flnlfT~R WlfDom

ABOUT THIS ISSUE:
At this moment, the real-the true-thing to say
about this issue of Sinister Wisdom is that it is verysinister. The other thing to say is that, at this moment, it
is wise. We keep reminding ourselves of the need to
speak-to speak up, to speak out, to speak to each other.
We keep stressing immediacy, the urgency to speak now:
not someplace else but here! Here in these pages ofwords and pictures twenty-two women shaner the silence:
they sing, they shout, they clarify and reveal; they do notmutter and murmur, obfuscate and con-seal. Can you
hear me? each woman asks. Do you choose to hear me?
Do you choose to listen?
Herein Michelle Cliff writes eloquently about speechlessness. What is lacking in this issue is Notes on Deafness (which I am now writing for the next.issue. Probably
a lot of you are, will be, too. Send them to us.) Lesbians
rightly develop deafness as self-defense: the exhortationsof the patriarchy are deadly. To be deaf is to control
ingress and hence access to one's self. But deafness canbe killing, too. It can, like speechlessness, be cultivatedto preclude growth. We impose deafness on one ear to'protect us from the threats and blandishments of thefather, but-out of fear-we can also stop up the otherear to muffle the new words of our sisters. If, as Julia
Stanley says, every honest speech act involves personalrisk on the part of the speaker, then every act of honest
listening involves personal risk, too-the risk of a changed
consciousness which can make the listener as naked andvulnerable as the speaker. She who hears, as well as she
who speaks, is a witch-a knower of changes.
We have 22 witch writers. Now, we want 22,000 witch
readers.
-CatherinefinifT~R ·wifDom
A Journal of Words and Pictures for the Lesbian Imaginationin All Women

5

Winter, 1-978

Editors:

Harriet Desmoines
Catherine Nicholson
Associates: Gloria Gyn
Debbie Allison
Special thanks to the Charlotte Collating Crew
Printed by WHOLE WOMEN PRESS
Durham, North Carolina

cover by Joanna Spilman

CONTENTS
Not Somewhere Else, But HereAdrienne Rich
3
Signs
Melanie Kaye, Paula King
4
Notes on Speechlessness
Michelle Cliff
5
Soliloquy
Emily Culpepper
1012It Begins with Names
Claudia Scott
Another Place to Begin
Flying Clouds
14
25
Drawings
Joanna Spilman
28
Neither Profit nor Salvation
Barbara Grier
34
Disturbance
Chocolate Waters
Practice. A Dream.
Ellen Bass36
LESBIAN HERSTORY:An Optional History
Sandia38
LetterJoan Corbin
40
Photographs
Clementina Hawarden
43-44, 47-49
Tee Corinne
45
Clementina Hawarden, Photographer
The Hieroglyphics on the Bathroom Wall
Sharon Olds
50
CENTERFOLD: EGO and MAP
Myra Love
51-54
Researching Lesbian History
Judith Schwarz
55
Remembering Our Past
Ellen Bass
60
READING and WRITING and PUBLISHING:
62
Retrieved from Silence
Harriet Desmoines
72
Writing and Politicking as Privilege
Gloria Gyn
The Rape of Diana
An Interview with Casey Czarnik
74
and Coletta Reid
Poems:
Minnie Bruce Pratt, Holly Lu Conant
80, 81and Robin Kaplan
82
THE POLITICS OF WHOLENESS II
Susan Leigh Star
Contributors' Notes
103
inside cover
Catherine & Harriet
Notes for a Magazine
Copyright © Sinister Wisdom, 1978. All rights reserved to individual authors and artists.
Published three times a year
Individual subscriptions: 3 issues, $4.50
Institutions: 3 issues, $9.00
Single copy, no. 5: $2.25
Back issues, while available:
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Book Issue No. 2, "Lesbian Writing and Publishing," $2.50
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Sinister Wisdom3116 Country Club Drive
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NOT SOMEWHERE ELSE , BUT HERE
Courage
Her face in the leaves
the polygonsHerout of touchof the paving
Courage to breathe
The death of October
The unbuilt house
The unmade life
Spilt wine
without memorygrown conventional
Graffitiscrawling the least wall
god loves you
voice of the ghetto
Death of the city
Her face
Her quick strideHersleeping
running
Search for a private space
The city
The lessons badly
caving-in from within
Or not at all
The unbuilt worldlearnedThis one love flowing
Touching otherlives
Spilt love
The least wall caving
To have enough courage
The life that must be lived
in terrible October
Sudden immersion in yellows
streaked blood
The fast rain
F acesInscriptions
Trying to teachunlearn able lessons
OctoberThis one love
Repetitions
from other lives
The deaths
that must be lived
Denials
Blank walls
OUr quick stride side by side
Her fugue
Bad air in the tunnels
voice of the ghetto
god loves you
My facepale in the window
anger is pale
the blood shrinks to the heart
the head severed . it does not pay to feelHer face
The fast rain tearing
Courageto feel thisTo tell of thisto be alive
Trying to learn
unteachable lessons
The fugue
Blood in my eyes
The careful suturesripped-open
The hands that touch me
Shall it be said
I am not alone
Spilt loveseeking its level
flooding otherthat must be lived
not somewhere else
lives
but hereseeing through blood
nothing is lost

- Adrienne Rich

3

SIGN
"Two deaf-mule women used sign language 10 escape a pair of kidnapers and would-be
rapisls Salurday morning near Kenlon Park, according 10 police reports ....
While one woman led Ihe Iwo kidnapers inlo Ihe woods, Ihe olher locked Ihe car's doors.
The woman who had gone wilh Ihe IWO men ran back 10 Ihe aulomobile and bolh victims
escaped unharmed ."Oregonian 1177

My fingers
move sly against your palm
Like women everywhere, we speakin code Hear me If
you run, if
they follow, if
twigs crack under their shoes
our bones will hear themstumble, unnerved
by our sudden wisdom: fear
is not useful;doing nothingis also dangerous
Show me your hands

Poem/Melanie Kaye4NOW Irunyou lock the car
I run
you start the car
I run
you wait the car
ready you wait
the car ready I
run I see
you the car the door
opens
my breath, your hands

Graphic/Paula King

tvAMfNQ.<

NOTES ON SPEECHLESSNESS- Michelle Cliff

The condition of affliction--as described by Simone Weil--is the primarycondition of the powerless. This condition is characterized above all by
speechlessness.

