than we can fill.
FRANK: Good. What’s the current market price?

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

JOE: Twenty thousand through a private attorney. Higher on
the black market, depending, of course, on the color.
FRANK: Well, let’s say twenty thousand for now. We can review that figure again before Christmas. (JOE starts to leave.) Oh,
Joe . . . Do you have kids?
JOE: (Surprised, he turns) Uh, two, sir.
FRANK: Well, I hope that doesn’t affect your ability to makeresponsible decisions.
JOE: I have always made it a policy to keep my family life separate from my work.
FRANK: Good. Good. (JOE turns to leave again) Girls?
JOE: One of them.
FRANK: (Pleasantly) And how old is she?
JOE: (Turning back) Sixteen.
FRANK: Really? Well, we might be able to find some work forher . . .
JOE: (Embarrassed) Thank you, sir, but she’s got other plans.
FRANK: (Laughing) Well, don’t they all? Keep it in mind. It’sa good offer. Might pay her college tuition.
JOE: (Uncomfortable) Thank you, sir.
FRANK: Good job, Joe. Here’s a little bonus for your trouble.
(He opens the drawer, and extends the wad of bills. JOE does not approach to take the money. To avoid a confrontation over it, FRANK
crosses to him and places the money in his hand) Here, now, you’ve
earned it. Get a little something for the kids.

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JOE: (Taking the money, he once more starts to leave, but turns
back to ask a question) Sir?
FRANK: Yes?
JOE: Do you have any children?
FRANK: This . . . (Thumping the desk) . . . is my baby.
(Blackout.)
THE END© 1987, 2005 Carolyn Gage

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Mary Meriam

Subtext“You must make sacrifices.”burn your health on your home’s hearth
send chants up the chimney“You cannot be expert in everything.”
you may hire a plumber who stumps you
do not wash your cash down the drain“Never lose your sense of humor.”allow yourself to cry on your deathbed
let your last breath be a laugh“You want people to remember you.”try not to be the forgotten one
you will lose your place at the table“Other people’s temper or ego don’t rock my boat.”study maps of troubled waters
your icebergs won’t seem so big“You have to be flexible.”learn to swallow the impossible
you may feel dizzy at first“But I’m also human.”
perform monthly self-examinations
palpate gently“You need a support circle.”deep in a dark forest at midnight
howl for help at the full moon“And don’t think you’re the only one feeling insecure.”
get off that window ledge
before you trim your fingernails
Quoting, in order from the top, Alison Estabrook (surgeon-director), Judith Jamison(dancer-director), Judith Shapiro (university president), Marion Elena Lagomasino (CEO),
Stacey Snider (corporate chairman), Stephanie Bell-Rose (corporate president), Eileen Collins(astronaut), Thelma Golden (curator-director), Judith Rodin (corporate president). “12 Leaders on Life Lessons” Newsweek, October 24, 2005.

summer-2006

Mary Meriamalone: a senryu sequence
not the faintest clue
how to find a job, I skim
the yellow pages
do I start calling?
no confidence, no contacts
no, I’m too afraid
there must be somethingelse I can think to make meforget I’m alone
what is a living?
there is no one to tell me
I get lousy jobs
each job goes nowhere
and kills me in a new way
what did I expect?
you can’t make it here
your girlfriend’s a prostitute
you drive a taxi
you rent a u-haulyou get out of the citycollapse on the grass
are you still living?
clean wealthy people’s houses
watch them have parties
you’re not invited
you must depend on strangers
they will torture you

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Worksummer-2006

Mary Meriam

SustenanceO the misery of Sunday
driving a taxi throughchilly Bleecker Street, voicesof George Jones, Ray Charles
on my old tape player.
O George, O Ray
I know you’ve been hereon the early a.m. street
looking for a fare
who’s not too anything at all
hoping for relief
from any kind or kindred soul.
Gray light saturates
tenements, pavements
streets puddle
with impotent drizzle
party-exhausted passengers
trickle coins into my hand.

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Mary Meriam

The Bitter Side of Flatbroke
Some people lead an easy life, from birth
to death, connected, pampered, lucky, rich,convinced that smiling fate defines their worth,quite safe and snug and settled in their niche.
I wonder why I can’t be one of them.
If I had money, I’d have time to write
and read and socialize with any femme
or butch or in-between who came in sight.
Or spend my time alone or take a trip.
Then I could call my life a life and notthis constant jungle fight to get a sipof water, find a place to rest, too hot,too cold, too worried, hungry, lost, alone.
Perhaps someone will throw this dog a bone.

Mary Meriam

The Countess of Flatbroke
I shun the man-made world and stay at home.
This suits the world, since I am very queer.
I eat my spinach quiche and write a poem.
I like my chair and bed; it’s pleasant here.
Except one little problem, namely cash,
which threatens to undo my little life.
The bank account is headed for a crash.
The fridge is empty—where’s my working wife?
What happens when a poet lives beyond
the time she would have died, except for fate?
A strange career, but not designed to bondsomebody to a steady job this late.
I have no skills in generating wealth.
I’ve spent my time recovering my health.

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Rose Strong

Our Cause Shouldn’t be Clouded
With Our Own Intolerance
I don’t recall a single place of employment in my adult life where I didn’t
find other gay people employed along side me. Not that everywhere I’ve
worked has been gay-friendly or the other people have been out to me, butwith that sixth sense we all have, commonly referred to as gaydar, it’s easy tospot others who are of the same orientation. Fear, which consisted of job
security and physical dangers kept me and other gay people in the closet.
Since high school I have changed careers more than once. From myfirst job as a florist to my later career choice as a cook, to a stint on anorganic farm where being gay was finally very acceptable. I could be out of
the closet and even had a compatriot with which to have lunch and sharesome thought-provoking, feminist derived conversation. Without the rightwing constraints or required diversity training, the farm was comfortable
and accepting of whoever worked there. Even my partner was welcome toshare a beer or two after work and was welcomed to the company holiday
party every year.
My current employer is a large health insurance company and although
it’s not my choice of careers, it is a job with great benefits that include diversity
training, a GLBT employee resource group, a safe space program and domestic partner benefits. I don’t always enjoy my job, but the company has somegood ethical standards that set it apart from other companies.
I have never hidden my lesbianism. I portray clearly who I am without
screaming it out loud. It’s just who I am and my actions display my intentions. I freely participate in all forms of work-related social activities which
include the ubiquitous water-cooler chat, company picnics and holiday gettogethers. I speak of my partner just like anyone speaks of their husband,wife or significant other.
In my years of working at my current job, it has amazed me at the lackof knowledge the average employee has regarding the issue of GLBT people
in a workplace that offers such clear information about diversity and a zerotolerance to exclusion.
I’m not sure whether these fellow employees know of me because I sit
near them and are tolerant or have no regard for the differences within thehuman family, but some folks are just plain oblivious about the GLBT
struggle.

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and WorkI am an involved member of our employee resource group whose mission is to enhance and advance the lives of GLBT employees through networking, professional development and community outreach.
When becoming a member of this group, one is given a list of all
members nationwide so they may be able to communicate between eachother, so those who need to network throughout the employee resourcegroup may be able to contact the person sitting 10 feet away or 2000
miles away.
Our group communicates with one another through email using the
BCC (blind carbon copy) since there is still such a stigma on those whose
sexual orientation is not heterosexual. The fear of losing one’s job or being
the brunt of harassment looms over the heads of those who are still in thecloset both in work and outside of work.
The idea behind the use of BCC is that email is not showing who else ison the communication, so as not to implicate others and open them up as
targets for harassment and unequal treatment.
According to our company representative who attended the Out andEqual Summit in September, most large companies who have GLBT employee resource groups are now excluding those who wish to remain in thecloset. You would think that since I am out of the closet, that I would goalong with this, right? You would be wrong. I am in heated debate within
the group over this issue, but can clearly see both sides of this GLBT coin.
One side feels that to stay in the closet is kin to remaining unseen and if
we are not out and visible we are easily ignored by the company. Ok, that’s
a viable reason. Staying in the closet is allowing the company to continue
only what they are doing presently with our benefits and not moving forward as other large companies have in the past few years.
Several individuals claim that making people come out of the closet will
gain more for the much needed employee participation it takes to keep thegroup running. This seems like foolish thinking since we have a companysponsored website where some of us who are comfortable being out haveour photos displayed. This hasn’t increased any participation by those individuals currently able to be seen on the website.
So, in essence I beg to differ with these individuals who think all of us
should be out of the closet. I find the issue of self-preservation of utmost
importance. If an individual is in the closet before walking through our
corporate doors, whatever programs we have in place will not erase any
cultural, religious, fear of bodily harm, or other reason they have for being
in the closet in the first place.

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Those who wish to be out can do so willingly with their actions. Keeping the list on email in the blind form is just a list that others cannot see andin the world we live in could be saving the life of another person.
I don’t want one of my fellow employees to be another gay-bashingstatistic. I don’t want someone who is an ally to be guilty by association andhave their lives made miserable and their career stopped in mid-track simply because someone saw their name on a misplaced email.
We have made many strides in the past 25 or 30 years, but it’s still acruel world. I am comfortable with who I am, but I live in an area where
there have been crosses burned on lawns of GLBT owned homes and racialslurs are spray-painted on roadways by our local good ole’ bigots. I am
responsible for myself and right now, as a member of this employee resourcegroup, I feel a responsibility to speak for those who won’t speak for themselves. They will otherwise quietly slip away from the only inclusion they
may feel here at their job.
Don’t get me wrong. I dream of a world where nobody has to hide orstay locked deep inside the closet, but we aren’t there yet. For those of us
who are out, we are leading the way like those before us. When people inthe closet feel safe, they will come out, but forcing them to choose between
being in a group that hails them as included, or making them fearful of
being outed, is not exhibiting tolerance or is it good business.
Ghandi once said, “You must be the change you wish to see in theworld.” This sentence makes it clear to me. If we want the world to change
we must make that change ourselves and not put others in a position of
being the victims of our own intolerance.

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

“Sue at Work” by Judith K. Witherow, 1981.

