sinister wisdom 49. ., "·~'~~,-·~~'i .
'\.W:.·~:"

the lesbian bodySinister Wisdom 49
Spring/Summer 1993
Publisher: Sinister Wisdom, Inc.
Editor: Elana Dykewomon

Editorial readers and advisors: Caryatis Cardea, Cath Thompson, Jamie
Lee Evans, Jasmine Marah, Julia (Dolphin) Trahan, Karyn Sanders, Laura
Munter-Orabona, Sauda Burch, SJ Kahn
Contributing editor: Gloria Anzaldua
Volunteer Coordinator: Susan Levinkind
Office Coordinator: Caryatis Cardea
Advertising Coordinator: Jamie Lee Evans
Fulfillment: Dolphin Waletzky
Production: Angela Koenig, Barbara Selfridge, Betty Dudley, Cath Thompson,
Caryatis Cardea, Jessica Bucciarelli, Susan Goldberg, Susan Levinkind
Office help, correspondence and accounting: Frayda Garfinkle, Janet
Pettini, Jasmine Marah, Laura Munter-Orabona, Linda Shear, SJ Kahn
Thanks to Bobby Rothschild and Rebecca Kutlin of Tamed Technology
Distribution and mailing crew: Aimee Waldman, Betty Rose Dudley,
Beverly Chandler, Carol Ann Baker, Caryatis Cardea, Casey Fisher, CathThompson, Dolphin Waletzky, Hadas Weiss, Jamie Lee Evans, Leslie Levy,
Lisa Carlin, Mady Shumofsky, Michele Nichols, Samara, Susan Levinkind,Susan Wittcoff, Suz Fields
Reader for the Womyn's Braille Press: Judy Freespirit
Cover art: Mandorla of the Spinning Goddess (etching, sepia ink, 18"x24", firstedition 1982), by Judith Anderson (photo by J. Colando). The mandorla isthe oval/almond shape formed by two intersecting circles, used in various
religions as a symbol of co-mingling realms (spirit/matter, life/death), but
clearly representing the yoni - the female genitalia.

SINISTER WISDOM, founded 1976
Former editors and publishers: Harriet Ellenberger (aka Desmoines)
and Catherine Nicholson (1976-81)
Michelle Cliff and Adrienne Rich (1981-83)
Michaele Uccella 0983-84)
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1983-87)
Copyright © 1993 Sinister Wisdom, Inc. All rights reserved to individual artists and authors.
ISSN: 0196-1853. Printed in the U.S. on recycled paper.

Sinister Wisdom, Inc. • PO Box 3252 • Berkeley CA 94703 • US

A Journalfor the Lesbian Imagination

hi theA.rts and Politics

This issue of Sinister Wisdom
is dedicated to thememory and inspiration of
Audre Lorde(1934-1992)

I have heard you calling
across this land in my blood(from "Meet," published in

Sinister Wisdom #3, 1977)

Sinister Wisdom is a multi-cultural, multi-class, womon-born lesbian
space. We seek to open, consider and advance the exploration of community issues. Sinister Wisdom recognizes the power of language to reflect
our diverse experiences and to enhance our ability to develop critical
judgment, as lesbians evaluating our communities and our world.

2

sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

Contents ___________________________________
4 Elana Dykewomon • Notes for a Magazine: Our Bodies Are
the Flags
10 Jamie Lee Evans • Notes for a Magazine: Internalizing the
Lesbian of Color Body
14 Sauda Burch • Notes for a Magazine: Ode to a Black Lesbian Body
15 Deborah. Reflections on my lesbian body (narrative)
16 Alejandra Laurenz • Listen/Escucha (poem)
18 Kadeth Pozzesi • Silent Pride (narrative)
21 Caroline Halliday • the lesbian body (narrative)
26 Peg O'Connor • When Docile Bodies Dance (essay)
34 Sheila J. Packa • A Woman Playing Ball (poem)
36 Janet Mason • "You know I used to work in the sex industry"(poem)
38 Kate Berne Miller • Women with Knives (poem)
39 Laura Hershey • Self-Body-Portrait (poem)
40 Naja Sorella • Basics (narrative)
44 Lisa Edmonds • Double Target (poem)
47 Judith P. Stelboum • Sliding into Home: Identifying LesbianSex (essay)
54 Cherie Bowers • Fingers in Popcorn (poem)
55 Suzanne. Opening Dialogue (narrative)
56 Donna Tanigawa • I Like My Chi-i-sa-i Body Now (narrative)
60 Arl Spencer Nadel • The Bus (poem)
62 Elissa Raffa • Skinny Sisters (performance piece)
71 Arl Spencer Nadel • 6/29/92 (poem)
73 Kelly Jean Cogswell • Chronic Blues (poem)
74 Chaia Zblocki Heller • I Don't Touch My Breasts Anymore(poem)
75 Dion Farquhar • Left Us Talking (poem)
78 Angela Koenig • from Meaning and Myth in Menopause(essay)83 jill falzoi • dying to (fiction)
89 Connie Meredith • Wild Woman (poem)
90 Julia (Dolphin) Trahan • Queen of the Girls (narrative)
95 Barbara Ruth • The Writer in the Mirror (poem)

Spring/Summer 1993

98
105
110
114
115
117
120
123
129
135
144

3

Cheryl J. Moore • Black earth, white, the sky (fiction)
Sonja Franeta • My Violin Loves to Play (narrative)
K. Linda Kivi • Moonriders (fiction)
Laura Hershey • canyon (poem)
Magdalena Zschokke • Rewriting the Lesbian Body (review
of The Lesbian Body)
Rebecca Ripley • Keeping it in the Family (review)
Rebecca Ripley • By Word of Mouth (review)
Books received
Contributors' notes
Classified ads and announcements
Upcoming issues§§§

ARTcover Judith Anderson • Mandorla of the Spinning Goddess (etching)
20 Kadeth Pozzesi • Surgical scar & tattoo on the breasts that I
love (pen & ink)
25 Elizabeth D. Ross • Areas of Injury I, II & III (monotype &chin colle)
33 L.A. Hyder • Reflection (photograph)
45 Kathleen DeBold • ... Ghost of Lesbians Past (cartoon)
46 Julie Finn • Constrict/Construct (photographs)
55 Juarez Hawkins· Jody <Computer graphic)
70 Jane Philomen Cleland • Susan & Susan at Let It All Hang
Out Day (photograph)
77 Louise Gilbert • Woman in Red Cap (charcoal)
104 CathyCade. What We Do With Our Bodies Series, #12: Mud
Lady (photograph)
109 JEB· Three bellies with shell (photograph)

Much of the artwork in this issue carne from the Lesbian Visual Artists
Slide Registry. Our thanks to Happy (L.A.) Hyder for a wonderful afternoon poring through hundreds of slides of lesbians' work. Lesbian Visual
Artists is a promotional and networking organization concentrating on
visibility. Members corne from around the world. For information, write
or call LVA: 3543 18th St. #5, S.F., CA 94110 or 415-821-2975.

4

sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

Notes for a Magazine ____________
Elana Dykewomon

Our bodies are the flags

In
this issue there are three "notes from the editor" - mine, Jamie's
and Sauda's. At the end of two of our editorial meetings Jamie,
Saud a, SJ, Laura, Cath, Julia, Karyn and I talked about the ways
we experience and perceive our own bodies (literally and metaphorically), and the anti-Iesbian/lesbian-feminist backlash. We
found the idea of a lesbian body to be a kind of labyrinth - a seriesof chambers in which it is difficult to find our way, though we canhear her heartbeat through the walls. That several of us wanted tofollow that heartbeat in separate directions seemed useful - ourdifferent perspectives give some clues to the complexity of "thelesbian body." While all our notes are editorial comment, they
are meant not as group consensus but as our own voices .
For me, this started as such a clear idea: to reclaim lesbianidentity. We, lesbians, will get to say who we are and who we arenot. Politically, sexually, emotionally, within our communities. We
will have space to discuss owning ourselves.
I've been wanting to do this issue for a year or two, in part to
explore how we understand "lesbianism" in the present, in partto respond to attacks on lesbian identity. I believe the ideas thatlesbians can sleep with men, that faggots can call themselves
dykes and dykes can avail themselves of male privileges bycalling themselves faggots, that men can be women and women
who pass do it because they're simply "playing with gender" are meant to divide and destroy us, to drive us literally out of ourown minds.
But I feel already driven out. Or more like I'm driving a carwith no brakes down a side road in the mountains and it keeps
picking up speed. I don't know how to contain myself and makea nice, neat, clear argument. I have to finish ten books first, reread
everything that came out in the last twenty years, find out exactly
what deconstruction and essentialism mean. How am I going todo that, edit the magazine, go to work and have a life?

Spring/Summer 1993

5

But I've got to try. I understand lesbians' claim to own ourselves (well, it's a stance more than a reality) as heroic1 . Our
minds, our bodies, our labor, our sex, our heritages are constantstaging grounds for war. Vastly out-powered on every front, wemanage to survive and, for moments, thrive.
Owning ourselves is, after all, no small feat. That lesbians aredifferent from "women"2 means something. Consider, for aminute, women's bodies: women have been owned for centuries.
This isn't just some old-fashioned out-of-date political conceit it's why the abortion rights fight is so ugly, why fundamentalism issurging across the globe. The appropriation of female labor including reproductive labor - is the cornerstone of social organization in the world we know. The resurgence of "family values"
is the brother-movement to the ethnic "cleansing" movements
we're seeing worldwide. These movements are a strategic reestablishment of hierarchical male power that positions individual
men to rule and fight for rulers hip and resources. But in order formen to do this, women have to be kept in line.
Men create ideas about what woman are in order to control
them. These ideas vary from culture to culture, but their use is thesame: to isolate females, to control their reproductive functions,to use their physical labor to support and enrich males, to keep
females out of public spheres as much as possible - certainlyout of positions of power. Those who think "real progress" isbeing made might consider that in the United States, a 6% woman
membership in the Senate is hailed as "revolutionary."
The "ideas" about women - sometimes called the "construction of women as a class"3 - work so well because they're so
individualized, and because women are so isolated from eachother. A good woman is a jewel; a bad woman courts disaster. A
woman has the power to be "good" or "bad" - her rewards in life
will reflect her choice. Which is, interestingly enough, a choice
1 While I have had the good fortune to always perceive womyn as "heroic," I
refer here to Marilyn Murphy's essay "The Lesbian as Hero" (in Are You Girls
Traveling Alone?, Los Angeles: Clothespin Fever Press, 1991), a wonderful
encouragement to take our ordinary bravery seriously.
2 Definition appears to be 9/10ths of the problem. For the purpose of thisarticle, I use the word "female" to mean someone born with a vagina and awomb, and "woman" to mean all cultural/economic images created as trappings for that female. The same for males / men, although it's males who create
the images of men to, literally, suit themselves.
3 Monique Wittig was the first lesbian I know to use this phrase.

6

sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

about how she uses her body. But both choices, "good" and ''bad,''belong to men, because men make these images and police theirenforcement (often conscripting women to police for them).
Other lesbians of course have written papers and books on
the way these things work - I think of Marilyn Frye and Monique
Wittig in particular. But the point is: a lesbian is in opposition toa "woman" by her very being4 • Of course we have to work on men's
terms to make a living, but even so we mostly rent our bodies out.
A lesbian body is, theoretically, a body that no man owns.
Which may be why so many folks are out to ''bend'' the definition of a lesbian out of recognition. If the word lesbian loses its
power and meaning, but the distribution of wealth, resourcesand opportunity remains overall the same, who benefits? In the
midst of the San Francisco Bay Times' current "gender debates,"
Caryatis Cardea wrote: "If a woman who sleeps with both females
and males is a lesbian; and, if a man who submits to surgicalprocedure to bring his body in line with his acceptance of sex role
stereotypes, is a lesbian; and if a straight woman whose spiritualbond is with other females is a lesbian, then what is a femaleborn-female who loves only other females? Soon there will be nological answer to that question."sEvery gay paper is filled with these "gender debates." It's the'90s - you are me and she is he and we are all together (okay, so
the Beatles did it 20 years ago, that only means they were aheadof their time, not that we're just following an old groove, right?).
Transsexual men 6 and their friends call lesbians hate-mongers,
fascists and "essentialists" for not opening every lesbian andwomen's organization to them. It's in vogue for everyone to bea bi-sexual (the "natural" human state, which, oddly enough,makes lesbianism "unnatural" all over again).
Of course there's a pivotal point in these arguments: what are
women and men? If a woman is the sum of her clothing and manI doubt the majority of lesbians would agree with me, still I think this is so.
It's what makes being a lesbian scary. It's why heterosexuals wish us to beinvisible and why so many of us go to such great lengths to convince them
we're "just like them."
5 San Francisco Bay Times, Vol. 14, No.5, Dec. 3 1992.
6 Because I refuse to consider them females or lesbians doesn't imply I haveno compassion for them (although heaven forbid a lesbian shouldn't havecompassion for everyone) - I just would appreciate their claiming their own
identity rather then appropriating lesbians' .
4Spring/Summer 1993

7

nerisms, then a man can become one, and the line so often read in
lesbian personals, "must look like a woman" would make sense.
This is a very confusing and tricky set of logical propositions.
Here's the problem: if I claim that there is no such thing as "awoman" or as "the feminine" then I am claiming that a male orfemale's attempt to be a "feminine woman" is an exercise in illusion (at best).
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you believe there isa "feminine principle" - some cosmic archetypal yin-thing thattranscends culture, because it's found everywhere 7. But if the"feminine" and "masculine" exist, that is, have an actual beingness in the universe independent of human beings - well thatwould suppose some grander design than I'm willing to admit.
I have to go back and base my knowledge on what I can perceive8 .
But in saying there is no "feminine" beyond culture, attitude,
psychologically manufactured "psyche," I don't deny what's infront of me: there are females and males. So what is female must
be the actual body. Then I end up saying: a female is a female
born in a female body, who has had to deal in some way with her
reproductive cycle and the appropriation of her body by males.
If I understand this right, this makes me an essentialist (actually
I think it makes me a "materialist" in the old political language)
because I appear to be claiming biology is destiny.
I sigh, then, and say, ok, biology is destiny because men havedone this to us. Haven't you gone to K-mart lately? Who do you
think makes girls' and boys' toys all pink and blue? Being female is like being a Jew, or short - it's a fact - but what it"means" is determined by culture, history, institutionalized
power. No matter how clearly (or not) I perceive those things, I
have few choices but to play my part or denounce it. Biology
becomes destiny seems more like it.
Many of us, who perceive men as destroying the world, arereluctant to give up the old dichotomies: men war, women nurture. We can argue forever (and seem to be) about whether it's
being born with a womb or being socially constructed that makes
I can' t help but stay in the argument: just because you see it everywhere
doesn't mean it exists everywhere, does it? Pink tinted glass does not a pinkworld make. And, if you claim that constants are found in the psyche insteadof the body, doesn't that also make you an "essentialist"?
8 I realize this is shorthand for a thousand years of philosophy into what
constitutes being, but I've only got six pages here.

7

8

sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

us "women" without being able to come to a final answer. But themore we understand attributes (self-reliance, adventurousness,curiosity, domesticity) as options instead of innate qualities, themore choices we have as individuals. Lesbians tend to choose
from the full range of available attributes (and occasionallyinvent some of our own). That doesn't mean we don't know
where we live - all of us must choose, at some point, whether or
not to cast our lots with the "women."9 Individual choice alone
does nothing to change power structures. Men can (and do) callthemselves sensitive and understanding in order to maintaintheir power in new social climates 10 (Chevron cares).
Queer Nation has picked up the idea that women and men
are "created" and given it a popular spin: get behind the fluidityof identity, don't be a rigid role-monger, don't cling to your label
like a reactionary to a life-boat, be flexible. It's an attractive idea.
So attractive that you'd think somebody would have thought ofit before the late '80s ... .
As many womyn, particularly womyn of colorll , have noted, themore you have power, the more you don't use "labels" to define
yourself (you don't see a lot of Rockefellers in the midst of thesedebates). It's the use of the "label" that states: I have to assert myown identity. All of us who have to consciously name ourselves
have, at some point, been uncomfortable with this (if for no otherreason than that someone we don't like can claim the same label).
But you can't change power structures by simply proclaiming these "roles" (gender, class, race) culturally constructed, andtherefore bourgeois baggage. Sure, roles are absurd - and they
exist for reasons. ''Deconstructing'' them without challenging thepower of those who make them necessary doesn't accomplish
anything - it's only playing dress-up with fancy words.
This idea - everything is fluid, we can change the world by
blowing straight people's minds, we can overcome our origins is nothing new. European and American cultures have a long"bohemian" tradition, and gender-bending has, in fact, beenaround since at least Shakespearean times. It's a parlor game theI know I said lesbian are in opposition to "women" by our very being. By"casting our lots" I mean we have to choose, politically, whose side we're on.
10 While we like to think that these "new climates" are the result of liberation
movements, I tend to think they are more the result of capitalism's having tosoft-peddle its message in order to expand the market base.
11 I am thinking particularly of the work of Gloria Anzaldua.

9Spring/Summer '993

9

privileged play, and they let some of us "others" in so the gamedoesn't seem rigged. It doesn't go to the root. And along the way
it accomplishes the power structure's dirty work: it makes it look
like we can "transcend" who we are and all become "human."Race and class become things we can shed - and should try to.
Womyn-only space is invaded and neutralized.
Which is why it seems to me so important for us to do thework of claiming ourselves. Our own bodies, our pride in them.
As often as we have to.
our bodies are the flags that advance our causes
age race culture size ability
lesbian womyn lesbiancreased into the clotha permanent seam
flapping in the evening chemical breeze
SJ remembers: I was a child and saw
survivors' numbers tattooed on their arms
my aunt said: cover it up shame cover it up safety cover it up
do you want them to see?
Sauda says
the darker we are
the more we represent the unknown
the thing which others are afraid ofand are embarrassed to see us carryalong with our daily lives
and Karyn says, they don't just mean:
oh you're still here, Indian
they mean: aren't you dead yet?
and Cath says
if I let myself feel or hear the names they call me on the street
1'd never leave my housethe brand has always been on the flesh
so obvious
we have to turn our eyes away
while we distract ourselves
get through the week
our bodies bear witness

10

sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

Notes for a Magazine ____________
Jamie Lee Evans

Internalizing the Lesbian of Color Body *I wonder if one reason that more lesbians of color didn't submit

their work on the lesbian body issue is that when anything owned
by lesbians is up for discussion, our first thoughts go to the whitelesbian, not to ourselves. Think about it, just for a moment,
lesbian community, lesbian culture, lesbian bars ... who do you see?
On TV's 20/20 Barbara Walters recently showed us the infotainment version of the 90's lesbian: baby birthing, rolls royce
driving, coupled white lesbians who are just sooo sweet. Althoughmost of my friends and I guffawed at the depiction of what is
supposed to be our community, it probably wasn't too far from what
we really think of when we think of the north american lesbian.
How do we come to this conclusion? Remember back to thelast womyn's music festival you went to? Now think of the last
lesbian poetry reading, the last lesbian play, the last lesbian
softball game, the last lesbian panel at the conference you lastattended. What comes to mind? Although there are lesbian ofcolor communities flourishing around the world, I think mostlesbians, of color or not, have internalized racism so deeply thatwhen we think of anything representing us as lesbians (community, culture, body, etc.) we still see white and color becomes
invisible, even to ourselves. We blend into the [white] scene, justlike that ole melting pot metaphor, and with deadly consequence:
we cease to exist.
The consequences of this invisibility are multiple and far
ranging. Not existing in the lesbian community means when alesbian of color considers writing about the lesbian world, she
thinks of herself as an afterthought. Another consequence is thatin order to feel at home in lesbian institutions, she may forget
who she is and where she came from.
One night my roommate and I were driving into East Oakland in search of a renowned taco made by a Mexican-owned.-

For Beverly, with dedication to our friendship and self-discoveries.

Spring/Summer 1993

11restaurant that closes at 8 because of the crime in their neighborhood. As we were driving further and further, close to 90 blocks
out of the way (the restaurant was on 14th Street and we foundourselves on 98th!), we began to feel less and less safe. The area
was not familiar to us, liquor and gun stores became more
frequent and masses of young males began appearing at eachstoplight. Finally we decided to turn around and head towards
home, and began joking to take the edge off the tension and fearthat had built up in the car during our journey. Rememberingthat my roommate's car had a reputation for breaking down, I
joked, "this would not be a good neighborhood for a butch
lesbian to be found in." She nodded her head and nervously
laughed. We traveled in silence for a few minutes. Then we
looked at each other and blurted out, "whoa, that's deep."
Two lesbians of color, Black and Asian, had seemingly
forgotten lesbians are everywhere, and come from everywhere.
We did gut checks on who we were thinking of when we thoughtof lesbians in East Oakland. We were thinking of dykes like theones on 20/20: white, middle-class and definitely out of place in
the inner city. We did find the Mexican restaurant, barely before
8, but they let us in and we ate while they closed up. While eating
my taco, I watched the owners turn away customers who arrived
after the hour.
Closing early, too dangerous to stay open past dusk.
I kept thinking about what I had said, what I had thought. I
felt ashamed. Who wanted me to think that the likes of me
couldn't be found in a neighborhood much like the Los Angeles
city I had grown up in? It was that brutalizing and very alive
force that declares only one race, class, only one type of person
is okay, the rest of us are superfluous. Lesbians are everywhere I
repeated again and again on our way back home. I felt close totears. What does it mean that I call the "lesbian community" home, but
do not see myself or other sisters like me living in that home? How manyeast Oakland dykes did I make invisible by my earlier statement? Was I thinking about the theft and violence that comes outof communities of poverty and imagining that lesbians are neverthieves or never involved in violence? Was I remembering my
own tough youth and how I knew that to be lesbian (or moreaccurately be caught lesbian) meant certain cruelty and attacks,even possibly murder? Maybe ... maybe, but probably it was12sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

more like I was thinking that "lesbians" wouldn't be in east
Oakland, because they are safer, smarter, richer and whiter thanresidents of this area. Honestly and painfully I acknowledged tomyself that I internally read lesbian as white lesbian.
Consider how many times you have heard a speaker talkgenerally about "lesbians," and then add lesbians of color, disabled
lesbians, poor lesbians, etc. to the end of the sentence. For example,
a teacher saying, "Lesbian communities and lesbian of color communities ... " implying that the lesbian of color is not an authentic
lesbian, but a special sub-set of the larger [white] lesbian set.
Webster defines sub as "lower than or to a lesser degree than."If the lesbian community were talked about in a way that
included all lesbians and didn't disregard difference we would
mention both white and of color. Similarly we would not say
things like, "the lesbian body and the disabled lesbian body," or"lesbian culture and black lesbian culture." All lesbians makeup all bodies, cultures, and communities. This is a simple formula actually, lesbians + lesbians = lesbians; or black lesbian
culture + Asian lesbian culture = lesbian culture; or Jewish
lesbian literature + Latina lesbian literature = lesbian literature.
This doesn't mean that we don't acknowledge the differencesthat exist between us. It does not mean that we are all the same,
one big homogeneous group of women loving women. What it
does mean is that we are more careful in our language anddeclarations of who we actually value as the real and who we areotherizing as those to a "lesser degree."
We take positions and privileges even when we're not aware
we're doing it. Besides internalized oppression harming lesbians of color, some white lesbians, though committed to social
justice, do not realize how deeply racism has burrowed into theirconsciousness. While considering the lesbian body and my bodyas a fat semi-able-bodied mixed-blood Asian lesbian of color
and again reminding myself that lesbians are as diverse as all
women are, I thought back to the first women's music festival I
attended this summer in Georgia. I had heard this was one of thefriendlier and fun festivals and for the most part I agreed. I
especially liked the free way women were moving about the landwith no shirts on. Appreciative of seeing unclothed lesbian bodies,on the second day it occured to me I was mostly seeing white lesbianbreasts and bodies. Do other lesbians of color know what I meanSpring/Summer '993

13

when I say I was severely disappointed to realize that I was once
again in the minority? It took me nearly two days to locate
another Asian woman in the 1500 festie goers, and I counted lessthan thirty visible women of color in the festival as a whole.
Again I asked myself why I keep putting myself in the positionof being one of a tiny minority of women of color? Why pay to
be a part of an institution that isn't reaching more women likeme? I didn't want to discount my enjoyment of seeing any sisters
naked and free but I couldn't fight that gut feeling that once
again something was very wrong with this picture. I pay a pricestruggling with white women and feminists who I love whenmost of their gatherings do not include more women like me.
Communing with, working with and loving lesbians of color
has served as an antidote to the suffering I experience as a lesbian
invisible in the white lesbian community. I have torn off thechains of racism more than once in gatherings of lesbians ofcolor. I actively devote time to my sisters of color - I seek themout - at poetry readings, conferences and concerts. I remember
the events that are diverse, I go back to them. I ensure my life isfilled with lesbians of color and I fight the power of internalized
oppression and dance a victory dance of acknowledgement andself-love. I listen to other lesbians of color who see themselves incommunity and I study their self-confidence and sheer lesbianstrength. I look at their lesbian bodies. I am a lesbian body andmy lesbian body is distinct and special, not lesser than or in
opposition to a norm. My voluptuous folds, angled brown eyes,
thick black/stick straight hair, short legs, small feet, hairlessarms and round face make up one lesbian body. I am not a subset. You are not a sub-set. We together are parts of the whole.

Beauty by Cynthia Consentino
from Dyke Clip Art, Vol. 3

14sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

Notes for a Magazine ____________
Saud a Burch

Ode To A Black Lesbian Body
The skin of milk chocolate glistens in sun; the hair of cotton
devours the moisture of the dry soils. Then darkness . The Blackbody beside another Black Body, remembering the ancestors.
Two bodies move deliberately back -through time. Hands andfeet for tools, they dig deeply into the earth, feeling their way tothe bottom of ancient night, the playground of old souls. Only atthe bottom is nothing asked of darkness. The bottom is darkness. Like earthworms they burrow. The rich, black soil protects
them through their journey.
The Black lesbian body is taboo. Is the despised Body. Is thefeared Body. The mysterious Body is the source. Torrents of lies
fall upon it. Whispers surround it. There is pushing against its
boundaries. Unforgiving. The Body of a lesbian. A Black lesbian. The Black lesbian Body survives.
The dark Body survives. The feared Body does not forget.
The forgotten Body defies. The forgotten Body remembers.
Remembers dark ancestral bodies. The Body houses memories. The Body insulates. The Body is safe. The Body is a private
hut, scattered with sacred objects. The Body is the womb of
meditation. The body rebirths itself.
The Body has scars from past wars. The Body does not forget
the defeats. The Body does not forget the triumphs. The bodytakes the scars from both and transforms them into armor. The
body protects.
The Body is the core. The Body is the bottom of an active
volcano. The Body is the center of the sun. The Fire. The Firetransforms. The phoenix soars from the ashes. The wings carryheat. Spews heat upon the world, warming and warning.