It is important to realize the alliance of speechlessness and powerlessness;that the former maintains the latter; that the powerful are dedicated tothe investiture of speechlessness on the powerless.
~peechlessness--as I have known/know ito-is implosive, not explosive.
That is, it is most effective--most devastating--against the speechlessperson. It may seem explosive: it may seem to affect those around andthose in opposition to the speechless person, but its real effect is against
she who will not! cannot speak.

Speechlessness begins with the inability to speak; this soon develops into
the inability to act. The inability to act is part of the implosion.
Speechlessness is always directed against the self, never directed outward,.except indirectly.
Speechlessness involves self-denial:
the denial of rights
the right to express, to choose
to choose to express
to choose to express anger
to choose to assert a separate self
in the expression of ideas.
If the choice for expression--the separation which will come from real,rather than speechless expression--is not made, the person is speechless.
The non-expression implodes into depression.
This denial of the self is the origin/ outcome of speechlessness.
It is self-annihilation.

5

The phenomenon: From my joumaI217177
Myself: the old feeling of not being intellectually up to it··when asked
to perform. The idea of being revealed as a phony in every sense . . .
my heart palpitating because my turn to speak was next.
Devising sentences in my mind.
Then, later, realizing that these women were women, this place a place
I could be with/in, where to talk would not be the experience it has
been . . . but something different. I don't know . .. I have so much torealize.

***On one level I have experienced my own speechlessness as:

fear of being judged along the lines of male modes of thinking andargument.
fear of being thought "stupid" as defined by those modes.
feeling of powerlessness when dealing in those modes.
fear of revealing I have never understood properly all along; that I am aliar and a fraud.
belief that everyone speaks from clarity where I do not.
These attitudes lead to a genuine difficulty in understanding, since in any
situation--a seminar, a meeting--these fears take precedence. The fears
settle like a mist; then turn to concrete--encasing. Disallowing
communication.
In those situations where absolute silence is impossible, the option for the
speechless person can be a trivializing mode of speech--e.g., humor: thiscan be a mechanism for deflection.
Speechlessness as self-punishment: as something self-induced topreoccupy in order to preclude growth.

***
The importance for women to realize and understand the causes of ourspeechlessness. How it is our collaboration with our oppression. How it
has been applied by us to protect ourselves from our oppression--but thecost has been ourselves.
Persona:a film about a woman who has stopped talking and a woman who is achatterer; about the non-communication of women--within/between
themselves.
During the film the faces of the two women split and merge; they become
one person: which they are. They share the identity of speechlessness.
We have been quiet. Or we have chattered.
Speechlessness is not simply being quiet--more about this later.
6***I am reminded that a great compliment of my childhood was: "She's sucha quiet girl . . ."i.e., speechlessness as a quality--a behavior--held to be positive andencourau:ed in young girls. Therefore speechlessness is connected withbeing "good.""Let the women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto
them to speak; but let them be in subjection, as also saith the law."(Virginia W ooH quotes this from Paul, the First Letter to the Corinthians,
in a footnote to the second part of Three Guineas. In the note sheconnects not-soeakinu: with chastity: the transm-ession of both of thesewith "shame." She observes that these two admonitions enforce thepatriarchal notion that a "woman's mind and body shall be reserved forthe use of one man and one only." Thus does speechlessness enforce
powerlessness. )***The necessity to relinquish male parlor games:

My choice of dissertation could be a trivialization of male historv and also
the trivialization of myseH as a scholar. But "The Intellectual Game in
Italian Renaissance Culture: 1400-1600" is also an investigation of thosemodes which seem to terrify me. In the dissertation I reduce the modes togame-playing, which in a sense they are. By choosing male intellectualism
but treating it as it was played--usually for the benefit of women--I
reduced the principles to a size I did not find intimidating.

***I see my own speechlessness as an outcome of various factors:

1. Being female forced into male modes of thinking and argument.
Excelling but never belonging.
She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he withreference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to theessential. He is the Subject, the Ab80lute--she is the Other.
The Second Sex

Being the Other conversing in the language of the Subject is acondition of my speechlessness.

2. Being a lesbian in the same circumstance. Concealing lesbianism andthereby entering a dual masquerade--passing straight! passing lesbian.
The effort of retaining the masks enervates and contributes tospeechlessness--to speak might be to reveal.
A dream:
I am in a small town in Europe. I enter an old-fashioned butcher shop.
The men wear straw hats; there is sawdust on the floor; marble counters. The place is brightly lit, filled with townspeople doing theirmarketing. I am an outsider, I am having trouble speaking theirlanguage. There is a paper container of sausage meat on the marble

7

counter. The butcher tells me it is for tasting. I taste-· it is sweet. I
realize suddenly that the meat in the shop is the dead flesh of lesbians.
I escape.

I feel when I wake up that I have engaged in an act of autocannibalism. The sausage meat is unrecognizable, mixed up. I
couldn't have said what it was originally. I can speak the language inshop but haltingly. Whatever else this dream stands for, it is a clear
illustration of what I am doing to myself when I take part in a double
masquerade. I can't pass myself off as straight because I can't speak
their language. But by remaining silent and denying myself any realknowledge, I am forced (forced meat) to devour myself. I am as identifiable as the sausage meat when I engage in this double masquerade.
Unknown even to myself. Speechless about myself.
3. Being my parents' child--which perhaps should be #1. For me, thesymbolic origin of my speechlessness lies in an event of my childhood:the diary-reading. When I was thirteen, the place where I wrote things
was broken into. In one afternoon my words and thoughts-~myattempt to recount my own reality; to assert my separateness--weretrivialized, shamed, ridiculed, ultimately denied. I was called a liar.
F or me, part of my speechlessness originates in my fear of the lies in. my childhood/life. It was a childhood in which lies were punished/encouraged, encouraged/ punished. In which lies concerned the definition of my identity. Lies (or silences) about my ethnicity/race/
name/ sex. (I was my father's son .. .for a time.).