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Sue Lenaerts

Paying My Ironworker Dues
It was 1979 and money for progressive social programs was starting to
dry up in the panic over high inflation and the changing political climate.
My friend Deb Friedman and I knew our foundation grant for Aegis: Magazine on Ending Violence Against Women wouldn’t be renewed. We were worried about the survival of our publication as well as our own livelihoods.
I had supported myself throughout the early seventies doing part-timethis-and-that peppered with occasional unemployment compensation benefits to afford my full-time uncompensated movement work. Then in 1976
I met Judith. We started our life together with the expectation that we would
both be working to keep a home for ourselves and her three boys. Suddenly
I needed a stable salary.
I fell into a foundation-funded position at the local rape crisis center, anorganization I had helped start a few years earlier. After several years at thecenter, I transitioned to another foundation-supported job. Deb had written a proposal for a staff position to put out the magazine we had been
producing for years without paid salaries. We understood the expanded financial requirements of women responsible for children.
But the paychecks would stop with the end of the grant money. And I
was desperate. Judith collected child support from her ex and had moneyfrom the sale of her house, but it wasn’t enough for three kids, much lesstwo adults and three kids. Every time she thought about finding a job, Judith
was hit with another health problem: endometriosis, cancer, an obstructed
ureter, multiple sclerosis. So my salary was not optional. I could no longer
afford the self-indulgence of unpaid or underpaid movement work.
I remember brainstorming with Deb one afternoon in the office. We both
had taken karate and taught self-defense. We had lots of contacts from our workin the anti-rape movement locally and nationally. It was time to exploit ourknowledge for financial gain. We would start a business together fabricating andinstalling metal bars on doors and windows to protect house and apartment
dwellers from intruders. The crime rate in Washington, DC was rising steadily.
People were scared. We would soon be rich enough to support our families andto keep our publication printing. We had it licked. Almost.
Deb had welded together shopping carts in Cleveland. She was the moreskilled. But I was the more confident. No problem—we could do it. Why
not? That afternoon I enrolled the two of us in a welding class at a voca-

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Worktional school with night classes near my home. The classes started the samenight. We were on our way.
I turned 29 that week. Judith surprised me with the best birthday
present—and a class requirement, too—steel-toed work boots. I was thrilled.
And ready to learn.
My confidence that Deb and I would be welding and starting our business in no time grew out of my own arrogant ignorance. After three weeks
of struggling with an acetylene torch, I realized that Deb and I might needa bit more instruction than that provided by the county school system. One
night when a substitute teacher sauntered up to us with tales of his bravado
on the high steel, I listened intently. He worked welding non-union in building construction. He said the good money was in the union jobs, and women
were being sought to satisfy quotas in all the unions. The all male, majority
white unions provided on-the-job training for women and minorities paid
for by the federal government. As he talked, he began to realize that Deb
and I were more likely to land good union welding jobs than he because ofaffirmative action. His friendliness evaporated as his reactionary side presented. It was time for Deb and me to leave.
Deb had done factory fabrication work and I had driven a cab in thepast. We were accustomed to resentment from men who believed we stoodin their way to economic success. I only wish I had all the money that I
prevented all these losers from earning. But honestly, I was grateful that the
put-upon substitute welding instructor had crossed my path. The next morning I followed his lead.
I started calling women’s employment projects to ask if they knew of
any on-the-job training grants for learning welding. Someone gave me thephone number of the AFL-CIO Human Rights Office. Deb and I were
given an immediate appointment with an official at that office who was
frantic to find women to place. The unions had been mandated (and paid)
to get more females on construction sites. All they needed was female flesh
to show up and apply.
When we arrived at the AFL-CIO, we met with Ms. Handout (I thinkthat was her name), the Human Rights specialist. She asked what we wanted
to do. We told her we wanted to learn welding. “Welding” is not the nameof a union job. She couldn’t find it on her Rolodex so Ms. Handout had tosearch through all her job descriptions.
“How about the Plumbers? They weld.” I squealed in protest. I explained that we were there to learn skills for putting bars on windows anddoors. Not plumbing.

summer-2006

69“How about the Steamfitters? They weld.” What on earth was that, I
wondered. It certainly didn’t sound like it. I rejected the Steamfitters, too.
“Well, the only thing left is the Ironworkers. They weld, too.” I asked
Ms. Handout, “Just what else do the ironworkers do?” “I don’t really know,”
she replied, “but their whole name is International Association of Bridge,
Structural and Ornamental Ironworkers.”
Bingo. That was it. Deb and I conferred. We were certain that ornamental ironwork was what we wanted. Visions of New Orleans and theFrench Quarter passed through our imaginations. How lovely! And we would
be part of it.
So Ms. Handout got on the phone. We were in luck. Randy Williams,
the business agent down at the Local #5 union hall needed a woman for afederal job quota. The money was unbelievable. After orientation and asafety lesson the following morning, we would be earning $6.98 per hour –40% more than I had ever earned. While learning welding at the same timeand doing beautiful ornamental ironwork.
The next morning we arrived at the hall ready for work. I had newboots, a sporty scarf and a bra restraining my usually unfettered breasts. I
felt like I was in a special “construction worker” uniform. This was fairly
bizarre since I’d been wearing the same clothes for years—other than the
bra—as part of my “women’s movement” uniform. Deb looked as she had
every other work day since we’d met.
Deb and I aced the preliminary introductory courses before we got thenews: only one of us was required that morning. That was the last time wewere to work together for nearly three years. Deb was sent to wait on thebench while I went out to the Dulles Airport job to report to my new foreman, Billy Bonzo. I was terrified. Somehow all of this was more fun andexciting with Deb along.
Dulles Airport is in Virginia, nearly 50 miles from the union hall. I
drove as slowly as I could without causing a huge gridlock mess on theroads. I had jumped out of my comfortable cloistered nest feathered withfeminists into a huge pit of strange men. Was money enough?
The original terminal at Dulles was designed by Saarinen and was gorgeous. Upswept glass walls on both sides; unobstructed views from anywherein the structure. I had studied the architecture in a humanities class when I
still lived in Florida. Sometimes I’d drive out and watch the planes, including
the Concorde when it started, and pretend I was going to travel somewhere.
So that morning when I pulled around the last curve as the terminalcame in to view, I was sickened. The Airport Authority had yielded the70sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

classic design to the increasing travel demands of the area. I was going to bepart of the gang who put on that first garish addition and destroyed theperfect design.
I found my way to some trailers behind the terminal on what had beenpart of a runway. My lofty outrage about architectural abuse was replacedby the cold fist of fear. Now what? Glancing ahead at the back of terminal,
I saw a vertical wall of pipes and planks rising up about 60 feet. Why wasthat there?
I entered one of the trailers and saw a woman. Wow! Maybe this would
be okay. After I explained that I had been sent by Ironworkers Local #5 andneeded to find Billy Bonzo, her eyes widened and then filled with pity. “Oh,that’s Wild Bill. He’s crazy. You’ll find him on the third floor over there.”
She tossed her head toward the terminal. “Climb up that scaffold and you
can’t miss him. He’s the skinny redhead with the big mouth. And he’s looking for you.”
OH NO!! Climb up that scaffold!! My fear of crazy men was suddenly
overshadowed by my fear of falling to my death. How could I do this? “Keepyour eyes on the prize,” I kept muttering as I approached the scaffold. “Sixninety eight an hour. Keep your eyes on the prize.” I was slow. I was notgraceful. But I made it up to the third floor hanging on to pipes and braces.
That money mantra turned out to be my favorite chant throughout myironworking career. It gave me the strength to overcome my physical cowardice.
As I climbed out onto the third floor slab from the scaffold, I heard
him. “Yi-eeei! There’s my sweet thing that the union hall sent out! Comehere, darling! Lookee here, guys—we got us a sweet thing!” Billy was indeed“wild.” I sensed that correcting him and asserting my liberated dyke persona was not the smart thing to do. So I swallowed my dignity and prideand slithered into the survival closet, not to emerge until I abandoned construction-related jobs for a computer career nineteen years later.
Before the end of the day, I had fabricated a six foot six inch tall steadyboyfriend named Johnny. He even had a job. He was a carpenter. He wasinsanely jealous and No One disrespected his woman. But he was good tome. He was my first level defense against advances from my ironworker
brothers. (In retrospect, I was describing Judith with an extra foot of height.)
Through the years working first as an ironworker and later as a project
manager for an ironwork company, I came to love my brothers. Called thebravest, craziest and dumbest of all the tradesmen, ironworkers turned out
to be loyal and caring coworkers. They respected my relationship with Johnnysummer-2006

71

and would never cross the line with me. They protected me from workers in
the other trades who were not always so respectful. I was patronized by thissystem but grateful for the protection.
Women were ridiculously outnumbered on the construction sites. I rarely
saw more than one or two other women working with tools on any site.
Thousands of men and maybe one or two women. The unbalanced numbers threatened me. My gender threatened many men. Some days I could
smell the hostility from strange men in other trades who resented my presence. Hiding my sexual identity was a strategy for survival. I faced enoughdanger as a woman without painting an even bigger target on my back.
One day on a high-rise job in Virginia, I was sitting in a sun spot eating
lunch at the bottom of what was to be a multi-story atrium in a fancy officebuilding. Earlier on the twelfth floor I had rebuffed a middle-aged electrician who was harassing me while I was working alone. Suddenly, my lunch
was interrupted by a loud crash as my own 12 inch Crescent wrench hit theconcrete about a foot away from me. The impact spalled the concrete just as
it would have crushed my skull had the wrench landed on me. I scurried
under cover and peered back up to twelfth floor. I saw a figure lurking nearmy scaffold, no doubt the rejected electrician.
This was not the only incident I experienced while on the job. Nor was
I the only woman who had to cope with physical and verbal harassment ora dangerous attack. Deb recounted leaning out over the edge of an elevator
shaft applying bolts when a man came up behind her, grabbed her andbegan an exaggerated humping motion to entertain all the nearby workers.
She was totally helpless unless she chose to throw herself—and her attacker—
over the edge. Another woman ironworker trainee we knew had been grabbed
up and dangled head down over the edge of the building. Another woman,a carpenter, was lifted up and swung around by the crane operator and his
cronies while using a roof top portable toilet. (I never again used any portable toilets within reach of a crane.)
As I progressed through the three thousand hour training program, I
began to gain recognition and grudging respect from the men I worked
around. I was smart. I was brave and strong. I was a good ironworker. WhenI would report to a new job site for the first time, I would hear whispers
among the men who recognized me from previous jobs. I became adept atfielding unwanted sexual or hostile attention and thus earned a reputation
as a good sport with a foul mouth, a tough cookie.
Three years and three months after that first day at the union hall, I
earned my Journeyman Ironworker card. I have never been prouder of my-72sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

self. I proved I could do the physically most demanding work and survive. I
could place myself in the most unfamiliar and alienating environment andmake it my own. But my pride is marred to this day by the fact I needed
Johnny’s shadow and a “heterosexual costume” to succeed.
Today, I’m an out Lesbian “office weenie,” an Oracle database administrator who is warm and safe and uses indoor bathrooms. Deb is now a clinical herbalist, three time black belt martial artist and still my dear friend. The
three boys are grown (the middle one is an ironworker) and Judith, always
my support, my rock, sits beside me on our bed. And we still have no bars
on our windows and doors.

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Chrystos

Worrying About How to Pay All My Billswith one week left until the firstmy mind a headache of amounts
due dates wondering where I could pick up an extra
job as I drive to polish silver & brass & copperat the mansion larger than all the places I’ve rented
put together

A fawn leaps across the roadall the numbers fall into a heap where they belong

I see the Elder lady who winked & whispered
You read too many books honeySprouting I see the sky blue as beginning
sun glittering each new spring leafbold yellow swamp lilies

the deer watching me from a curve of emerald &all the dancing birds breathe into my soul

Reprinted from Fire Power by Chrystos (Press Gang Publishers, 1995 p.
57) with permission from the author.