Spring/Summer 1993

15

DeborahReflections on my lesbian body
September 26, 1992
New moonThis Lesbian body is brown and hearty.
Dark rings around my ankles, knees and elbows. I remember my mother scrubbing at it with the fingernail brush.
Screwing halved, half-spent limes onto our elbows until
suction held them in place in an effort to bleach the skin
(after all, it worked on blond hair).
This Lesbian Body is round and full.
Large soft breasts that excite and amaze lovers. Full belly
and hips that require me to rush embarrassed into "plus size"
stores. Full belly and hips that provoke cruelty and judgment from the world. Full belly and hips that keep me
hiding. Full belly, fat belly. Full hips, fat hips. Fat.
This Lesbian Body is scarred.
A colon that carries the scabs of child sodomy. A stomach
with ulcers because it can't seem to digest the truth. Skin
striped with stretch marks that announced the prematurearrival of pregnancy.
This Lesbian Body is an inspiration.
Moving gracefully through my Tai Chi sequence. An everwise entity that speaks to me through visions, memories,
sensations. Despite the invasions and desecrations my bodyhas suffered, it still yearns for passion and orgasmic intimacy with my lover.

16

sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

Alejandra Laurenz

Listen(from Atthis's daughters)

LISTEN
we're scarcely given
a very crude exile

ONLY a margin of darkness
where to hide so much disorder
they say
OUR invisible ardor
doesn't heed any commanddisarranges their liturgy
scrupulously
LET the dead run away

they will ignore for everthe very great splendorsof those who never treason to themselves
LOOK at me
we're a sweet flap of wings
over the skin of the worldtranslation by the author

Spring/Summer 1993

Escucha(dellibro Las hijas de Atthis)ESCUCHA
nos conceden apenas
una crud a intemperie
UNA orilla de sombra
donde ocultar tanto desorden
dicen
NUESTRO ardor invisible
desoye los mandatos
trastoca su liturgia
escru pulosamente
DEJA huir a los muertos
ignoranin por siempre
los grandes esplendoresde quien no se traiciona
MIRAME
somos dulce batir de alassobre la piel del mundo

17

18

sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

Kadeth Pozzesi

Silent Pride

I like the vein that runs over my biceps, pumped up with bloodit rolls under my skin like a sea snake. I can see the faint blue
green under the translucence of my skin, taut over pumped
muscle.
Sometimes I like my feet. I can see the structure of my bones,
bird feet, lizard feet, sculptures of narrow bones overlaid byskin. On one foot the brush tail of a dragon tattoo rides, and I
especially like the black ink as it slips over the hills and valleys
of flexed tendons. They remind me of Mary Magdalene's hands
and feet in "The Last Temptation of Christ." I liked her. I thought
she was brave.
I never look in mirrors for long. Enough to brush my hair,that's all. When I step into the shower, I have the occasional
glimpse of breasts and ribs, slight thrust of hip. I don't look
much, and always I think of my imperfections.
Imperfections. As if there was perfect. Perfect flesh on perfect bones. Perfect skin in a perfect color. I know better. My
intellect speaks to me in reasoning words, your body is perfectfor you, its shape, its grace, even its woundings, are perfect foryou. Your body is you, my mind says.
My heart likes my feet, and the vein over my biceps.
You're beautiful, a friend says. I know that word beauty isconnected to a standard of disfigurement. How many womenrebuild faces full of life and character, push breasts up withsilicon that kills them slowly. To die for a standard better suitedfor man-made gemstones, or hothouse flowers .
Lesbians, too, look at ''beauty.''
Dancing on the date floor, whirlwind pattern of bodies andhopes. Barbie dances with Barbie, the airline stewardess lookSpring/Summer 199319

co-mingles with the fashion model, cruising butch women race
to the bathroom to check that they are "still perfect." The eyes eat
you up and spit you out as unworthy to know if you haven't got"the look."
When did we forget the person under the skin?
Ads in the paper . . .
"No dykes. Must pass as straight and like the same.""Are you the kind of girl that drives men wild? Then you
have the look I want."
My hands are like my feet, bony, strong and tattooed.
My hair is uncut. All of it, dark and wild. Everywhere itchooses to grow I let it. I wear the perfume of my clean flesh.
Half of me is proud. Half of me doesn't care when my boss
sees me in street clothes and makes a comment that I'm as hairy
as he is. Half of me doesn't care when the model perfect lesbiansneers at my artwork, colored into my skin.
The other half of me is ashamed. Sometimes I wish I had
picked an easier path.
I fight not to keep my arms pressed uncomfortably down ina crowd, be it family, friends or strangers. How can a simple
patch of hair offend so? How can I have learned to respect that
offense, take it within? How have my sisters learned too?
"Do you have the kind of look that drives men wild? So do
I, let's get together. No leather no dykes."
Unnatural.
I war with the mirror. The mirror wins more often than I, andmy heart looks away first. Sighing, wishing I could be easily
beautiful.
No matter how "beautiful" I am, no matter by what standard,in my heart it will never be enough.
I don't like the lights on when I make love.
Maybe if I lose 20 pounds.
Maybe if I buff up more.
Maybe if.
I hate that I have internalized these feelings . With my mind
I know I am fine. The chants of my dad's playboy magazines, of20

sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

mom's beauty books, of high school's "good grooming" classes,
are all unwelcome lodgers in my soul.
I like the perfume of my sweat.
I like my feet, and the vein on my biceps.

Sur3ica.1 Sc.o. r J. T<t++-oo
01"\-+h'l- bre.a.s-ls +¥.a...~ L l ou~)urgical scar & tattoo on the breasts that I love
pen and ink

Kadeth Pozzesi

Spring/Summer 1993

21

Caroline Halliday

the lesbian bodyIthese nudes in the Tate all tidy and clean and white and mimsy
not plush and belly and rolling belly is the place I like to lay myface body generous and giving luscious and plentiful andpleasure is proud her legs wide open at the workshop and I
thought she is more proud of her sexuality than I am not proudof my vulva open legs I'm frightened overwhelmed sit on myface I'd hate it the smell of urine overripe cunts reminds me ofstale smell the flashes come less often though they are strong
the man in the street and for no reason I could see his body large
penis bursting red and harsh he was large with powerful hands
to push me about and once I wrote a healing poem, a feeling of
being loved a velvet closeness, my cunt rich and smoothly wet byitself the lesbian body wet wet wet can't cope with this word, so
petty for something exquisite and slippery and sensual her cuntas my finger slipped in, but she'd never told me it was the firsttime Fruit is not called wet, but juice running on the chin andup the nose slippery like persimmons where the skin getsthinner as the fruit ripens and becomes translucent and the thickfat labia lie on the tongue while the juice spreads in the mouth
pears are the other ones pears like a woman wide with a belly andwomblike and a vulva I've lost the gift of loving led by mydesires All those women those cunts N's was the prettiest I've
ever seen, so neatly arranged like a flower and the leaves and the
pubic trailing hairs, or R's with the tough, short pubic hair likea brush, wanting sex so quick not an all over the body experience
which is what I have we don't describe them enough orgasm I
want to ask all my friends what is orgasm like for you
The lesbian body I can cry for anger and go through the horrorsof it if you wish fear this penis winey like jam left too long shesays to me but supposing someone was turned on by yourdescription of incest and he wants me to have it this red hot

22sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

thing so it burns against my vagina Lovers I want you clean, outof the bath, you stand dripping pubic hair and I kneel up to
explore with my tongue beneath the hair, and I find I findsmooth rich juice of your cunt contrasts with the thin dry textureof water, and I lay you down perhaps and my tongue upwards
and insideII

I have forgotten my body since you left, it took you-fromaustralia to take me to bed, as soon as I heard your voice on thismachine I felt the rush of desire Not this empty glass booth ofa person like a phone box speaking at distance the incest survivor has learnt to live half a self anger? the lesbian body is anger?
all those lovers lost, S like rough tough mountain grass, to grab
and pull and roll and run and her fingers thrusting inside my ass
such a large new place I was so relaxed and she loved every inchof me her freedom with the physical trusting the physical thephysical knows I know what I am receiving when you touch me,
the body and I are real
I know I am the receiving bodyandthisisthepresent deep bright smell of red pepper insides ordefinite green leaf and feather of sweet corn and earth and leaves
holding holding and a friend touching my face as she kisses me
goodbye Yet the mind and I are real too this is direct this is what
I feel put down, word, there, now. Writing and fucking nothingcompares with these twoYetlooking at you begins to be real. Hearing what you)say begins to
be real this is what healing is
the lesbian her body my body
if only I could gather all these things together and stuff them into
the empty phone booth and then you and I would both see
the glass filled up up to the top full chock full of rich pebbles
from so many beaches and woods, silks and grey rich hair a belly
glowing and shoulders smooth and sturdy feet that carried me
the child and through so many years poems and handmade
paper and bowls, arrangements of room, ideas carried through,me a radical woman it hurts this knowledge of
my baby,emptiness the fear of saying it and fearing you will not believe

Spring/Summer 199323

and fearing you will think I am lying in some way or contempt
I fear your contempt it hurt far too often when he said "you? you
can't ..." and I was his puppet all those child minutes of my lifeand my brain goes scatter and reaches the dead place in my head
I told my mother, she couldn't believe me I became the bad girlwho dared to say such things and the room was empty and thesplit began
either it was their truth or mineand then I nearly died and perhaps the oral rape ended only his
hands creeping up the bed between my squeezed together legs
as I turned away pushing between my thighs and the drummingof the body began the thrumming of my response and the liquidseeping frightened but beyond my control and for years I felt mybody betrayed me the traitor the lesbian body betrays itself but
I want to part my legs to your tongue with glory
and for some the parts cut out for the incest survivor the parts
stay but belong to someone elsethe lesbian body an invaded country nothing belongs to me thefive year old, but the arms and legs, containing the empty bodythe lesbian body an invaded countryIII

it is too hard, wandering the house trying for the right balance
which will give me time to be a writer and let me earn my living,support my child, achieve this new life north of the river, makenew friends, maybe even a new lover, no, forget the lover ...
paint the new doors, raw timber mustn't get soaked with autumn
rain... and it's me alone responsible for getting back to workand get her back to school not so many illness days off now we'reinto our second year proving something to somebody and I what
I want is someone's arms around me, someone saying you canleave this till tomorrow or next week or even I'll do this, just carryon with what you're doing and I'll finish this get the dinner ontidy the kitchen so it'll be all ready for another week at full speed
ahead
this the lesbian body the lesbian mother's bodyand theanxiety that rises to my cheekbones threatens to invade does

24sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

invade every moment of my waking today time hateful number
one enemy I want an autumn of contentment someone asks
what passion in my life and I say no - contentment. High
contentment is what I'm after these days
I have a photo of you taken by the sea Bexhill, when we'dplunged naked it was cold but leapt about our limbs you are
outlined against the sky your face shows aging, beautiful signs
that draw me to you my body has not remained the same you
loved me when it was changing daily growing and now it is
growing older changing
I deny myself the body comfort the comfort in sex because I've
learned not to trust it I have been trying to deny myself theseneeds I haven't changed enough to live like this contentment
High risk living the incest survivor in me all these years high risk
living but I don't want safer living to mean no living I am
wandering the house with this lesbian body idea and I comeback to my bedroom hear the sudden rain pattering the skylight
like fingers on a typewriter I have hardly written all the year notknowing who I am writer in this new space place
I love this room I've created it the high ceiling the skylightthrough which I can see blue and clouds and grey sky and themoonlight and sunlight and the peace of cool walls and yellow
bedspread my painted curtains and the grey stone colours brown
and iron brown two of the stones beside me now grey streaked
and smooth to the touch these stones represent my need quiet freesteadyI was hungry sometimes I can't find the rhythm for feeding
myself sudden recognition I need hot milk and bread andmackerel and above all tomatoes with pepper on them andwatercress
I will go out when this is written, and walk in the rain
I might go and visit someone go out to meet the chaos the beautyof the world take its hand take a hand and hold itthese tears represent the lesbian body there is no clear way tohealing no clear hand to hold no belly to lie against only aconstant emptiness that changes slowly slowly this is my lesbian
body alone

Spring/Summer 199325

Areas of Injury If II & III
mono type and chin colle, 32"x44", 1989

Elizabeth D. Ross
Areas of Injury I, III & III are part of a series dealing with the rapeand brutal murder of my mother in 1986. In these images themodel is myself, the pain and injuries blurring from her body
into mine.

26 sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

Peg O'Connor

When Docile Bodies Dance

Our bodies are formed within networks of power relations, and thecultural interpretations of those relations. Our bodies are sites
where the regimes of discourse and power inscribe themselves.
The subjection or docility of the body is required in order to produce an easily manipulated, self-obsessed population. The moredocile we become, the more we are encouraged to speak. We
become constant chatterers in docile bodies.
Power functions in such a way as to link sex and the searchfor "truth." Sexuality has become the site where the most fund amental "truth" of identity is experienced. In the process of institutionalizing sexual identity, sex becomes open to surveillance
and interpretation. We can "know" our sexuality, but we must
rely on experts to interpret it for us. This institutional interpretation of sexuality is one of the cornerstones of hierarchy.
In the western christian tradition, it was the priest who acted
as the authority. In confession, the one who is confessing is
encouraged and expected to reveal her every thought and feeling
related to sex and pleasure - it is only through thorough examination and complete disclosure that one can be told the truth ofherself. The one in the privileged position of interpreting andascribing meaning to this secret is the expert. The secular versionof the confessional is the psychiatrist's couch. Tile same power
mechanisms, with the command to "tell all," function as well on
the couch as in the confessional.
The mass media version of the psychiatrists' couches or thepriests' confessionals are television talk shows such as "Oprah"or "Donahue." Many of these shows focus on topics of sexuality
and there are "experts" who play the role of confessor to the otherguests. These shows are watched by millions every day - each
day millions of us "discover" and have identified for us, andidentify and claim for ourselves, our deepest "truths."
The liberal orientation aims at liberating what is repressed.
It exploits the temptation to believe that to be happy, it's enoughSpring/Summer 1993 27

to articulate personal problems and remove a few prohibitions.
The liberal orientation may itself be an aspect of modern powerthat serves as a masking function. Contemporary notions of
freedom, liberation and emancipation seem to strengthen power
structures by implying that there is some true self or natural
body that is just waiting to be liberated.
Can we hold out for any form of resistance? The answer, I
think and hope, is that resistance and subversion are possible.
Resistance is not simply saying "yes" to sex. "Yes" to sex is not a"no" to power. What's at stake here isn't liberation of individuality, but resistance to and rejection of the individuals that we are
made. The resistance is focused against the constitution of individuals through modern power/knowledge regimes. Resistanceis directed at not being a docile or useful body. It seems that
resistance happens when we stop the search for our "truth," when
we fight against the experts telling us who and what we are,when we refuse to be docile bodies. If power is targeted at thebody, then it is the body that is the site of resistance.
I want to propose three specific examples of resistance involving our bodies. First, acts of autoeroticism - the pleasures
we give ourselves (not necessarily limited to masturbation) can be extremely subversive. The second is the involvement of
women in certain sports. The third activity that I take to be
subversive (and highly controversial), is lesbian erotic dancing
for other lesbians. I admit from the outset there are problems,
controversies and issues surrounding these examples, especiallylesbian erotic dancing. I mean to include the participation oflesbians of every size, age, race, appearance and ability andbelieve these acts can be interpreted to show just how subversive they are.
First - our autoeroticism does not seem to be subjected tothe same sort of scrutiny as male masturbation. There is vocabulary and slang for men masturbating. We don't have many words
for women's pleasuring ourselves. This indicates that not asmuch is "known" about women's activities. I can only speculate
about why this is so, but I think it's tied to the idea that women
don't experience sexual pleasure without a man present. Women's
autoeroticism, then, is not regarded as an important or valid
object for inquiry and domination 1.

28

sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbia n Body

If women's ways of pleasuring our own bodies are not subject to expert surveillance and opinion, and are not part of theconstruction of the science of sexuality, then our ways of pleasuring ourselves are not institutionalized. There isn't a body ofknowledge that surrounds and captures, and hence normalizes
and regulates, women's autoerotica. Therefore I take women's
autoeroticism to be subversive.
The second example of potentially subversive activity is
women's involvement in sport, particularly a sport such as rugby.
Sport is fundamentally about the body, physicality andstrength and this seems especially true for rugby. Running after
women, tackling and physically subduing other women are alldone in the name of the game. There is little or no semblance oftraditional "femininity." Women cannot participate in such great
physical contact with other women without exhibiting someform of resistance. Women, in a sport such as rugby, are not using
their bodies in ways that are useful and docile.
Women athletes train our bodies so we are capable of acts thatare in opposition to those that have been prescribed for us. We
can wrestle in jello, but contact sports, requiring exceptional
strength or physicality, are considered off limits. One of the ways
this is enforced is through invoking the dreaded label of lesbianism. Homophobia seems an obvious way of excluding womenfrom these sports and keeping us from the subversive relationships we might have with our own and each other's bodies inthis arena. Homophobia masks the power mechanisms that keep
women relating to our bodies only in normalized)ways.
My third example of potentially subversive activity - lesbianerotic dancing - is the most problematic and controversial of thethree.
Recently, on "Donahue," the topic for the day was lesbianerotic dancing. As Phil said, ''Women are doing for women what
women having been doing for men for years ." On the panel were
Lesbo-A-GoGo (a group of erotic dancers), Catherine Wend ricks,
Camille Paglia (not the famous author), with Joan Nestle (founderof the Lesbian Herstory Archives) in the audience.
Discussion was fairly heated. The dancers said they were
dancing for fun and enjoyment and of their own free will.
Catherine Wend ricks didn't approve of the dancing and thoughtSpring/ Summer 1993 29

they were going through growing pains and looking for ways toexpress their sexuality. Camille Paglia said the dancing was
pornographic and the dancers really weren't doing this of theirown free will, they were acting out male-created roles and scenarios and were therefore having a negative effect on the lesbiancommunity. Joan Nestle was all out in favor of this dance activity
as a healthy and beautiful expression of women's sexuality.
Audience reaction ranged from "keep it in the bedroom," to "disgusting," to "don't go if you don't want to see it."
The issues at hand are women dancing for other women andwomen watching and eroticizing the dancers. The dancers maintained they use their bodies in ways they and others find enjoyable, pleasurable and erotic. When asked how their audiences
respond, the dancers answered that the women appear to enjoy
themselves and often dance along. The dancing was described asa participatory event. The dancers also stated they did not feel
any threat of violence while dancing.
One argument against women dancing for other women isthat it will encourage women to objectify women in the sameways that men have. This argument seems wrong to me onseveral counts. First, there is a radical difference in power andprivilege between men and women, and this difference in power
affects how we look and what we see.
Joan Nestle at one point in the show said, "Women are nevermen in society, no matter how butch a woman looks, no matter
how much like a man, we don't come with male privilege. We
don't look at these women with eyes that say we own the world... I can look at a woman and touch her and feel that this world is
a compassionate place."
Marilyn Frye, in her essay, "In and Out of Harm's Way,"
describes what she calls the Arrogant eye. She writes that[the] primary answer to the philosophical question ofman's place in nature [is]: everything that is is resource
for man's exploitation. With this world view, men see
with arrogant eyes which organize everything with reference to themselves and their interests. ... Everything iseither "for me" or "against me." ... The arrogant perceiver
does not countenance the possibility that the other is
independent, indifferent.2

30

sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

Marilyn Frye and Joan Nestle seem to be making the same
point - that one woman can look at another woman withoutlooking arrogantlf. With arrogant perception, I would believe
the dancers are simply dancing for me - for my benefit alone.
When one perceives arrogantly, the reality of the woman dancing
for her own pleasure and for the pleasure she may feel in being
watched is lost. Arrogant perception leaves no room for anyone
else but the perceiver.
bell hooks, in her essay liThe Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators" discusses the power in looking. She begins
with the observation that no matter how much power dominating adults had over her and her gaze as a child, that power wasnever so absolute that she did not dare to look, stare or peek. The
gaze of black people has been repressed, but this repression has
produced in black people
an overwhelming longing to look, a rebellious desire, an
oppositional gaze. By courageously looking, we defiantly declared: "Not only will I stare, I want my look tochange reality." Even in the worst circumstances of domination, the ability to manipulate one's gaze in the face ofstructures of domination that would contain it, opens up
the possibility of agency. 4
In the struggle of resistance, hooks says, lithe power of thedominated to assert agency by claiming and cultivating 'awareness' politicizes 'looking' relations - one learns to look a certain
way in order to resist."s The oppositional gaze of black womenis developed in resistance to the dominant ordrr. Those whohave developed an oppositional gaze have resisted the imposition of the Arrogant Eye of the white male. "As critical spectators,
black women participate in a broad range of looking relations,contest, resist, revision, interrogate, and invent on multiple levels."6 It is these revisions, inventions, imaginings, and creationsof new meanings that are transgressive and subversive of thedominant order.
The concept of an oppositional gaze is a useful tool in understanding how lesbians eroticizing other lesbians is not necessarily "women acting just like men." I don't want to argue that there
is such a thing as a lesbian gaze, but I do think the gaze of individual lesbians can be developed in opposition and resistance toSpring/Summer 1993 31

heterosexualized ways of looking at and knowing the world.
Those lesbians who have constructed their identities in resistance to the dominant order of heterosexuality will most likely
have developed this critical and oppositional gaze.
Looking at another woman, recognizing that we don't own
the world (and that neither we nor anyone else has a right to ownit) and that lesbians do not come with male privilege, allows us
to see something radically and wonderfully different than those
who perceive arrogantly. Lesbian spectatorship allows us to discover the power of the erotic. Audre Lorde, in "Uses of the Erotic:
The Erotic as Power," describes the erotic asa resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female
and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our
unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort
those various sources of power within the oppressed thatcan produce energy for change. For women, this has meanta suppression of the erotic as a considered source ofpower and information within our lives. 7
To ask women not to eroticize or look at other lesbians who want
to be looked at, is to allow the male gaze to continue to dominate
and suppress lesbian eroticism. Sharing between the dancers
and the audience keeps the relation from being exploitative or
abusive. As Lorde says
To share the power of each other's feeling is different
from using another's feelings as we would a kleenex.
When we look the other way from our experience, erotic
or otherwise, we use rather than share the feelings ofthose others who participate in the experience with us.
And use without consent is abuse ... When we look awayfrom the importance of the erotic in the development andsustenance of our power, or when we look away fromourselves as we satisfy our erotic needs in concert withothers, we use each other as objects of satisfaction rather
than share our joy in the satisfying, rather than makeconnections with our similarities and differences. 8
We look away from ourselves as lesbians when we say we areacting just like men. We look away from ourselves as lesbians
when we deny that we do want to evoke erotic feelings in other32 sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

lesbians. These looking aways are denials of sexual agency wehave as lesbians to discover, create and claim erotic power. Within
the context of lesbian dancing for other lesbians are multiple
interactions - these interactions and erotic engagements empower by sharing joy and pleasure with others.
Later in the show, Joan Nestle brought the focus back towomen using their bodies in subversive ways. What she said,
especially in the context of a national TV talk show, was incredible:
It is a myth that direct sexual feeling or lust for a woman
isn't an intimate feeling. That it's not spiritual, it is. That
it's not healthy, it is. Our community has risked everything for over 200 years in this country to kiss another
woman, to enter another woman, to hold another woman.
That is at the center of our culture. You may not like it, you
don't like me to say these words. What they represent forsome of us is the glory of our lesbian erotic courage ...
Lesbians like to touch each other. They make oral love toeach other, they touch each other's nipples, and they are
not men. A man and a woman in this light are very different. When I touch a woman, I am not a man. It is an act of
resistance against our society that thinks we are dirty.
And we celebrate our bodies among ourselves.
When we celebrate our bodies among ourselves, we recognize and claim the power of the erotic. And the power of theerotic is both subversive and transformative.

1. Edi tor's note: if, on the other hand, the domination of womyn's sexuali ty is theerasure of an independent sexuality (and sex), then autoeroticism, as defined bywomyn (not institutions, "experts" or men) remains a subversive act.
2. Marilyn Frye, "In and Out of Harm's Way," in The Politics of Reality: Essays in
Feminist Theory (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1983), p. 67.
3. Unfortunately, "can" is not "will." Class, race, size, age, and ability may distort
our gaze.
4. bell hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators," in Black Looks:
Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992), p. 116.
5. hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze," p. 116.
6. hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze," p. 128.
7. Audre Lorde, "The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power," in Sister Outsider(Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1984), p. 53.
8. Lorde, "The Erotic as Power," pp. 58-59.

Spring/Summer 1993

Reflection
silver gelatin print
L.A. Hyder3334 sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

Sheila J. Packa

A Woman Playing Ball

S he begins to play
Wednesday nights for
Women's Rec II, Ruby's Cafe
slow pitch soft ballbut stops her practice
before she reaches the easeof veterans, before she learns
to let her body connect
with the ball, to use the glove
and take out the opposition
she watches a woman on third
catch and throw, run and slide
she watches all the women on the
diamond, their guileless motion
and sees what a foul life she's had
like she had been the sphereof leather and string herself struck
hard by a batter playing to win
until her seams split, until she's
gone out of bounds
been lost beyond the fence, left in
pasture grown over. This is not
the life she wants so she puts on the glove
she takes up the bat
she remembers how her lover
has taught her to warm up
and swing
she steps up to the plateSpring/Summer 1993

once she watched the World Serieslearning the terms
RBI, double play, triple play,a line drive
had meant nothing to her
she had never trusted a teambut now she hears them calling
encouragement
they wait to see what she doeswith the pitch
strike, strike, hit and she runs
with all her might
making her way home

3S

36

sinister w isdom #49,The Lesbian Body

Janet Mason"You know I used to work in the sex industry"I t takes brass balls to be a dancer at fourteen she knew how
to grab bills with her snatch
even though she didn't do it,
staying out of reach
except for her toes on the bar.
She's still got it,
sixteen years later, another life,
walking with me in this place
where hundred year old trees
crack through dead limbed night;
sway into morning:
dance whether anyone watches or not.
She rotates her pecs
gives me a musculo-skeletal overview:
how pas ties are twirled;
smoke inhaled in gasp of cervical muscles,
exhaled in a musky cough.
)I exhume my own past:seventeen, tending bar,a shot and beer joint
attached to a men's rooming house
where junkies stand up
on their bare stools and scream at me.
When my hands shake (one part terror,
one part perpetual hangover)they ask me who is beating me
my husband, boyfriend or both.
I guess I was underage, I say.