***
The analogy of Victor, the wild boy of Aveyron, with whom I haveidentified.
Victor never learned to speak-a scar on his throat.
He was "rescued from the forest (parents, mother, family) and taken toa "civilized" place (learning, separation, growth). But the damage has
already been done--hjs tlrroat has already been cut--he has been rendered
speechless.
Victor returns to the forest.
Then chooses to return to the civilized place.
The fear is that the throat has already been cut; that speechlessness will
be lifelong.

***
In my journal I find that I have written about Virginia Woolf: As asurvivor, but also as someone who used withdrawal and humor to
deal! not to deal. As I have done.
Both withdrawal and humor are types of speechlessness.
The obscuring and trivialization of what is real is also speechlessness.
Speechlessness is not simple muteness--it is the inability to speak but also
the inability to reveal.
8

Speechlessness--whether muteness, withdrawal, humor--seeks to "avoid"lies; to avoid real expression or revelation. Muteness and withdrawal
avoid the possibility of being caught in a lie by their outright silence;
humor allows the use of a lie--essentially--and if the lie proves too much,then with a laugh or a disclaimer the lie is defused/negated. Escape ispossible. Truth has once again been deflected.

***
SUrvival:
To not be speechless: to seek ,those modes of thought and articulation
which will assure the unity rather than the division of myself.
To separate out and eliminate those elements which split me.
Those elements which have divided me into mind/body, straight/lesbian,child/ adult.
This means nothing more or less than seeking my own language.
This may be what women will do.

9dear Sinister Wisdom sisters,
Besides being prompted by the need to articulate my feelings, I
think I'm sending this to you because the Soliloquy springs from circumstances among women that I see abounding - lots of mistrust,divisions, purist absolutism. Not to be confused with our urgent
need/ right to be strong and clear about ourselves and how we each
see things as to the extremely desperate circumstances of our sex.
Women are trying to search out a new world in one that is on adeath march. But (and here's where the Soliloquy emerges) if ourstrength and clear definition and politicafpassion doesn't surpass
perpetuating the patriarchal pattern of women divided against eachother (attacking each other, distrusting each other), the larger
meaning is nothing new. All this is a problem I pose to myself
continually, as superficial accept-everyone-where-she's-at pseudosisterhood doesn't work either. I want to see women wondering
about this and hope we can call forth our wisdom to consider andcreate some other alternatives. The Soliloquy puts forth my musingsabout this where they strike the raw nerve of the personal bottom
line, as one basic, fundamental place to start. The personal ispolitical also means that the political is personal.
in sisterstruggle,

10

A Soliloquy on the Thousand Mysteries of Women
to be read in awry, shy voice

It's true, I think sometimes I'm beautiful and strong and kind, and I
don't know why a thousand women aren't indicating any passion towards
me. That's when I figure there must be some defect invisible to my own
eyes that gleams blindingly to all others and scares them from me. But
then I think, there are at least a thousand women whom I find wondrous
and why is my own passion not urging me toward them? So perhaps, I
muse, it's a secret mass stand off· leaving us all hungry and longing.
There are, I realize, at least a thousand different preconditions to ardentacceptance considered essential by each woman alive. Often I can thensurmise that the next logical step is that I clearly must have my own
thousand preconditions too and so what the hell are they anyway? M aybe
everyone has a thousand known and unknown ones and is secretly (evento herseHl somehow looking for a matching thousand. As I continue
musing in this vein, the assorted aforementioned tho~sands already makea pile so steep that I start searching for a witch broom to sweep psychic
house. Of course I know I write brave home alone after making love tomyself, but in the bar
your house,
those meetings,
that dance
this dinner,
I smell all the Reasons It Won't Work, whichis I know I know the odor really from the passive gas that permeates ourfemale mental atmosphere. Ah . but when the microsecond wedge of
hesitation looms between us, it carries fear and awkwardness anddetachment, not only from each other, but from the feelings within one's
woman self that grease the skids, oil the joints, lubricate the impulses,
propel' the pulse, move the questions, engage the encounter. Anyhow,
that's how I experience it these days. It's certainly not defensible and I'dabandon it in a minute if I could feel it go. But somehow it's still just there. a mystery in a plain brown wrapper. It's not even that I don't see
bridges between us, you understand. There are in fact easily a thousandbridges. It's just that we're all standing in the middle of different ones.
by: emily odd woman

11

It Begins with Namesquite suddenly
this story ceases to seem strange:
there was that moment,
there was that one moment
registering, the beginningit begins with names
repeatedly in wildly different conversations
hearing friends' and their friends'
known and unknown nameswith recognizing, picking up on
the same dozen namesof friends
acquiring histories, your friends, who
so the story goes, once
and their friends, "whom you have to meetor should have
you'd have gotten on
she was a character
went off to England a few years ago, andanyway, we haven't seen her sincethough any time, I wouldn't be surprised"with wonderingwith listening
for the links, the legends
it begins with names
there was no apparent reason
as it happened
my life happened withincertain expectations andI was accepted
there is an informal code
we do have certain expectations
that don't have to be defineda context in which our behavior
is, if not predictable, at leastconsistent, on consideration
reasonable, not out of line
a core of mutual familiarity
experience and allusion
the whole point is that our lives
should not be alien and strange