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Susan Saxe

A Place Where Everyone Belongs:
Laboring in the Vineyard of the “Religious Left”
The call for articles about lesbians in the workplace inspired me to think
about how fortunate I am to work in an environment that is fully supportive of me, for all of who I am. It may surprise some readers that I work for areligious organization. So much discrimination and abuse has been inflictedin the name of religion that it is sometimes hard to remember that the“Religious Right,” militant fundamentalists and hate-filled extremists do
not represent the sole voice of faith or spirit in the United States or theworld. The Religious Left is alive and well. This is especially good news for
lesbians and queer folk. Because so much wounding has been done in thename of God, it is especially important that communities of faith are more
and more standing up proudly and strongly for inclusion and healing, proclaiming that God is the force of liberation and justice, not a spiteful old
man who despises queers, women and poor people and wants us to vote
Republican.
The organization I work for, ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, isthe oldest and perhaps best known institution of the Jewish Renewal movement. ALEPH is in the forefront of developing feminist theology and women’s
spiritual leadership. We have long been on the growing edge, ordaining gay
clergy and advocating gay marriage before these positions became acceptedin other parts of the American religious scene. We serve Jewish communities and individuals across denominational lines, have over 40 affiliated congregations world-wide and partner with progressive Christian, Moslem,
Buddhist, Native and other organizations to advance a variety of projects
focused on social justice, human rights, peace and environmental sanity.
In my fifteen years at ALEPH, I have always felt valued for all of who I
am. In fact, the hallmark of our movement is being a Jewish organization
where you don’t have to check your gender, sexual identity, progressive politics, feminism, etc. at the door in order to participate. Has it always been
easy? Not completely. No organization is perfect and because GLBT folk
are a minority in almost any setting insensitivity is bound to occur. However, when an organization is deeply committed to self-reflection and growth,
people with differences can be heard, minds changed and hearts opened—
at least among leadership, if not with everyone who may come through thedoor.

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One pivotal moment, that happened before my time, occurred in theplanning stages of a major conference. The planners, mostly heterosexual
women and men, were considering themes for the event and someone suggested “a wedding.” A joyous event, beloveds coming together...who could
object? Until one of the planners, a lesbian rabbi on the board, explained intears how that imagery excluded her. The plan was dropped and from thatday on at every subsequent event the organization has gone out of its way tovisibly and explicitly affirm GLBT people as cherished members of our community.
To what do I attribute these advances and the ease with which they haveoccurred? First, I would attribute it to the very big role women have playedin both governance and spiritual leadership. Like many spiritual movements,
we find more women than men in our ranks and have enjoyed the benefit ofmany strong and clear feminists, both queer folk and allies who have served
as board members, rabbis, teachers and staff over the years. Welcoming a
new generation of younger women into the circle of leadership has been aparticular joy in recent years.
It also has to do with our shared core values. For us the bedrock value
comes from understanding that we are all intimately connected, each one ofus made “in the image of God” Whose creative, boundless diversity we celebrate and welcome. From that flows the “Golden Rule,” the common denominator of all faiths (and of those who self-define as “humanist” or “spiritual but not religious”) even though it is expressed in slightly different ways
by each. It’s when religion strays from this Rule, gets into having the one“right” answer, creating hierarchies and “us vs. them” divisions that it collapses into fundamentalism. Constant return to the touchstone of sharedholiness is the key to avoiding this trap.
One colleague of mine, Rabbi Rachel Levine, describes a spiritual path
as a journey up a mountain. At the base of the mountain, paths might lookvery different. In fact, from where I stand it may be impossible to even see
your path. However, as we journey up the mountain, the paths converge toa single point and we can see each other, appreciating and learning from one
another’s journeys while remaining committed to our own.
I would add that fundamentalism makes its camp at the base of themountain and occupies itself with fortifying the walls of that camp. To journey up the mountain, you have to travel light, leaving more and more ofyour “baggage” along the trail. We sometimes refer to that process as “making room for holiness,” and being open to surprise when it occurs in unexpected places.

76

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and WorkIn the spring of 2000, at a peak in the national debate about gay marriage, ALEPH devoted an issue of its journal to articles by prominent Jewish
thinkers in support of the sanctity of gay and lesbian relationships. We thendid a special printing of that issue to distribute to the conference of Reform
rabbis that was meeting at the time and slated to vote on a resolution affirming same-sex marriage (they did!). By that time the question for us was nolonger “if ” or “when,” but “how.” ALEPH had already moved on to training the students in our rabbinic program in the nuts and bolts of how toprotect the legal rights, counsel and create meaningful marriage/commitment rituals for same-gender couples.
In his column in that issue, our then Rabbinic Director, Rabbi Daniel
Siegel wrote, “Our movement... has always been about expanding holiness...toplaces and to people to whom it has been denied...invit(ing) people to comehome to Judaism and bring with them the treasures of who they are...” Hewent on to add, “ALEPH supported the leadership of women not because
feminism is or was...politically correct...but rather to release the holinesspent up in women so that it could become part of the publicly shared whole.”
This doesn’t mean that we don’t do things that we think are politicallycorrect, but that we constantly seek to remind ourselves about why it is theright thing to do. When you understand that harming, exploiting or demeaning another person damages the web of life that connects us all, thenjustice is not just a nice idea. It is imperative.
At heart, it is about being wounded healers. Continuing about the inclusion of gay and lesbian people in the sanctification of relationships, Daniel
went on to point out that there is no “us” and “them.” Our movement was
founded by “people who felt out of step in some way, whose holiness was
not being recognized...This shared search (for meaning and the experienceof the divine in our lives) binds us in a way that no ideology or preference...canseparate us.”Having worked in a variety of settings in my life, I am well aware thatthe picture is not so rosy in most workplaces. I have certainly experienced
my share of sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and the oppressions that
we as lesbians share with women and men across a broad swath of society—work that is, in the words of the Sinister Wisdom editors, “degrading, unethical, boring, stressful, dangerous, disabling and/or unsatisfying.”
Do I ever experience burn-out days when deadlines loom, interruptions abound, new projects creep onto my already overfull plate and there isjust more to do than is humanly possible? Sure. Do I ever encounter homophobia? Well, since part of my job involves outreach to the general pub-

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lic, of course—particularly when I’m called upon to deal with folks you
might call “returnees from fundamentalism.” There are some spiritual seekers who have found some of their needs met within settings where common
religious dogmas and prejudices are reinforced or just not challenged. They
are drawn to our style of spirituality, but held back by either internal orexternal voices that don’t want them to “leave the fold,” and deploy the “hotbutton” issues to pull them back in. Sometimes it’s about our pro-peacestances, sometimes about the role of women, and sometimes the homophobia card is played.
How do I handle it? First I remind myself of what most outreach workers and therapists know—the “presenting issue” is often masking some otherissue that is far more important. So, often I will inquire whether the person
is dealing with their own sexual identity or that of someone close to them. If
that is the case, then I know I may be dealing with a human being struggling
with narrow “religious” judgements that are keeping him or her from being
and loving more fully, and I can proceed from there.
If not, then I invite the person to leave that issue aside and think about
why they are really contacting us.
Once we establish a bond, it is usually not a big deal for them when
they discover that the nice outreach worker on the other end of the phone isa lesbian. Sometimes there’s a period of cognitive dissonance (“how can thisbe—I like this person, yet she is the demonized “other”) but over the past
15 years, in all but a couple of cases (for example the occasional ideologue
who simply wants to argue and isn’t really interested in what we have tooffer) the experience of befriending and being befriended by the demonized“other” leads them gently down a path of personal growth and delightful
surprises—including reintegrating other disowned parts of themselves. Often
in my outreach work, I have been thankful for my lesbianism as a powerfulplace from which to provide this healing experience to others.
Jewish lesbians or fellow travelers can find out more about ALEPH andlocate our affiliated communities on line at www.aleph.org.

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and WorkJean Taylor

Lesbians and Work
From the outset I have to say that the situation here in Australia as far as
unemployment and other benefits are concerned is quite different from theUnited States. That is, everyone who has registered for work and is unable
to find a job is entitled to a government benefit to enable them to support
themselves. As well as the dole, (unemployment benefits), pensions or benefits can be paid to single mothers with small children, those who are permanently disabled, have reached old age or are temporarily sick. That theamount is quite small compared to wages, generally, is offset by the fact thateveryone is entitled to assume the state will support them in extremity. The
dole is subject to a means test, so for example, if your spouse is earningmoney it usually renders you ineligible for benefits because your spouse issupposed to support you. However, as our lesbian relationships are notrecognised by many government departments, we therefore qualify for financial support if we’re unemployed.
As you can imagine, this has affected my working life quite considerably. I have been able to move in and out of the paid workforce confident in
the knowledge that if and when I haven’t been able to find the kind of workthat suited my best interests as a radical lesbian feminist I could apply forwhatever government benefits I was eligible for at the time.
The first disruption to my working life as a trainee nurse happened
when I became pregnant at 17. In those days, 1962, I had to get married toensure I was financially supported. When I separated and became a single
mother I worked part-time in a women’s refuge and was eligible for part ofthe single mothers’ pension (which came in 1973). When my children became independent I went on the dole. And in between working on the
different jobs I have mainly established for myself, and except for the brieftime I went on a carers’ pension when my partner at the time was dying ofovarian cancer in 1998, I have been on the dole ever since.
In fact, as a lesbian writer who has not been accepted by the malestream
publishers I consider the dole to be a kind of writers’ grant which allows me
to write novels, articles, plays, essays and poetry to my heart’s content. I’m
not suggesting that it’s easy to live on a benefit that is considered to be below
the poverty level by standards in developed countries but it is better thannothing. And while the government is making it harder to stay on the dolewith its concerted effort to shame us out of being ‘dole bludgers’ or forcing
us to apply for non-existent jobs then we just have to find more creative
ways round these difficulties, particularly as we get older.

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And it’s worth it. Especially as it means I have not only been able to do
my writing as well as continue my mostly unpaid work as a radical activist, I
have also been able to make sure that the jobs I do choose to do will allow me
to be out as a dyke as well as ensure that I have supportive work conditions.
I have had two jobs where my paid work was an extension of my activist
work: two years part-time at the women’s refuge and a year full-time at the
Women’s Liberation Switchboard at the WL Building (which also gave me
enough money to start self-publishing my own Dykebooks). I have started
groups and created jobs for myself by applying for short-term funding, forexample, as the Director of the Performing Older Women’s Circus and working on the Victorian Women’s Liberation and Lesbian Feminist Archives. I
worked full-time as a conductor / driver on the trams here in Melbourne (Icame out by putting a ‘lesbians are everywhere’ sticker on my locker without being hassled) to get enough money together to support myself for 12months traveling round Europe.
More recently I’ve had a couple of small writers’ grants, one from the government and one from a lesbian organisation to write books about the herstoryof the Women’s Liberation Movement and lesbian feminist activism. Neither ofthem provided enough to live on but they supplemented my dole money.
For me, paid work is a means to an end and allows me to do activities,
like traveling, I couldn’t afford to do if I relied entirely on government benefits. If a job is halfway decent and provides me with some satisfaction it’s abonus. But I have long since given up on the idea that paid work, because it
is working to someone else’s timetable, is going to be the be all and end all.
I actually get more job satisfaction from the innumerable hours I’ve put inorganising events in the lesbian community as an unpaid political activist.
And again, it’s my writing work that I really enjoy the most even though I
know full well I’ll never make any kind of a living from it.
As a radical lesbian feminist, my main occupation, as I see it, is not to join
the workforce and have a career, necessarily. For the most part, I have felt astrong obligation to live as cheaply (Op shop* clothes and second-hand furniture) and simply (without a credit card and by using public transport) as
possible, to not get caught up with capitalist consumerism. To remain confident in myself (however hard it has been at times with endless rejection slips).
Not to allow myself to become so fearful I can’t function (which means notbelieving anything our governments tell us about terrorists or Weapons ofMass Destruction). To remain as sane as possible. And above all to get toknow myself well enough (in all my ever-changing facets) that I can act in theworld with as little damage to myself and others as possible.
Not always an easy task. But what else is there?
* Short for Opportunity Shop in Australia which is the same as a Thrift Shop in the USA.