Spring/Summer 1993 37

The job lasted less than a month.
I never knew why they fired me or
hired me in the first place.

What do you mean, you don't know!
Her voice is a lion's roarin this hush of trees.
At seventeen I was timid
as leaf scattered wind,
but now, blood free of my own fist,
I shout back: I don't know.
I never thought about it.

Think about it.
The sex industry loves young fruit.
You may not have been on the bar
but you were behind it.
Through her words
I hear fallen leaves, my thoughts
touch the ground, rest silently
before they grow damp,
compost to veined lace,sift into sediment.
I remember grey years
vomited from mind.
Later a healing, halfway,
wordless and driven,
rain storms of daily exercise,brown rice by the bucketful.
Memory's eraser compiled
in a dim purge of years.
For a breath the trees are silent.
In that brief inhale and exhale
I feel the lightening bolt
slice through me, charred edges,
the burnt pulpy scent of split wood.

38 sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

Kate Berne Miller·W omen with Knives
for GloriaYour arms,
freshly carved,
chill me in this. seasonof remembered ghosts.
How can hearts
such small organs of stamina
contain us.
Every pain that hides beyond memory
will surface writhing under the skin,appearing in welts on our arms and legs.
Nothing less than bloodcan voice these words .
When I see you
the shock of recognition,
frigid and familiar
as steel against skinflays me open.

\

Soundless the knife speaks,
we are bloodsisters, sworn to silence we shout out at last.
Years later, our scars will remain - delicate engravings,
spidery tracings of our lives,
the book of our survival.
May your wounds, now visible
heal, and your tongue
be unbound.

Spring/Summer 199339

Laura Hershey

Self-Body-Portrait
Bleached ribs arch up into the sun .
end in jagged points
limbs mostly buried
as sandkeeps drifting
between bones the wind wears at
My lover a sleek blackfeathered scavenger
perches on one cleaned rib
Heat and sand grind
spine
digitsribs
Yes I know
this is not healthy as selfimages go
Affirmations are called for
I am a beautiful
source of pure light
Yet something
the whiteness of the bones
the shifting solidity of sandintimacy with a bird's beaksomethingdraws me to a picture
I can see:
Erosion explains
my frame's twists and asymmetry
and what is left
the raven takes

40 sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

Naja Sorella

BasicsJournal entry, Friday, September 4, 1992

I been trying to write something for the SW issue on the Lesbian
Body. I go back to the guidelines and re-read them, and each time
the thought of "basics" keeps getting in my way. I wanted toaddress the question of "why our heads get disconnected fromour bellies and vaginas." And I immediately think of the migraine I got while I write this.
Migraines get in the way. It's hard to feel anything in my cuntwith a migraine. There's plenty in my belly, though. Nausea.
Lots of it. Nausea in my head, nausea in my belly. My head andbelly are connected when I got migraines. Somehow, I don't
think this's what they were thinking of when asking that question. I think they wanted something more esoteric.
For me, it's the basics that get in the way. Always the basics.
These past 31j2 weeks, I've been working my butt off not to lose
my Gamma Globulin. I depend on intravenous Gamma Globulin, a blood product extracted from whole blood. Every ten days,
I faithfully drip 2 cups of it into my veins. Gamma Globulin
gives me the antibodies I don't make, due to immune system
illnesses. The antibodies create a defense system I lack, fighting
off infections, viruses, etc. Been doing Gamma Globulin 3 years
now, and it dearly makes a difference in my quality of life. Not
feeling like I'm dying is a big deal to me.
The provider company refused to send me any more shipments cuz Medi-Car hadn't paid them in a year. Of course, they
didn't call me about it six months ago, and give me another six
months to work on it, they just up and tell me the shipments arecancelled. When they told me that, I heard: "We're cancelling. Medi-Cal is a California state program for poor womyn with children anddisabled people officially on 55!.

Spring/Summer 1993 41

your life for the next few months or maybe forever, depending onwhether we get this figured out with Medi-Cal or not." I thought
my heart was gonna stop right there and then. Been pushingmyself way beyond my limits these past weeks, making hours
after hours of phone calls to the provider company, to every
office and branch of Medi-Cal, to the company that makes Gamma
Globulin, to my friends for help, to United Way and to a phone
number I was told was for getting underground drugs, but ofcourse it wasn't really for that. It turned out to be a number forcheap vitamins for people with AIDS. Every god-damned number I called for community services of some kind, ended up
being for people with AIDS. Nobody else is sick out here. No
other disease exists except AIDS. Hours and days and weeks ofcalls. Most of those days I woulda unplugged the phone andbeen a t.v. slug, I was doing so bad.
But I hadda keep my Gamma Globulin. Sex I can do without.
A bath I can do without and did, and do. Can't remember the lasttime I had one. My dirty, stringy hair keeps falling in my face as
I write this. I made hours of phone calls, often to where I hadda
stop or risk having seizures. Then, I binged on every sweet I
could find in the house. Ate like I hadn't eaten in weeks:Crammed
it in until I felt like I wasn't gonna pass out, wouldn't collapse on
the spot.
I couldn't sleep, my head was so jammed with: who could I
call next, what should I do tomorrow, what was the next bestthing to do, who was I supposed to call back with what information? What if I did lose the Gamma? Was I willing to live incellular exhaustion again? Lying in bed using every ounce ofenergy to breathe, forget rolling over. I always felt like I wasdying. My muscles ached so deeply, so intensely, I swore a truck
ran me over each day. When I lived in cellular exhaustion, I was
suicidal. For years, I was suicidal. Gamma Globulin keeps mefrom feeling like I'm dying. I still lie in bed 20-22 hours a day, butmuch more comfortably. I roll over whenever I want. I might wait
a half hour to get up and pee, but I don't wait 2-3 hours every
single time. At least 60-70% of the time, I get 4 hours outta bed aday. Before Gamma Globulin, I was lucky if it was 1-2 hours. I've"

42 sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

been so panicked at the thought of no Gamma Globulin, it'd takehours to fall asleep, then I'd wake up every half hour. After a few
hours of that, I couldn't sleep any more at all.
These things get in the way. They jam up my head. They takeup all the space between my head and belly and cunt.
As if that's not enough, California's had no budget for over
2 months. Certainly didn't help matters with the Gamma Globulin. I sweated out every minute of the budget crunch, knowingthat when it was settled, I'd be a loser. It's settled now. I am aloser, along with several million other Californians unfortunate
enough to need social assistance programs. My SSI goes down
$37 a month'. I already know my Section 8 rent was going up $5
a month. That's $42 a month I won't get. Not a lot to someone
making $20,000 a year. It's devastating to me. Attendant moneyis also being cut. How much I don't know. My guts are clenched,gripped in fear. Medi-Cal is being axed more than its usual
annual cuts. Will my Gamma Globulin be lost for good now? Myhead is on full time. Despite the migraines, the terrible, fogged
out, fuzzed out pressure I live with every day, despite the brain
dysfunction and constant brain pain, and everything else thatusually goes on in my head, now, there's the fear, the panic.
Trying to figure out what to do, the images of life with no Gamma
Globulin, higher rent, less money each month, maybe no attendant money or very little of it, these are always hammering in myhead. On top of the usual daily gut pain, now I got fear twistingthem up. I guess I got a head-to-belly connection after all.
Of course, there's the neighbor from hell two apartments
down, dealing crack day and night, all kinds a scumball men
around. They come in shifts, a month or two at a time. Then awhole new batch of them. They shout all night, fight, throw eachother around. They piss in the stairwell, write Lesbian hating
notes, yell names at my butch lover in her apartment next tomine. One of the guys downstairs beats his girlfriend between
7 and 8 a.m. Then trots off to work. He's higher 'n a kite all the• SSI is Supplemental Security Income, a federal program for poor disabled
people.

Spring/Summer 1993 43

time, cranks up the music so loud the building shakes, and has
an equal number of slimy men around. More fear, terror. Morethoughts filling my head. How to move? So little energy, so little
money. My guts tight, tight. What if one of those junkies breakinto Frie's apartment, or mine? What if we don't live to tell about
it? My head feels like it's gonna explode. My guts are knotted up.
Goddess, I wish I could be thinking of my cunt. I wish there
was the energy, the desire, the ability to do something about it the
few times I do feel something stirring. Last week my cunt got
excited 3 times. That's more than I usually get in a whole year. At
first I didn't know what the hell it was. I thought maybe it wasa yeast infection. Or there was something wrong with my cuntand I should see a doctor. On the third day it happened, I suddenly remembered what that odd feeling was. I'm so used to not
feeling anything sexual these past 5-6 years, that all I could think
was, ''What's causing all this cunt excitement? Is it the extra
thyroid medication I'm taking? If it is, I gotta cut back. I don't got
the time and energy to be dealing with my cunt 3 times a week.
I got more basic important things to deal with." I shouldn't've
worried so much. I'm back to normal. Nothing stirring for overa week. I'll probably go another 5-6 years before I get 3 days ina week. And I'll probably think it' s a yeast infection.

Thanks to Frieda and Caryatis for feedback and critique.

44 sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

Lisa A. Edmonds

Double Target
Does she look straight?
my friend's friend
asks of me
as though there are
qualifications
as if straight equals feminine
and this matters

Yes my friend says
cataloging my bodyhips waist lips
long hair devoid of spikes
my clothes
send no social message
of masculinity androgyny
lesbianity
Now that I've passed
the gender specific test
My friend's friend
wants to meet me
Her womenmust fit insocially
An "unfeminine" womancauses people to starehiss laugh suspect bash
An "unfeminine" dyke
is a double target
I have friends who
do not buy "femininity"
don't try for "straight-looking"Even some of them\Spring/Summer 1993 45

have been raped
Still each is linked instrength and grows
My friend's friend believes
if she acquiesces
if she plucks and shaves
she'll avoid hate
She doe~ not realize
the source of all thispressure to surrender
I say this out loudmy breath staining
the bathroom mirror
as I dress my face
bracelets rings earrings
clicking
I do this likea knight
bearing armor

Kathleen DeBold46 sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian BodyrConstrict/Construct
Julie Finn
Constrict/Construct, my 1985 image self-portrait series, continues tomean as much to me today as it did 8 years ago. I still battle with theinternal and external forces which seek to keep me constricted,
and work at breaking free and expanding to live life at my fullpotential.

Spring/Summer 1993 47

Judith P. Stelhoum

Sliding Into Home: Identifying Lesbian Sex*
When I talk about myself as a lesbian I openly declare my sexual .
preference. I know there are other ways to define lesbian life:social and economic oppression, philosophies, music and literature. But there is one aspect of my life that is a constant - thetruth of my loving women. Defining myself as a lesbian means
declaring myself in a sexual context.
Just as there is no one way to act like a lesbian or be recognizable as a lesbian, there is no single way to be a sexual lesbian. In
fact, the incredible variety of lesbian sexuality is what gives us
power. The more we know about lesbian sex and desire, the morechoices we have in the ways we make love, establish relationships, have sex.
By ignoring lesbian eroticism, the phallocratic cultures attempt to negate the intensity and power of sex between women.
In this way, our very existence is denied. I want to talk about sex
because, as a lesbian, I want to exist. I don't want people thinking
that because I have sex with another woman, it's no sex. As
Marilyn Frye writes in her essay "Lesbian Sex," the very word"sex" has corne to mean a moment when there are "one or morepenises present."l If I am defined as a non-sexual entity, I don't
exist. It is not enough for me to be merely tolerated in a heterosexual world. I want my definition of myself as lesbian recognized as a valid identity and a viable option.
I know this is dangerous. Forcing people to abandon theirillusions can produce hostile reactions. But if we encourage
visibility and continue to create lesbian culture, then lesbianidentity must become a reality. Though many of us are still
individually invisible, we must not remain culturally invisible.
A subtle example of maintaining invisibility is referring toourselves as gay. Gay is a term associated with men. Some lesbi* This essay has been adapted from a much longer paper presented at Southern Connecticut State University Women's Studies conference, Oct. 1992.

48 sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Bodyans would still rather be linked with a man, even a gay one, thanclaim an identity of their own or identify with other lesbians.
"Society makes us invisible by calling us 'lesbian women,' thatis 'women' with an abnormal or perverted sexuality. Feminists
see us as 'women' whose sexual preference is to be consideredamong all of the other demands of feminism, a way of co-opting
us into the fight to improve the subjugated condition of womenin the hetero-system. It is therefore imperative that we define
ourselves as lesbians."2
I don't want someone thinking that sex without a male organ
is just a substitute for the real thing. And I don't want someone
thinking, lesbian or straight, that if some of us strap on dildos orwear boxer shorts we want to be men. As Lyndall MacCowan
says in her article on "Recollecting History, Renaming Lives,""Butch and Femme are lesbian-specific genders, two of many
ways to be both a lesbian and a woman. They are unliberated
only in the sense that they need liberating from the assumption,
made by heterosexuals and lesbian-feminists alike, that they are
an imitation of heterosexuality, a clinging to heterosexual femininity or an attempt to masquerade as a man."3
I have to talk about my sexuality, lesbian sex, because I don't
want to be defined by the psychoanalysts, the AMA, local police
departments, boards of education, Food and Drug Administration, national sexologists associations.
Carole S. Vance describes a conference on "sex research"where films were shown depicting heterosexual, homosexualand lesbian sex. During the conference the word "sex" always
referred to heterosexual sex. Vance says that in the heterosexualfilms "men set the pace and the timing of the activities. Women
cooperated . ... All heterosexual films culminated in vaginal penetration .... The films of male homosexual sex were highly genital and depicted orgasm." Vance states, "in contrast with thefilms on heterosex and gay men's sex, lesbian sex occurred in afield of daisies, chronicled by discontinuous jump cuts. Sexual
activity, never genital, consisted of running in slow motion
through sun dappled fields, hand holding, and mutual haircombing." These films were liberal, recent and widely distributed for sex education and counseling.4

Spring/Summer 1993 49

Many years ago I heard Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey speak at
Vassar College. Someone in the audience asked her to define themost important questions regarding sexuality. She said there
was really only one important question and if we knew theanswer most of the questions we have about human sexuality
would be clarified. That single question is, what are the causesof heterosexuality? Everyone was silent for a few seconds and. then began to laugh. But she was serious.
"Sexuality is power," Monique Wittig states in The Straight
Mind. "The sexual subjugation of women leads to their economic, social and political domination. Lesbians who have nosexual relations with men therefore have an economic, politicaland social perspective that goes beyond the male/ female categories."s Wittig questions the entire category of sex as a product of
the heterosexual society by which men appropriate for themselves the reproductive labor of women as well as their physicalpersons by -means of the marriage contract. She goes on to saythat only nuns and lesbians escape this sexual slavery. "Thus alesbian has to be something else, a not-woman, a not-man, aproduct of society, not a product of nature for there is no nature
in society."6As a lesbian, I have many reservations about mainstream
feminism which generally ignores us. A few weeks ago, I waswatching a program on TV about women's issues in the '90s. The
panel, chaired by two women known for their "liberal views,"
discussed abortion rights, the glass ceiling in business, womenas combat forces in the military, child care for working women,
the difficulties of single parents. There wasn't a single reference
to any problems faced in this country by lesbians. Lesbian problems are not women problems because "Lesbians are not
women."?
During the seventies men worried about losing their wives
and girlfriends to lesbians in consciousness raising groups. And
they were right to worry. The slogan of the time stated the idea
fairly succinctly. "Feminism is the theory, Lesbianism is thepractice." In the excitement of the seventies, the reality of somany women becoming lesbians forced many long held beliefs
about us to be reconsidered. Many, including lesbians, believed

SO sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

we were created by a bad home life or were helpless victims ofour genes. We were more to be pitied than condemned. But asthousands of women made the choice to love other women,
biological determination and social upbringing as "causes" forthis "perversion" became inadequate explanations. Lesbians
may not all be born - we can be made.
Julia Penelope, in Call Me Lesbian, states that, "we choose
whether or not we will live as who we are. Naming ourselves
lesbian is a decision to act on our truest feelings ."s When wename ourselves, all the other names society has labeled us become meaningless. I have to talk about "what lesbians do" notjust for straight women (so they might understand what's possible without men) but for us - for lesbians who still self hate,or are embarrassed by the overtly dykey, or think they're somehow superior because of physical attributes, social or professional status. These distinctions prevent us from talking about
what we do have in common: our love for women and our physical expressions of that.
Being Jewish, I am sensitive to these specious distinctions.
We. try to pass in so many ways. Some lesbians still believe"they'll never come for me," or "they'll accept me if I can show
them I'm just like them." A little paranoia, tempered by history,
allows me to believe that if they come it won't matter if you don't
own a dildo, watch porno videos, or keep your handcuffs in atrunk. Your femme dress, your motorcycle jacket, your professional title, your integration won't save you.
Talking about lesbian sex openly states my entitlement toexistence. And as a political and social tactic, the openness declares the best defense to be a good offense. When I hear someone define me by saying, "a lesbian is someone who likes making love to women," I want to respond by asking, "How? Do you
know how?"And I have to begin that answer by defining and examining
my own excitement. The excitement comes precisely from thefact that it is two women and not a mariand a woman. Instead ofsaying that lesbians are defined as those who like sex withwomen, we could say that any woman might enjoy sex withwomen if she allowed herself the same freedom of choice.

Spring/Summer 1993 51

I make this point because it is basic to my argument - thebiological similarities of our bodies, rather than deadening sexual
mystery as we've been told, are instead the powerful source ofsexual excitement. These biological similarities are the basis, thecore of the excitement.
There are real problems in attempting to describe lesbiansex. As there are no names for lesbian relationships, there is very
little language for our sex.
Let me give you an example of how language can affect sex:
The first woman is placing 2 or 3 fingers inside of the second
woman who is lying on her back with her legs open. If we thensay the first woman is the lover and the second woman is the lovee; the first is the giver, the second, the receiver; the first is the top,
the second is the bottom, that additional language transforms
the action. It seems as if the second woman is now passive. The
language does not indicate the simultaneity of the feeling, nor
mutual participation. The words make one a "performer" andthe other the "performed upon." This does not describe lesbian
sex at all. It may more aptly describe traditional roles in heterosexual relationships and in heterosexual sex.
Using these words may make lesbian sex partners vacate thereality of the act itself. We may not recognize the inadequacies ofthe language, but react to and be affected by definitions which
do not describe us or what we're feeling or doing. The language
denies the essence of lesbian sex; the simultaneity of feeling andthe mutuality of physical identity.
Let me describe one part of lesbian sex - not, by far, the only
method, just one of the variety of lesbian sexual expressions:
When I enter another woman with my hand, fingers, I knowwhat she feels like, physiologically. I may not know her emotional feelings, her reaction to me, but I do recognize the insideof her body. It is my body. And I know what she is feeling at thatmoment when my fingers enter her.
This moment of identification, communication, and recognition of shared sensations is very complex. It is her body entered.
It is my body entering. It is my body responding. My body
responding to the feeling of my fingers entering her. My body
responding to her feeling of that same sensation. I can feel the52sinister wisdom #49,The Lesbian Body

sensation of her in my fingers, in my head and inside me. She
experiences the sensation inside her and in her head . She knowsthat I am experiencing the excitement of this moment and she
knows, too, the way in which I experience it. So it's not only myidentification with her which causes the excitation, it is also her
knowing what I am feeling and her identification with me.
This awareness of the physiological similarities can intensify into a deeper spiritual sensation of connection - one may
feel she is reaching up and touching the deepest part of another's
being. During these moments of sexual identification and unity,
it is possible for the woman entering to have an orgasm solely
from the response of the woman being entered, and / or from her
own identification with the sensations and the feeling of that
other woman. Descriptions of this sexual moment appear inmany lesbian works of fiction.
I don't think a man can ever feel that identification. No
matter what the relationship, he will never be able to appreciatethat moment when entry into another woman becomes entry
into yourself. He can only understand his own physical reactions
and identify with his own sensations. A lesbian lover can concentrate on herself, understand and identify with the other
woman, focus both on the feeling in her fingers and the feelingthe other woman is experiencing in her vagina.
The level of intimacy may also increase identification andheighten excitation. But the truth is, in lesbian sex it doesn't
always matter how intimately you know another woman. You
know how another woman feels inside. It's your body too. This
communication can be sufficient stimulus for excitation.
Without this basic knowledge of the other's body, mutuality
can't exist. The mutuality of lesbian sex affects excitement. One
woman knows she may either simultaneously or sequentially be
experiencing similar sensations. This alternating "power" role
can be an important element. I use the term "power" as a createdimage playing out an aspect of sexuality. In lesbian sex, roles canbe reversed. Each woman may get to experience both parts of thissex play in a unique way different from heterosex.
As a lesbian, I must be conscious of who I am. There are no
single, simple answers to questions raised in discussing lesbian

Spring/Summer'993 53

sex. In fact, the more discussions the more questions seem toarise - this is how it should be.
While writing this, I thought about us as the group that Jill
Johnston once described as the Lesbian Nation. The diversity of
our sexual needs and desires should not make talking about oursexuality impossible. We are not all the same. Nor should people
who comprise a nation be thought of as similar. The need to rethink old ideas is vital to our future lesbian lives. Our differences and similarities should encourage us to re-create and define our selves in a truer, more realistic, positive and energeticway.

1 Marilyn Frye, "Lesbian 'Sex'," in An Intimate Wilderness, ed. Judith Barrington(Portland, OR: Eighth Mountain Press, 1991), pp. 1-8.
2 Ariane Brunet, Louise Turcotte, "Separatism and Radicalism: An analysisof the differences and similarities," For Lesbians Only, A Separatist Anthology,
ed. S. Hoagland, J. Penelope (London, England: Only women Press, 1988), pp.
453-454.
3 Lyndall MacCowan, "Recollecting History, Renaming Lives: femme stigma
and the feminist seventies and eighties," in The Persistent Desire: A FemmeButch Reader, ed. Joan Nestle (Boston, MA: Allyson Publications, 1992), pp.
299-328.
4 Carole Vance, "Gender Systems, Ideology and Sex Research," in Powers ofDesire, The Politics of Sexuality, ed. Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, Sharon
Thompson (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1983), pp. 375-376.
5 Monique Witting, The Straight Mind (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1992).
6 Ibid., p. 6.
7 Ibid., p. 32.
8 Julia Penelope, Call Me Lesbian (Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1992), p. 42.

54 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

Cherie Bowers

Fmgers in Popcorn

The warm butter of your company
drips into my veins.

Can't believe I asked you
Can't believe you accepted
Can't believe we spent $19.50
to ignore a movie.
Palms of my hands
sweat and throb
Popcorn balances between us
Fingers in,Fingers out.
Fingers in,Fingers out.
Fingers brush yours, with salty grease.
Say it. Say it. Say it.
Say, "I love you."
Say, "I want you."
Say, "I will never find anyone like you again."
Leaning across the bucket,
Shoulders pressing,
Ear angling to my lips,
Dark curls resting on my cheek.
Take a breath,
Swallow hard,
Wet the lips,

Say it.
Say It.
SAY IT.

"I love M&Ms. Want any?"
Slip open the bag.
Fingers in,Fingers out.

Spring/Summer 1993 SS

SuzanneOpening Dialogue
In 1979 I was the only woman of color at my first "all-girl" party.
I found myself openly staring at a 6'1", 250 lb. leather-boundsouthern butch woman who had a thick mustache, spiked hairand a dainty feminine name. I had never before known that awoman could look like that. I was repulsed. Even a little frightened. And suddenly very conscious of that prissy pink bow
fastened to my dress. She caught me staring at her (while I was
tugging off that femme bow) and she lumbered toward me.
Afraid not to make conversation with this scary-looking woman,
I asked her if a Black woman here might find a date.
Shedrawled, Honey if they don't want you because you're Blackthen they don't really like wimmin!
I thought that made sense. I ended up leaving with her!

ladylaser print

Juarez Hawkins

56

sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

Donna Tanigawa

I Like My Chi-i-sa-i Body Now
Before time, I got plenny tings fo' feel shame. Whoevah said dat one
Asian woman is exotic nevah come talk to me. Eh, I wish dat I wastold my body was so meting desirous. From small-kid time, I wentink dat fo' be Japanee was fo' be kind a ugly. Mo' worse, I waskind a fat. Whoevah saw one not so skinny Japanee in da magazines at Tani's Superette? Not me. I nevah even see one Japanee in
papa-san's dirty magazines (da ones under da sink across da Ajax).
Wow, I nevah believe dat haole-folks wen tink Asian women stay
exotic. Even okay looking. ' Ass why hard. Maybe my life would be
different if I knew dis kine stuff. Maybe I would nevah try fo' look
like one haole, yeah? Da kine, put Scotch tape on my eyelids fo'
make 'urn double. An' maybe I would nevah tink dat I had fo' go
on one crash diet. Dis kine tinking wen make me hate myself.
I stay struggling now. My lover Lee-Ann tinks dat I got one
great body. She loves da way my two chi-chis grew from one"almost A" fo' one cup size "C" in da last two years. Japanee
women get small breasts, yeah? I used fo' tell her dat I wanted fo'
kapu her chi-chis - cuz dey stay big.
Good fo' have Lee-Ann in my life. She safe fo' talk story wit
at night. I tell her more an' more about my hanabata days as one
kid in Waipahu. I wen grow up in one town where mostly had
Pilipino folks, da sugar plantation, 'ass why. Da Pilipinos are dalast group of labor immigrants fo' work in da cane fields in
Hawai'i. I tell her any kine about my family. About my small-kid
friends. Aftah about one year, I tell her about me, Donna.
Eh, I was one fat Japanee girl. I used fo' eat adult meals at
Funaba's Family Restaurant. I ate plenny ono foods at home, too.
I used fo' grind da New Year's mochi. Da rice all white an' soft.
Only ting I had stuck doo-doo dat nevah like leave my okolehole wen I ate too much mochi.
I tink dat my life wen change at Alphabet Land. I was da onlySpring/Summer 1993 57

I tink dat my life wen change at Alphabet Land. I was da only
fat kid in preschool. I began fo' feel shame about da size of mybody. All da kids was skinny, I tink. I used fo' cry wen da kids callme "Donut" an' not Donna. 'What did you do?" Lee-Ann ask me.
I ate more. Mama-san wen tink dat one fat child was healthy.
At Alphabet Land, I wen fall in love wit my classmate Laurie,
one haole girl. She wuz skinny an' had short blond hair. She ate
plenny carrot sticks fo' lunch. I put myself on one diet so I could
look like her. Just tink, one seven-year old kid going on one
fuckin' diet in da 1970s. Geez, dis wuz even before health food
was in da markets. I remembah, I wen make one list of all dafattening tings I ate an' had fo' stop eating. I wen write andagi,
shrimp tempura, an' milk at da top of my list. Had about twenty
foods I nevah like eat, bumbye I stay fat. Laurie was pretty an'
had nice thighs dat kinda look like her carrot sticks.
I lost plenny weight. I came skinny, too. I noticed dat myschool teacher wen tink dat I was so cute. She wen say dat I was"petite." Wow, I wen love Miss White dat year. Aftah I wen pull
down, nobody called me "Donut" 0' tease me. Mo' bettah I stayskinny, I wen tink.
So why, you ask, I no can believe dat me, one Asian woman,stay ono-Iooking? I nevah see da Hollywood movies of us-folks
as Chinatown playtings, eh? I did. Or all da dirty magazines fromJapan wit plenny beautiful naked women? I did. My uncle hadsome under his mattress. I tink dat fo' me, I wen always hate mybody. First ting I was fat, den even as one "petite" girl, I still wen see
myself as fat. Or at least not like da other girls. Maybe dats why mydoctor wen tell my mother I was suffering from anorexia nervosa
wen I went fo' my physical exam. I was one teenager an' my rags
wen stop fo' tree months. No'ting. Not even enough fo' soil one
Stayfree panty liner. Anyways, I liked fo' be skinny, just like Laurie.
I nevah tink dat I had problems. Laydahs in college, I nevahtink dat I suffered from one bad self-image. Only now, I can see
dat I really wen hate my body. I stay 4 feet, 11 inches. I always
weigh less dan 100 pounds, even before I get my rags. My waist
stay 24 inches an' at least now, I get decent size chi-chis. So why
I hate my body, you like ask? Ask, sistah.