12

a place, a presence
reckoned on, space figured
into conversation for my words
for stories that begin not to needendings, that include your namethat hesitate into the question"you were here then, weren't you"were youit's become hard to remember
just when it began
the relativity of this chronology has been accepted
what must and what does nothave to be true to be true
there was a beginninga point in this roll of names
when my name joined
but it no longer matters
I have been accepted
I belong from the beginningto the end my name will
have its own existence"you'd have liked her
but she moved, east somewhere
she puts in an appearance
once a year or so"and still no completely
compreheiIsively apparent reason
certain expectations
that can't be defineda group of friends, a webof legends, a network of names
hearing names
this moment slides andI have suddenly remembereddifferent, and the same, the same
we move on, we move each other onquite reasonably
to new old names
the whole point isand our lives are not strange
you know this story
it begins with names- Claudia Scott
13

Another Place to Begin
Q

story by FLYING CLOUDSThis is the beginning of my story. I plan to get up at six every morningand come here to write, alone, at the typewriter, while the day is fresh. It
will be hard to manage this. For one thing Regina isn't very encouraging.
When I told her my plan she assumed I wouldn 't be able to do it andtherefore would just blame myself. I feel I will do it and I know, even if I
don't, I would blame myself more for not trying. Gina doesn't realize thatwriting must be done, that it doesn't just happen. I shouldn't expect her
to understand right away, after all it's taken me this long to figure it out
myself. For just a few minutes this morning when I could see that I would
not be here as early as I wanted, I began to feel the frustrated anger.
Starting tomorrow I will be working full-time. I need time to read, to bewith Gina, to keep the house together. When am I going to write? Whatmakes me think I can do so much? And even if I did crowd in my writing,wouldn't that cramp always be there? I want my writing to be free. I feltthat frustration only a minute, then I said, simply: No, absolutely, no. I
have had enough of that anger. That was my experience most of last year,
all of last summer, and now I don 't care how difficult my situation is, I
will write, I will enjoy it, no frustration anymore. I will be hopeful. Wideopen. It is really very simple. Get up at six, get ready and come here,
work on my story until nine o'clock when the work day begins. The only
thing that bothers me is being afraid to be here at work alone. I will lockthe doors and go into all the rooms to make sure no one else is here. No
discontent now. Mustn't feel that, must just go ahead. In fact, as I write I
am very happy. I like to think that morning after morning stretching into
the future, I will be writing.

***
There was a dream Regina and now there's a real, day by day Regina.
I feel that I hold out on the everyday Gina. I'm not as brave as I might
think and much too afraid of losing things for myself. Sometimes it
bothers me that I can't tell how Gina looks. It's like listening to alanguage you know and not being able to hear how it sounds -- her face
has too much meaning. We've been friends for thirteen years.
Gina was very happy last night when she came home. Peacefully
happy. And very tired and wanting to go to sleep but I was in her bed andhadn't gotten out yet, so we talked . She'd been talking to the man who
fucked her the night before. He was supposed to withdraw and didn't.
14She was upset yesterday, couldn't decide to take the morning-after pill
because they require her to sign a paper saying if it doesn't work and she
is pregnant that she will get an abortion. Yesterday she decided she would
get an abortion if she were pregnant. It was a big decision for her tomake. I talked to her about getting a diaphraghm. She was thrilled toimagine not being a victim anymore. How sordid it all looks to me now.
It's because I have this other experience, this other knowledge of how nicethings can be, how we don't have to have anything at all to do with men.
Of course, the whole thing makes me hate that man and hate Gina too in away. Damn it.

***This anger in everything I do, everything I think. Ironically enough
Gina particularly understands the source of that anger, Gina knows why I
hate men, white, rich so much. But now I'm hating brown, poor,
incompetence, pain. I want nothing to do with it. I want money, ease,space. I want to cry. I can't. I feel the struggles of my whole life pushingout through my eyes. And here at work I'm expected to be the secretary.
To be pleasant! Pleasant! Fuck that shit! Here to keep my job, the only
thing going for me right now, I'm to be polite, calm and certainly notangry! Not even sad! I'm to be eIIicient. I'm to smooth the way so thatthese fucking men can get a good day's work done -- and my work, whatof that, what about my work! I want to write too and to read and to think
and to be involved with other women who are writing and thinking andreading. No room for that in this scheme of things. Lucky to get this joh.
Great! A job copying down notices for the professors of what theirsalaries will be next year -- most of them around $20,000. Twenty
thousand dollars. II I made that much money I would have gotten to mywriting class at the Women's Building last night. I wouldn't have been
anxious the whole long bus trip, anxious first of all about having tochange, having to wait around as it got darker and darker, afraid of men,
men who tease at violeqce and rape, not that they intend to do anything,
too much energy required for that and a bit too much risk most of thetime, but still it isn't too much energy to make me afraid, so they'll dothat. Walk right up to me; feel the fear rise, walk on by! I do know if I
were making 20,000 a year I wouldn't have been that sort of anxious lastnight, the eagerness, the anxiousness making my stomach upset, being
hungry too but no time to eat, didn't know what to eat in any case. Thengetting off the last bus, seeing from the numbers I was still blocks away,
already late by now, getting darker and darker. Deserted places, parking
lots, warehouses, few people, walk, walk, my legs being pushed, theirtension, my whole body tension. Trying not to sense I'm defeated, that
I'll never make it. My $1.29 paint-scraping razor tied around my wrist,
held in my fist, opened, determined I'd use it, wish it weren't so nothing;if only it were a gun . Ahead of me rows and rows of train tracks, trains
standing still, fenced-in roadway, and I'm not sure how far I have to go,
how safe I can be, I can't face it, I resist acknowledging defeat -- I crossover to the next street (out of my way), the relief of seeing people going
into restaurants, getting out of their cars, going into restaurants.