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Shewolf“Work,” Defined by Lesbians in a Man’s WorldFor me I suppose the way one defines “work” starts the process of ourattitudes about this whole series of ideas related to lesbians at work. Do werelegate the term “work” only to paid activities, “that which we do to earnmoney to survive” or is it something we call what we HAVE to do? Work tome can be a true joy and a salvation in times of stress or loss. Work to me has
always been the order of the day. Coming from a poor, lower class, working
home, where we never knew we were poor or lower class, work was the joyof our life. To have work to do was something to cheer about and something
to look forward to all the time. In today’s world, over 60 years later, I findwork once again to be a joy but not for pay this time. I work in patriarchal
fields, lesbian areas, and community activities with the ease of fluidity once
absent in my life. Now I can “work” for pay or for no pay and be doing
similar things in this community. My fields include communication, publishing, teaching, testing, research, woodworking, consulting, and education. The differences between working 50 years ago and now as a lesbian
and as a woman are apparent to me in many ways.
Then, 50 years ago, we were paid a lot less, respected a lot less, given lessresponsibility, told what to do more than asked how to do it, limited in our
choices of jobs available, trained in only specific fields of study, and by far
separated from the “good old boys” political, social, and working opportunities club. Today straight women and lesbians have more opportunities totrain for and acquire work experiences in a broader range of occupations.
Some still have to struggle to be accepted and treated equally but thosebarriers are slowly coming down for us. Now female physicians, lawyers,veterinarians, firefighters, guards, senators, truckers, construction workers
and police exist across the country.
My personal experiences as a female university professor included silent
exclusions from the old boys’ club. As a lesbian, there was omission of opportunities to advance into higher positions of authority even though mysuperiors praised my accomplishments as an administrator. In the 70s wewere still banding together as women to get equal pay for women in theacademic ranks. We were still struggling to show the discrepancies in pay
related to slow promotions of women into higher academic ranks while
men of lesser accomplishments moved up the promotion ladders because
they were men. Actually, in the 50s there were articles written by men whichsummer-2006

81

automatically were accepted and published while more carefully researched
articles by women were passed over when the author was known to be awoman. In some cases the prejudice was so rampant that the judges didn’t
even know they were doing it.
Five of us banned together to cause the officials of government to comein and rectify the situation and improve the status of pay for female university teachers in Louisiana. In those days no one was supposed to know anyone else’s salary. Records were extremely hard to acquire. We met in secret
for weeks, found the necessary information and reported it to the proper
authorities. Of course we did this at the risk of losing our jobs at the university; some of us suffered for it, too. We did not have the support of the
majority of the women on the campus either as they were too fearful for
their jobs.
“Work,” I say can be for pay or not. It was hard “work” to bring together groups over the years to fight against inequality in the academic ranks.
The only “pay” we received was the eventual changes that finally occurred
over time. Times have changed, thank goodness, but it took a lot of “little”
people to change it. A lot of change is still needed to improve the working
conditions for lesbians; and women in general, too.
Now, some 35 years later, I “work” for lesbian causes and programs thatoffer no pay monetarily, but I consider myself well “paid” in other ways.

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Lee Lynch

Dangers in the Workplace
The new Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse in north Roseburg,
Oregon, which will open soon, received about 3,000 applications for 160
positions in that city of 20,000. The store will employ 160 workers during
the peak seasons of spring and summer and 120 during off-peak seasons.
About three-quarters of those positions will be full time.
This news made me want to mail a personal thank you note to ourcompassionate conservative in the White House. That’s 2,840 people who
won’t have to worry about tax refunds in the near future, since there won’t
be any income to tax in the first place. The 160 are the lucky ones, but I
wonder how many of the applicants really wanted to work as retail sales
clerks or cashiers, even for an employer like Lowe’s whose non-discrimination policy includes sexual orientation.
How many of us are working for enlightened employers and doing a
job we like? In this economy, I would guess, not many. Not even my job,which involves a lot of fascinating labor market research, would be my first
choice. I’d rather be writing stories.
And I have learned, in my frequent exposure to the labor market, that
I’m not alone in this yearning to do something besides what brings homethe bacon. I’ve also learned that I’m darned lucky to do the work I do.
All work is stressful. Mine, for example, requires that I cold call employers and ask questions about the jobs that they offer. They are not exactly
sitting around waiting for my calls and can be everything from friendly andcooperative to curt or nasty. I suspect it’s, though not potentially fatal, kindof like working as a tree faller – that giant fir can come down where it’ssupposed to, or might just snap back and kill the faller. Or like farming,
where you can be riding along whistling while you work one minute andupside down under your flipped-over tractor the next.
I’ve never met anyone who characterizes her job as easy. Look at theattorney who bills hundreds of hours and gets stiffed by the client after
giving her all to judge and jury. Look at the pink collar worker whose boss
leaves things to the last minute, then pushes her to make up the time withimpossible deadlines – or the fisherperson out on a boat in a high, roughsea. These are all jobs I’m glad I don’t have to do.
Then there are the glamour jobs like editing newspapers – the raging
letters to the editor alone would scare me away. Or the disc jockey who hassummer-2006

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to keep up a cheerful patter on days when she has wicked menstrual cramps.
Some athletes and rock singers may get rich, but I wouldn’t like their traveling schedules one bit.
I remember being amazed at the horrendously tough work a utility lineman described to me – as if the climbing were not enough, he had to wrestle
with huge coils of cable, dig ditches and work in blazing hot sunlight or blizzard conditions. Another guy had a job treating telephone poles – he manually rolled the poles into place, then applied insecticides and other chemicals.
A house painter I once worked with was a walking warning about the dangers
he’d faced, having lost both arms after falling into electrical wires.
Maybe stocking at Lowe’s isn’t such a bad deal, compared to these jobs.
Of course, I wouldn’t want to be the screener who had to wade through3,000 applications – I hope she gets overtime pay. But then, I wouldn’t
want to be president either, at least one whose policies create these kinds ofconditions. How can he live with himself? The only industries I’ve run
across that are thriving are those which are war-related. A couple of weeks
ago I spoke with the human resources rep for a company that makes metal
tools. She said the company would have laid off hundreds more workers if itweren’t for military contracts. Is that what this administration wanted – ablood-based boom?
I suspect another industry that’s thriving must be the repo business.
Now, that’s a difficult, dangerous job and I don’t imagine many people makeit number one on their lists of what they want to be when they grow up, yet
it provides employment for thousands of Americans who will be visiting thejobless. These Recovery Specialists must be in great demand to pick up after
the devastation wrought by just three years of Bush and his greedy gang.
Today, I can only be grateful that I have a job despite my government.
Like it or not, I’ll be spending my days calling strangers and asking questions until I retire. Do I want to keep doing a job that requires serious
multi-tasking when I don’t even particularly want to uni-task any more?
And about that dream of retirement – now that neither Medicaid nor Social
Security are sacred, should I plan on keeping this job until I keel over?
When I made calls in the manufacturing field this week, a number ofreceptionists and human resource departments reported that their production jobs had all been sent overseas. Nothing was left but sales and distribution. The displaced workers were all hoping Lowe’s, repo work, something,anything would come through for them.
© Lee Lynch 2005

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Roxanna N. Fiamma

Dyke Physical Education Teacher
I look through the window of my work – twenty-six years of teaching
Physical Education. I see reflected back the pain and suffering I endured asa Lesbian who could not / would not pass. The toll that Lesbophobia took
upon my spirit is etched upon my soul.
I was unable to endure the weekly hatred I was subjected to (mostly
verbal taunts and graffiti by students). I had two suicidal depressive breakdowns; I was finally able to retire with disability because I kept a journal ofsome of the Lesbophobia I faced.
I encourage any Lesbian who is being harassed, in any situation, towrite down what is happening. Many times I was unable to write because
the emotional pain was too great. It was especially hard when the Lesbophobia
was caused by student(s) trying to cover their own Lesbianism.
When I retired I was not even sent a card by the junior high staff I had
worked with for twenty years. The Lesbophobia I endured was perpetuatedby co-workers and parents.
I would like to talk with other Lesbian P. E. teachers about their experiences with Lesbophobia and how they cope. Please contact me at P. O. Box
1180, Sebastopol, CA 95473. Thanks!

“Roxanna N. Fiamma,” photo by
Fran Day, 1985.

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Raven

Land, Work and Disability
Santa Fe, New Mexico
A group of lesbians in northern New Mexico have been discussing plansfor our second land trust. We want land that will be accessible to disabled
wimmin and to other wimmin who aren’t able to live with the difficulties ofArf wimmin’s land. In our discussions of what we want and need I have beenacutely aware of the issues that are surfacing around land, work and disability.
I’ve heard a couple of lesbians over 40 talk about how they want to beon land soon. These wimmin notice their bodies slowing down due to age.
Because of the sheer volume of labor always required on new land, thesewimmin want to do the work while they still can. Other wimmin haveexpressed their desire and preference to bond with each other around work
projects. They would like to get to know each other during activity, rather
than sitting around and talking. Another attitude I’ve encountered is thework ethic so prevalent in the u.s. dominant culture. I’ve struggled with thismany times during my years on land. This is expressed in the opinion thateveryone should be doing a certain amount of community work that can bemeasured in hours and results.
I’m a chronically ill dyke who is already not able to do much of theintense work load on new land. I’m often left out of the camaraderie ofwork projects. And I get really angry when able-bodied (a-b) lesbians wantto measure my work by their standards.
I love physical work. In 20 years on land or connected with land I havealways pushed my limits and beyond. I’ve cut lots of firewood, helped build
adobe houses, cooked countless dinners, put in and maintained garden beds,
grown enuf sprouts for salads for 30, as well as participating in the often
thankless labor of community emotional process and decision making. There
has always been some physical work I couldn’t do, and I’ve never been able
to do an 8 hour day of heavy physical work, or to do this sort of work on
two consecutive days.
Over the past few years I’ve accepted that there are many projects I
probably won’t do again. I won’t have the joy of building my own housewhen I’m again on land. I will have to find a way to obtain money to pay forlabor. I grieve over my diminished abilities. I love the inner peace I’ve foundthru physical work. I have also experienced feeling less a part- of community when I can’t participate in projects.