58

sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

I tink dat I nevah like feel good any more. Not only did I tink
dat nobody wen like me cuz I was Japanee an' fat, but den I wentink dat fo' be da kine "sexual" wuz shame. As one small girl, I
used fo' play on da monkey bars aftah school. I used fo' hang real
still, an' move my legs like one scissors. Back an' forth in da air.
Felt good. Used fo' feel good right under my stomach. Sometimes mo' bettah play aftah drinking four glasses water. All da
shi-shi made da feeling mo' strong. I had dis same feeling wen
my penpal from da mainland came Hawai'i fo' da summer. We
wen Eskimo kiss an' move our legs like on scissors until her
aunty wen get all huhu about us. "Sick," I tink she wen yell at me.
So laytah wen Martin made da same feeling come fo' me, I
wen tink, "Sick, Donna." He was my classmate in da sixth grade.
He put any kine stuffs between my legs. Mostly his hands. I tinkdats where I learned fo' leave my body in da canefields an' go
someplace else, even if I wuz right deir wit him. I only had fo'tink dat I wuz someplace else, even if Martin was on top me.
So as one adult, I wen still hate my body. All da times dose
haole men wen date me, I wen tink dat maybe they heard about
me an' Martin. Silly, yeah? Here I wuz on da mainland far, faraway from Hawai'i an' I wen tink dat some stupid childhood
memory stay inform dese men. Maybe dey made me feel da sameway, 'ass why. Eh, I was all prepared fo' be raped, I had my mind
all psyched. I know it's not true, but I used fo' tink datJ was raped
cuz it was easier fo' me, as opposed fo' some beautiful woman,
fo' take rape. Da counselor used fo' tink dat I hated my body cuz
my rapist wen violate me. True, da guy was one fuckin animal,
but my small-kid days wen prepare me.
Now I like my body. I see dykes check me out. Especially wen
I get all femme-out an' to go da women's bar in Waikiki. Lipstickan' heels. I tink dat da only really ugly ting about my body is dascar on my left forearm. Stay look like one mouth, all red on dainside an' thick brown on da edges. I wen make dis badge
myself. Curling iron work good fo' craft 'um. I wen burn my arm
every night. Den laytah, I used fo' peel off da scab an' swirl
around whatevah flesh I could see. One time I wen even bite dathole. But I no eat red meat too much. Only get stuck cuz Asian

Spring/Summer 1993 S9peoples no can digest too much meat an' dairy products. I used
fo' like lick da blood. All dis wen help me wit my pain. Fuck myarm, I wen tink. Da pain feels kinda good. I nevah feel "sick" likeI did wen I wuz wit my penpal. (Secret-kine, felt kind a good wit
my penpal.)
So wot, Donna? How you feel now? Tink you body still no
good? No. I like who I am now. No big ting fo' be Asian, too. So
wot my eyes no more space fo' fit eyeshadow. An' dat shit wen
happen fo' my chi-i-sa-i body. Now I know dat it's no good fo'
destroy my body. No starve or carve yo'self, Donna. No hurt
anymore fo' look at myself in da mirror. My lover Lee-Ann makeda space between my legs feel good. An' you know wot, sistah?
I stay make dat place feel good, too. I make my whole body feelgood. I eat andagi now.

Glossary of "Pidgin" Words
chi-i-sa-i: small; tiny, petite
before time/befo' time/befoah time: long time ago; earlier, formerly
Japanee: a person of Japanese ancestry
haole: Caucasian; white; Hawai'in for "foreigner"chi-chi: female breasts
ono: delicious; tasty
ono-Iooking: beautiful; attractive
kapu: to reserve; to claim
hanabata days: childhood (literally, a time when you had hanabata, or
mucus from your nose)
grind: eat
mochi: Japanese rice that is pounded and steamed/baked
okole-hole: anus
andagi: fried Okinawan doughnuts
bumbye: later onpull down: lose weight
shi-shi: urine
huhu: upset

60

sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

Arl Spencer Nadel

The Bus
Young men on the bus
legs splayed wide
take up 2, 3 seats even,Stare at you insolently
demanding their rightto take up as much space as possible.
Fat womon sits primly
Pulls in her folds
as tight as possible
takesup11/4,ll/2
maybe 2 whole seats on the bus
ashamed, she stares out the windowand smashes herself even closer to it
if you sit next to her.
I've seen a full bus with boys taking up so much roomno one dares sit beside them
forcing them to take the real space
their skinny bodies require
I've heard and felt the sighs, the looks,of resentment toward the fat womonsquishing her soul Into a tiny space,making room for some
disgusted skinny person.
You know buses were made by white men
for money
so's as many as possible can fit
on this cattle car for the poor.
And I know those white men
don't ride them.

Spring/Summer 1993 61

Fat latina womon andsmall asian womon
sit side by side
one takes up two thirds of the seat
the other's legs dangle in the air
I'm looking at all of us trying to fit ourselves
into some white man's image
I'm looking at all of us trying to survive
in this white man's world
And I wish I had the chutzpah
to spread my legs andlet my beautiful fat body expand
let my arms fall to my sides,
to stare insolently at
the disgusted thin people
and not care.

62

sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

Elissa Raffa

Skinny Sisters
me upstage wall is blank. There is a slide projector downstage right,
which Elissa operates from stage and which can project an image onto the
upstage wall or onto Elissa's body, when she steps into the beam. Music.
Lights up on Elissa sitting in an overstuffed chair, downstage left,
sorting through a box of slides, holding them up to the light. She wears
leggings/long underwear, an oversized white t-shirt and a blue plaid
flannel bathrobe. Photo albums, books and magazines are stacked andscattered by her feet. Other items on stage include a basket of unfolded
laundry and an ironing board. A TV sits on the ironing board, the screen
facing the audience. A continuous-loop videotape of images from dietcommercials plays on the TV with no sound. Elissa turns on the slide
projector. Music fadesJ(Slide on wall: Elissa with her grandmother, three sisters and the familydog)
1972. Grandma's eighty-fifth birthday party. I'm the chubby
one in the long blue dress. Doesn't my grandmother look good?
Let's see: that's the other fat sister, Gloria, hiding behind me.
And my two skinny sisters, Maria and Angela on the left. The
thing I love about this picture is how clear the rules are: fat girls
wear granny gowns, only skinny sisters get to wear mini skirts.
Or was that have to wear them? This rule wasn't particular to myfamily.
(Slide on wall: Elissa's grandmother with three other young women)
These are the three best friends my skinny sisters and I
invited to my grandmother's party. As you can tell, the rules
applied to them too.
I have only been skinny twice in my life. Well, I mean, I
wasn't really skinny, but I felt skinny, relative to the other sizes
I've been - or the one I am now. And both times I met withdizzying widespread approval.
(Slide on wall: Elissa in 1976, looking over her shoulder)Spring/Summer 1993 63

1976. My first skinny period, at age seventeen. I had mono.
Every time I sat down, I fell asleep. I was completely inactive, but
I was too busy sleeping to eat. Plus, I couldn't swallow. People
told me I looked great: my sisters, my aunts and uncles, myteachers. Like I was doing something virtuous.
(Slide on wall: Elissa in 1986, blowing a kiss)
1986. This second skinny phase of my life - at 27 - is a little
harder to explain, but I think I was in the midst of a brand new
sexual infatuation. I was up all night almost every night, andthen on top of it I worked a really demanding full-time job. Oh,
yeah, and I biked 10 miles round-trip to work and back every day
as long as the ground was dry. I guess I was sick a lot that year,
too - from lack of sleep, maybe from neglecting my nutritional
needs. So I started shrinking (Slides on wall: Elissa's face over different-size cut-out bodies)- from size sixteen ... to fourteen .. . to twelve. I even bought asize ten pair of pants, but - they were expensive pants. They
would have been twelves at Target. You know that rich women's
clothes are labeled a size or more smaller than inexpensive
clothes? If you can pay fifty bucks for a pair of pants, you deserveto think you're a size ten.
The weird thing about this more recent skinny spell was theattention I got from certain lesbians. Not friends, but acquaintances, women on the edge of my circle of friends. Good, solid,
politically aware, radical feminist, skinny sister dykes. Thisparticular bunch of women had always struck me as kind of
standoffish, a little snotty. And here they were, all of a sudden,with huge beaming smiles every time I got into line behind themat the coop.
(Slide on wall: a thin lesbian showing approval)
I didn't want to believe that they could be so shallow, butthen I started growing again. This way. (gestures side to side) I
don't know what happened. The sexual infatuation wore off. I
started driving to work, instead of biking. I made it a priority to
eat balanced meals and get a full night's sleep. I stopped getting
sick. And these women - the dykes that had become friendly

64 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

overnight - just as suddenly, their smiles faded. Now when I
see them at the co-op, they avert their eyes. Or they peer into my
shopping basket to check out what groceries I'm buying.
(Slide on wall: a thin lesbian showing disapproval)(Elissa takes off bathrobe.)
You know, I missed those approving smiles. For about fiveminutes, I actually thought of doing something -like dieting to see if I could win them back again. I dismissed that thought
pretty quickly. After all, I had my record to protect. I am thirty
three years old, and I am proud to say that there are two things
I have never done to my body: I have never dieted, and I havenever shaved my armpits. (shows armpit hair) Not that I haveanything against women who do; it's just when you've held out
this long you don't want to blow it.
I did shave my legs for a while - in seventh grade. I was sosick of boys teasing me about being hairy, I begged my motherto let me start, first with that awful-smelling depilatory creamthat lets you rinse off body hair and then with a delicate pink
plastic razor. But by the end of that school year I had lost interest.
It was 1971 in New York and there were all these really beautiful
straight hippy women around. They were older than me and I
thought if they don't have to shave I don't either. It just happensthat I made that decision before I ever took a razor to myunderarms.
(Slide on wall: diet ads with before and after pictures)
I don't think I decided not to diet; I think I just knew,
instinctively, that it wasn't going to work. Oh, sure, I read thebacks of magazines.
(Elissa walks into the projector beam so that the "before" image is
projected onto her shirt. She imitates the slouched posture of the model.)I was allured by the thought of changing from this (She jumps to get"the "after" image onto her shirt, and imitates thecorresponding coquettish posture.)- to this. But my better judgment told me it wasn't worth themoney or the effort. I could tell they were trying to make methink badly of myself.

Spring/Summer 1993 65(She shuts off the projector.)
I could smell a scam. So I didn't tinker with my body.
Sometimes I feel like I'm supposed to apologize for that ... andfor eating in public.
(Elissa begins to eat an apple.)I hear women do it all the time: I'm just eating because I. skipped both breakfast and lunch. I'm eating now because I
won't get a chance to eat later. We're supposed to explain away
our desires. Prove that we care about looking good. Pretend that
we're really committed to controlling our bodies. As if that's
possible - or desirable.
I remember reading a New York magazine in the mid-seventies with a big, splashy cover story about how medical research
proved that 99% of the time reducing diets don't work. It was oneof my skinny sisters, Maria, who showed me the article. Maria is
a graphic artist and a tile setter and people underestimate her
intelligence all the time. When we were kids she gave me a lot ofshit about how my being fat was an embarrassment to her, butever since she read that article about how we all have different
set points, she hasn't breathed a word about me being "overweight." Not to me, anyway. The whole tone of the article wasthat this new information about the failure of diets would bequite a blow to women, but when I read it I felt sweet, warm
relief. Here was official permission to live in my body, to noteven bother to fight with it. To not see food as my enemy.
Hallelujah.
Of course there were still a ton of rules about what was
acceptable to wear. You know these rules, don't you?
(Elissa turns the slide projector back on, and steps into the beam of the"before" image. The next series of slides are patterns taken from everyday
objects such as venetian blinds and projected onto Elissa's shirt.)(slide) No horizontal stripes - (slide) - just vertical. (slide) No
loud splashy colors - (slide) - a solid dark color is best. Oh, andif you're short, like me, never wear contrasting shirt and pants.
(slide) It cuts you right here. (gestures)(Slide on wall: Elissa's grandmother in 1950)

66 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

In the Italian neighborhood where I grew up there were allthese old women around, wearing black for mourning. At least
I thought it was for mourning. Maybe they were fashion victims
too. My grandmother's husband died of a heart attack in 1944.
She always wore blue and violet dresses with flowers andpaisleys, never solid black. I thought she didn't wear black
because she was too young to act like her life was over justbecause her husband died. But maybe she was intentionallydefying fat sister fashion rules. Maybe wearing all those colors
was her way of saying (struts) look at my curves. Or - why go outof your way to look like you're starving when you're not?

(Slide on wall: Laina Pecora with her legs in the air. Elissa gets on floor
and imitates the pose.)This is Laina Pecora. Isn't she pretty? She's a strong woman- principled. I read about her in People magazine. She was arising star in the fashion model industry but she refused to giveup eating. It says right here, she enjoys food too much to just pickat lettuce like the other models do. When she got all the way up to
155 pounds she got fired. Actually, she was given a choice: diether way back down to 110 pounds or cancel her contract. She
gave up a kabillion-dollar-a-year contract, just for the right tostay a size twelve.
But, the righteous are rewarded. It's not like she's not working, although she did suffer quite a salary reduction - from akabillion dollars to a few hundred thousand. You know what
she's doing? Modeling clothes for Lane Bryant, the women's
clothing retailer that specializes in sizes 16 to 28. So whenever I
go in there to check out what would look good on me in size 18,
there are black-and-white pictures of Laina all over the store.
(Slide on wall: interior of Lane Bryant)
There she is in a plunging V-neck cable-knit sweater. There
she is in stretch pants. There she is in a silk thigh-length tunic.
I always wonder: do they make a special little size 12 version of
everything they sell, just for her photo shoots? More than that I
wonder: Why do they have a skinny sister modeling large
women's clothes? Buy this imitation Navaho pattern oversizedcamp shirt and you'll look like Laina?

Spring/Summer 1993 67(Elissa shuts off slide projector and starts folding clothes.)
I have to stop trashing Lane Bryant. After all, how many
places do middle class fat women have to shop? If you're poor,of course, it's worse. I mean check out how mi:my size 18 or size
24 items turn up on the racks at the Salvation Army. Like one a
year? But my problem is having the money I have for clothes
burn a hole in my pocket before I find anything that looks good.
This is compounded by the fact that I'm under five foot two andall the clothes in large sizes are designed for tall women. You
know, "weight proportional to height" as those dykes who write
personal ads are so fond of saying these days. So, being disproportional, I find a pair of pants here, a shirt there, once in a while,maybe once every six months, but before I know it, they're wornout and I'm looking again. I don't even have to dress up for work:
jeans and a t-shirt are fine, as long as they're not ripped.
One day I was downtown and I caught myself ravenously
staring at skinny women. It was sort of embarrassing. Then I
thought about it and I realized: I didn't want to look like them; I
wasn't sexually attracted to them; I was jealous that their clothes
fit so well. (holds up pair of jeans) How's this for an energy drain?
I am constantly thinking about what am I going to do when thispair of pants gets shredded from one too many trips through thewashing machine. Don't tell me to buy another pair in the samestyle. The manufacturer has discontinued it. So in spite of all myrighteousness about not watching TV or reading mainstream
magazines, I do frequent large women's clothing stores. Frequently. And I know a lot about them.

(Elissa turns on the slide projector and begins a lecture about the 50%of u.s. women who are size 16 and up; the way clothes are marketed tolarge women; the minuscule percent of floor space in major department
stores devoted to large women's clothes; the inane text in large size store
catalogs; the kind of clothes sold in large sizes, and the quality; and about"the look" - contrary to the old rules it is now mandatory for large
women to wear bright splashy prints and large metallic objects. She
illustrates the lecture with more slides of everyday objects projected onto
her t-shirt: floral couch fabric, a potted plant, etc. She pretends to be

68sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

trying on different clothes - asking "How do I look?", tugging at theshirt, etc.)(She steps ou't of the projector beam.)
I'd go to work naked if I could. I already hang around myhouse naked all the time so I don't wear out my few items ofclothes.
One day I was in a fat woman clothes store and I was just.
feeling belligerent, so I asked the skinny sister sales clerk why
they fold up pants on the hangers so they look really tiny and you
can' t flip through the rack fast and see how clothes are tailored.
You have to waste time shopping that could be better spent on art
or revolution. I see her sizing me up. Uh, oh, I imagine her
thinking, here's another one of those fat-liberation-be-proudof-your-body-type customers. The kind that doesn't appreciate
how lucky they are to even have a store that caters to them.
I figure she's going to tell me about saving space and how
many fewer carousels would fit in the store if they used bigger
hangers. But no, she's got a better explanation. It's about keeping
the clothes from looking all droopy on the hanger. Then she
glances around, to make sure we're the only ones in the store, andshe gets this look on her face like she's just eaten a frog.
Imagine, she says, how much fabric goes into a size twenty
eight - and how ugly it would look drooping off the hanger.
(Slide on wall: a thin lesbian showing disgust)I'm supposed to be grateful that I'm not a size twenty eight.
I just walked out. I gotta save my energy for family get-togethers.
My skinny sister Angela thinks that "fat" is a dirty word, an
acceptable insult to hurl at someone who has crossed her, likemen on the street, or our oldest sister who really is bad news, forentirely unrelated reasons. Kind of like the word "Jew," whichis Angela's favorite slam against her ex-husband.
Don't say that, I told her, it perpetuates hatred. She didn't
want a "politically correct" lecture, but she did stop using "Jew"around me. She never did use it around her Jewish friends, ofcourse. Still she was really stubborn about giving up "fat."Spring/Summer 1993 69

Don't say that, I tried again, it hurts me.
I don't think of you as fat, she said, which isn't even true.
But I have to deal with it in the street. Fat cunt. Fat bitch. Fatcow. Fat dyke. Ugly dog. Ugly pig. Fat is just a fact. It's not acharacter flaw. So why do you talk like it is?
We were screaming. Her boyfriend had to step in and tell her
I was right. So, she cleaned up her act a little. But she still advises
me to buy sweaters on sale that don't fit me because maybe I can
put them away until I lose weight. She never read the famous
New York magazine diet issue, or Fat Liberation pamphlets. She
still believes fat is a tragedy, or at least a sign of psychologicalinferiority.
She thinks our oldest sister - the one we don't like - that
her teenage daughters are fat because they're fucked up fromliving with their mother.
Do you think I'm fucked up?
No, she says.
Then why equate being fat with having psychological problems?
Well, she says, you have to admit that people eat compulsively.
But some compulsive eaters are skinny. And some fat people
eat as little as you do.
We were sharing a plate of fried calamari in a Greek restaurant and I hoped to God I hadn't eaten more than my share.
Well, you have to admit that people gain weight when they
start eating more than they used to.
Angela, I don't eat any more than I used to. Maybe less. If I
gained weight in the past three years it's because I stopped
riding my bike to work. Because I spend more of my spare time
sitting and writing. So I get less exercise? That doesn't make me
fucked up.
Well, you have to admit that people exercise because theycare about their health.
People exercise because it's easier to join the Y than to change
the world .

70 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

(To the audience) If I decided to really care about my health you .
know what I would do? I'd spend all my spare time doing
research, writing letters, making phone calls and sitting inlegislative hearings to try and shut down the garbage burner. I'dwage a one-woman war against industrial pollution and agricultural pesticides. And I wouldn't get skinny doing it.
Copyright 1992, Elissa Raffa

Susan and Susan at Let It All Hang Out Day, SF, 1989
photographJane Philo men ClelandSpring/Summer 1993 71

Arl Spencer Nadel

6/'E/CJ2.

She walks across the fieldtall skinny gangly womon
someone I don't know
who I've known for 9 years
Neck held up by white bracemuscles too destroyed by the dietto function.
Only reason I recognize heris the brace and the ex-loverby her side.
I can't look at her,
can't bear to see and yet not see
the casualty she's become.
Dieted to get that job
to end the endless hatredof her body and her selfbought that leather jacket
got that tenure track position
had tachycardia
and her neck go out because her muscles were so eaten away.
I don't recognize the face without softness
nor the arms that look like skinbarely stretched over bones.
And what's hardest is I don't recognize the friend
I once held so dear.
What I recognize is the loss
and the ·aching grief.
What I understandis in this world

72

sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

my reaction is outrageous.
The worJd sees a womon who's finally won
won thinness
won a job
won at life.
What I do know is another beautiful fat dykehas been lost
her life shortenedby who knows how much.
And my friend has lost most of herself
to feel able to survive.
And I am in mourning.

Spring/Summer 1993 73

Kelly Jean Cogswell

Chronic Blues

I lose my body day by day.
I've watched it happen seven years.
My skin is torn with tattered rage.
My face begins to split like faces
stretched out queer with constant fevers.
I lose my body day by day.
Doctors fail like childish faith,prescribe, pronounce, refuse to hear
my skin is torn with tattered rage.
I need protection - leather and chains?
Do blood cells die by what I wear?
I lose my body day by day.
I'll try a biker's jacket, snake
skin boots, a distant, careless, uncared forlook. My skin is torn with rage.
I'm sick of stethoscopes and plastic saints,
Take your pills, Overcome, Persevere:
I lose my body day by day.
My skin is torn with rage.

74 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

Chaia Zblocki Heller

i don't touch my breasts anymore•

1 don't touch my breasts anymore.
those impossible curves, too steep for my hands.
and all those oblong, invisible lumps
rolling along inside me like land mines.
all that searching and probing,always scanning for a pebble, a tiny marble,
some sign that would send me runningwith both hands flailing,slipping across the blue tile of a laboratory
to pose in front of some gigantic, eyeless camera,
the broad creases under my breasts
smiling their last round of "cheese"to the tired, pale faced nurse
the fear of some man
flashing his steel and cutting into me
as if into a stick of butter, slicing away
a whole portion of my life:
i spent my entire twelfth year
pumping my arms and praying
to fill the lavender leotard
i stole from my big sister's drawer
the part of me that most matches my mother,those too familiar, rose-centered rises
softer and more wondrous
than any planet known to man.
i don't touch my breasts anymore.
i have surrendered them up,
pawned them off
for a small piece of mind.

Spring/Summer 1993 75

Dion Farquhar

Left Us Talking
For Vivian and Gene

I've been on the wrong endof every statistic
she said, trying to decideamong all the options
she knew meant no choice.
To shrink the tumors
on her spine. Radiationin New York or an experimental
chemo combo in Houston
going for systemic
remission. They've got
a grant, she said,
they tell you straight out
it might kill you ormake you lose your mind.
Friends and parents
said fight for time
so not wanting to, she left
her city, went to Houston
leaving us to phone.
It's a cancer industry,
she said, there's a wholebuilding just for kidneys.
Always the same smart.snit and lip, tough voiceunchanged and the soundof the strong suckon the cigarette

76 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

exactly three days
before she died, an houron the phone. Tell me about you,she said, not much to sayfrom here, before her fadeinto sleeping pill slur
but insisting, Don't come.
I'll be back in a week.
Then her dying, talking in her sleepin the motel where she spent
two days every week, outpatient with her motherwaiting for it to be overto get home to New YorkSpring/Summer 1993 77

Woman in Red Cap
charcoalLouise Gilbert

78 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

Angela Koenig
from Meaning and Myth in Menopause
Introduction

N early forty million U.S. women are about to go through menopause - what has been a private passage is about to become agenerational journey. Menopause often signals a crisis in meaning for women who undergo the process in this Europeanderived culture that demeans women generally and mocks menopausal women in particular. Yet there is evidence for a lost
heritage in European history and prehistory, for a time whenolder women were respected figures of authority in their communities. The following is a condensed chapter from Meaning
and Myth in Menopause. I wrote this book to challenge stereotypes
and assumptions about menopausal women, and I hope it willsound a note of encouragement, even of welcome, because there
is ample reason to believe that menopause can be a time ofrenewal and revitalization. The medical industry, aware of theenormous profit potential, has targeted us but we need not
become their market for drugs and intervention. Menopause canbe a bridge from life as a personal quest to a time of communal
purpose and engagement. This will surely be more fully envisioned in the next two decades as millions are changed by andchange menopause.

from A Lost Heritage
A curious theory is often repeated during discussions ofmenopause: not until this century have women lived long enoughto go through menopause, and this is why medical science
understands so little about the process. This theory serves thepatriarchy; it trivializes women's experience by suggesting alonger life is an easy price to pay for a little discomfort, and it
promotes an image of the culture as benign and caring if given
the opportunity. Very few physical conditions were "understood" before this century, and women have grown old in all
cultures, and in all times.