***

15

Last night I dreamed of Jay. She'd bought a house, in the country. It
was a new house, hadn't set yet, didn't have living in it yet. I went there
when she wasn't expecting me, I cooked, I was happy. I loved looking at
the animals and smelling the country smells. I was about to leave and shecame in. I knew she was happy to see me but she kept saying other things,
pretending I should leave and I pretended I would. Then she kissed me,
said she wanted to give me a baby. I yelled, "What do you think J am, atest tube?" J was happy to leave that house with the ,yellow walls, andwalk in the evening down the country road going to my own home.
Also dreamed of Regina, her having something to tell me, being afraid
to tell me. Finally she told me -- how ugly it was to her that I don't shave
under my .arms. Oh, how angry I was, how disgusted with her for notb'eing a lesbian. In fact, the dream was like being with her this morning. I
hated when she came and got in bed with me, explaining it was because of
the cold. I really don't want to touch her. That getting in bed with me sort6£ thing more than anything I know makes m.e angry with her ~or all herinterest in pricks. Oh, I'm working my way back to last night, to justbefore we went to sleep. I'd changed' the sheets on the bed (we traded,
now she's sleeping on the floor and 1-. have the bed, I was quite happy
about it until I realized this morning what a bad soft bed it is, aches andpains, and Gimflaughing saying now you know why I wanted to switch).
I'd changed the sheets, used white sheets. I couldn't sleep. I started
reading about witchcraft. Mostly my mind was working on my essay, thepolitical! spiritual realities. I kept thinki~g the contradictions toeverything I was readmg while I was agreeing too. I began to feel thateverything was possible, that I would be able to travel. I lit 'candles andstarted making a tiny dream pillow out of muslin, stuffing it withniugwort, sewing it with pink thread. Gina wanted to make one too. How
she laughed and laughed when she saw how tiny my pillow was! She calls
it a checker. With black thread she embroidered a life sign and a flower
with stars shooting out. To stuff hers she dumped the herbs right onto my
bed and started stuffing in her messy ,way. We commented on how each
one's pillow looked like who made it -- mine orderly and neat, plain, hers
disorderly, crooked, inspired, and dirty. We traded dream pillows. She
made us saffron tea. She forgot we had a teapot. How can she forget wehave a teapot! We 'use it everyday ~nd talk every time about what a niceteapot it is. I think it was because last time we made saffron tea there
were roses in the teapot, nine lovely salmon roses.

***
I was shocked to find myself writing that I didn't want to touch Gina.
And yesterday when she wanted to hold my hand it was alright with me
and we held hands for awhile. I could easily remember then the very earlydays of our being together and how we always held hands, held each otherin bed, gave each other baths. How without tension it all was for me, how
I knew Gina'd balk at love-making or rather more of it so I never
expected it. But neither did I expect that when she'd heard Rose and I'dbeen lovers in the Navy she'd quit coming home, quit snuggling, quit
holding hands so naturally. That was years ago and that rejection cut so
16

deep into both of us we could never tell exactly how to be with each otherafter that and now there's yesterday and the rose garden and holding
hands. I loved smelling the invitation roses.

***
I have what's almost one single image of my life at Miss Annie's where
I lived for a year and a haH and where I was living when Jay and I
became lovers. And that single image is of the big room, its row of wide
windows above the wooden box, the sheer white curtains and how alone I
was, how happy. I'd read, I'd write, I'd get ready for work in the earlymorning and walk there noticing every tree and every flower; in theevening I'd walk home again, wonderful to feel the strength to walk thetwo miles home though I was tired from cleaning and recleaning Ms.
Halden's already sterilely clean house, coming home and being alone,
how deep that solitude became, it became my joy, my pleasure and mypain. The roses bloomed and bloomed and I'd get cranky with Miss
Annie for watering them before I got a chance to, she'd always beat me toit and that wonderful morning when she called me outside at 5:30 to show
me a long row of plants all violently blooming in wonderful purple, allthose old cans of flowers strung across a wire and however after I called
them the Paris flowers because how I felt right then, that morning, was inlove, loving Miss Annie, sharing the love of the flowers with her, and howthat in love was all of me, the inside out of me, the air I breathed and why
am I remembering Springtime now when it wasn't Spring, not at all,when Jay came into my life, how she'd come over, I'd listen for her
motorcycle and then she'd be there thin and smiling, smelling likesquashes and cauliflower, her lankiness would be there, that flopping
down on the bed, her black sweater, new jeans, leather motorcycle gloves,
QOw she'd swish around her blond strands of baby hair, how she wouldn't
talk and I'd want her to, how she'd smile and I'd feel that happinesscoming out of her like the being in love was coming out of me, and those
Paris flowers and the morning Miss Annie called me into the green houseto see the blooming begonia the "just a talking doll" it was to her; shehardly knew how to be that happy, her energetic seventy-four year olddyke seH, us together loving that begonia, and Jay with me, Jay comingon the blue motorcycle and my solitude disappearing, beautifully
disappearing, I'd buy more groceries, I'd think of her when I bought-food, I'd try to have things for us to eat, but she wasn't satisfied, said
she'd bring things from home, it'd be no trouble, and how sad that felt,
I'd pushed back into being alone but so cruelly this time because she wasright there, in the kitchen, looking into the refrigerator, laughing, making
jokes at how little there was -- and I thought of Ida how she never did
anything but joke and play tricks but never would Ida have joked or evenlet on she'd noticed if someone's refrigerator wasn't as full as hers, shenever made fun of panties that were old the elastic stretched completely
out -- and Jay who hardly ever let me laugh, who'd threaten with her
asthma the minute I started to laugh, Jay throwing me so cruelly backinto a solitude that she'd shattered for me, throwing me back there withher jokes about how empty the refrigerator was and I knew there were
three meals there, I knew exactly what was in the refrigerator, and I knew
17