86

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and WorkI understand why lesbians enjoy the special connections made when
they work together. I don’t want to take this away from anyone. I’m alsomuch better at getting to know someone thru a common focus than byhanging out. But when able-bodied wimmin talk of bonding thru work, I
start to panic. I wonder whether wimmin realize that really accessible landmeans figuring out ways to provide me access to the same intimacy that a-b
wimmin have. I wonder whether wimmin are willing to be creative about
ways to include me in their companionship.
In my years on land I’ve seen many resentments develop when some
wimmin feel they’re doing more work than others. I know some wimmin
try to understand that I‘m not able to do much physical work. I also know
when someone is working when she’s tired, she might have trouble understanding the intense limitations of ongoing fatigue. I’ve had my share ofresentment when I’ve wanted someone to do something that would takepressure off me. On our projected land, if a-b wimmin have these feelings, I
hope they take them to each other and not to me. I need wimmin to trust
I’m doing as much as I can. I hope each of us, disabled or not, will responsibly assess our abilities and limitations.
I’ve heard a-b wimmin say that a disabled community member can atleast do the land’s correspondence or cook a meal for a work day. I happen
to enjoy cooking meals and writing letters. And I expect to do things I don’t
like simply ‘cuz they have to be done. But I don’t think someone who hates
1etter writing should be pushed to do this job on a regular basis just becuz
she’s disabled. Everyone wants to do work that feels rewarding.
Tho I love correspondence, writing exhausts me. I can participate much
more fully in community work if I’m getting help when I need it with thedaily tasks of my survival. If a community is not willing to organize assistance for sick and disabled landmates, wimmin who are energy limited should
not be expected to do community work. I’m not talking about caretaking
each other and I don’t think help should come from one or two wimmin. If
I’m living with 15 a-b lesbians I might only need an hour or two from each
womyn every couple of months. This would give me many more available
hours for community participation.
Most of us in this culture have absorbed the ethic that work is a measure of personal worth. I have been forced to redefine work. Sometimes myjob is simply to stay alive. Some day sooner or later we will live with wimmin
who are doing the work of dying. Presently I am pushing my limits byremaining committed to lesbian land, to accessible land, and to the outreach necessary to make this happen. In the past I’ve been criticized for notsummer-2006

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doing enuf work. When this happened I wanted to shout—what do you
mean I’m not working? I’m here, aren’t I? As a community we need to appreciate a womyn’s commitment and not just what she produces.
I understand that a-b wimmin get tired too. In order to make land
liveable for those of us who can’t live primitively I expect we’ll have to raise
funds for paid labor, do work weekends that bring in help from off the land,
welcome traveling wimmin who have labor to give (as well as those who give
smiles and new perspectives).
I’m sure I haven’t thot of all the ways of approaching work and ourdifferent attitudes, abilities and skills. Class, ethnicity, and present access tomoney all affect attitudes about work. In addressing work and disability, it
would be valuable to consider all our diversity. I’ve written this article fromthe perspective of our New Mexico potential land group which will involvea large number of able-bodied wimmin. A small community, a group of
mostly disabled lesbians, or a group with mothers and small children will
have less energy to draw on within the community to both do land workand meet each other’s needs. I hope I’ve raised questions that will encourage
land dykes or any lesbians to approach the issue of work and disability in acreative and revolutionary way. I’d like to hear from other land groups anddisabled dykes who are trying to create truly accessible community and also
do the work necessary to make our lives comfortable and fulfilling.

Reprinted from Maize (Spring, 1983).

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Lilith Rogers

Work: You Name It, I’ve Done It“I loved that job you had delivering those organic muffins,” Luna said
to me the other day. “It was great to get the leftovers.”“Delivering muffins? When was that?” I responded.
“A couple of years ago—you took them down to San Francisco healthfood stores. Remember now? They were delicious.”“Oh, right. I thought I’d get paid to drive to SF and visit Felicia and thebaby but it ended up being more trouble than it was worth. Like so many of
my jobs,” I added with a sigh.
Work, you name it—I’ve done it. Short of brain surgery or serving inCongress, I’ve done just about anything you mention.
Well, not anything. I joked one time that if it pays well, includes benefits, is stimulating and worthwhile—I’ll never get it. Actually, I’ve even had
a few jobs like that but they never lasted long—the funding always ran out
just after I got started.
Seriously, work has been a long strange trip for me. I started working
for pay at about age ten—babysitting neighborhood kids back home in mylittle suburban neighborhood on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Probably got fifty
cents or a dollar an hour. After that, I worked summers for my father in his
doctor’s office in Galveston. He was a diet doctor and my job was to weighand measure his patients, take their blood pressure (to this day I can stillhear those little changes that signal the upper number and lower number)and count out their pills.
I worked for him until the summer of my junior year in college when I
asked for a raise and he refused me so I got a much higher paying job—anda much more fun one—working as a bar maid and waitress at a local pub.
My best friend Cici worked with me and we got big tips for wearing theseshort skirts and dancing together to tunes on the jukebox!
At college, I studied liberal arts and, at my practical mother’s insistence,
got a teaching credential, but since my political beliefs didn’t match up withthe conservatives who ran—undoubtedly still run—the schools in Texas, I
couldn’t find a job there after graduation. (Fortunately for me, I’m sure.) Instead, I joined VISTA and got sent off to Newark, New Jersey to join up withsome other idealistic young people to help end racism in America. This was in
1968—a year of great change—for me and the rest of the world. We organized a parent-run day care center that is still going as a charter school after allsummer-200689

these years. To supplement the minimum wages we were paid, I got a job as a
waitress in a local diner. So my summer job experience came in handy.
Of course, my politics got pushed even further to the left from myexperiences in Newark and I guess that has contributed to my continuing
inability to fit into the great American capitalist system. Not that I haven’t
tried sometimes. When I’ve applied for jobs at various schools, colleges,
even car dealerships, I’ve sometimes spent quite a bit of energy putting on
make-up, getting the right haircut, the right clothes, answering questions
the right way. Well, actually I haven’t done much of any of that in the lasttwenty years or so but I did at first. Didn’t usually work—somehow they
could see through my disguise. And now that I’m older, heavier, unmistakably dykier, and without a clue, really, of what you’re supposed to look likeor sound like, I don’t try for those jobs any more.
I don’t want to sound bitter about my situation. Along the way, I’ve hadsome wonderful work. After I moved to the West Coast in the early 70s, I
was a school bus driver for a while, had a baby, came out as a dyke, andmoved into a house with a yard, I realized I loved working with plants. I
went to San Francisco City College, studied ornamental horticulture, formeda partnership with a couple of other students there and together we started
Goodwomen Gardening. We bought an old Ford pickup, some tools, andput up some signs and we were in business. It was hard work—pulling out
blackberries and anise, pruning trees, digging holes—but it was fun, rewarding, outdoors, and we were our own bosses. I loved it. We stayed together for five years or so and then stuff happened in all our lives that pulled
us off in different directions.
When I moved to Sonoma County, California over twenty years ago, I
continued the gardening and I went back to college—this time for a master’s.
Once again, I thought I would teach but once again, I just couldn’t fit in to
the system. Oh well. I did get a teaching job for awhile at the Native American Education Center but that was one of those places where the funding
got cut. Likewise teaching child assault prevention for Women Against Rape.
But I loved those jobs while they lasted. Oh, I even joined Americorps a few
years ago and got to teach gardening to kids and start a community garden
in an abandoned parking lot in downtown Santa Rosa. Which is also stillgoing, I’m proud to say. And in between and always, there has been thegardening, the odds and ends like delivering newspapers, flowers, and thosetasty muffins. I’ve been a random, independent worker.
Right now, though, I’ve got my first steady pay check in years. I’m doing in home support work for a couple of disabled folks three days a week. I
clean their little houses, cook them a few meals, and walk their doggies.

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Since I’ve never been able to keep my own house clean, it’s another one oflife’s little ironies that this is my job now. And—I find it tedious in theextreme. But I’m doing it because, you see, I’ve finally—at almost sixty—
found my real work and I know that soon it will kick in and I’ll be able toquit messing around and do what I’m meant to do.
And that is—to be Rachel Carson. During all these years of all thesejobs, all this education, I’ve been writing. Writing poems, plays, children’s
stories, even a gardening book. I’ve been published a lot in places like Sinister Wisdom, Women’s Voices, even MS. Magazine once, but for the most part,when I really wanted to get my work out, I had to publish it myself. And
that’s been fun and emotionally rewarding but limited, of course, by mylimited resources and distribution.
Then, three years ago at the Junior College, I saw a woman doing a one
woman show about Alberta King, the mother of Martin Luther King. In
one hour, through her impersonation of this remarkable woman, she taught
all of us in the audience more about the life and work of Mrs. King and her
son than we would have learned in many hours of reading about them. And
she did it in a way that was enjoyable both to herself and to us. I was hooked.
I went home and said to Luna, “I want to do that, too, but I don’t know
who to be? Any ideas?”“Well, I’ve got this deck of cards of remarkable women. Let’s see whatcomes up.” And she shuffled through the deck and turned over Rachel
Carson, author of Silent Spring. “What about her? Fits in with your love ofgardening, nature, the environment, etc., doesn’t she?”“She does. I’m going to look into her. Thanks, sweetie.”
So, I did look into her and she was/is great for me. A fabulous writer, awonderful spirit, a life that was interesting and well documented. A lover ofthe ocean, the earth, the ecosystem. Like me. For months I read and readabout her, I wrote about her, I thought and thought about her. I took a theaterclass, I talked about her incessantly, I sent off for documentaries about her.
After a year or so I put together my performance, “Rachel Carson: Her Life
and Work.” I had my debut at the Sitting Room, a local women’s library, andeveryone loved it. People said I was channeling her. They said they learned
more about her life and work from my one hour performance than they would
have from hours of reading about her. I was so proud.
Now, I’ve performed my show more than a dozen times in homes, schools,
and senior centers around the bay area. And it’s great. Always well received,always stimulating and inspiring for me and for my audience. It’s my work. I
know it. And it won’t be long before my show supports me financially, too,and I can quit washing dishes and sweeping floors. And whatever else.

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Lynn Brown

Sometimes at PlayWork can be interminable, lasting until our limbs and minds unfurl
for the occupation. Just recently I succumbed to a severe disability andallowed myself to not work for a year and collect disability payments, mymoney anyhow. Then the money ran out without warning, although I
could have gotten the time limit from an 800 number if I had the perseverance to keep calling back after fifteen minute waits without a humanvoice. I stopped working because my job in home health care required acertain kind of physical strength that I wasn’t sure I could continue tomuster. I depended on my physical well being to assist others who needed
help. I loved the work often when the people I assisted were vital in someparts of their selves and enjoyed the opportunity to listen to the stories ofolder women. Many of the elderly just want to share themselves while
they have a breath left and listening can be a special service with rewards
on both sides. At the beginning I did this work in hospital situations
where I was supervised by several others and the way I performed wasmeasured in institutional doses. In other people’s homes I found myself
with some freedom to both give and receive whatever gifts I had at hand.
Of course I had to maintain daily care and order my routine so that every
need would be accomplished in a timely fashion. This was hardly everdifficult. I often had hours to read or write when the patient was unable
to do more than rest. I loved this time as well though I would be physically restless and look for ways to add something to the house’s ambience.
I honed my temperance and tolerance for all kinds of behavior including
my responses to various difficult situations. Since I had a problem “holding my tongue” I found this a personal challenge and something I wanted
to master. After all, communication is the most important human tool
we possess and totally necessary in my work. When I worked with men
the dynamic was altered because they seemed to need more babying thancare and companionship. I found all the women I assisted in their homes
to be dauntless in their desire to return to their former well being whereas
the men often crumbled under the pressures of discovering their own
mortality. It was strange but apparently the norm. Most of this happened
in a population of 65-95 year olds. I also learned about how we handle
our own dying though my experience with AIDS had previously heightened that awareness.

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Working itself seems a necessity and when we step off that wheel welook for what to do. For a year I have been able to write when I was able,
garden when I could, use my imagination to think and create for friends
and myself and support an ongoing dialogue with whatever my internal
dreaming self would offer. If it continued I would volunteer and use myartistic means to more financial gains. I haven’t had the time to do that yet
although there are projects in mind. Working on one’s self is an endless
lifetime service, a means to an end but few of us are granted time and space
to do this justice. I’m thankful for all the time that I’ve had, for the relationship that has come lately into my life with such surprise and grace, for the
chance to do some worthwhile and seemingly right livelihood contributionsin the world of communications. I appreciate the process and know that it’s
never finished, always changing and designed (if I stay awake) to reward me
with liveliness and courage, sometimes joy. As a lesbian and feminist I knowthat I have suffered discrimination in the face of others, in my work, in myrights as a person and even with other lesbian women. As a large woman I
have had to learn to stand on my own and figure it out. As an aging humanbeing I am subjected to more garbage than I can pay attention to. Therefore
I just move forward, using my lionheart to guide and allow me a path fullenough of worth and while to sustain growth and passage from this world toanother.