Spring/Summer 1993 79

There is a silence around menopause that feels strange, likea silence that tells a child she has come close to where a secret isconcealed. Maybe this feeling can be explained by the reluctance of older women, in the past, to discuss physical matterswith young women and girls, but I believe the silence is morecharged.
Deliberate erasure and not neglectful ignorance caused
menopause to disappear from public view within the European
tradition. A long and extremely rich past in which older women
were figures of authority in all spheres of personal and community life has been lost, and this is a past that began long before
the classical Greeks and Romans.
The Neolithic is widely understood to have been a peacefultime. Nearly all who write about this time comment on the lackof evidence for aggression and violence. It is also a time when lifeon earth was understood through representations of goddesses.
liThe moon's three phases - new, waxing, and old - are repeatedin trinities or triple-functional deities that recall these moonphases: maiden, nymph, and crone; life-giving, death-giving,
and transformational; rising, dying, and self-renewing.. .. The
concept of regeneration and renewal is perhaps the most outstanding and dramatic theme that we perceive in this symbolism." 1
We lost more than stories when the goddesses and their
meanings disappeared from our common and ready understanding. We lost a body of metaphors for self awareness, forgrowth, for connectedness, for metaphysical consciousness. I
mean this phrase most literally: a body of metaphors. A woman's
body. We use the phrase "body politic" and there is no doubtthat the body meant is a male body. Think how differently wemight relate to public life if this metaphor evoked a female body.
Then we might have very different ideas of creativity, of civic
responsibility, of connection, of purpose and transformation.
The menopausal body has the potential to signify renewal,
rebirth and revitalization, but in our cultural context, these
meanings. are utterly denied. Menstrual blood was once thought
to be the source of a woman's power; when we spoke of being
related by blood, we meant the mother's blood. A menopausal
woman was understood to be all the more powerful because

80 sinister w isdom #49, The Lesbian Body

once she no longer bled, she retained her power for herself. Thusa woman, in effect, gives birth to herself at menopause, and I finda wonderful energy in this concept. "The original Crones of thematriarchal community," writes Barbara Walker, "were women
past the age of menopause, in whom the blood of life no longer
appeared outside the body .. .. [I]t was usually described as wise
blood, and old women were described as the wisest of mortals ....
[O]fficial opinion about witches included the assertion that theirmagic powers resulted from permanent retention of their lunar
blood within their bodies."2.
The crone as a mythological figure not only affirms thepresence of older women in the past, but she also redirects andtrains our ability to see women within the cultures where they
were regarded with respect. The crone is not a single goddess,but many, and among her names are Kali, Demeter, Cerridwen,
Baubo, Holda, Hekate, Erda - and each of these names, from awide range of cultures, focuses on a different power. In ourancestral cultures, for example, measurement was a most sacredfunction, and it was the natural function of women; measure,month, menses, moon - these words derive from the same root.
We may even have artifacts from the Paleolithic that measured
the lunar cycle.
We do have an image of the crone in our culture, and shecomes from much more recently than our Neolithic past. The
figure of the witch, I believe, knows why silence surrounds
menopause. The culture and communities of Old Europe, thename Marija Gimbutas gives to the pre-patriarchal lands, did
not end with the Greeks and Romans. "There is no question that
Old European sacred images and symbols remain a vital part ofthe cultural heritage of Europe. Most of us were surrounded inchildhood by the fairy world, which contained many images
transmitted from Old Europe."3 The continuity of tradition
lived not only in symbols and stories but also in the arrangements of daily life. Carolyn Merchant gives us a sense of the lifeof Europe' s peasantry: "The earliest agrarian communities ...
have been called 'territorial communes.' Whereas each family
farmed its own individual plot, all those living in the community's
territory shared its natural resources: forests, pastures and water.

•Sp ring/Summer'993 81... Peasant jurisdiction and self-regulation of these common
lands exemplified an interaction between individual needs andthose of the group as a whole."4 Women were as central to thesepeasant communities as they had been in Old Europe.
A terrible gulf now lies between us and knowledge of ourlost heritage as menopausal women, and this gulf is a centurieslong convulsion of terror. "History" calls these centuries theHigh Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation, Age of Discovery, Age of Reason, and most ironically, the Enlightenment, but
in women's history these are the Burning Times. When they
began, the pagan, goddess-centered, woman-honoring traditions of the Old Religion were still strong and vital in the daily
lives of rural people. Nine million people were murdered forbeing witches, and almost seven million of these were women.
When the Burning Times ended, a Christianized patriarchy had
uprooted an ancient and generous culture, and sown in its place
fields of ignorance, selfishness, cruelty and fear.
The Burning Times were a complex exercise of womanhating, power politics, religious persecution and class warfare. '1n
1585," .Carolyn Merchant reports, "two villages in the Bishopric ofTrier in Germany were each left with only one female inhabitant. ... Not only were the majority of accused persons women,
the victims were primarily people in the lowest social orders,even though witchcraft beliefs were popular on all levels ofsociety."S Greed also played an important part since the propertyof the accused witch was shared out to the accuser and public
officials. Still, there can be little doubt that the older woman was
the primary target of the persecutions. The popular culture
figure of the Halloween witch is presented as a deeply frightening
caricature of evil - the crazy, ugly, wicked and dangerous old
witch. This hag is what became of the wise woman of the older
cultures. Patriarchal propaganda and terror erased our memory.
Jean Shinoda Bolen makes the connection more explicit
between the persecution of the Burning Times and the silence
about m~nopause: "[F]or a period of 300 years, just about every
eccentric old woman was burned as a witch. Any woman who
was a midwife was the first to go. And if you weren't a midwife,
but you were an herbalist, if you were looked to by anyone as

82 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body•

having knowledge, you became a threat and the Inquisition
would coine for you .... So we have that in our collective psyches,a recollection of what autonomy and wisdom and eccentricity
might bring to you as you become older ... a death sentence."6
Thought of in generations, this women's holocaust did nottake place so very long ago. I estimate it possible that my
grandmother's grandmother might have known people who
witnessed the burning of a witch. Alice Miller has written thatinter-generational communication does not need to be explicit,
that fears and silences masking deep feelings can be communicated implicitly. Body knowledge is often passed on even though
the reasons are lost, and a mother would have kept silent toprotect a daughter: the Inquisition burned children and animals
if they were thought to have been corrupted by witchcraft. Afterthe witches were burned, the murderers wrote the history books.
The persecution of Europe's wise women seared the soul of Western peoples, and patriarchal power was consolidated through areign of terror that still leaves women stunned.
Menopause has been used by a woman-hating culture as one
more channel through which we can be demeaned. Let us,
instead, look to menopause as a time to revitalize and inform
images with meaning and renew our sense of purpose throughcommunity.

1 Marija Girnbutas, The Language of the Goddess (San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1989), p. 316.
2 Barbara Walker, The Crone: Woman of Age, Wisdom and Power (San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1985), p. 49.
3 Gimbutas, Language of the Goddess, p. 320.
4 Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women , Ecology and the Scientific~evolution (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980), p. 44.
Ibid, p. 138.
6 Jean Shinoda Bolen, "The Wisewoman Archetype: Menopause as Initiation." Audiotape, Sounds True Catalog, Boulder, CO, 800-333-9185. From the
University of California Berkeley Extension Symposium: "Women's Lives:
The Quest for Self," San Francisco, March 16, 1991.

Spring/Summer 1993 83

jill falzoi

dying toI sat on a wooden swing and kicked up my legs like when I wasa kid, trying to swing over the bar and wrap around it. I thought
I was going to die very soon, so when I kicked my legs up I put
all my life energy into that swing. I let the wind untie the ribbon
from my hair and then my hair was all over the place, sticking to
my face and flying up around my head like a tornado.
I felt my back throbbing after a while, and I stopped pumping my legs so hard . Then I stopped pumping at all, leaving themstraight out in front of me so they wouldn't drag on the ground.
As the swing carried me gently on smaller and smaller arcs, I
could feel the heaviness of my body against the wooden seat. I
leaned into the chain until eventually the swing swayed to rest.
Then I sat still and thought about my mother.
My mother is always talking about death. When she gets madat me she doesn't yell, she just says something like "you'll be thedeath of me," or "what are you trying to do, kill me?" And thenshe won't talk to me for a day, or a week if I've done something
she considers really bad. Like the time I cut off all my cat
Miniow's fur.
The strange thing about my mother is that I think I alreadyhave been the death of her. She told me that when I was born she
looked at my father and said, "oh, what a big fat baby girl." And
now all she ever says is "oh." She says "oh" to everything that
happens whether it is bad or good. When I got moved up a gradein school she said, "oh, well, I guess you'll have to work harder,now." And when my rabbit, Fredricka, got run over she just said,"oh, that's how it goes." Sometimes it makes me really mad andI yell at her, but she never responds then either. Or she says, "youdrive me to drink," or something.
Maybe I am the result of all the pain inside my mother justwelling up and bursting out in the form of a baby. Does she want

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sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

me to jump back in? My mother looks at me and sees her pain andshe can't put me back into herself because all she can to is makethat circle with her mouth and say "oh." I want to comfort us
both, but I don't know how.
Then there is my father. One night she was talking in thatwhisper-mean voice she uses when most people would havebeen bellowing like an inferno - "You're just a killer in the
bedroom, aren't you? That's what women think. That'll be· thenight, when you kill me in the bedroom. Maybe some night I'll
just be stone-dead for you. Or maybe just stone-dead." My father
didn't answer, or if he did, I didn't hear the response. I think,actually, my mother was just stone-drunk.
Anyway, that happened over two months ago, and I push mydesk in front of my bedroom door at night. My mother says it'sa fire hazard. If there was a fire I would jump out the window, I
told her. It's a quicker way out than through the hallway. She
said I'd probably break a leg that way. But I said a broken leg isbetter than being burned up. She just said, "oh," as usual. But
really, I just don't want my father to kill me in my bedroom.
When I stood up from the swing I thought it was all over. The
ground took a terrible tilt to the left, and my legs just gave out
beneath me. I fully expected the ground to open up and take me,
but as I sat there I felt the ground shift back, and my legs begin
to pulse with life. The pulsing began in my feet and then pulsed
all the way up my thighs to that empty pained place in my belly.
I felt my belly shaking like my soul was in there, trying to kickout. I just sat there and the feeling passed.
A group of public school kids walked by with their teacher.
They were loud and didn't walk in a straight line like we were
taught in Catholic school. One boy was even kicking another. I
recognized him. He lived on my street and always sneered at me.
I hated him. The teacher didn't do anything. If Sr. Mary Francis
were there she would have whacked them both. I sat frozen,
waiting to be discovered and ridiculed for my uniform, but they
were already gone. Noone noticed me.
I wondered if I was already dead, and thus invisible. I
wanted to cry because I felt so lonely and the pain hadn't evenSpring/Summer 1993 85

gone away. I could imagine all the invisible dead people now
trying to reach inside me and take my soul away with them. My
body felt too heavy and wanted to sink right into the ground.
And I felt the ground wanting to cover my body up.
I forced myself from the ground and went to the cheese,which is a small cement cave with several holes in it. I didn't
want anyone to see my dying and then take the experience awayfrom me. Like my mother saying oh. If anyone found me andsaid, "oh, you're dying," that would just kill me.
From inside the cheese my whole body felt like an infection.
The cave seemed to press and swell around me, and I was definitely getting heavier. When I had an infection in my foot last year
from stepping on a nail my foot felt heavy and swollen like this.
My mother put hydrogen peroxide on it to kill the infection andit felt like she was burning my whole foot off. I was screaming
like a wild horse. My father had to hold me down, and he hit me
because I kicked my mother in the face with my living foot.
o

I wonder if death is that painful.
I feel my underwear full of blood. It is seeping through myskirt and soaking into the dirt underneath me. It is warm, wet
and sticky between my legs. The blood is coming out of the same
hole that opened on my mother to say "oh" and pop me out. But
I'm not saying oh, and I know because I will never, ever, ever say"oh" to pain, whether it is my own pain, or the pain of anyoneelse. My hole is heavy and swollen and bleeding. I fold my arms
over my chest and wait.
I dream I am walking along a river and it is dusk. There areboats passing by with strange sails that are shaped like cartoon
characters. I see Mickey Mouse and he waves at me. Suddenly
there is an army tank in the river. Then I notice all the boats arereally army tanks disguised as cartoon characters. The characterslook mean, now. They have guns.
I hear air raid sirens and I run along the street looking for myschool desk to hide under. I cannot find it, I cannot even find myschool. I don't recognize the streets.
There is a light-brown cat in front of me, and I pick her up.
She has spiked fur, but it is very soft. She starts purring, and her

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sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

purr is like a motor which lifts me off the ground. I hold the cat
in front of me and she flies me over the water where the ships andtanks are.
When I hear shots I know they are trying to shoot us down.
I hold the cat close. Every time she is shot she swells and carries
me higher over the water. I am scared because the cat is a bloody
mess in my hands and the bigger she gets the lighter she is andthe more blood and I am afraid she is going to die and I don't
know how to fly by myself.
Then she bursts and I fall out of the sky with blood spraying
all around me. I land on a mountain, there are people watchingme. I realize I have lived here before. That I went away and forgot
to come home. How could I forget, I wonder, as I am surroundedand embraced by so many loving faces?
I see someone standing apart, and I know it is my mother. I
remember you, I remember. I begin to sing in a strange andfamiliar language and although I do not know what it means, I
know the song by heart. My mother smiles. I think I have neverseen such a beautiful and ancient woman. I want my face tocrease like hers.
My mother's arms enclose me. She speaks softly in my ear,but I do not understand her words. Her breath is warm and I am
soothed by her voice. Then I hear her turn the words to my childlanguage, "I have loved you always in pain, child." I see myself
in her eyes, wet and melting. When she kisses me straight on mylips I am laughing, relieved to die.
Then as though I am being attacked, I wake to swords
piercing through my left side. My body feels as if someone ispressing me into the ground and I am ready for the ground to
shift, make a space for me, and then cover me afterwards. I want
to go back to my real mother. To the beautiful woman who
doesn't say "oh," who kisses me instead.
I reach my hand for the blood - "Elisabeth, I anoint thee."
I smear the blood into a cross on my forehead, "full of grace," I
make a cross on my lips. "Blessed art thou," I make the cross on
my throat and reach for more blood, "among women," I rub acircle onto my left palm. "And blessed is the fruit," a circle in mySpring/Summer'993 87

right palm, "of thy womb," under my blouse, a circle on myheart. I press both hands into the blood and raise them to my lips
- "Elisabeth."
I taste my salt-and-blood soul slipping through my fingers.
I am leaving my dying body, my aching dying body, with blood
upon my tongue and my hands. My lips are light but my soul ispulsing, filling, dropping lower and lower until it will burst
through the opening that will never say oh, will never have achance to say oh, and I am glad. I am glad to die bleeding, rather
than die from a stopped up soul. I want my death to be beautiful.
It hurts. I start to cry. I think I am being wrung out from theinside. Soon there will be nothing left. I cannot take it anymore.
I want my death to come, please, please touch me. I want mymother.
I stumble my way home. It is dark and I can hardly see for thetears. When I reach my street I am running, and I burst into theliving room. My mother is sitting, nursing a drink and doing acrossword puzzle. My father is reading the newspaper. ''Where
were you?" she asks without looking up. I stand still, not quite
believing I am there.
''What happened to you?" I hear my father ask, and then,"Greta, you'd better take care of her." My mother looks up.
''What'd you do, kill someone?""Greta, take care of her," my father says again, his voice sharp
as a knife.
She takes me to the bathroom and washes my face and hands.
She doesn't say anything, not even one caustic remark. She justtakes the washcloth and scrubs me hard. I stand wincing fromthe cold cloth, but other than that I feel totally numb. Even thecramping seems far away. All I can think of is how cold the tile
floor feels beneath my feet. How I thought that by now I could
have been under that cold ground.
"Here," she says, pressing a white rag into my limp hand.
'That goes down there. Between your legs."
I put it there and feel the spasming again. "It hurts.""You bet it does." She reaches into the cabinet for a bottle ofaspirin. "Here," she says, shaking two into my hand. There is88 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

still a streak of blood on my hand which she wipes away with thewashcloth.
I take the aspirin with water, cupped in my hands from thefaucet. I don't say anything, because I am not sure anymore what
to say. Am I dying, or not? Does my mother know?
"This is it," I hear my mother answer. This is what it is to bea woman. This is the curse of being a woman."
I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.
"The curse," she continues. "You'll get it every month now.
You learn to live with it."
But I didn't want to live with it. I wanted to die with it. Whatwas happening? I do not believe my mother. I do not believe it
is not my soul crying out inside me, bleeding and throbbing in
the lonely pain of my body, wanting to get out, get free, flyawayhome.
I do not hear her as she accompanies me to my bed, telling me
about boys and men and pregnancy and sluts. I do not hear her
because I want only to hear my own voice, the voice fromunderneath. It is pulsing with life life life life and death confused in the life and I want to be alone to sort it out.
My mother kisses me good-night on my forehead. Then sheleans over and says in my ear, "Don't tell your father, but I'm
glad you've been born a woman. I'm proud of you, girl!"
I nod, knowing another voice more powerful than hers . I
hear my own voice saying dying to dying dying to and like myheart beating, I feel my soul beating, stomping, screaming, andI know the pain will never well up inside me like a baby, because
the pain is bleeding out, will always bleed out of me because I am
dying to live through it.

Spring/Summer 1993 89

Connie Meredith

Wild Woman

I am reading about Wild Womenand smoothing mylady mustache sometwelve hours
after making love when
my clit twitches
because her juice
dried in knuckle folds.
I pauseto agree: wildness is a force
I cannot live without
and inhaling,pick up her scent.

90 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

Julia (Dolphin) Trahan

Queen of the GirlsMy mother says I was born masturbating. All mothers embarrass their children by telling of some adorable act or endearing
habit. But my mother talks about my inherent sexual narcissism
at dinner parties. She tells it to my friends, says it in front of mysister's boyfriend. She even told our real estate agent.
I've asked her to stop. She just giggles merrily. I have such acute mom. I love her very much. I figure she can't help herself.
Actually, I don't mind that she publicly talks of what is
usually considered a private act. She's making a political statement. My grandmother the Baptist told her people with disabilities - survivors of traumatic accidents and chronic pain - don't
have sexualities. My grandmother said, "It's such a shame. She
was such a pretty girl."
My co-worker tells me people born with a leg too short don't
think about wild fucking in the back of pick-up trucks or chasing
a beloved, naked in a field or holding the hand of a lifetime lover,
trembling in fear at a scary movie. He says if they think thesethings, it certainly shouldn't be said out loud. And, he says,
desires are disgusting to act upon if you are hideously disfigured . Such as having one leg too short.
All sorts of people think about sexuality. Trust me. They do.
Take me, for instance. Hit by a truck at age eleven. Mangled andmutilated by a truck. Lost a lot of things: 20/20 vision, the use of
my left side, the ability to speak or swallow. Even lost my life androse from the dead, just like Jesus Christ. But that good 01' everflowing life juice, erotic sexuality, never left for a moment.
Being born masturbating saved me. A girl needs to havecontrol of her body if she wants to survive in this world.
As a toddler, my parents tell me I'd masturbate everywhere:
in the kitchen, the living room, the park. My favorite story is how,Spring/Summer 1993 91

at age two, the evening of Neil Armstrong's moon launch, I snuck
champagne sips from grown-up's glasses and put on a show infront of the TV. My parents scooted me into another room saying,''That's a private act."
Older, and less exhibitionistic, I'd rock on my bed at night
dreaming elaborate fantasies. The usual theme was, I, Queen of
the Girls, and my favorite Knights had been captured by renegade boys trying to conquer our majestic empire. We'd be tiedup, spread-eagled and fucked in every opening, every way myeight year old mind could imagine. All the boys wanted to fuckme 'cause I was Ruler of the Kid World, the fastest, the smartest
and the strongest. Only the boy Kings and Lords dared to fuckme, and I got fucked the most, the longest and the hardest. .
When satiated by enough sucking, fucking and Shakesperean
drama, I and my band of merry Knights would easily overthrow
the boys. Then, dance back to the girl's camp. We'd dance andsing recklessly, eat and make love in glorious celebration of ourdivinely female victory. We never took prisoners. Who would
want them?
I spent fantastic childhood nights this way. Sometimes, after
school, I couldn't wait for dark. I'd sneak down to the basement,lie on my belly next to my sister's waterbed rocking gently,
hands between my legs. Until she interrupted.
''What are you doing!?!"
She was in junior high school and masturbation wasn't cool.
After that I took cold showers in the dark. I loved that moment when ice hit skin. My body spasming and squirming in
painful euphoria. My heart tangoed. Leaving the world of aspinning, slightly moldy, metal shower stall. Entering a world ofbrightly lit blackness. Underwater no one lied, and freedom waspossible.
This sacrament proved that I was rightfully Queen of theGirls. I was tough. I knew what mattered.
When doctors told my mother across my hospital bed that I
wouldn't recover this or that, or at all, I knew they were mistaken.
I was Majesty of the World, Queen of the Girls. I'd escape victoriously when tired of being fucked by boys.

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sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

Being born masturbating saved me. Sometimes pain fromcrushed bones - head to toe - was too much. Orgasmic energy
made my body bearable. Waves of electricity washing and soothing my overstimulated burning nerves. My temperature 104 day
after day. Only certain thing was, if I didn't die from internal
bleeding, time would pass, painfully. Masturbating I'd ward off
panic. Pass the time by shooting my psyche into worlds where I
valiantly rode blue stallions on untouched ocean shores. .
My hormones didn't slip out on wasted blood. I learned
egotistical doctors pay attention and answer questions when
flirted with. Nurses and therapists, objects of passionate crushes,
made me classical music tapes and hot tea, tucking me into bed
extra carefully, if I stared adoringly into their eyes.
I wasn't aware that I didn't have or wasn't supposed to havea sexuality. The three female nurses that stuck fingers and washcloths up my vagina and anus, pinning my dying body still, theUrologist who stuck his cock-level fingers in the same holes,
staring lustfully into my little girl eyes, the teenage nurse's aid
who rubbed my breasts while I lay immobilized, recoveringfrom my twelfth surgery - these people knew I had a sexuality.
A disposable sexuality, like used snot rags. The user is remotely aware that used tissues are infected with human waste andcan be tossed away without remorse. Aware enough to be disgusted.
As cruel as the package given me, at least I was allowed asexuality.
As a teen, when not in the hospital, I went to Catholic highschool. Devoutly against Catholicism, and not being Catholic, I
felt comfortably alienated. Proudly spoke of my bisexuality. My
streetwise cigarette buddy, Jolie, tried to rip my shirt off, herknee in my crotch, my wheelchair waiting patiently outside thebathroom stall. I joined the Catholics, repressing my sexuality.
Freedom!!! Eighteen, grown-up. Had learned to walk andtalk and swallow well enough to be considered worth fucking bymen. Doesn't take much. I fucked and fucked. Wore men out
while living in San Francisco Art Institute's spray paint room.
Fucked their friends . Asked for it. Begged for it. Only got raped
once. He didn't use weapons. I told myself it didn't count.

Spring/Summer'993 93

While fucking these men, I thought how good it felt to touchmy little girl's body under the blankets, safe, in the dark. Onlythat touch made my pain go away.
When I touched women it was different. With women I madelove and fell in love. Sex was supposed to be like this. Melting
into my lover, endlessly, when I kiss her lips. Liquid whether she
drove a red sports car, liked to dye my skin blue with foodcoloring or smoked too many menthol cigarettes.
Jane, twice my age, curly blonde hair, serious blue eyes reflecting mine. She liked the way I plunged fearlessly into snow
catching a bird's expression on video. I liked the way she sat in
the back of class, legs outstretched, head held proudly. Obviously, she knew more than the instructor.
Floating on foreign dinners of exotic foods and silly stories
of mature lesbians, I didn't understand everything she'd say.
"You're too independent," she sexily accused. I was steppingout of her van into a freezing Minneapolis winter. Thought she
meant I was playing hard to get. So I shut the van door and kissedher.
"!' d like to take you home, but!' m uncomfortable with your age andyour handicap," she whispered, my hand held tightly between her
knees. Slapped from my intoxicated infatuation into reality, I
saw our relationship's end before it began.
"Uncomfortable with my handicap." An honest statement.
But what does it mean?
I am more normal looking now. I walk with a cane. I'm white.
Blonde. Blue eyes. Large breasts. Fairly tall. I've grown accustomed to ordinary hideous men and women wanting to jack off.
In my cunt.
But falling in love with Natasha, with Jessica, with Beth,with Antonina and with Racael, I've noticed a pattern. It is notjust them I love, it is their sweetness, their love of human meekness. Their comforting hands and tender words give me life as I
forge ugliness into fiery dreams and watery fantasies.
I hold my lovers tenderly when they cry, in awe of their tears,
grateful they want me to be with them. When my lovers cry I94 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

often feel they cry the tears I can't. More flexible, they express
pain that I can not bear to see.
Preciously, I kiss my innocence on their faces. The innocence I traded for survival. The innocence murdered in me bythose who know only how to jack off.
I read in a magazine that one is abused or one is an abuser.
How boring.
My mother says I was born masturbating. And she shouldknow.
I live my masturbatory life for survival. There are those who
would jack off on my dead body. I see them. They are predictable.
I am no longer frightened .
I live my life concerned with my thoughts of a perfect world.
Taking sex, taking emotions. Putting them into words. Words I'm
not supposed to say, words I shouldn't be thinkiJ:tg. Shudderingat my own courage, knowing I can dance through nightmares.
My cunt glistening with power as I rock to get the words out.
My mother is right. And I am coming and coming and coming
and cOming.

Spring/Summer 1993 95

Barbara Ruth

The Writer in the Mirror

She blinks
She misses something
She dreams
She neglects to write it down
So much is lost
Because her gaze
Faltered
Because her mind
Wandered
She's a lazy girl
She has other things to do.
Her handCannotHold
Her penAnd her labia
At the same time
- Unless she writes the words
on the walls of her vagina
And what passersby
Will read them there?
Who is
The intendedAudience?
The ideal
Reader?
The womon
Who understands
From the inside

96

sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

The womonWith her nose
In my book
But how far in
Do I really want
To be read?
I like to make the words
But when it comes to doing it
I equivocate
I used to set up mirrors
Used to arrange the lighting
So I could watch the blood
Seep through my os
Used to contemplate
The secret place
The opening
BetweenOutsideAnd inside
The corridor of birth
Used to watch
In wonder
The pooling of my blood
Where there was no injury
Now
My cervix is removed
The opening
Sewn up
If I bleed
1'm wounded
And if the blood
Pours from my cuntIt's an emergency
Now
I learn to closeSpring/Summer 1993 97

My other apertures
Without the scalpel and the catgut
I learn to look inside
With mirrors more luminous
With lightsources
Of higher frequencies
She braids her hair
The white and black together
Soothes her lungs with chamomile
Rosemary for remembrance
She adds a purple stone
To the gris gris
Twixt her breasts
She changes point of view.
She concentrates
She learns to write
With either hand.