those three meals were meals for sharing. Her laughing and then comingback into the room and offering me three dollars worth of food stamps. It
was my turn to be silent, for her to want me to talk, didn't I want the foodstamps, why shouldn't I take things from her? Fuck you, I was feeling
good, food in the refrigerator, food to share and you because you havemore money, more food saying you'll bring your own from home, givingme three dollars worth of food stamps, there now, we'll be equal. Fuckyou -- keep your damn food stamps and leave me my pleasure my sharing
why can't you fucking learn about me, why can't you fucking learn how I
know every piece of fruit every vegetable I buy like I know every rose I
pick, why can't you learn about me how I hardly eat at home how I eat in
the houses where I work because it's free because they only pay me $15.00
a day and they spend twice that each day on groceries alone and when
they offer me lunch I take it and if they leave the house during the day I
go to the refrigerator and I eat and I put oranges into my knap-sack andwhen they say "These vegetables aren't fresh, would you like them?" -- I
take them. Why don't you learn about me damn you how Miss Annie
brings me eggs back from the country and I share them with my sister andwith Ida and then I have six wonderful country eggs and I love the shapeof them, I leave them out in the sun so I can feel their warmth, how I
loved them, growing up, hunting for them in the lots among the straw inthe sheds, how sometimes I'd find them in the bright sunshine hardly
hidden at all, I'd gather all the warm eggs into that rusty coffee can that
we used to measure the cottonseed meal and I'd take them in to Motherwith such absolute pleasure and how she'd make her little speech, thelittle speech of appreciation she always made -- "Oh, am I glad to see
those eggs, put them right here, we can certainly use those fresh eggs, mygirl's got bright eyes." Learn about me damn you don't go laughing
because your refrigerator has more in it than mine's got and stuffing yourdamn three dollars worth of food stamps down my throat when I'm theone working, I'm the one with four days of work a week. It never seemedto Jay that I had a job, and later on when our tensions couldn't bearthemselves any longer she'd yell how I should have gotten a job, all along
I should have had a job! And I'd yell "All along I did have a job. I
worked, I know I worked, I feel every clean floor, every clean dish , every
made bed in my bloo.d, I worked dammit! "***And now it's the smell of Jay, always the smell of her and that
unexpected closeness, just that having her there, the ever miracle to me
that was, the sound of her motorcycle and she'd be there, take up space inthe room, lie in the bath-tub, tub full of water, me on the toilet seatlistening to her talk, finally Jay begins to talk and I try to piece things
together, grope around, know I'm not doing a good job, keep thinking
well that isn't all -- she's left something out. Jay there, relaxed,
unsel£conscious, strong arms, her smiling silence and blue eyes, small
breasts, vulva exposed, nothing buried, no churning muddy rivers. Jay
there. Jay in the kitchen, Jay eating the food she'd brought from home,
Jay allergic to tomatoes but liking the eggplant with cheese, my joy ofactually sharing food with her, loving the dark purple of the eggplant, the]8

funny greenish yellow of the inside, eggplant always making me think oflong ago Julie, Julie telling me it wasn 't even a food, it was a poison, Aunt
Zell telling how her aunt pulled up her uncle's eggplants never having
seen them before, thought they were weeds, threw them over the fence todry up in the sun, eggplant and scraping the skin off with the potato
peeler and remembering Mother crying, Mother's heart breaking while
she scraped the carrots at home, making our supper, Mother's caring andcaring and caring and always feeling that tenuousness about it, nevertaking it for granted, never letting us, always reminding us she was taking
care of us because she could now she might not always be able to, Mothergrowing up in those Federal schools, making her own way, on her own,
from age three and before that when Grandma'd leave her in the upstairs
room to care for her brothers, little Mother worried one day, worried
when Grandma didn't come home, knew she'd have to get food, taking
down the flat tin pan , tiny Mother deciding she'd wash her hair before sheleft her brothers alone, before she left to find Grandma or find foodwhatever she could manage, Grandma hadn't come home when she
usually did and they 'd watched for her from the window, watching forGrandmother coming home, and then the Indian schools, those earnest
years, those silent years, then crying scraping carrots and crying andscraping and crying, the slivers falling onto the old newspaper where
she'd collect scraps for the pigs' slop, Mother crying, Mother's heart
breaking and my not understanding, not knowing what to do, notknowing, wasn't I there with her, why was she crying, wouldn't I takecare of her always, didn't I love her, hadn't we walked together in theevening like we did every night, hadn't she told me then the things shealways told me. hadn 't I run ahead eager to make sure the nest and little
birds were where I'd found them, were still where I was taking Mother to
see them, running ahead , too eager, leaving her to walk more slowly,
should I have walked slowly too, should I never never never have left her
side, Mother crying, Mother's heart breaking and Mother fixing our
supper, the carrots she'd scrape and cut in half and then each half in longquarters and place in the shallow glass dish with radishes, Mother who
never cooked the carrots, never served us cooked carrots, that was muchlater, years later, coming home to see her, both of us women together
then, both of us able to share the secrets of that, those unspoken secrets,
those unspoken secrets of woman loving woman, woman happiness with a
new recipe, a recipe for cooked carrots, a recipe called copper pennies,
how beautiful the orange carrot circles the green pepper circles were toher, much later that, years later. And Jay there, Jay in, the big doorway
between the bedroom and the hall , that joy in me, that almost disbelief atthe company, and then I knew she'd move, she wouldn 't be framed there,
not for long, just a few seconds and then she'd move, she'd say something,
she'd want something, she'd suggest something, my life buoyed up, liftedbeyond itself, Jay there and us together, rainy evening, tired of being in
the house, tired of love-making - what pleasure - and walking in the misty
evening, her under bright orange poncho, me getting wet, wishing it were
wetter, taking our books, going to the ice cream shop, going to sit andread, going to find the tiniest distance for the shortest time, going to readdifferent books, going to step into different worlds and every now and '19then return to say the smallest something to the other -- "Do you wantanother Dr. Pepper?" "Do you want some more coffee?" "Are you liking
your book?" "Are you happy?" and then reading again, raining outside,at first hard to read, hard to want to leave her, hard to want to separate
and then my mind catching hold, my mind jumping with its freedom,wanting to be away, wanting to read, not wanting her to interrupt, hoping
she doesn't tire first, hoping I get to read for hours and hours and for her
to still be there, wouldn't want to adjust to her absence, just let her staythere, across the table, Jay's red and white face reading, quiet, there, Jay
across the table, Jay looking out the window, Jay watching the rain, Jay
there, there, there, with me, not alone, for awhile not alone, how strange,
how I'm not nervous, how I'm sure, how I'm happy, Jay there, and thenlater in the dark, walking back to my house, she'll spend another night,
walking beside her in the rain, rain puddles, street lights in the puddles,
loving her for being there, how long since I've been out at night, not since
I was raped, so long since I've felt the silence, the nighttime, unafraid,
glad she's there, glad I'm there. Jay -- there.