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Contributors’ Notes
Joan Annsfire: Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, I have lived in the
Bay Area for nearly thirty years. The process of earning a living has always
been both a struggle and a challenge for me. My work persona has gone
through many incarnations before settling into my present one as a librarian. My writing has appeared in The SoMa Literary Review, The Harrington
Lesbian Literary Quarterly, 13th Moon, Sinister Wisdom, Bridges, Evergreen
Chronicles, Mediphors, the “Cancer Poetry Project Anthology” edited by
Karin Miller, “The Other side of the Postcard” edited by devorah major andan upcoming anthology, “Identity Envy,” edited by Jim Tushinski and Jim
Van Buskirk.
Sierra Lonepine Briano: I am a 58 year old dyke living at ArtSprings,
twelve beautiful acres in Oregon. ArtSprings is a retreat for women artists
and writers.
Lynn Brown has always been a poet and lover of language, the creationof gardens, vision and touch with the intention towards friendship and healing.
Cathy Cade has been documenting the lesbian community since theearly 1970s. In addition to photography, she now offers services to people
to help tell their life stories. To see more about her work and services visit
www.cathycade.com.
Chrystos: Writer and Native Rights activist who won the Audre Lorde
International Poetry competition in 1994 and the Sappho Award of Distinction from the Astraea National Action Foundation in 1995.
Becky Banasiak Code: Her essays and poems have appeared in Sinister
Wisdom, Weird Sisters West, Notre Dame Magazine, Friendly Woman, Womenin the Outdoors, Pleasant Living Magazine, on-line in Moondance: Celebrating Creative Women, and in a book entitled, Family. She teaches histology
part-time and lives with her partner in Athens, Ohio.
Nisa Donnelly won Lambda Literary Awards for her novel, The Bar
Stories (St. Martin’s Press), and for the anthology, Mom (Alyson Publications). She is also the author of the novel, The Love Songs of Phoenix Bay (St.

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and WorkMartin’s Press), and of numerous short stories and essays, which are included in many award-winning anthologies. She and her domestic partner
Denise Wallace live in rural Shasta County, California.
Julie R. Enszer is a writer and lesbian activist living in Maryland. She
has previously been published in Iris: A Journal About Women, Room of One’s
Own, Long Shot, the Web Del Sol Review, and the Harrington Lesbian Fiction
Quarterly. Her work is forthcoming in Poetica and the Red Mountain Review. You can learn more about her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.
Roxanna N. Fiamma: I was born in Denver, Colorado in 1943; Italian
American (Olive Race), grew up working class. I came out as a Lesbian in
the late 60s and as a Separatist in the mid 70s. I taught Physical Educationin Denver until I retired in 1993. I live in northern California where I enjoy
life with my Dear Companion Dog, Phaedra and Land-Mate, Fran.
Carolyn Gage is a lesbian-feminist playwright, performer, director, andactivist. The author of four books on lesbian theatre and forty-eight plays,
musicals, and one-woman shows, she specializes in non-traditional roles for
women, especially those reclaiming famous lesbians whose stories have been
distorted or erased from history.
Sheridan Gold teaches Special Education and music to at-risk youth inan Alternative Education setting. Although she’s had her teaching credential
for 13 years, she feels she is just beginning to get a “handel” on it. She isthrilled to share that she just celebrated her 28th year anniversary with herpartner, Dianna. They live in rural Petaluma, California with their two cats,
Freedom and Sunshine.
Susan Hagen spent ten years as a volunteer firefighter/EMT in rural
Sonoma County, California, before retiring in 2004. She is a former news
journalist and co-author of the post-9/11 book, Women at Ground Zero:
Stories of Courage and Compassion (www.womenatgroundzero.com). An
award-winning nonfiction writer whose stories have appeared in a variety ofliterary publications, she is also a motivational speaker and writing teacher
who helps others give voice to their own life experiences.
Lori L. Lake is the author of lesbian fiction and a freelance reviewer for
Midwest Book Review, Golden Crown Literary Society’s The Crown, The Independent Gay Writer, and Just About Write.

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Sue Lenaerts is a Lesbian and feminist activist since forever. She now
welds web pages and databases rather than steel. She considers herself to be
Judith K. Witherow’s one and only sweet thing.
Lee Lynch’s newest novel is Sweet Creek. She has published twelve books,
the most recent of which is Rafferty Street from new Victoria Publishers(www.newvictoria.com). Her web address is http://leelynch6.tripod.com/.
She lives on the Pacific Northwest coast of the United States.
Mary Meriam is a lesbian poet-activist with an MFA in poetry from
Columbia University. Her poems have been published in So To Speak, Bay
Windows, Lodestar Quarterly, Sinister Wisdom, and HLFQ. She’s circulating
the manuscript of her first book of poems, The Countess of Flatbroke, which
has illustrations by Sudie Rakusin and an afterword by Lillian Faderman.
With Jan Steckel and Nicki Hastie, Mary started an online literary salon
called Woman-Stirred.
Bonnie Morris is a women’s history professor and lesbian writer who
has taught women’s studies at Harvard Divinity School, Georgetown, George
Washington University, and aboard ship for the Semester at Sea college voyage (twice!) She is the author of six books, including two Lambda LiteraryAward finalists (Girl Reel and The Eden Built By Eves.)
Marjorie Norris is an ardent writer who belongs to two writing groups:
Women of the Crooked Circle and Spiral Sirens. She was “Just Buffalo Poetin-Residence” in 1999, and has taught creative writing at State University of
Buffalo’s Women’s Studies Department and Chautauqua Institute, as well as
participating in Feminist Women’s Writing Workshop in Ithaca, New Yorkand Southern Lesbian Writers’ Conference outside Atlanta. She has been
published in Arizona Mandala Quarterly and other national publications.
Jamie R. Okulam: I have been the editor of Spirited Women, a literaryand spirituality magazine published by SisterSpirit, for ten years. SisterSpirit
turned twenty December 8th, 2005. During my time as editor I have written under the name Amethyst CrowMoon. Shortly after beginning my relationship with my spouse, Frodo Okulam, the founder of SisterSpirit, in
1996, I returned to school after a lifetime as a nurse’s aid. I am now finishing a master’s in the creative writing program at Portland State University
with a focus on publishing. I can be reached at: hiddenviking@yahoo.com
or the SisterSpirit Office: 503.736.3297.

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Meredith Pond is a poet and fiction writer who lives in Takoma Park,
Md. Write to her at P.O Box 5627, 20912.
Raven (1944 – 2004) described herself as a Pagan Jewish disabled Lesbian. Her articles and poems appeared in many publications such as Maize,
Lesbian Contradiction, off our backs, Common Lives/Lesbian Lives, Lesbian
Ethics, Hikané, and Dykes, Disability and Stuff.
Ida VSW Red, retired editor & librarian, University of California at
San Francisco Institute for Health & Aging, and writer & performer with
Mothertongue Feminist Theater Collective for twenty years, facilitates agroup of old lesbian writers and is learning to be old — it’s work!
Lilith Rogers is a longtime writer, gardener, and lover of women—
especially the latter. She has recently published a CD-Rom, paper-free bookof her poems and photographs (taken by herself and Sun Bell) called Persimmons and Other Lesbian Erotica. To order, contact her at
Lilithrogers1@juno.com. She is currently performing a one-woman show
about Rachel Carson.
Susan Saxe is a long-time activist who has been with ALEPH in various
capacities since 1990.
Shewolf was aUniversity Professor for twenty years in Communication,a cattle rancher for five years, and operated Womanworld, a Lesbian Community in the South, for seventeen years. She was born into a lower class,poor, catholic family in the south part of the United States; lived in eight
different states during her education and various jobs, and retired from the
University System at 52 years of age. She taught wimmin carpentry, communication skills, and community building during some of those years. She
is the originator, publisher,and editor of Shewolf’s Directory of Wimmin’s Lands
and Lesbian Communities, now in its 4th edition. Shewolf is currently coordinating a project to find housing for dykes displaced by hurricanes; shecurrently lives in Melrose, Florida, and works when and where she likes asmuch as possible.
Rose Strong is a freelance writer and artist with a day job who resides inBucks County, PA. Along with her beloved partner of nearly 19 years, she
thrives among many companion animals that share their home and inspirestories, art, laughter and love.

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Jean Taylor was born in 1944 and is a radical lesbian feminist writerand political activist based in Melbourne, Australia where she also does tai
chi and is an active member of the Victorian Women’s Liberation and Lesbian Feminist Archives collective. In between her political and writing commitments, she also knits, exhibits art work and enjoys the company of her
grandchildren.
rainbow williams, a found object artist, lived at pagoda communityfor 20 years, edited a monthly newsletter Changes, in orlando for 8 yrs,
participated in the “Peace Walk” gainesville to key west, 1984. taught art
and worked as architectural drafter til retirement. now runs a non commercial gallery and salon, Riverview, in st augustine. i am 72, single, and i datewith glacial speed. www.geocities.com/williamsrainbow

Judith K. Witherow is an American Indian storyteller, poet and essayist. Her book of poetry, All Things Wild, was recently reviewed in Lambda
Book Report. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Sinister Wisdom. Her website is: www.jkwitherow.com
zana: i’m 58, jewish, living in the desert near tucson, arizona, for 21
years.