Gloved Hand by Laura Brown
from Dyke Clip Art, Vol 2

98 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

Cheryl J. Moore

Black earth, white, the sky'You're a person, aren't you?" Cre Wright reflected as she buttoned her shirt and slipped into her loafers. Her room wa~ stillgray with a misty morning. E-4 was a corridor of rooms and alounge in Wellesley Hospital, south of Newark.
The subdued dining room doubled as a physical and occupational therapy area. Yellow, soft walls, curtains and the earthlike
carpet gave a home touch to the psychiatric ward.
Cre and the other patients lived three to a room. Cre's bed,nightstand and closet faced within the room she shared with Diane
and Gale.
Cre's anxiety attack was a low level of uneasiness after threedays on the ward. She was hospitalized in speechlessness. The
booster shot of Valium didn't hurt at all, and she slept a longnight and late into morning.
She lived alone, perhaps too long, but she made rugs in theevenings and sold them to buyers she met through women friends.
Her work as a claims representative countered her craft, but kept
her in contact with responsibility.
The rugs were balm, yet some nameless anxiety crept into hersoul as she went deeper into therapy, all as if by accident. Her
work began to seem ill-fitted. The anonymous co-workers encroached on her view of herself.
"I'm afraid to go to work." It wounded Cre as she told Mrs.
Sage, her counselor.
"Can you get to a hospital?""Yes.""I'm sending you to Wellesley," Mrs. Sage said, "to Doctor
Woods."
Cre's eyes opened wide, but she had a destination.
My blackness is my mettle, these black eyes, dark skin, these fingernails, my white palms, the moons in my eye and steady gait. I can walkmiles. Vise of thighs, long arms, fists, fists on hammers, logs, on drums
within my breast, me and good. Good. It saves my life.

Spring/Summer 1993 99

A light beam settled on the silent television as Cre sat witha borrowed book. She read a paragraph, scanned the cover andsat the book aside. Breakfast was over.
The orderly was unlocking the ward door. He led in a docile
woman with free hair. She looked at Cre and walked into theroom. James showed the woman down the corridor.
Cre wandered into her room and took another shirt off ahanger. Physical therapy began at ten. Cre felt dazed, yet thewhisper of the tree outside the window comforted her. Summer
green was near its height.
Cre ran a pick through her hair and went to the lounge.
The patients played mock volleyball with a blue balloon thatfloated out of reach. Everyone tumbled about together.
Diane reached across Cre and slapped the balloon to the net
as Cre tried to shake herself.
Cre called, "Why do we have to p'laywhen I'mina daze?" Thepatients laughed and the game continued with banter. Cre said
to Diane what she could.
The afternoon was quiet. Dr. Woods listened for an hour, bored,
yet he kept his eyes on her. Cre noticed the quiet, but she couldn't
stop talking. Dr. Woods left the chair in the middle of the floor.
Cre sat to herself at dinner, but the woman with free hair sat
down beside her and began to prepare her cup of tea. Patientswith hospital trays drifted to the big table. No one wanted any
music.
Cre opened a little tub of butter and noted the yellow swirl,
yellow yet white and smooth. She buttered her potato and cut
into her roast beef.
The woman's hair was brown but blonde and gray. She musthave been slightly older than Cre. She had light eyes and longlashes.
They ate in thought. The woman's docility abated a little. As
she finished eating she said, ''Would you like a cup of tea?"
Cre said, "I'd like that.""I'll get the hot water."
The woman went to the hot plate, brought water and poured.
''What's your name?" Cre asked.
"Elizabeth Case."100 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

"Why are you here?""I p.itched a fit." Elizabeth took the water back and returned
to Cre. They sat waiting.
"What kind of fit?" Cre asked.
"I went berserk. All over the place."
Cre forgot her daze and sipped.
"I'm Cre Wright. What do you do?""I fly small planes. To Columbus, the midwest."""I like to fly," Cre said, "any kind of plane."''What have you flown?""In a glider."''That's good flying," Elizabeth said.
"It was a long time ago, but I'll never forget." Cre shifted. The
light was soft, delicate.
"It was a 20 minute flight," Cre added. "I could see New York
about 50 miles away. The flight strip was always ready down
there, but the ride was everything.""How was the landing?" Elizabeth smiled.
"A dream. Slow motion."
Elizabeth stood up. "I must go to my room, but let's talkagain.""I make rugs," Cre said.
"Yes, I want to hear about it. I'll tell you."
Elizabeth walked off and Cre put the trays on the dinner cart . .
"Cre is protective," Elizabeth thought.
The next afternoon Dr. Woods sought Cre out and asked,''Would you like a therapy session?"
Cre said, "No. Not right now." She left him standing in thedoor of the ward. She would have left even the orderly standing.
Cre found Elizabeth watching the news. There were patients
sitting about, but the lounge was quiet. The low overstuffedchairs were silly but comfortable. The plants needed water.
''What's the news?" Cre asked.
"Sit down. There's war, of course.""You say that lightly."''Not at all." Elizabeth settled back and then sat forward .
"How do you find it here?""I don't mind staying."Spring/Summer 1993 101"The staff leaves one alone," ere said. "Therapy passes thetime.""It's mostly talking," Elizabeth said.
"Is that all?""Oh, yes.""I get anxious," ere said. "I can't figure it out."''What's it like?"
ere paused. "It's endless, bottomless, hollow.""Sounds like a place.""Messed up into a state of being, I think." ere laughed
quickly.
"I guess it's all anxiety.""Even a fit?""Absolutely. One is as if obscured." Elizabeth drummed ahand and flipped it.
''What am I working out?" ere felt a desperate lunge in her.
"Perhaps nothing."''What?'' ere sat up.
''Nada.'' Elizabeth winked.
"I wish I could pitch a fit."''Think about it," Elizabeth said and she sat silent.
ere watched Elizabeth's hand slapping the handle of thechair. She had a slender woman's hands. Elizabeth stilled andere looked away, but she looked back. They talked on lightly incontrast to the voice of the television. It was mere hot presence
to distract in the room.
"My rugs remind me of the earth." ere paused. "The weave.
The itness."''Do you work fast?""No. Quite at a pace for most of a day.""Your craft is the hook." Elizabeth smiled.
"It relaxes me.""You're not listening.""Good."
They released each other, looking at television. They went on
into late afternoon and Elizabeth said, "Tell me more later
again." ere looked up at her.
''Think about yourself," Elizabeth said.
"What?"

102 sinister w isdom #49, The Lesbian Body

"Go ahead." She walked off.

But I want to think about your stillness, the relief of your instinct.
I'm not anxious about color. Your hair amazes me. I love the difference.
Yet our hands are the same. I want to hold you . You fly, your hair flies .
You're in the sky where I want to be and it's frightening . Yet we're thesame. Or are we not?
They met in the lounge the next morning. A nurse smiled tothem. No doctor carne near.
"Elizabeth, what is your angst?" ere was full of concern.
"It' s white.""Where?""In my spirit." Elizabeth frowned and said, "I am separated
from something ancestrally.""Elizabeth, you have your ancestors' blood.""Too austere.""Yes, I'll say," ere said, ''but you pitch a fit.""I try to let it out," Elizabeth nearly gasped.
"What?""My love.""Elizabeth, your love is primitive, too, a tribal first naivete.
It goes back to hidden forests . Reverent." ere looked at her. "Notwild, holy. We're all mortally primitive.""But it's a fit. It's violent.""And it's sometimes absurd too, but it's not bad to feel." erenearly cried.
"Spirit's all the same, isn't it.""Some are more reflective than others." They laughed.
"We've got the same malady.""Yet I am of the earth," ere said. "You are sky.""Oh, but many of us are of the earth," Elizabeth whispered.
"That' s the fit. ""Even now we are being passionate.""The dynamic is thrilling," Elizabeth said.
"You had to say that." ere looked at her.
"That won' t make it go away."
They sat after breakfast with coffee.
"Don't move."Spring/Summer 1993 103"I think I'd better.""This is new to me," Elizabeth said.
"You are new to me.""It's like dying. One falls."
ere laughed. "I dan't want to understand it."Elizabeth touched ere's hand and a bolt went through her.
She bent down in need.
"It's an open room," Elizabeth said.
"Let's talk."
ere took a breath. "Is the sky so high?""Absolutely," Elizabeth said.
"I don't think I can talk."
The floor resident gave them day passes and ere drove
Elizabeth to her apartment. They bought fruit and yogurt andjuices. They bought milk. ere's VW beetle chugged contentedly.
Her small apartment spoke of an abundance of chairs, rugs,
pictures on the wall. Cloth and wood. The bedroom was of thebarest essentials.
ere couldn't start slow. They rushed and rushed again, but
the morning enfolded their new want. The light bathed them.
ere was ere and she was Elizabeth and Elizabeth was one. The
bed tumbled.
A mystical air slowed them. Something haunting, very deepand clean. They found their woman's beat, each in the other,
being in the quietness. Nursing.
Their healing was in degrees, day by day, in ere's apartment.
Elizabeth brought flowers and jewelry. She had a basic wardrobe, some books.
Every orgasm was another. The differences surprised ere
and stilled Elizabeth. The stark ones scared them. Love triumphed.
They don't know when they finished. They never finished.
ere lost earth. Elizabeth's sky descended.
The afternoon.

104 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

"This was the first day I let people see my body,
including my lovers, including myself."

What We Do With Our Bodies Series, #12: Mud Lady
photographCathy Cade

Spring/Summer 1993 105

Sonja Franeta

My Violin Loves to Play1

I've been in bed all day. This is very unusual for me. I'm in a lotof pain. I have no idea where it came from. And now my father's
face begins to flash before me. It's been ten months since he died.
Various events in my life have kept me from thinking very muchabout what his death means to me. Now suddenly I'm caught inthis excruciating neck pain. A live muscle pulls my left shoulder tomy neck so taut that when I try to turn my head the pain screams in
my ear. I get nervous when the image won't go awayHis mustache is trimmed the same way I liked when I was two. I

listen for his whistle when he comes home from work and love being
picked up, kissed hard, and held real tight. His mustache is bristly, yes,but I love it, his pride in it, his love of me for loving it.
He was a big man, tall, strong and solid. He became hostile, forsome reason, the older I got. The beating when I was sixteen was
not the first time he laid a hand on me, but it was by far the worst.
I push and tread in my dark bed.
I'm glad he died. We were at least rid of him. Now, as my neckand shoulder throb, my father's face won't leave me alone. In mypain and stiffness I feel unexpectedly drawn to him. His skin issmooth, his lovely cheekbones high, a burst of capillaries betweenbone and skin - olive and oily in texture. I want to touch his faceso much. His eyes look in the distance, at his own suffering
during World War II, perhaps, not at me and my neck pain.
My father was violent. The day I went to my first prom withTony, my first real romance, I was sixteen and thrilled . Tonycame to pick me up and my father was decidedly cold and abrupt
with him. Dad told me earlier I was not to come home after
midnight. My mother plotted with me about how she would
cover for me, reminding me to be very quiet when I came home.
I left my anxieties behind as I stepped out in my new evening
gown, on the arm of the handsome and attentive Tony.

106 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

When Tany drapped me .off it was late. We spent same timemaking out in the car, befare I crept inta the hause. Every saund
seemed ta echa. After awhile I heard my parents' arguing vaices.
My heart was paunding, I expected an explasian. I gat inta mynightgawn. All .of a sudden my bedraam daar swung .open. My
father was inside, cursing me in his awn language, swinging his
belt and caming taward me.
He began ta beat me. There was a terrifying passian in thase
blaws; he laaked last. I remember screaming and falling ta the flaar
ta ward .off the blaws with my arms. My .only weapan was mywards: "Ga ahead and kill me." My yaunger sister witnessed thewhale thing fram her bed. My mather whimpered in the background meekly asking him ta stap. (I never cauld understand why
she stayed with him and didn't pratect us fram his chranic raging.)
I was afraid he was gaing ta kill me. Suddenly, my aunt wha
was almast his size and living with us at the time, came in andyanked him .off me. He kept calling me "whare" and "bitch" as
he left the roam.
The next day I was lying in bed swallen, wanting camfart
fram Tany .or my best friend, any .one nat in my family. My
mather came ta me tearfully, tald me nat ta tell, ta keep the
beating, his brutality, a secret. My shame was taa great anyway.
I wanted ta die. My bady began ta turn waaden then - stiff,
asleep, scarred. I had ta farget.
Sa what da I da naw?
My neck is killing me.
I call my friend Susie. She tells me haw ta treat my neck.
She'll be aver saan. Asks if I can rest with the image .of my father- accept it, nat fight it - and understand the pain as truth. I
really have na idea what she;s talking abaut, but I knaw she's animpartant friend and teacher at this juncture .of my life. She says
this cauld be a memary .of the beating, an injury I gat when I fell,
and my bady can na langer stare it away.
In a few days my neck pain daes get better. I feel my bady has
cammunicated samething ta me. I run my hands alang my hurt
left shaulder, grabbing my neck where it had hurt sa bad, thenslide dawn alang the rest .of my bady.

Spring/Summer 1993 107

I love the violin - an amazing possibility of sound held ina stiff yet womanly instrument. Wooden, I begin to speak of theanger and pain. I admit feeling relieved that my father has died.
Waxing my bow, I begin to see that he will never leave mypsyche.
2

Susie and Jean took me out to lunch to celebrate my birthday
about ten days after the pain stopped. My father was still on mymind. Jean also had problems with her father. Susie helped theconversation along because she knew both of our stories. I
learned that Yugoslavian fathers and Cuban fathers had somethings in common. And that Jean fought hard against her father's
possessiveness as well.
But there was a charm about these men. Susie liked Jean's
father and got along with him. I always felt that my father was
sweeter to my friends, embarrassingly flirtatious too. He was so
hard and distant with me, perhaps afraid of himself around me.
I was glad for this conversation and felt a closeness with Jean.
When we got home, I had to get ready for work - second
shift at the aircraft factory. I really didn't feel like going. Susie
called me into the other room and said, "You don't have to accept,
but Jean and I would like to give you a special gift. We'd like tomake love to you for your birthday."My eyes widened. Looking away I said, 'What about work?"
She laughed, "Call in sick." I shook my head seriously, my heart
pounding within me like it was another person. "Think about
it," she said.
How could I turn this down - a dear trusted friend and her
attractive lover. It was too good to be true, and I hadn't had sex
in awhile. I went upstairs, got into my work pants and flannel
shirt. Then I dialed work.
We laugh awkwardly at first, my wa terbed rocking us around.
Susie's laugh is full and free, her eyes glisten. Jean is a strong anddynamic woman. She knows women well and seems muchbetter at giving her lovemaking than receiving. I know Susie
loves sex with Jean, and I enjoy experiencing their intimacy as108 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

well as their pleasure with me. They undress me and kiss me
gently,. I begin to relax with their gift.
I feel an excitement and looseness in my body that I havenever felt before. As if I were swiftly coming alive after a long
sleep. A fluidity with their focus on my body, both womencaressing me, my vagina opening wider than I ever felt, unabashedly wanting more than I ever wanted . The tips of my breasts.
seem to be drawing out some very deep part in me.
I love the complexity of our attentions. Their making love tome turns into Jean and Susie loving each other. I touch both ofthem with such tender affection I want time to stop. So when
Jean turns to me alone with her virtuoso energy and prowess,
Susie leaves the room, angry and jealous at being excluded. I
don't want to face this conflict just now - the pitch between Jeanand me is high. So Jean and I go on alone.
We wrangle. She can be rough and gentle at the same time.
She is utterly patient with my rhythm and yet pulls my hair,insistently wanting to reach my mouth. I feel like thanking her,but I just give myself to her capable hands, and enjoy.
We take a rest and woo Susie back to bed - she loves us andeven loves the chance to cry. I get to watch the tenderness
between them, as Jean coaxes Susie's frustrations out, tears andal I feel I shouldn't be there, that perhaps there is something
very private going on.
They begin to make love. I ask if I should leave. Of coursenot. I hold Susie as Jean makes love to her. Slowly, coaxing withwords, Jean makes Susie come. I am witness to a powerful andsacred act. My dear friend is glad I am there, I feel her softness
and warmth. I myself cry, moved by the emotions and intensity.
We are close and open with each other. My small room is about
to burst.

+
For days after this symphonic night, my body trembles witha hum at my very center. A tuning fork I never knew about, its
tines vibrating and sending the sounds of my surviving spirit
throughout my body, newly aware. But it also seems that I could
easily fall apart - structurally, that is - I am so loosened. I

Spring/Summer 1993 109

remember reaching, stretching, holding, pulling, forgetting all
responsibilities and obligations, listening to some preverbal,
prehistoric sound inside. I let the hands of my friends hold my
deepest nook and their arms hold me so tight I cry.
I feel the wood of my body ease into music. Can I survive likethis. This body that I set aside with the beating, this body thatheld onto all the complex emotions about my father, still wanting to win him and yet hating him for such cruelty.
Straining my senses tonight, I release some of the pain, thetightness that took the place of my adolescent romance. Loved
with such abandon by Susie and Jean, I lose the need to touch myfather's face. My violin has its own music.

Three bellies with shell
photograph

JEB

110 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

K. Linda Kivi

Moonriders
When the moon came up over the hill beyond the pasture, it
glowed like a round eye looking for the places we call home. My
home, your home - why, I wondered, leaning over the sill of
your grandmother's bedroom window into the salty lavenderbreeze, could we not have found our home beneath this sharedsky? My bare skin puckered remembering your hands and I sighed,forgetting everything except a nostalgia for that blessed year we
spent before the ocean separated us.
It was there, in your grandmother's bedroom, as the mooncame up that you slipped your fingers inside of me from behind.
I gasped, nearly lost my grip on the wooden sill, almost pitchedthrough the gaping windows into the garden of poppies and forgotten mint below. I pulled your fingers inside of me, held youtight in my depth, felt the warming of nearly forgotten places. I
was glad your grandmother was gone, I didn't have to stop myself from crowing to the cows who, warm and content, had chosen
to moonbathe and spend the fragrant french night outside.
There was clover in the air, a touch of Mediteranean salt on
my tongue, and we smelt of passion, of the juices you beckonedby the pulse of your hand in my vagina. I wanted to hold on, I
wanted to let go, I wanted to turn around and throw yo,u onto the fatfeather bed that we had just risen from. I wanted to roll in yourjuices, smear mine across your cheeks and belly, lose myself inthe folds, fill the entire house with the song of that creaking bed.
Bed song, my song, I chanted a litany of yeses to you thatnight, one yes tripping over the next, drawing you further anddeeper into me, making the world forget that we had chosen topart, each chosen the familiar woods of our separate lives overthe lust and passion that drew us together.
Bed song, my song, our bodies rocked so fiercely that, for a
moment, I believed we would not have to part again, that we
could throw ourselves into this passion and remain there.

Spring/Summer'993 111"If you throw yourself into something well, with thought,
practice and belief," you told me, pressing your lips onto thenape of my neck, "you will fly on your own to the places you
dream of going. If you let fly, you will land only there where
passion lives."
You murmured these words from behind me, pressing yourlips, your body, your fingers into me, but it was as if the moon
was speaking. You murmured again and I forget to be afraid. I
wanted you all - words, flesh and spirit - to infuse my skin. I
hung onto the windowsill as though it were possibility itself. I
hung onto the moon.
When was it that you threw me back onto our symphonicbed? That you took me in mouth and hand, and made love to me?
My vagina grew wider, longer, bigger until it was moon sized
and moon strong. I grew until I was so large that I could see
everywhere in those hills of your grandmother, of your childhood. Everywhere.
I saw the bolete mushrooms, as big as our furled fists, pushing up out of the needle carpeted forest floor. Below the surfaceof the gleaming pond, where one lone cow had gone to low at the
ripples, I felt the fish who nibble on secretive toes and flash
silver quick. In the vineyard, I plucked the grape laden vines andcovered you in purple juice.
Oh take me.
Take me again.
Like you did. On the fat slab of kitchen table that is of a woodso old no one remembers its tree, the salt shaker and pepper
grinder clamouring as we rocked to all four seasons of Vivaldi.
In the train, your face buried between my thighs, under the veilof my skirt while stony towns and wind tipped cypresses parted
the way. While dancing barefoot across the dark wooden floorsof your grandmother's house, Cointreau and butter soaked Breton
crepes leaving trails of stickiness around us.
I want to be that me again.
Like I was.
I put lipstick on - red - and you threw back your head andlaughed, your dark curls shimmering down your back. I slathered112 sinister w isdom #49, The Lesbian Body

myself in perfume from an unmarked but pungent bottle on yourgrandmother's dresser and you swooned at my feet, begged me totake you. I covered the swell of your belly in red kisses, ran the soft
tuft of my pubis over your thighs, entered you when you could say
nothing more than s'il te plait, s'il te plait over and over again.
I cupped your body from the side so that I could hold you
while you came. I made you keep your eyes open. I held youreyes with mine while you squirted, squirted and squirted into
my cupped palm until your cum overflowed onto the Louis
Quinze carpet. Until your eyes turned glassy and your dark curls
exhaled with heat. We had so little time, my Marseillaise. It wasover so quickly. Again. But I don't want to think of that now.
We stole a bottle of champagne from your grandmother'swine cellar, pushing back the cobwebs and dust to find theoldest, the richest, the most forgotten elixir in that dim caveunder the house. I carried it up to our room and we drank straightfrom the uncorked bottle. And then we made love again.
Love me harder, deeper. The breeze and the ghosts of yourgrandmother's house urged me on, opened the armoire doors
and snuck out to watch our pleasure. That was the night themoon stole me from our singing bed. I was drawn out as if myskin had disappeared and I faced the night with my bare, bareflesh fully exposed.
You fucked me so well. liLa lune! La lune!" I cried out when I
came and you didn't miss a beat. Only the cows paused to watch ,the madwoman who had come to live in your grandmother'shouse. Lunacy had taken hold.
Later, we lit the fireplace in the faded kitchen and roasted
onions in the coals. You fed them to me layer by layer, pullingeach one back, one at a time. There are no tears in a cooked onion
you reminded me, only sweetness and a caramel tinge where theembers have touched hot. Because you could not keep me fromrubbing the soft, warm onion flesh all over you, over the moundof your belly, your buttocks, your calves, we ran the bath.
Fire into water, water into fire.
That house of your grandmother's has a tub with the taps in
the middle, as though it were designed for love. But whose? Your

Spring/Summer 1993

113

grandmother's? Or only ours? We climbed in, leaned back, playedwith each other's nipples and labia with our steamy pink toes.
And the bowl of dried rose petals on the shelf above the tub
made a gift for us. The parched red petals flowered again when
they touched the hot water. They spread, opened up, even seemed
to find their true colours. One lone petal floated while the otherssank. It crossed the momentarily still waters. Where would it go?
Would it sink too?
I am drawn to you, my fine french lover. But the ocean is sucha tremendous tub, too large, too cold, too rough to let the petals
fly and float, even if the same moon shines on both sides.
Come, I wanted to say, but left with only a kiss and morememories.
So I'll say it now. I'll say it here between these lines of passion and love.
Come to my grandmother's house.
Come to Amerika where bears and deer nibble on wild purple
berries and coyotes ride the moon. Come here to the heart ofcedar forests where the snow falls so gently that the winter hare
leaves its trail across my yard. I can hear the pileated woodpecker
calling, knocking and calling and knocking again. It is your turnnow, your turn take wing and find me in my home.
Let fly, ma cherie, let fly.

114 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

Laura Hershey

canyonI dividefalling away
trickleleft and right
my surfaces
under yourare like centuries
runofffingers finding

already youof springcoursinga route between
my banks
creating firsta streamthen a riverthen
a canyon
I deepenwiden orwith every gushnarrow to hold your eddies

your circuitous
your slow meltdelightful
I teemrock
searchingirresistible current
and your occasional
rapidswith chasms of airand hungry birds landing
for nests

if some summers the river
seeps a dusty trace my shores unwet
still
the canyon lives

Spring/Summer 1993 115

Reviews
Rewriting the Lesbian Body
The Lesbian Body by Monique Wittig, trans. by David LeVay(Boston: Beacon Press, 1975)

I go over to you entirely, I explode the small units of m/y ego, I am
threatened, I am desired by you. (p. 98)
It's been almost two decades since Monique Wittig wrote The
Lesbian Body (hereafter, TLB). Nobody has broadened the lesbian
imagination, has forced everyday language with such violencein the intervening years.
TLB is marketed as high literature, discouraging many fromreading it. It is not a novel with a beginning, a long middle, anda surprising (hoped for, or clever) ending. It is without a describable plot and it doesn't seem to have characters. It works like atime bomb. To write about it has to be done in the form of apersonal journey:First, TLB gave me nightmares. Then I got angry. "Why does
Wittig have to write everything so ugly?" I read it again, for aclass, sometime later. That's where I acquired the argument that
it was sadistic, violent and murderous, a text-book of patriarchal
destruction. Later I wondered. The figures in the book do (physically) impossible things to each other: they suck bone marrow,they slice, dissect and eat each other, but neither of them dies.
Conversely, in some scenes (or novel segments) someone isbeing reassembled, in ways as physically impossible as thedismantling. The result was always life. That's when I understood that to intervene in language, to create a new imagery, a
new history, is a violent undertaking. In TLB Wittig created alanguage for my fantasies so I can feel and understand them.
To un-domesticate women is a radical act. I used to get ulcers. Now
I want to murder your vindictive ex-husband, maybe cover his body withblack widow spiders and red fire ants and then watch his eyes when herealizes what is happening. Instead of shame I now feel anger, andpowerful rage.