***
I need to start all over, to find another place to begin. I'm so sleepy. I
didn't get to sleep till after three, I was excited. So was Regina. She
cooked us green beans, told me I'd been creative last time I'd gone
shopping, and laughed when I told her I was tired of hommos. She'd been
to her calligraphy class, had a bottle of black ink and pen, showed mewhat they'd ·done, the lines and circles. She'd left behind the sample ofwriting her teacher'd passed out. "See, there I was taking care ofeveryone else and forgot my own things!" I laughed and she called out,"Your ink! Here's your ink! You're forgetting your ink!" like she'd donein class and then it was clear to me that she had been in that class. Strange
how I forget how real Gina is, if she's not right under my nose.
I'm ashamed now of how I told how we quit living together years ·ago.
Gina was pregnant. On the train to the house after she'd met me at
Greyhound she told me. She told it like a happy surprise. She wanted toget an abortion. I said, "Oh, no, don't do that, we'll take care of thebaby." She laughed, said she knew I'd say that but no she wasn't going tohave the baby. All nineteen-year-old me knew was that it was wrong tokill and I certainly didn't know how to go about getting an abortion. We
didn't have money and we didn't know anyone. Finally she made friends
with Rachel, another Puerto Rican woman, who knew someone. All thistime passing though, four months, and Gina'd say look and show me herbreasts how full they were, how happy she was to be pregnant. And then
Rachel went with her. I heard about it later. A woman had done it for$75.00. Gina said she was "like a man" and there had been pictures ofwomen covering the walls and the ceiling. Rachel took her to her own
house where Gina'd been living most of the last two months anyway.
They went home by cab. Gina lost alot of blood and was in a great deal of
pain. After two days Rachel took her to a city hospital. When I went tosee her I took a chocolate bar which Gina had me eat; she said she could
tell I hadn't eaten lately, my hands were shaking the way they did when I
was hungry. I ate the candy. She was pale and far away from me. There
20

were bottles of liquid, tubes going into her hand. The ward was green anddirty, noisy, the beds close together. I sat for awhile in the hall on a
splintery bench and talked to another woman. She asked me what waswrong with my friend. I said she'd lost a baby. How clearly I rememberthat woman's face, so wrinkled, so New York, so poor and her smirky
knowing nod, "Oh, lost a baby." It was illegal then to get abortions I
suppose. Gina stayed in the hospital a long time but she got better, little
by little. Her hand where they'd fed her through the tubes was the last to
get well -- for months it would swell up and hurt. She lived with Rachel
after that. Rachel had a baby girl and sometimes I'd go over there andbabysit while they went out, just because I wanted to, they were quite
used to leaving her alone in her crib. I remember Rachel carrying the girlon her hip to the beach. How tan Gina got during that time, how
beautiful. She and Rachel busy hustling and shop-lifting, going dancing,living that fast-pace. I'd gone to live with another woman then and Gina
hardly ever came over.

***
How could I write about the time we quit living together in that
upstairs apartment without mentioning the chickens -- Gina broughthome four chicks and kept them in the bathtub with wire fixed over the
top. Whenever we wanted to take a bath we had to manage to get thechickens into a cardboard box, set the box out the window onto the roof,
and clean out all the smelly chicken shit. They grew so fast and soon thewhole apartment smelled bad and when I'd call Gina and ask why didn't
she ever come home anymore, she'd say how bad it smelled there andlaugh and laugh! How much time we spend making each other laugh. I
suppose that's the most characteristic thing about the two of us together -we make each other laugh'lon purpose and as often as possible.