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Books Received
Descanso: A Soul Journey by Cynthia Tyler. Haworth Press, Binghamton,
NY, 13904.
An Emergence of Green by Katherine V. Forrest. Haworth Press,
Binghamton, NY, 13904.
“Kalliope: a Journal of Women’s Literature and Art,” Volume XXVII
No.2.
Modeware: Home Ground by Patricia Sykes. Spinifex, 2004.
Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory,and the Sacred by M. Jacqui Alexander. Duke University Press, 2005.
The Seven Sisters of the Pleiades: Stories from Around the World by Munya
Andrews. Spinifex, 2004.
The Wings of Angels: A
Memoir of Madness by
Sandy Jeffs. Spinifex, 2004.
Lesbian Ex-Lovers: The
Really Long-Term Relationships by Jacqueline S.
Weinstock and Esther D.
Rothblum. Haworth Press,
Binghamton, NY 13904:

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Books Reviewed
Julie R. Enszer, Reviewer
Sweet to Burn by Beverly Burch and Some Very Soft Days by Margo Solod
Writing Our Lesbian Lives in Poetry
There is a dearth of lesbian words in the literary world. As a result, I
think that each book of poetry published by a lesbian should be met withtintinnabulation across our lesbian land. Two first books by lesbians rang in
my ears this year.
Sweet to Burn by Beverly Burch is a novel written in verse. It is a lovestory between Meg and Alice from their meeting in a bar in San Francisco
through their “perimenopausal mid-winter” to being “old sweethearts” in“the backyard at 9 p.m.”
Sweet to Burn is filled with the details and texture of lesbian life in the San
Francisco bay area which makes it rich and engaging. Burch tells a compellingstory of lesbian life at the end of the last millennium and the beginning of
this; these characters are both women I know and women I want to know.
I especially enjoyed Sweet to Burn when Burch delved into the moredifficult questions that we face as lesbians: parenthood, infidelity. For me,
the best poem of the collection is the one where infidelity is exposed, “Promises.” It begins with Meg speaking:Alice speaks of the new cook at her job:
she studied in France, worked at Chez Panisse,traveled in her twenties, café to café—
Alice stays at work late, long after lunchtime.
Then suddenly on duty for dinner,comes home giddy with wine.
It ends with Meg recounting these devastating lines from Alice, “It won’t
happen again./I’ll change jobs. We’ll take some trips.” Burch has an ear for
capturing our words and our emotions in the compact language of poetry.
I was disappointed by only two things in the collection. First, each section is narrated which propels the reader through the story that she is telling
but I felt was unnecessary and could have been done just with the poems.
Second, at times, the voices of the two lovers did not differentiate them-100sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Workselves as two autonomous voices. These are minor quibbles, however, in astrong and compelling book.
Sweet to Burn comes to us seventeen years after Marilyn Hacker’s Love,
Death, and the Changing of the Seasons, a book of sonnets that chronicles her
relationship with a younger woman from the hot sex through its eventual
demise. Reading Burch’s book through the lens of Hacker’s is to see theprogress for lesbians and queer rights.
Sweet to Burn is an important contribution to our lesbian heritage. It
was the 2004 winner of the Gival Press Poetry Award. I hope many morelesbian voices come forward through that prize.
Some Very Soft Days by Margo Solod is her impressive first book of poetry. Solod has a clear and definitive poetic voice. She opens Some Very SoftDays with “Credo” and these lines:
I believe in the sanctity of handmade quilts,
In unlocked doors, in anyone who’s lived a hundred years
Or more. I believe in eating what you kill,
And hanging up the bathmat. I believe in kissing away tears,
She ends that poem: “I believe in dreams of grandeur,/in the curve of awoman’s hip as a form of prayer.” I wanted to stand up and say, “I do, too!”Some Very Soft Days has four sections. The first and the last are thestrongest, though the dramatic monologues in the second section are interesting and engaging, but without the deep truth that she conveys in her
more confessional poetry. I struggled with the third section, perhaps mylimitation as a reader, but I found that I couldn’t follow the narrative arc andfelt that the collection might have been stronger without it.
Solod’s strength as a poet is in taking on the large questions or the big
ideas and distilling them into the particular and concrete images. The final
section of the book, “Disguised as a Child” is filled with poems that exemplify this. In “Who Decides,” she writes,
That a box of matches shouldbe thirty-two, while a bookholds only twenty?
And ends the myriad of childlike questions, with these devastating lines,“that my sixth year would be a blur of not remembering anything/except
the hands of the man next door?”summer 2006

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In the same section, the poem “What We Know” concludes, “She sits
there, watches me paint./Her coffee cools. I paint her watching me.” Solodalso questions and answers these phrases, “Why You Left,” “Why I Can’t
Forgive You,” “What We See,” and “Since You Asked.”
Some Very Soft Days is a very fine book-length entry for Margo Solod.
According to biography on the book, Solod has previously published fourchapbooks and more than one hundred poems. She has more work andbased on this first book, we should all be waiting for it with great anticipation.
Both books are available online from fine booksellers and locally. You
can also order copies through the publisher’s websites.
Sweet to Burn, Beverly Burch, 2004, Gival Press, www.givalpress.com
Some Very Soft Days, Margo Solod, 2005, Mayapple Press,www.mayapplepress.com§
Lori L. Lake, Reviewer
The Temple at Landfall, by Jane Fletcher,Bold Strokes Books,
www.boldstrokesbooks.com, released Nov 30, 2005, ISBN: 1933110279,$15.95, 300 pages
In the Temple in the city of Fairfield, a young woman named Lynn does
the important work of helping women reproduce. She is a sort of psychic
DNA-knitting doctor/priest and is called an imprinter. Imprinters are chosen very young for their psychic abilities and are taken from the families toserve Celaeno, the great goddess of the people. Everything about Lynn’s
world is focused on prayer, imprinting, and the teachings of Celaeno. The
imprinting skill she shares brings in a fortune in “offerings” (required by the
Church) from eager women desperate for children. There is no separationof Church and State; they are one and the same.
After a couple of decades of this mind-numbing, psychologically draining work, the book opens with Lynn in a state of depression. Once a month
during a religious ritual on the steps of the Temple, she sees the outdoors.
Otherwise, she is locked into the tomb-like environment of the Temple,
never to have a lover, never to have freedom, never to know anything but alife of service. She is basically held captive, a prisoner of her own abilities—
until the day Sister Smith, from the larger Temple in Landfall, appears and102

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Workwrangles with the authorities to take the talented imprinter far away to a
bigger, more powerful Temple. Lynn is excited to make the long journeyduring which, perhaps for the last time, she can enjoy the forests, the cool
air at night, and the freedom to walk on the woodland paths and see themoon.
A squadron of Rangers, including Lt. Kimberly Ramon, is assigned toescort the Sisters and Lynn on the long journey over the mountains and to
the south. And this is where the adventure begins. For the first time sincechildhood, Lynn is among real and interesting women, and she is quitetaken with Ramon, who has her own secrets and griefs. “As much as anything, Lynn enjoyed the honest, open banter, although the jokes were frequently bawdy. To Lynn’s mind they were far less offensive than the conversation of the sisters; the intimidation by pious quotes; the politicalbackstabbing disguised in religious platitudes. The soldiers spoke of a world
Lynn would never know, but it didn’t matter. Their stories were like breathing fresh air after years of choking in incense” (p. 76).
The soldiers are also brave, and when they are attacked on the journey,
everything about the trip changes. Lynn’s ability to envision herself as a freewoman begins to grow. But can she shake free of the grip of the Church?
How far will the powers-that-be go in order to keep her to themselves?
This fundamentalist society, operating based upon bits and pieces oflore, abridged history, inaccurate facts, and misguided good intentions, isall the more frightening because it is peopled only by women. In Fletcher’s
world of Celaeno, it’s not men with the compulsion to render matters of life
into simplistic and often bone-crushing black and white; women can be
and are just as dangerous.
With rich, glorious prose, Jane Fletcher has created a spell-binding world
and a variety of fascinating and multi-dimensional characters. The world is
so compelling that I couldn’t help but wish I could quite literally go there!
Lynn’s quest, as well as Kim Ramon’s quest, make for exciting reading. At its
heart, the book is an adventure/quest, but it is also a mystery. Who are thesepeople? Where did they come from? What happened to the men, if, indeed,
there ever were any? The back story of the previous 533 years is unraveledslowly, but surely, for the reader so that by the end of the book, all is revealed.
The Temple at Landfall, which was originally published in England as
The World Celaeno Chose, is absorbing and engrossing tale-telling of thehighest order, and the really exciting thing is that although this novel iscomplete and “finished,” the door is left open to explore more of this world,which the author has done in subsequent books. I can’t wait to read the next

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Celaeno volumes, and this book is a keeper that I will re-read again andagain. I highly recommend it.
§
Lilith Rogers, Reviewer
Freedom is Your Human Right! Accepting and Honoring Yourself, by Dianna
L. Grayer, M.F.T., I’m Special Publications, P.O. Box 452, Petaluma, CA,
94953, 135pp, $16.95
As Dianna writes near the end of Freedom, “You deserve to feel good.
Think of using these tools to invest in yourself. That’s what this whole bookis about. Think of your needs and take care of yourself.” And that really iswhat this whole book is about. Although Dianna dedicates Freedom toLGBT’s (that’s lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders in case you didn’tknow) it would be a useful tool for anyone struggling with low self-esteem,with confusion about their purpose in life, or with fear of taking the next
step. One chapter is aptly titled “Removing the Chains of Bondage.”
Freedom is a combination of Dianna’s prose, poetry, and empowering
exercises. The final chapter is a compilation of columns dealing with personal freedom, family, and relationship issues co-written by Dianna and herpartner Sheridan Gold for We The People. Since Dianna is a practicing psychotherapist and a foster parent caring for troubled teens—she and Sheridan
have taken in 25 kids over the years—she brings the voice of authority to
her writing.
In these difficult times, when giving up seems to be easier to do thannot, Dianna’s strong voice of encouragement may be just what we need tohelp us stay the course. Actually, it will help us find the course first, set out
on it, and then stay with it. It reminds me of the old Jimmy Cliff song I
throw on my CD player most every morning to help me get out of bed—
“You can get it if you really want it, you can get it if you really want it, but
you must try, try and try. You’ll succeed at last!”
When I spoke with Dianna a few weeks ago about her book and how toapproach it, she told me many people would probably skip around in it—
read a poem here or do an exercise there and they would definitely benefit
somewhat from it’s message. But, if they started at the beginning and worked
their way right through, they would feel they’d started at the base of a highmountain which appeared too steep to climb but, by the end, they’d findthemselves smiling and waving from the summit. And that is Dianna’s fer-

104

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Workvent desire for her readers, her clients, her children and, I’m sure, her friends
as well. That we should all climb that mountain, however intimidating it
appears to be from the bottom, and open ourselves up to a happy, free,productive life. As she says in the chapter on soul searching, “Now you are
the director of your life. Your new leadership will guide you forward...”For information about local appearances, go to
www.iamspecialpublications.com.
Originally published in Women’s Voices, August 2003. Reprinted withpermission from author.
§
Dianna L. Grayer, Reviewer
PERSIMMONS and Other Lesbian Erotica, by Lilith Lynn Rogers,
Earthy Mama Press, 96 pages, $15.00
Imagine yourself biting into a big, soft, juicy, really, really ripe persimmon with its juices dripping off your mouth and sliding down your chin.
Yes, that’s exactly what
PERSIMMONS and Other Lesbian Erotica is. From the beginning to
the end, it’s a juicy ride. Lilith Rogers has stepped out into the area of sexualpleasure. Even though sex is often taboo to discuss openly, people seek sexual
excitement and enjoyment through many means, including with poetry andprose. Lilith has gone a step further by openly sharing some of her personal
exotic, steamy, sexual encounters. As you read the stories you will see andfeel Lilith’s sense of sexual freedom and liberation. She exudes sexual energy
and clearly has had partners who share her desire and openness.
Lilith writes, “I’m convinced that joyous, ecstatic, blissful, exciting, creative, and fun lovemaking is the best, most wonderful healing gift we cangive to ourselves, our lovers, and to the world.” Lilith’s freedom of sexual
expression is refreshing and surprisingly soothing, because she handles her
partners like she would a ripe juicy persimmon; with tenderness and care.
Her goal is to please, as she nibbles, caresses, sucks and licks, making sure
she stimulates the flow of her mates’ natural juices. “Your dear hand slides
into my so wet yoni in and up you press into me and I lift one leg onto yourchair so you can get higher there, there, there.”
Lilith is a poetic writer; her words flow rhythmically across the pages ofher book. “Thrusting my tongue into your mouth, stealing the sweet, seedy
fig from your mouth as your magic body pressed along my magic body, fig