116 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

TLB is not easy to read. Just as viscerally effective as destruction, Wittig lets desire and love become a tangible, sometime
painful reality.
I've been missing you for an eternity. My day took me to places
you've never been. Now I've come back to you and I don't know you. I
can't imagine how I've ever touched you naked.
I have no recollection of your arms your shoulders your backyour belly. I am unaware that your hair when licked has adelectable taste. (p. 63)
Finally I kiss you and your breath against my lips reminds me that
we've been here before. After you 're undressed and willing me to discover yo u,
I remember that Wittig knows how skin can acquire eyes with which to see.
the eyes of your body are fixed attentively on the different
autonomous parts of m/y body in their actions in relation to one
another (p. 134)
It is strange to make love to you with someone else's words in bed
with us. But I have no language as alive and as evocative; and so I keep
falling back into Wittig's dreams.
the tiniest grain of sand between your belly and m/ ine canseparate us once for all ... I begin to throb in m/y eyelids, I throb
in m/y brain, I throb in m/y thorax, I throb in m/y belly ... (p. 51)
TLB is not just naming/inventing a sexual reality. Not only do
the interacting characters not die, they recast culture, history andWestern literature. Wittig talks not just of personal body-space,
TLB is a body of literature, a body politic. TLB rewrites The Bible,
Greek mythology and Alice in Wonderland (to mention a few). The
figures, the interacting "I" and the "you" metamorphose throughmonster, animal, stone woman, into goddess/muse and historical/ mythical figure.
One of the most powerful re-writings is Wittig's version of
the Orpheus and Eurydice story. In the traditional narrative,
Orpheus will be allowed to bring Eurydice back from the underworld under one condition: he may not turn around until he isabove ground. On the way up he doesn't hear her step and she
does not answer him (she is not allowed to speak). A few feetfrom daylight, he turns around to see she was right behind him

Spring/Summer 1993 117

all along. So back she goes, into the underworld, after almost
having reached the land of the living.
But Wittig tells it thus: On the way to the surface Eurydice
frets, thinking of all the reasons Orphea won't love her anymore:
she is rotting, she stinks, she is invaded by worms .. . Once there,
Orphea turns to Eurydice who says "looking into your eyes I
revive with prodigious speed." (p. 20)
This makes me think: Why did we accept the idea that the world's
great love stories always have to be tragedies, particularly for women?
It is as though Wittig pulled the fog from my (cultural) eyes andremoved the calluses from my nerve endings so I can make love
to you with unknown intensity.
I will never again be quite as tractable, as good a citizen, as ashamed
a lover. Wittig has given us all a language and a powerful lever: The
Lesbian Body!
- Magdalena Zschokke

Keeping It In the Family by Judy Freespirit, a novel on tape readby the author (1992, Freespirit, P.O. Pack #254sw, 1678 Shattuck
Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94709, three cassette tapes running 3
hours 28 minutes, $31.95 post. paid)
This fictionalized autobiography exists in a unique format:
on tape only. One reads with one's ears rather than one's eyes, anexperience unusual to sighted readers. Not all writers have theacting skill to justify the purchase; Judy Freespirit does. Her
voice is as finely developed for creating characters as k. d. lang's
is for singing. Both the writing and the performance are strong
enough to do justice to the material. The unfamiliarity of themedium quickly becomes irrelevant.
Keeping It In the Family unfolds as a series of short stories.
Maika Windsinger, a fat, disabled, middle-aged Jewish Lesbian,sets about to understand and try to heal from her early sexual
abuse by writing. As MaIka, Judy Freespirit's alter-ego, explainsin her introduction, this requires remembering and, where one
can't remember, inventing.

118 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

A child's incest story begins well before her birth. This one
starts in 1902. Incest is a history lesson, a way of transmitting
unspeakable knowledge. Naming it incest, showing how andwhy ' it works, means finding words for the knowledge. In
Keeping It In the Family, incest appears as part, often the mostloving part, of family life. The family is a base for and seems arefuge from economic struggle. But the refuge is illusory; incest
mirrors and transmits the violence of poverty, the consuming
effort towards upward mobility. The unnamed reality: sex is acommodity, family life full of lies and exploitation. Sex becomesthe price of everything: fun, security, affection.
All the ancestral scenes here are imagined in painful but
precise detail. If written and read with less skill, they would be
tempting to skip. For a listener of Ashkenazic American Jewish
descent, it seems almost a desecration to picture such things
about our sepia-tinted ancestors. How much safer to keep themat a soft-focus distance. The act of imagination is a kind of incest
itself, or counter-incest; intellectual violation in reaction tophysical violation.
MaIka's own story begins with an expanded version of thealready published Daddy's Girl: anIncest Survivor's Story (Diaspora
Press, Langlois, OR, 1982). Embedded in the story of MaIka's
remembering are her parents' lessons about sexuality.
Both teach secrecy. MaIka's incest survivor father, Howard,
teaches what his father taught him: this is our special secret.
MaIka's mother, Hannah, emotionally cut off from her child by
the unsuspected incest, tries dutifully to breach the silence andexplain about "men-stroo-a-tion," a painful and embarrassing
secret, but one shared by all women. When MaIka gets her first
period, she confesses to having cramps. What she doesn't tell
Hannah is that they remind her of the feeling she gets when
Howard puts his fingers up her. Hannah says without irony,"Now you know what it means to be a woman." She wants toteach about sex, shame and secrecy, but it's too late; MaIka has
already learned, from Howard.
The lessons contradict each other, and the contradictions
become part of MaIka. She unwittingly betrays secrecy, when
she attempts to french kiss her first boyfriend the way she kisses

Spring/Summer 1993 119with Howard. This loses her the boy's friendship and gains her
the reputation of a whore. In one daringly honest scene, the adult
MaIka, turned on by writing about Howard's molesting her,stops work long enough to satisfy herself. She has to consciously
replace his image with that of a woman lover. It's the best she cando with the excitement - which, like all desire, follows its own
rules.
The humor that suffuses so many of Judy Freespirit's works
is for the most part absent here. This story calls instead for irony.
Humor seeps in only in the final few stories, those in which thecarefully-woven secrecy unravels for one family member at atime. The characters are middle-aged and old, many of them far
older than the author was when she wrote them. Their voices
ring as true, to this middle-aged reviewer, as those of the earlier
stories' narrators. Only one disappoints: in a book of strong,
individual points of view, the weakest is Howard's in his oldage. His personality comes through much more strongly in theparts written in MaIka's voice.
In the story most in need of reprinting, MaIka talks with her
adult son about incest because "I want it to stop here." Every
incest survivor who becomes a parent has to face the possibilityof passing on the tradition, the challenge of trying not to.
However I know of no other published stories on this subject:talking about it with one's grown child who is on the verge of
becoming a parent.
Part of MaIka's son' s answer: he shared sexual feelings withhis mother and didn't feel molested. He raises a question for all
members of passionate families: the feelings are there. Whereand how do we draw the line around their expression?
Humor finally takes over in a story incidental to the plot,
which exists only to give a voice to a minor but comic character.
Aunt Ruby, the queen of creature comforts, exquisitely andminutely selfish, puts considerable energy and imagination into
getting everything she wants. If Keeping It In the Family were analbum, Ruby would deserve to be released as a single.
Many incest stories cover the experience of one molested
child. Keeping It In the Family extends the the problem and therecovery through 100 years and four generations, providing a

120 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

depth absent in even the best of individual accounts. It issuspenseful, believable, and thought-provoking, and will undoubtedly serve as a model for other explorations of incest as afamily tradition.
- Rebecca Ripley

By Word of Mouth: Lesbians Write the Erotic, edited by Lee
Fleming (1989,114 pages, gynergy books, Box 132, Charlottetown,
Prince Edward Island, CIA 7K2, Canada)
Eroticism is not a matter solely of the body; what is erotic toeach individual depends as much on quirks of memory andemotion as on physical sensation. In By Word of Mouth "erotic"
encompasses genital sex and a great deal more. The working
definition in this selection of 45 pieces by 31 authors seems to be:whatever excites desire.
No definition of "lesbian" is given. The stories and poems are
lesbian not because they all concern sex between women but because all the authors are willing to be called "lesbians." Editor Lee
Fleming's desire was not to define anything, but to "sample ... somelesbians' erotic experience" - and to evoke desire in the reader.
Every story or poem in By Word of Mouth can evoke desire,because all were inspired by lust and written at least competently; a few are masterpieces. The subject matter covers a wide
range: wet clay, fish, one's own hand, a stranger in a publicbathroom, a flirtatious straight woman at work.
Some pieces evoke a mood while telling no obvious story, forinstance Susan Windle's "Song for a Chorus of Women":In the sultry room
the plums are singing
the weather is hot the womensucculent and cool
Other stories are quite clear: Ruth's ''The Three of Us (a fantasy
in progress)" blatantly invites a particular couple to include her- at least just once. Some pieces hint: Kathy Anderson's "WhereSpring/Summer 1993 121

We Go" calls sex a "dark and fearful place" succesfully explored
together. Is the underlying story one of recovery from incest?
A Canadian anthology, By Word of Mouth contains one bilingual poem in English and French, "French Kiss" by Sue Shine.
At least half the contributors are Canadian, and the rest who
indicate a country of origin are from the U.S. There are a few
reprints; however most of the work is original, some by writers
not previously published.
The introduction speculates that By Word of Mouth will"challenge ... us to experience other lesbians' erotic truth," and "helpbreak the silence." Which silence? I would guess: the silence
about what women who call themselves lesbians really do orreally like. This silence helps fuel the futile debate about what
those who call themselves lesbians should like. The silence also
helps make lesbian identity so fluid it sometimes trickles away.
Consider the current debates: Can bisexuals be lesbians? Can
lovers of castrated men? Lovers of surgically-altered women?
And there are older debates: Can celibate women be lesbians?
Can married women who have never been with a woman? Thelabel can best be defined by those who claim it as an identity;
part of the definition is sexual. Creating a forum for erotic
writing is thus a political act.
The erotic truths in By Word of Mouth vary. In Oriethya's "Spirit
and Flesh," each lover's soul is shared by two bodies, human andanimal; Sanne's "Sensational" realistically describes a paraplegic lesbian's one night stand with an able-bodied stranger; EllenThompson's "Lesbian Love" describes how two formerly-het
women work out a style of love-making that includes humor, anddoesn't at all resemble what they did with their husbands.
The anthology is limited in only one sense: it specializes in
nice, role-free sex between nice, role-free girls. This limitation isnever stated, but the content makes it obvious. Pat Califia's or
Dorothy Allison's stories would be out of place here. Risk,
where it exists at all, is downplayed: Louise Harrison's " .. . She
Was There Again," the volume's single slm fantasy, concentrates
on the mysterious stranger's promise of delight; the possible riskof letting her in never becomes real. Joan Bridget's "Exile" is an
exquisite evocation of longing that threatens to disrupt a friend-122sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

ship not yet declared; however the tone is gentle and lyrical, thefuture as much promising as dangerous. In neither story does thethreatened disruption occur.
Joan Nestle's evocations of femme/butch eroticism would
also be out of place. Those roles are irrelevant to most of thesestories. Some, such as "Painter's Rain" by Linda Scarrow, readquite differently depending whether the imagined narrator isfemme, butch or androgynous. Others (Marah's "Raspberries
and Cream," Carolyn Gammon's "Cafe, 2PM," Cecilia Lockwood's "From Kimono Series") concern unnamed femme-onfemme desire. Brenda Brooks' elegant but earthy poems celebrate both butches and femmes, though never so labeled. Roles
exist only the same muted way as risk. Is acknowledging them
too risky? By admitting that there are lesbian genders, a writer
introduces the question of what gender has to do with being alesbian - a discussion fraught with anger.
The sex in By Word of Mouth seems intended to be healing.
Only one piece presents an uncompromisingly disruptive erotic
force: Jess Wells' "The Succubus" raises the specter of mother/daughter incest in the person of a supernatural being - the only
character in the book who is definitely not nice. However, her
purpose turns out to be the end of denial, the beginning of healing.
What's healing is as individual as what's erotic. We are all
erotically damaged due to being raised in a woman-hating world.
Some erotic art can make the damage worse; glorifying rape, forinstance, only encourages it. On the other hand, rape fantasies
are a welcome or unwelcome part of many women's, many
lesbians', erotic life. Acknowledging the attraction of even violent fantasies is part of exploring both the damage and theunderlying desire. In By Word of Mouth only "The Succubus"
bears witness to this truth.
Even undamaged eroticism can be disruptive, therefore threatening. I think this would be true even in a woman-loving culture.
Would everyone really greet a lover's new flame with benign
tolerance, recognizing that it's "time to let go?" This is as unrealistic as the idea that all "adulterous" passion can be successfully stifled. Would all women be so wise that nobody would
ever be hopelessly stuck on the wrong person? Or so kind andSpring/Summer 1993 123

trustworthy as to painlessly deflect such crushes? Passion, by its
nature unpredictable, pulls people in all kinds of directions. A
woman-loving culture would be better at guiding decisions
about acting on passion - but could not eliminate its inherent
danger. It is this danger that By Word of Mouth avoids.
There is a contradiction between challenging readers withother lesbians' eroticism and providing only intentionally healing material. This contradiction makes By Word of Mouth seemcuriously limited despite its variety. Had the limitation beenstated rather than implied, the variety would have been moreevident. All editors have standards. Searching them out forces
one to read any book as a mystery. I prefer them to be explicit.
Despite this flaw, By Word of Mouth is well worth reading andrereading. It contains plenty of sexy good writing and furthers
the desperately-needed honest discussion of what we mean by"erotic" and by "lesbian."- Rebecca Ripley- - -_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Books Received
About the Books Received List: We list (almost) all the books we get in themail. Unfortunately, we never have room to review everything we thinkshould be reviewed. I tend to list books here by books/ authors/presses
I think are important (although all books from one press are listed
together), with an emphasis on lesbian-owned presses. If I've read all orpart of a book I may add subjective qualifiers like "read this." While thepresence of adjectives can be interpreted as editorial endorsement, theabsence of them only means I'm going by the publisher's press releaseElana.

Running Fiercely Toward aHigh Thin Sound is my favorite lesbian novel of
1992, funny, deep, Jewish, resonant, a book worth talking about withyour friends, by Judith Katz. 1992, $9.95, Firebrand Books, 141 The
Commons, Ithaca, NY 14850.
We Say We Love Each Other - Minnie Bruce Pratt's 1985 wonderful andclassic collection of poems, reprinted. 1992, $8.95, Firebrand.

124 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

The Issue Is Power - Essays on Women, Jews, Violence and Resistance essential, accessible, passionate writing - if you ever read non-fiction,
read this important collection of Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz's. 1992,$9.95, Aunt Lute, POB 410687, SF, CA 94141.
Visionary Voices - Women on Power - Conversations with shamans,
activists, teachers, artists and healers, 19 interviews with lesbians andstraight women by Penny Rosenwasser. 1992, $9.95, Aunt Lute.
Hot Chicken Wings - compelling short stories exploring Jewish, female
and lesbian experience by Jyl Lynn Felman. 1992, $8.95, Aunt Lute.
Willful Virgin - Essays in Feminism 1976-1992 - anyone even remotelyinterested in lesbian-feminist theory should check out this new, longawaited and rewarding collection by Marilyn Frye. 1992, $12.95, Crossing Press, Freedom, CA 95019.
Call Me Lesbian - Lesbian Lives, Lesbian Theory - a dyke who reminds
us of who we are and shows the road ahead is a treasure, as is each of theseessays by Julia Penelope. 1992, $12.95, Crossing.
International Feminist Fiction - an unusual collection of 24 stories by
women from Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin and North America, the Caribbean and the Antipodes, edited by Julia Penelope and Sarah Valentine.
1992, $20.95 (cloth), Crossing.
Sexual Harassment - Women Speak Out - and fight back, as the many
here testify; edited by Amber Coverdale Sumrall & Dena Taylor, withintros by Andrea Dworkin & Margaret Randall. 1992, $10.95, Crossing.
Lesbian Love Stories, Vol . 2, 26 varied dykes present themselves in thislovely bedside collection edited by Irene Zahava. 1991, $9.95, Crossing.
Women's Glibber - State-of-the-Art Women's Humor, the sequel to Women's
Glib, full of cartoons, stories & light verse, lesbian & straight, edited by
Roz Warren. 1992, $12.95, Crossing.
Life Savings -an engaging novel wherein a group of 40-something dykes
invest in a Berkeley fixer-upper, setting themselves up for a host of hot
issues while the protagonist tries to commit to a new S/M relationship,by Linnea Due. 1992, $10.95, Spinsters, POB 410687, SF, CA 94141.
The Two-Bit Tango - hard -boiled S.P. P.1. Nell Fury finds herfirs t plot, by
Elizabeth Pincus. 1992, $9.95, Spinsters.
Stage Fright - Jane Lawless, restaurateur and sleuth, in her second case.
1992, $9.95, Seal Press,3131 Western Ave., Ste 410, Seattle, WA98121.
She's a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock & Roll-Gillian G. Gaar covers
the role of women as producers, performers and writers in the musicindustry through four decades of pop and rock music. 1992, $16.95, Seal.

Spring/Summer 1993 125

Forbidden Subjects: Self-Portraits by Lesbian Artists - a fantastic collectionof multi-cultural, resonant images and words by lesbian visual artists,
edited by Caffyn Kelley. 1992, $8.95, Gallerie Publications, 2901 Panorama Dr., North Vancouver, BC, Canada V7G 2A4.
Tuesday Night: poetry and fiction by Valley Lesbian Writers Group is a lovely,
eclectic collection of nine dykes' work, edited by Janet Aalfs, Sally Bellerose
and Susan Stinson. 1992,$10, VLWG, Box433,Northampton,MAOl060.
Of Angels and Survivors -luminescent, clear poems in a limited-edition,
beautiful chapbook, by Janet Aalfs. 1992, $8, Two Herons Press, 39 Old
Town Road, Amherst, MA 01002.
Locked Down - A Woman's Life in Prison is an engaging page-turner about
Mary (Lee) Dortch by her lover Idella Serna, both of whom are serving life
sentences. 1992, $8.95, New Victoria, POB 27, Norwich, VT 05055.
The Earth House - two Zen Buddhist lesbians build a packed-earth
house, one of them dies of cancer; a contemplation on connections byJeanne DuPrau. 1992,14.95 (cloth), New Chapter Press, Old Pound Rd.,
Pound Ridge, NY 10576.
On the Road Again: The Further Adventures of Ramsey Sears, a dy:kereporter's travels and road romances, by Elizabeth Death. 1992, $9.95, thefirst fiction from Madwoman Press, POB 690, Northboro, MA 01532.
That's Ms. Bulldyke to You, Charlie! cartoons with a little something tooffend everyone, by Jane Caminos. 1992, Madwoman Press.
The Hour of Pan/amri, experimental, playful, demanding new poetry witha complicated lesbic world-view by Nuala Archer. 1992, $10, Salmon
Pub., Auburn, Upper Fairhill, Galway, Ireland.
The Lavender House Murder is the second appearance of African American
lesbian sleuth Virginia Kelly, by Nikki Baker. 1992, $9.95, Naiad, POB
10543, Tallahassee, FL 32302.
Love Zena Beth appears to be a fictional account of a young dyke's getting
it on with Rita Mae (and was picked up by the Book of the Month Club,no kidding) by Diane Salvatore. 1992, $18.95 (cloth), Naiad.
Morton River Valley -lesbian life in a troubled New England town, Lee
Lynch's latest novel. 1992, $9.95, Naiad.
A Tiger's Heart - a new Caitlin Reece mystery by Lauren Wright
Douglas. 1992, $9.95, Naiad.
Introducing Amanda Valentine - a new sleuth tale, set in New Zealand,by Rose Beecham. 1992, $9.95, Naiad.
Paperback Romance - a complex intrigue of lesbian loves, complete witha famous, passing conductor, by Karin Kallmaker. 1992, $9.95, Naiad.

126 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

Uncertain Companions - husband loses wife to lesbian and the moongoddess Devana, an erotic fantasy by Robbi Sommers. 1992, $9.95, Naiad.
Delia lronfoot, denied tenure in archaeology, goes to live among her Ute
relations in this lesbian adventure by Jeane Harris. 1992, $9.95, Naiad.
Sticks and Stones - a tale of ordinary lesbians battling homophobia, by
Jackie Calhoun. 1992, $9.95, Naiad.
Passion Bay - romance, mystery, intrigue, money and weather mingle in
the South Seas, by Jennifer Fulton. 1992, $9.95, Naiad.
The Erotic Naiad: Love Stores by Naiad Press Au thors - 19 stories, edi ted byKatherine V. Forrest and Barbara Grier. 1992, $12.95, Naiad.
Dead Certain - the fifth detective inspector Carol Ashton mystery, with"outing" dramas, by Claire McNab. 1992, $9.95, Naiad.
Mosaic of Air - 16 lesbian short stories "trace political and emotional
realities across time and space," by Cherry Potts. 1993,£5.95, OnlywomenPress, 71 Great Russell St., London WClB 3BN, England.
Gay Games III, Vancouver, Canada: THE WOMEN - large-format
photobook of buff dykes doing daring deeds, by Cheryl Traendly. 1992,$24 pp, Cheryl Traendly Productions, POB 68, Eldridge, CA 95431.
Collateral Damage: The Tragedy of Medea - a rare play, reworking the
Medea story with a lesbian/ feminist sense of humor, to be acted entirely
by women, by Jackie Crossland. 1992, $9.95, Press Gang, 603 Powell St.,
Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6A IH2.
Paper, Scissors, Rock - a first novel, peeling back layers of family interaction
with a feminist sensibility, by Ann Decter. 1992, $12.95, Press Gang.
sing me no more - a straight addict's story, moving through the circles ofurban hell to sobriety, by Lynnette Dueck. 1992, $12.95, Press Gang.
The Adoption Papers - poetry, in the voice of the birth mother, adopted
mother, and daughter - a black girl adopted by a white Scottish couple- stuffed with image and powerful phrase, by Jackie Kay. 1992, $13.95,
Bloodaxe Books (US dist: Dufour, Chester Springs, PA 19425-0449).
Susie Bright's Sexual Reality: A Virtual Sex World Reader, in which Susie
Bright continues her quest to smash the institutional state of mind. 1992,$9.95, Cleis Press, POB 8933, Pittsburgh, PA 1522l.
Grandmother of the Light - A Medicine Woman's Sourcebook is a collectionof stories from the native peoples of North America, a series of sourcesthat feed the mythic hearts of women, by Paula Gunn Allen. 1991, $12,
Beacon Press, 25 Beacon St., Boston, MA 02108.
Red Creek: A Requiem - a lesbian poet searches through the silt of attitudes
and memory that comprise her Georgia horne town, by Margaret Robison.
1992, Amherst Writers & Artists Press, POB 1076, Amherst, MA 01004.

Spring/Summer 1993 127

Six of Cups: A Circle of Stories - an unusual collection, focusing on
disability, teaching, lesbian life, and other themes, by Swiss-born Erika B.
Makino. 1992, $8.50, Earth Books, POB 740, Redwood Valley, CA 95470.
Language Unbound: On Experimental Writing by Women - a study of six
20th century writers by Nancy Gray. 1992, $12.95, Univ. of lil. Press, 54
E. Gregory Dr., Champaign, IL 61820.
All Sides of the Subject: Women and Biography - examines the theoreticaland historical dimensions of biographies on women, by Teresa lies. 1992,$15.95, Athene Series of Teachers College Press, Columbia Univ., 1234
Amsterdam Ave., NY, NY 10027.
Living By The Pen: Early British Women Writers - a series of essays on awide spectrum of women, edited by Dale Spender. 1992, $17.95, Athene.
Families We Choose - Lesbians, Gays, Kinship, an investigation into
community-by-choice/necessity, by Kath Weston. 1992, $13.95, Columbia Univ. Press, 562 West 113th St., NYC, NY 10025.
Ween ie-Toons - Women Cartoonists Mock Cocks (dyke and straight) in a
comic chapbook edited by Roz Warren. 1992, $4.50, Laugh Lines Press,
Box 259, Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004.
Out of the Closet and Into the Classroom: Homosexuality in books for young
people - short reviews of the literature in English (Australian, Canadian,English, U.s.), edited by Laurel A. Clyde and Marjorie Lobban. 1992,
ALIA Thorpe, 18 Salmon St., Port Melbourne, Victoria 3207, Australia.
Mother, Not Mother - a challenging series of probes into many kinds ofmother / daughter / female (& occasionally male) relationships in very
poetic, very feminist tones by Di Brandt. 1992, $11 .95, Mercury Press, 137
Birmingham St., Stratford, Ontario, Canada N5A 2T1.
The Cracks is an experimental, "arts scene" first novel by Montrealer Anne
Dandurand, trans. by Luise von Flotow. 1992, $11.95, Mercury Press.
Court of Appeal- The Black Community Speaks Out on the Racial and Sexual
Politics of Thomas vs. Hill- 41 essays, 20 by women, edited by Robert
Chrisman and Robert L. Allen of The Black Scholar. 1992, $9, Ballantine.
Ever ything You Have is Mine - a lesbian P.I. tracks down a rapist in themainstream, by Sandra Scoppettone. 1992, $3.99, Ballantine.
Buffalo Woman Comes Singing - an individual quest and a Native
American sourcebook, by Brooke Medicine Eagle. 1992, $12.50, Ballantine.

An Alchemy of Genre: Cross-Genre Writing by American Feminist PoetCritics - examines the writing and literary "place" of many contemporary writers (inc. many lesbians), by Diane P. Freedman. 1992, $12.95,
Univ. of Vir. Press, Box 3608 Univ. Station, Charlottesville, VA 22903.

128 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

Victorian Women Poets - Writing Against the Heart - essays on eight
women by Angela Leighton. 1992, Univ. of Vir. Press.

The Gypsy-Bachelor of Manchester - the Life of Mrs. Gaskell's Demon - a
new-view biography of the 19th century author by Felicia Bonaparte.
1992, Univ. of Vir. Press.
Second Thoughts Over Bourget - modern European history and a sense of
the absurd co-mingle in this interesting poetry collection by Laurel
Speer. 1987, $5, Geryon, Tunnel, NY 13848.
Women's Mysteries: Toward a Poetics of Gender - a humanist, academic
text, by Christine Downing. 1992, $19.95 (cloth), Crossroad, 370 Lexington Ave., NYC, NY 10017.
Eve's Daughters: The Forbidden Heroism of Women is a psychological,
humanist text centered on the real heroism of women's daily lives, by
Miriam F. Polster. 1992, Jossey-Bass, 350 Sansome St., SF, CA 94104.
Asphodel, the first complete publication ofH. Do' s 1920' s novel of expatriation and bisexuality, edited by Robert Spoo. 1992, $12.95, Duke Univ.
Press, 6697 College Sta., Durham; NC 27708.

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Spring/Summer 1993129

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Contributors' Notes
Alejandra Laurenz: born in Buenos Aires, Argentina (1949). A
literature professor and translator, she has been widely published. Her books include: The anonym (short stories); Forbidden
for big people and The guests (drama); Atthis's daughters, Greedinessof dark territories and Splendors (poetry); A different woman (fiction);
Somewhere (songs) and Eagerness (script).
Angela Koenig is a european-american writer, currently menopausal, who is interested in exploring how the specific aspects of
our lives can guide us to opportunities for making communities.
Ad Spencer Nadel: My identity lies somewhere in a list of labels
longer than my size 11 men's shoes: I'm a feminist/anti-imperialist activist, fat Jewish dyke, poet/ writer, partner to Janet, motherof two catties, and 35 year old daughter of a gay father and amother who was killed by lightning. I'm in the process ofreclaiming my identity as a writer and getting an MFA in creative
writing at Goddard College.
Barbara Ruth: My poem ''The Writer In the Mirror" can be foundin a slightly different form in my book Past, Present and Future
Passions, available from HerBooks, POB 7467, Santa Cruz, CA
94061. I've been surgery-free for over five years. Kinehara.
Caroline Halliday lives in London, England. She has been writing for many years and has published poems, stories and articles.
Cathy Cade has been photographing lesbians and feminists since
the early '70s. She lives in Oakland with her two sons and is
working on a book on lesbian mothering.
Chaia Zblocki Heller lives in Hatfield, Mass. where she justcompleted her poetry manuscript, What Amazes Me Most. Her
work is published in several journals and anthologies, including Calyx, Sojourner and Sister Stranger (Crossing Press). She is aclinical social worker and teaches eco-feminism at the Institutefor Social Ecology in Vermont.
Cherie Bowers is a 3D-year-old, Midwestern, white writer of
poetry and short fiction whose work has appeared in Common
Lives, The Evergreen Chronicles, and the anthology Ride the Wind.
During the day, she labors in public service and remains alert for
inspiration. At night, she writes.