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juice sticking us together—tit & cunt—merging ourbodies, mingling our desires.” I especially enjoyed
Lilith’s connection to the earth and references tonature: “Over our heads the birds are singing...,”“...we stood arm and arm naked under the light warm
rain, the pale blue sky.” She is an earthly Goddessthat loves and nurtures earth’s bounties, especially awoman’s body, no matter what her size, shape, color,
texture, or age.
Lilith’s book is also a tool that will help those
women who are modest but desire more sexual freedom. Her openness, freedom and attention to pleasure, as both a giver anda receiver, are educational and validating to the female experience. Her connection with her sexual energy and desires are contagious and an inspiration
for women to acquire and achieve.
Don’t let the length of this book fool you. It is packed with informationthat you can use to move your sexual experiences to a heightened and moresatisfying level. You too can learn to be freer in yourself and freer to explore
the using some of nature’s juicy fruits to turn a dull afternoon, night or
morning into unforgettable orgasms. You can begin to create your own sweetand juicy memories to hold and cherish.
The book I viewed on CD is alive with many stunning photographs ofwomen and nature. They add a special touch, especially the one that has
two mouths devouring a divine wet and juicy persimmon. I will never view
persimmons the same way again.
I must admit that reading the book to review it was a totally different
experience from hearing Lilith read her stories live. I, with ten to fifteen
other women, sat one afternoon and listened to the sapphic words roll off
her tongue. It was like we were with her on the many rides she shared withus. The room at times was filled with laughter and many oooh’s and ahhh’sand even some yummmm’s! It was lots of fun and, of course, stimulating. I
believe many of the women left rejuvenated, alive, and ready to explore
their own sexual playfulness. It is evident that Lilith’s sexual freedom andcomfort is contagious.
For information on how to order PERSIMMONS And Other Lesbian
Erotica, and other writings from Lilith, write Lilith Rogers at Earthy Mama
Press, P.O. Box 2455, Sebastopol, CA 95473, or email
LilithRogers1@Juno.com.
§

106

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Workrainbow williams, Reviewer
Beyond Recall by Mary Meigs, edited by Lise Weil,
Talonbooks,Vancouver, 2005 ISBN -088922 -505 –2 $15.95
This precious book has just been lent to me by lovely lesbian friends
from Canada, who knew Mary and were part of her network of friends andcaregivers. From the moment I held it, it felt familiar and trusting as thehands of an old friend. With a fondness for reality that is manifest in her
life, this book is Mary's journey into her own aging and dying. It is radiantwith spirit, with truth and beauty, and sparkles with her wit. Here was alesbian sister who was connected with our own Florida community: Sugarloaf
KeyWomens Village, and refers to Ruth Dreamdigger and Barbara Deming
and their conscious dying.
In 1988 I saw a film called The Company of Strangers which was aloosely scripted affair by a Canadian film board, in which I first got to "meet"
Mary playing herself, with six other women, who were not Lesbian. The
bus breaks down and leaves the women "shipwrecked" with each other for ashort period of time, in which they improvise and face their demons. Evenin the film she had her note/sketch book and watercolors, which continued
to be her daily companions.
Later she was working on a speech to be delivered at OLOC (Old
Lesbians Organizing for Change).
"The dying process today has become the subject of a vast field ofstudy in order to meet the needs, which have become big business. The
ideal is to provide a setting of care and friendliness with interests and activities that will prevent people from feeling bored or abandoned. To me themost successful of these environments falls shortof the caring for dying friends in a lesbian community by a support group that views death asa final kind of sharing. Barbara Deming took
us into her own fear and pain toward the acceptance of her own death; so did Ruth
Dreamdigger. Each of them took charge of her
own death surrounded by loving friends andsuch grace, generosity of spirit that those friends
and family who were present felt honored andincluded.”“ The lesbian community at Sugarloaf Key,the one I know and admire for their sensitive

summer 2006

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attention to each other, has learned from experience that a dying friend's
deepest need, even when she cannot speak, is to be listened to." (Mary Meigs,
the OLOC Reporter- Fall 1999).
Mary Meigs continued to write and draw and paint her lovely watercolors, and one flowering of these latter days was some playful handwritten
faxes, from her kitty (well illustrated in line drawings) to her friend MC.
And “freewriting”, which was a new and liberating technique for Mary andresulted in some stunning poems and journal entries. See pages 146 -7 for
four of these. Mary Meigs has gifted us with her dreams, her fears, andpenetrating discussions of everything that was in her mind; let us see her
shadows and her lights.
This is a book that I want to keep AND to give away to every deep friend.
§
Meredith Pond, Reviewer
All Things Wild: Poems from the Appalachians by Judith K. Witherow.
Twin Spirits Publishing ISBN 0-9747172-0-7 PB, $9.95, 56 pp.
Native Storyteller
The winner of the first annual Audre Lorde Memorial Prose Contest
for nonfiction a decade ago, Judith K. Witherow celebrates her sixtieth yearwith the publication of her first collection of poems, All Things Wild: Poems
from the Appalachians. Haiku, free verse and photography, this book gives us
a glimpse of how her love of nature and reverence for the outrageous havemade her strong, full of humor and very, very wise.
A political activist recognized for her widely published essays about her
experiences with disability, gender and race and class issues, Judith Witherow
has published poetry and essays for more than thirty years.
The poems in All Things Wild are “inspired by everyone and everythingthat was ever typecast as untamed and untrained,” she says in the introduction. Her world is red-dog shale and long-needle pines, the Texas two-stepand soulful ballads, shamans and sun-brushed women.
All Things Wild celebrates the story of Witherow’s life, from growing up
in poverty to becoming a lesbian feminist. In a few brush strokes, simple
words show us what it means to grow up without heat or plumbing in thecoal towns of Pennsylvania’s Appalachia, or how it feels to live close to nature, or what her life is like as a lesbian.

108

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

The way Witherow tells it, “My partner Sue and I have been together
for almost twenty-eight years. We have three sons and four grandchildren.
Some people say their partner keeps them humble. Sue does just the opposite. With her I feel like someone special.”
When Witherow first showed her mother one of her early poems, “Itseemed like she took forever reading it,” she says. “When she was finished,
she looked me square in the eye. ‘Tell me the truth now,’ she said. ‘Do you
know all of those words, or did you find them in the dictionary?’ Then she
said, ‘It’s real nice but it sure doesn’t rhyme does it?’”
Her intuitive connections to the world of nature and animals reveal her
Native American roots. “There’s an almost religious worship of the simplest
item that my eye beholds,” she says. “It’s the reason I wanted to place photographs beside so many of the poems—to share what the words were seeing. If I couldn’t see or touch things happening on the other side of the glass
there would be little reason for living.”“I’m a poet, essayist and storyteller,” she says. “Storyteller is my favorite. It’s the Native American way of passing on oral histories. This is naturalfor my family, but sometimes I feel like some of the stories shouldn’t betalked about. Not everyone recognizes the drama and humor of daily life.”
One such story is her struggle with health issues that prompted hercommitment as a health care activist. “One of my chronic illnesses is systemic lupus. ‘Canis lupus’ is the Latin name for wolf. Lupus causes a reddish wolf-like mask on the face during lupus flares. When I heard the nameI decided to get a tattoo of a wolf on my arm to protect from the evil that
was attacking my body,” she says. “I study the habits of all kinds of animals,
but the wolf is my totem. Its ‘pack mentality’ agrees with my way of thinking. I am very clan identified, and I nurture and guard those around me likethe wolf does.”
Judith Witherow is a study in determination. For more than half a century, she’s kept her family and friends close and loved them well. All Things
Wild is a testament to that love.
For more of Judith K. Witherow’s stories and poems, or to order her
book, visit her web site at www.jkwitherow.com.
Reprinted with permission from Lambda Book Report April – May 2005

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Poetry and photographs
by lesbian feminist author

Judith K. Witherow

All Things Wild
Poems from the Appalachians• Beautiful. Connective. Important and Empowering.
Nayiree - Rain and Thunder• Great Book! It’s so reassuring to know that the mountains are there
where you left them.

Carol Anne Douglas - off our backs• You take a view of translating and interpreting the world as you see
it ... both the beautiful and the not-so-beautiful.
Nkenge Toure - In Our Voices - WPFW

$9.95 plus $1.50 shipping & handling.
(MD residents add 5% sales tax)

Send check or money order payable to:Twin Spirits Publishing
P.O. Box 1237 • Clinton, MD 20735

Visit Judith online at www.jkwitherow.com

Books by Chrystos
Available once again, the groundbreaking collection of lesbian erotica, In Her I Am, by Chrystos.
Please send a $20 U.S. Post Office money ordermade to Chrystos to : Her GiveAway Press, P.O.
Box 4663, Rolling Bay, WA, 98061.
Copies of Fire Power are also available for $10.

110

sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

Sinister Wisdom
A Multicultural Journal by & for Lesbians

Celebrating 29 Years!
“Truly reflects what
lesbians are thinking & doing.”-Henrietta Bensussen in Women’s Voices

Recent & Forthcoming Issues# 61 Women Loving Women in Prison# 62 Lesbian Writers on Writing & Reading# 63 Lesbians & Nature# 64 Lesbians and Music, Drama & Art# 65 Lesbian Mothers & Grandmothers# 66 Lesbian Activists# 67 Lesbians & Work
# 68 Death, Grief and Surviving# 69/70 30th Anniversary Celebration# 71 Two Spirit Women of First Nations# 72 Utopia
Subscription Rates & Writing Guidelines at:www.sinisterwisdom.org
SW, POB 3252, Berkeley, CA 94703

summer 2006

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HAD05

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summer-2006

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Correction
The article titled “San Francisco Dyke March Statement 2005” printed
in Sinister Wisdom #66 on pp. 97 - 100 should have been titled “Excerpts
from the San Francisco Dyke March Statement 2005.” We apologize for theerror. For the complete statement go to the Dyke March website atwww.dykemarch.org.
The sections on Dyke Identity and Who We Are as they appear in thestatement are printed below.
DYKE IDENTITY - A MARCH FOR ALL DYKES
We continue to demand that the Dyke March and rally be DYKEONLY SPACE. In other words, we ask that men NOT participate, butrather that our brothers support us from the sidelines, cheering us on andhelping with finances or other support.
This march is for DYKES. Dykes gather at the Dyke March to celebrate our love and passion for women and for ALL dykes. We celebrate ourqueerness in all its manifestations. Given this year’s theme, Dykes AcrossBorders, we understand DYKE IDENTITY to include those of us who arequestioning and challenging gender constructs and the social definitions of
women, and who are gender fluid. We also welcome all women who want tosupport dykes to march with us. Celebrate Dyke Diversity!
WHO WE ARE
The coordinating committee is a crew of community-oriented dykes
who come together from varying backgrounds through our love of dykes
and for the San Francisco Dyke March. We are grateful for the work of theDM’s founders (the Original Girls) over its first 11 years, for their continued guidance, and for the foundation they laid that we now stand upon in
our work to keep the annual March thriving. We are femmes, butches, andotherwise-identified; dykes-of-color, dykes of mixed race, Jewish dykes, andwhite dykes; dykes of varying ages and classes. Some of us identify as queer,
as genderqueer, and as transgendered. We are each of us dykes seeking to
put our myriad talents to use for our communities.
This committee could not bring you each year’s Dyke March without
the help of dedicated volunteers, exceptional performers willing to donate
their phenomenal talent at fundraisers and at the rally, small businesses (mostof which are dyke- and woman-owned) donating services, a few small grants
and a lot of t-shirt sales (buy those t-shirts!). Thank you!

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sinister wisdom #67 — Lesbians and Work

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