130 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

Cheryl J. Moore: born in 1947 in Georgia, I have been writing
since 1980 and have written a manuscript of poetry called"Waterpaths." My BA is in English. This story and my poetry
were written while working as a librarian.
Connie Meredith: I wrote poetry in adolescence, derailed in my
20's by two marriages and two divorces; raised a daughter, cameout, began recovering from various addictions in 1982, andcurrently attend college at EKU here in Richmond, Kentuc1,<y.
Deborah: I am a 30-yr-old first generation Peruvian-American. I
am also an art historian, masseuse and earth lover. I struggle every
day to love my body and live vibrantly and fearlessly.
Dion Farquhar is a poet, prose-fiction writer and culture critic in
New York. Her work has appeared in Sulfur, boundary 2, CreamCity Review, Red Bass, Exquisite Corpse, Painted Bride Quarterly,
Fiction International, etc. She teaches political philosophy andfeminist theory at Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass.
Donna Tanigawa: I am a 26-year-old yonsei (fourth generation)
dyke of Japanese ancestry from the sugar mill town of Waipahu,
Hawai'i. It is difficult to locate myself - 4 feet, 11 inches and 98
pounds - in the context of a larger (and taller) lesbian community. Even through writing, I struggle to locate a sense of self. I am
exploring the language of my childhood, Pidgin English, in orderto heal myself and "come home" to my chi-i-sa-i (petite) body.
Elissa Raffa was born in the Bronx in 1959 but has lived half herlife in Minneapolis. She writes prose and plays, teaches at analternative high school, is an activist for disability rights and therights of young lesbians.
Elizabeth D. Ross is a visual artist living on a farm in Mendocino
County. A Jewish red diaper baby, she thanks her parents fortheir vision and love, and she blows kisses to her lover andlesbian family for helping her stay alive through and with it all.
Happy/L.A. Hyder is founder and director of LVA (Lesbian
Visual Artists). She has been photographing and practicing in an
eclectic spiritual bent for many years . Her favorite place of peace
and power is Point Reyes National Seashore, California.

Spring/Summer 1993 131

Jamie Lee Evans is a feminist writer, thinker, rough theorist andmarketing director in Oakland, Calif. She's 26, an obvious Capricorn and has been called "crass" by her lover on more than one
occasion.
Jane Philomen Cleland: I am a dyke photographer living andworking in San Francisco - photographing the lesbian and gay
communities (such as they are). I will be having a big photo showat Josie's Juice Joint (Market & 16th, SF) May 1-31. Please stop by.
Janet Mason lives in Philadelphia. Her work has been publishedin Sojourner; Common Lives/Lesbian Lives and many other journals.
Her poetry and short fiction is also included in a half dozen
anthologies. Her chapbook of poetry, A fucking brief history offucking, is available from Insight to Riot Press.
JEB (Joan E. Biren) loves women's bodies and has been photographing and videotaping gorgeous lesbians for over twenty
years.
Jill Falzoi: I am twenty-five and a PhD. student in the dept. of
Performance Studies at New York Univ., TISCH School of theArts. I am studying feminist theory and criticism of performance. I want to be a writer.
Juarez Hawkins is a second-generation artist of African-American descent, happily freelancing in Chicago. Computer graphics
are a natural outgrowth of a dual passion for computers and art.
Recent graphics credits include The Joy of (Safe) Lesbian Sex, andher work is featured in a new card line, CardThartics.
Judith Anderson: I think of my etchings, full of symbolic meaning, as icons of women's emerging spirituality and a renewal of
our bonds with the earth. Reinterpreting various religious traditions, myths and legends, I want to express the sacred nature ofordinary experience.
Judith P. Stelboum teaches Literature and Women's Studies at
the College of Staten Island, City Univ. of NY. Since 1980, she has
been director of an organization which develops and administers programs in higher education between the U.s. and thePeople's Republic of China. She has written poetry, essays andshort fiction, and is presently completing a novel, Past Perfect,
which details the influence of memory on erotic experience.

132 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

Julia (Dolphin) Trahan: I'm a 26-year-old, white writer, video/
performance artist who is semi-settled in San Francisco. I'm
working on a book of fictional short stories, Dolphin's Hell. I want
my work to separate the attitude of disability from the reality of
individuals' physical differences.
Julie Finn has had extensive training in theatre, singing, photography, video and computers. She has finally found a meaningful
and challenging way to synthesize her various skills ~s theFundraising & Events Coordinator for The Video Project, a nonprofit video distributor specializing in environmental, peaceand human rights issues.
K. Linda Kivi: I am a rural BC writer of Estonian-Canadian
heritage. My stories dealing with the erotic, the sensual, thesexual and the political have been published in various journals
and anthologies including Getting Wet: Tales of Lesbian Seductions,
Rites, etc. My first book, Canadian Women Making Music, was published in 1992 by Gre~n Dragon Press in Toronto.
Kadeth Pozzesi: The night wind brings me spirit messengers,
these times most of all. Kadeth, white, alone but for my cats andspirit helpers. Lesbian always, strong as best I can be. Peace.
Kate Berne Miller: I am a mixed-blood Cherokee/Irish lesbianliving in Seattle and working at Red and Black Books. I havebeen published in The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader
edited by Joan Nestle, and Reinventing the Enemy's Languageedited by Joy Harjo. I am co-editing an anthology of writings by
women who are multiracial with Jamie Lee Evans.
Kathleen DeBold (KET): works for the Gay and Lesbian Victory
Fund in Washington, D.C. Her cartoons have been published in
Women's Glibber, Common Lives/Lesbian Lives, Amazon Times andLesbian Contradiction . She lives with her lover of 18 years, Naiad
novelist Barbara Johnson.
Kelly J. Cogswell: I am a queer, disabled native of Louisville,
Kentucky, and a current, if somewhat reluctant resident of NYC.
My hobbies are sorting through disability and social services
paper work and cross-country skiing (not). I've been publishedin the Cincinnati Poetry Review, Wayne State Poetry Review, TheSpring/Summer 1993

133

Khumba Times and Now and Then. My fondest desires are to
publish a collection of "sick" poetry and art, and to meet Dorothy
Allison.
Laura Hershey: I am a Denver poet, activist and writer. My poems
have appeared in The Journal of Progressive Human Services, Disability
Rag, Plains woman, Sinister Wisdom, Candle in the Window and Slipstream. Last summer I did a reading tour of the Northwest to promote my two poetry tapes, The Prostitutes ofNairobi and You Get ProudBy Practicing. I also write a monthly column on disability issues forthe Denver Post.
Lisa Edmonds: I am currently a senior English literature major at
Cal State Univ., Long Beach. I have recently started to submit mypoems and have been published twice by Sheila-na-Gig.
Louise Gilbert was the assistant to Anton Refregier on the Rincon
Annex P.O. Mural in S.F.; has exhibited at the Museum of Modern
Art in S.F., the Legion of Honor, Michaels Gallery and in New York;
received two purchase prizes from the S.F. Art Commission.
Magdalena Zschokke, an ex-sailor turned student, recipient of
the 1991 Astraea fiction award, is working on her dissertation
about lesbian literature at UC Santa Cruz.
Naja Sorella: I'm a 41-year-old Aries (but ruled by Aquarius)
Lesbian separatist, severely disabled by immune system illnesses. Frieda, my wonderful, deliciously round Jewish lover ofalmost 9 years helps make life with a devastating illness morebearable. The other loves of my life are painting, writing, reading,collecting stones/crystals, and talking with other separatists.
Peg O'Connor: I am currently a graduate student in philosophy
at the University of Minnesota. It is my deeply held belief that
humor and laughter can be subversive.
Rebecca Ripley - Chronologically: boy trapped in girl's body;pregnant corpse trapped in fat girl's body; faggot trapped inanorexic girl's body; disembodied; frigid androgynous lesbian;femme bottom; frigid femme bottom; incest survivor; woman;dyke incarnation of Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth. Ethnically: descendant of Moses' brother, Aaron, the high priest.
Other: Who I'm attracted to is personal, but not a matter ofchoice; acting on it or not is the only choice.

134 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

Sauda Burch is a writer, an activist living in Oakland.
Sheila J. Packa is a poet and social worker living in Northern
Minnesota. She has received a Loft Mentor and Loft McKnight
aw ard in Minn., and has published her work in Sing Heavenly
Muse, Hurricane Alice and other places.
Sonja Franeta: I write poetry and stories based on my family andpast experiences. I also enjoy translating Russian women poets.
I live in San Francisco.
Suzanne: I am a strength-identified African American currently
snowed in at a cabin in the mountains, awaiting great notions at
my typewriter.

SALLY B. OWENCAROL N. LEVIN~J"1\11111~
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Spring/Summer 1993 135_ _ _ _ _ _ Announcements and Classified Ads
PUBLICAnONSPRIME OF UFE: A BIOGRAPHICAL UBRARY OF UTERARYWOMEN. Lists 125 fascinating biographies and autobiographies ofwomen writers and artists. 623C Neely Manor, E. Palestine, OH
44413 for a free catalog.
ESTO NO TIENE NOMBRE, REVISTA DE LESBIANAS LATINAS
EN MIAMI, is a new quarterly creative forum for latina lesbians
with a Miami twist. Open to all forms (Spanish, Spanglish,
English), $10 per year (checks to: Tatiana de la Tierra). Guidelines, subs to: 4700 NW 7th St. #463, Miami, FL 33126.
MAIZE, A Lesbian Country Magazine. $10 per year (4 issues).
Single issue $3.50. MAIZE, POB 130, Serafina, NM 87569.
FRONTIERS: A JOURNAL OF WOMEN'S STUDIES has changed
its address to: Room 2142, Mesa Vista Hall, Univ. of New Mexico,
Albuquerque, NM 87131
WE ARE HERE - national resource guide for lesbian and gay
youth, pub. by the Gay Youth Comm. Coalition of the Bay Area,$5 (to We Are Here) from: 2215 Market St., #479, SF, CA 94114.
SEP - publication for lesbian separatists only, since 1986. Aska lesbian separatist how to reach us. Be a part of the contagious
spread of dyke separatist courage!
TEEN VOICES - by, for & about teenage and young adultwomen, $2 for a sample to: Women Express, POB 6009 JFK,
Boston, MA 02114.
CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONASIAN PACIFIC LESBIAN AND BISEXUAL WOMEN's anthology seeks writing and artwork. All genres. Unpublishedwriters encouraged. Deadline May 25, 1993. Questions, special
needs or submissions plus SASE: Sister Vision Press, POB 217,
Station E, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6H 4E2.
Call for submissions by BATTERED LESBIANS. SASE for
guidelines. E. HodgelJ. Malott, Univ. of Cincinnati, ML374,
Cincinnati, OH 45221.
LESBIAN MYSTERIES anthology - short stories, lesbian content, to be pub. by Seal Press. Deadline June I, 1993. Send mss.
and queries to: Irene Zahava, 307 W. State St., Ithaca, NY 14850.

136 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

MULTICULTURAL LESBIAN RELATIONSHIPS anthology.
First-person, tapes, interviews O.K. Topics include: racism in/outside relationships; having/ raising children; socializing/ friendships; language differences; what works & doesn't, and? SASE
to Rene Dawson & Terri Jewell, POB 23154, Lansing, MI 48909.
MOMMA SAY: ALL THOSE THINGS THE WOMEN WHO
BROUGHT US UP TOLD US - any form, any subject(''My
Nana said: Force it and it will always break."}. Include name,place of birth, age. Deadline June 1, 1993. SASE to: Terri. Jewell.
POB 23154, Lansing, MI 48909.
TRIVIA: A Journal of Ideas, Issue #22 is A Journal of Rejected
Ideas" - material rejected because of content (send rejection
letters too, if available). Deadline August 1, 1993. POB 9606, N.
Amherst, MA 01059-9606. (Note: this is a new POB number!)
LESBIANS RAISING ADOLESCENT BOYS anthology, past or
present, any capacity, any form. Queries to: Leah Moussaioff,
2836 South Dakota, Seattle, WA 98108.
DANCING IN THE HEART OF WONDER: Women Exploring
the Mind/Body Relationship anthology. Deadline May 15, 1993.
Queries, mss. to: Arachne Stevens, 50 Pleasant St. 9E, Brookline,
MA 02146.
RISING TIDE PRESS, a new lesbian publisher, seeks fulllength lesbian novels. For guidelines, send SASE to: Rising Tide
Press,S Kivy St., Huntington Station, NY 11746.
LIKE WRITING ABOUT WOMEN? We need your stories! LAVENDER LIFE, 215 Cleveland Ave., Endicott, NY 13760.
BAD ATTITUDE is a new radical women's newspaper seeking
international reports of women's struggle on every front. Info:
121 Railton Rd., London SE24 OLR, England.
II

RESOURCES/ORGANIZING/CONFERENCES/FESTIVALS
OLOC - Old Lesbians Organizing for Change helps form groupsof lesbians over 60, provides ageism education, stimulates confronting ageism. Contact: OLOC, POB 980422, Houston, TX
77098. Now available: Facilitator's Handbook on Confronting Ageism, Consciousness Raising for Lesbians 60 and Over, $15 to OLOC.
LESBIANS OF COLOR PROJECT of the NCLR (National Center
for Lesbian Rights): legal advice and counseling, publications.
Frequent S.F. intake hours, English and Spanish. For more info:
NCLR, 1663 Mission St., 5th Fl., S.F., CA 94103, 415-621-0674.

Spring/Summer 1993 137

HER STORY - a flyer project: write up and post lesbian/womyn's history everywhere. Send a copy of yours, or get
samples from: Her Story, POB 1073, Royal Oak, MI 48068.
AUSTRALIAN LESBIAN FESTIVAL AND CONFERENCE, Oct.
1993. Write POB 985, Fremantle, Western Australia 6160 for info.
INTERNATIONAL MARCH on the UN to Affirm Human Rights
of Lesbian and Gay People, June 26, 1994, called by the International Lesbian and Gay Assoc. (ILGA) & U.S. organizers Stonewall 25. Info: Stonewall 25, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, NY 10011-7799.
MARCH ON WASHINGTON, April 25, 1993 for Lesbian, Gay &Bi Equal Rights & Liberation. For last minute info, call (202) 6280493, TDD (202) 628-047l.
(AD)VENTURESLESBIAN ART RETREAT on beautiful Oregon Coast. Toxicfree, safe, creative environment in a rural setting. $175/week
includes meals with other working artists, separate living andstudio spaces. Private instruction available. RIVERLAND, POB
156, Beaver OR 97108, (503) 398-5223.
SALLIE & EILEEN'S PLACE, vacation cabins for women, in thewoods. Mendocino, CA (707)937-2028.
LESBIAN PARADISE! With 20 charming rooms, 100 mountainacres, pool, hot tub, hiking/skiing trails, yummy breakfasts,
peace and privacy. We're your perfect vacation choice year
round! HIGHLANDS INN, Box 1185R, Bethlehem, NH 03574(q03) 869-3978.

ACTIVE VACATIONS for women. Many activities and locations. Canoe in the Boundary Waters or explore Alaska. For freebrochure: Woodswomen, 25 West Diamond Lake Road, Minneapolis, MN 55419, 1-800-279-0555.
THE PAGODA celebrates her 15th year as a spiritual! cultural
home and retreat/guest house for Lesbians. 5 guest rooms, $15
per woman per night. For more info: 2854 Coastal Hwy, St.
Augustine, FL 32095.
BUSINESSESRED RIVER, 100% Cotton Menstrual Pads, comfortable, ecological, economical. Made by Land Dykes. Write for brochure:
Red River, Box 130, Serafina, NM 87569.

138 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

SUPPORTLAVENDER L.E.A.P. is the Lesbian Emergency Action Fund ofmoney given anonymously, available to any S.P. or Alameda
County (CA) woman-born lesbian of poverty or working classbackground who needs it. In addition to emergency help, Lavender L.E.A.F.'s long-term goal is to diminish economic disparities
among lesbians. Send checks, queries to: L. Leaf, POB 20921,
Oakland, CA 94620.
WOMYN'S BRAILLE PRESS - desperately needs money tocontinue, as well as volunteers to read and type. WBP provides
over 750 titles to blind, partially sighted and print disabled
women, and publishes a great quarterly newsletter. Tax-deductible donations, queries to: WBP, POB 8475, Minneapolis, MN
55408, (612) 872-4352.
SHE - Sister Homelands on Earth has purchased its first two
acres - Saguaro Sisterland - to primarily provide accessible
space for lesbians with mobility lor allergy I chemical sensitivity
disabilities and low-income wimmin. Money and support services are critical to SHE's survival- write to SHE at POB 5285,
Tucson, AZ 85703, inc. SASE for reply.
WHIPT AIL WOMYN'S COLLECTIVE is trying to organize awomyn-only dyke-identified, drug-smoke-alcohol free space in
S.F. & needs all the help it can get. Send $, questions, energy to:3543 18th St. Box #29, S.F., CA 94110.
THE LABYRIS PROJECT: Helping Lesbians Heal from Incest wants a safe home for all lesbians having trouble surviving due
to incest memories, as well as a meeting place for local survivors.
Community-based, holistic, realistic, feminist healing. Send
checks or SASE for info: New Mexico REEF I Labrys Project, POB
40097, Albuquerque, NM 87196.
THE CLEARING HOUSE ON FEMICIDE offers Femicide: The
Politics of Woman Killing + newsletter with $25 min. tax-exempt
membership. POB 12342, Berkeley, CA 94701.

AD RATESClassified: 35¢ a word, $5 minimum.
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sinister wisdom
Some Current & Back Issues#48 / Lesbian Resistance: investigations into the heart and practise of our courage!
• Rosenburg, Whitehorn, Kadi, Gilhooly, Klepfisz, Stinson, Ajanaku, Leto, Guilbert •#47 / Lesbians of Color: Tellin' It Like It Tis'. Special 160-page edited by lesbians of color
indudes important new work in all forms-essential reading!
• Villanueva, Manyarrows, Sapphire, Tanigawa, Sayyed, Omosope, Rudd, Li, Tiamaya •#46 / Dyke Lives. New fiction and poetry from Russia, Canada, France, Australia, Germany and the U.S. on topics from Palestinian identity to Lesbian weddings .
• Krause, Kadi, Sprecher, Lim-Hing, Duncker, Freespirit, Hawthorne, Schaffer •#45 / Lesbians and Class. The first issue edited entirely by poor and working class dykes
includes analysis, personal narrative, challenge, poetry, fiction & a graffiti wall.
• Cardea, Blue, Dashu, Marah, Elliott, Lauby, Sorella, Platt, Cou~tot, Caspers •#43 / 44-The 15th Anniversary Retrospective. 368 pages, over 90 lesbians' work fromthe second wave. An amazing source collection-inspiring and thought-provoking.
#42 / Lesbian Voices. Our first intentional all-lesbian issue, with work on legal theory,
racism, Israel, hair, surgery, the effects of rape on relationships, much more.
• Bogus, Warland, Parks-Satterfield, Negr6n-Muntaner, Seto, Sapphire, Robson •#411Italian-American Women's Issue. Guest edited by Denise Leto & Janet Capone.
• Azpadu, Guido deVries, Tavormina, Capra, fides, Cuomo, Veno, Tornatore •#40 / Special Focus on Friendship. Essays, fiction, editorial discussion transcript.
• de la Pena, Hardy, Svirsky, Gray, Stinson, Dambroff, Mi Ok Bruining, Hauptman •#36 / Special Focus on Surviving Psychiatric Assault/Creating Emotional Well Being in
our Communities. Includes testimony, prose, poetry and essays.
• Hope, Aal, Caicedo, thundercloud, Robson, Sien, Moran, Ward, NiH era, Willcox.
#34 / Special Focus on Lesbian Visions, Fantasy, SciFi. Includes work on Disability, Separatism, Building and Transformation.
• Katz, Ortiz Taylor, Hoagland, Allegra, Livia, Louise, Rios, Danaan, Marah •#33 / Special Focus on Wisdom. Lesbians of Color, Non-violence, War Stories, Incest,
Leaving a Will, Assimilation, The Real Fat Womon Poems, Corning to Terms.
• Anzaldua, Ruth, Rich, Chrystos, Kaye/ Kantrowitz, Hardy, Gilmore, Brody, Rakusin •#32 / Special Focus on Illness, Death, Mourning, Healing, the Disappeared, Hunting
Season, Dealing with Suicide, Cancer, New Ritual Observances.
• Maia, Allegra, Sears, McDonald, Waters, Hansell, Rosenblum, Butler, Stinson •#311Special Focus on Sex and Fiction, Corning out in the South, Found Goddesses.
• Smukler, Blackwomon, Romano, Davenport, Dykewomon, McNaron •#28 / Special Focus on Women & Work; Body Image, Size & Eating.
• Klepfisz, Clarke, Heather, Sturgis, Gould, Boucher, Gomez, Sardella, Moran •#26 / Special Issue: To Go To Berbir by Jill Drew, a book-length journal written by an
American nurse working in Beirut during the 1982 Israeli invasion.
#25 / Butch / Fem in the 50's, Native American Roots of White Feminism, Haitian,
Palestinian, Puerto Rican Struggles, Jewish Radical Identity, Welfare Life.
• Allen, Cotrell, Root, Stecenko, Love, Paz, Smukler, Hall, Lipstadt, Brant •#211Separatism Revisited, Jewish Survival & Defiance, Black Lesbian Writing, Photos
of Dykes in Drag, Suicide, Bars, Letters about Anti-Semitism.
• Arobateau, Segrest, Simpson, Tornes, Addison, justice, Klepfisz, Foley, Crawford •Sinister Wisdom #1-19, 27, 38 & 39 are out of print. Photocopies can be provided-$S for
the first article, $1 for each add. in the same order. Allow one month for delivery.

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144 sinister wisdom #49, The Lesbian Body

Upcoming Issues~______________#50 Lesbian Ethics: what they are, how they translate into ourdaily lives, how we meet our ethical challenges. Editors:
Caryatis Cardea and Saud a Burch. Out in August.
#51 Open Theme: if you've been wanting to send us work thathasn' t fit our recent themes, now's your chance! Any form orstyle. Deadline is June I, 1993.
#52 Allies: The words are easy: "none of us is free until all of us are
free," "an injury to one is an injury to all." Are these true statementsof our community ethic? How do we enact that ethic in our lives inboth daily and exceptional ways? Do we "walk our talk"?
We understand oppression as the systematic, institutionalized perpetuation of misinformation and mistreatment of a groupof people. This doesn't just happen" out there," it happens amongus. Our liberation lies in the unlearning of attitudes, assumptions and behaviors. How, as a community, as individual dykes,
do we live out our commitment to each other, how do we articulate the politics of being true allies? What do we require of ourallies? What do we offer as allies? How do we respond to eachother's oppression? Do we actually experience another lesbian's
pain as an injury to ourselves? How do we acknowledge and use
our privileges? 12.0 we take initiative" to intercept oppressive
behavior when it's in our faces? Do we understand the difference
between (cultural) sharing and appropriation? Do we, as allies,
use what we've learned from our own oppressions without ranking or generalizing ("I know just how you feel") that experience?
- These are just the beginning of our questions. We say we're acommunity that wants to fundamentally change attitudes about
race, class, age, ability, size, appearance. As allies, how are wemaking that happen? Deadline is October I, 1993.
#53 Tentative theme: Old Dykes, details to come. Deadline isFebruary I, 1994.
#54 Tentative theme: Lesbians and Religion (or: fuckxmas), to beedited by lesbians raised in other than christian cultures. Deadline: June I, 1994.

MANUSCRIPTS, SUBSCRIPTIONS, BACK ISSUE ORDERS &CHANGES OF ADDRESS
Please send all to: Sinister Wisdom, POB 3252, Berkeley, CA 94703.
Submission Guidelines
All written work should be mailed flat (not folded), with your name andaddress on each page. Submissions may be in any style or form, or
combination of forms. Maximum submission: five poems or two stories
per issue. We may return longer submissions. We prefer you type (orsend your work on 31/2" discs, ASCII or Mac, with a printout). Legible
handwritten work accepted, tapes accepted from print-impaired
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ENCLOSED. Selection may take up to nine months. If you want acknowledgment of receipt, enclose a separate, stamped postcard. GRAPHICARTISTS should send B&W photos, stats, or other duplicates of theirwork. Let us know if we can keep artwork on file for future use.
We publish only lesbians' work. We are particularly interested in workthat reflects the diversity of our experiences: as lesbians of color, ethnic
lesbians, Jewish, old, young, working class, poor, disabled, fat. We
welcome experimental work. We will not print anything that is oppressive or demeaning to lesbians or women, or which perpetuates negative
stereotypes. We do intend to keep an open and critical dialogue on all theissues that affect our work, joy and survival. See p. 144 for details on
upcoming issues. We are open to suggestions for new themes.

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doing a benefit or subscription drive for SW in your city.
We need lots of lesbian energy to keep printing. • We particularly needvolunteer or commission grantwriters and ad sales reps. • Our equipment
wish list includes (in order) an office-quality Mac-compatible laser printer,a scanner & OCR software, a CD drive, a fax or fax-modern. Thanks to eachof you who participates in reading, writing for, building Sinister Wisdom.

If power is targeted at the body, then it is
the body that is the site of resistance.
-Peg O'Connor
My blackness is my mettle, these blackeyes, dark skin, these fingernails, my whitepalms, the moons in my eye and steady
gait. I can walk miles. Vise ofthighs, longarms, fists, fists on ham mers, logs, on
drums within my breast, me and good.
Good . It saves my life.
-Cheryl J. Moore
the lesbian body wet wet wet can't copewith this word, so petty for somethingexquisite and slippery and sensual.
-Caroline Halliday
Bei ng born mastu rbati ng saved me. A gi rIneeds to have control of her body if she
wants to survive in this world.
-Julia (Dolphin) Trahan$5