***
I dreamed there isn't much food to go around. The maid has a little
fQod. She keeps it for herself. She doesn't hand it over to the rich people. I
pat her on the back. I want her to know I agree. Why should she give up
those few cucumbers? But our hearts know different. We know she is in
the right to kep.p thr small portion of food. And yet. She is able to give it
up. She kn'lWS its value. And she knows she can give it up. And she does.
But sometimes she'll be hungry. Sometimes she'll wish there weresomeone to know that those few cucumbers had been rightfully hers -after all, they did belong to her. And at those times she'll not want to bewith Jay anymore. She'd rather walk alone where the hill slips down to
the water and in the river she'll see floating trees, whole trees sometimes,
and she'll find minnows near the edge. Sometimes she'll want to beinterested in how big the water can be and at the edge how small -- why,
not even big enough to cover her fingernail, sometimes she'll choose not to
be interested in Jay, or in anyone. For the maid it's a matter of being
stumped, not wanting to have so much ·in her own hands; Here, take someof me, look into my face, see what it's like to give up those two
cucumbers, here, take all of this. I'll talk and talk and talk, I'll tell Jay
21everything, she'll see how angry I can be, she'll see how far under I cango, she'll see how being locked out after the long bus ride when I was
ready to clean your house, you rich people's house, and you didn't leave
the door open and I went home again without the money for the day's
work and you didn't call until you wanted me to clean again, you didn't
get your house cleaned but you did save yourself $15.00, Jay'll see how
one of those days and I don't know how to go on, when we go to the store~ really have no idea what I want her to buy for our supper, I think about
It and feel well whatever Jay wants I guess I'll want that too, and I getworried thinking I won't know when I'm hungry but it's bound to be
more often than Jay, and then what will I do -- go hungry? Yes, I guessthat's the best way, I don't have mv $15.00 to put in and I've lost mvs.elf
somehow, too many similar circumstances I suppose, slipped back in one
day to those times with men, those hungry times, when I'd eat what theywanted to eat when they wanted to eat because I didn't have my own
money and I couldn't hold out against the,flood of them. Sure I worked I
had money too but even all of it was so little and we always lived within
their means. Oh, yes, I lived better, learned about proper ways to eat, but
I didn't eat what I wanted when I wanted it and now I'm desperate andthere'~ this awful cloud like I'll never even know what I want to eat again.
lleft to go talk to my sister. Not about what was happening, I was too
fogged up in that to think I could talk about it, but just to go see mysister. Oh and then I got things right. Then I could see again and talkagain and feel hungry again. Damn it, I hate you rich people. You're theones with the cars, the houses, all the furniture to clean, kitchens dirty
from all the damn food you've eaten -- I go over there, long bus ride, up
hours before I even start working, then hours of cleaning. I hate you. And
always I start loving the work about the time I'm too tired to want tofinish. Just about the time when I start to think I just can't finish, I wantto sit down, damn it, just about that time that understanding that isn't in
my mind, that knowing, that stretched out place will come to me and I'll
finish my work, and your house will be clean, I'll want to look and lookand look like when I write I want to read and read and read but I'll pullmyself away and I'll go home. I'll have spent all day caring, perhaps inspite of myself, but caring even so, wanting the bathtub spotless, wanting
all the shelves and books dusted just so, and I'll go around seeing thehouse through your eyes, the beds changed, your funny water bed that if I
were still riding the maid van we'd all laugh about together. The
newspapers scattered all over the Iloor, someone knocked a trash can overthis morning and didn't pick it up, I guess you thought, "Oh, the maidcomes today." That's what hurts, not honest work for honest pay, butthat thinking I'm supposed to do for you what you're too lazy to do foryourselves. Some of you won't even throw your underwear in the hamper,
won't even pick it up off the floor, and that's what hurts, what makes me
angry if I have energy enough, just kind of knocks off a part of my heart if
I don't. I'll clean your house, I'll care about it all day long, I'll really try
to get the kitchen floor clean, and I'll want the stove and counter tops
shining, I'll feel bad if I can't get everything done before you come home,
and what is your part? Well, leave the door unlocked so I can get in andpay me $15.00. I'd like Dr. Pepper but that's really something extra and22

if I have the money I'll buy my own and bring it in my knap-sack. No,
just leave the door open and leave $15 .00 on the table. You won't have tolearn about me, it'll never have to occur to you to wonder what my house
looks like, how I have things to do just like you, how my days meansomething to me , not just to you in how clean your house is when I leave,none of that, and those of you who spend the day at home with me you'll
talk all day long about yourselves, my heart will love you, feel bad at yourimprisonment, feel bad to know you pay me half to listen to you since noone else will (of course you expect the house to be cleaned too), you' ll talkeveryday I come for weeks and weeks and it'll never occur to you towonder what's on my heart, whether when you're talking to me I might
not have my own head full of things to say. No, none of that required. All
that is required is that you leave the door open and the money on thetable. (You went away once for three weeks and expected me to clean
without getting paid. You paid me when you got back, as though I didn't
have to buy food and pay bus fare while you were away.) I keep harping.
I just mean to say -- leave the door open, the money on the table. I'll do
the rest of it, I'll take into myself whatever needs to be taken in, I'll do thework. And then you lock me out! You don 't call later to say you're sorry,that you' ll bring the money over anyway . Alright, not bring the money
over, but just to call and say you're sorry, that you'd intended to leave thedoor open! Sometimes on those days the pain covers me over and I getlost and for days I can't even be with Jay, can only just float along there
beside her, feeling that I'll manage if I just eat when she's eating. But
we'd planned to go to the ocean. She'd even borrowed her friend's car.
We'd planned. I can't go. I can't decide to go. I can't decide to stay . I
WANT MY TWO CUCUMBERS BACK. I need them now. I can't rideon the top of this wave. If only I could yell my anger! If only I could
march over to your house and start screaming --***I'd gone to the Friday night coffeehouse. The newsletter had just comeout with some awful slander against the separatists and since most of us
were at the coffeehouse there was lots of talk, alot of excitement. I wasvery tired. I'd cleaned Ms. Keese's house and then waited an hour on thebus. I don't even know why I went to the coffeehouse except that it had
something to do with not being defeated , taking a bath, putting on clean
Clothes and making the world mine again, no matter how tired, thetiredness would leave, it'd just give me an easiness, a special cloud to see
the others through. I sat on the big stuffed pillow, Darlene sat beside me
and Linda on the other side, separatists all around me on the floor . I felt
like I was the center to the whole discussion , something was making me
the center, I couldn't tell what. The articles in the newsletter hadn't
affected me much, I saw them for what they were, that was all. The tall
weedy wildflowers in the vacant lot had affected me more, my tiredness
affected me more, being there with the other women, the triumph for mein that, no more going to strange houses with strange men doing strange
things, no more being used, absent -- my taking the world, my going to
the coffeehouse, sitting on the stuffed pillow sitting between Darlene and23

Linda, somehow being the center of the circle though I wasn't eventalking. Joan was the most upset, it mattered to her so much that she be
liked, that she not be misunderstood. I told her we loved her, to justconsider herself part of the Lesbian Separatist Organization and forget
the Lesbian Organization. I told her "water off a duck's back" andthought of buffle-heads on the Hudson near the falls, thought of upturned
tails that could make me laugh, thought of those walks by myself throughthe snow to see the buffle-heads. All of it water off a duck's back, thebody tiredness I'd defeated, I'd come on my bicycle in the twilight. I
could hear women's voices, I loved to look at us, to see how we looked,
felt Darlene about ready to curl up into a tiny kitten on my lap, and Linda
wanting to hear from me what separatism meant, did I just mean no men,and I remember her face pushing into my face, not actual physicalcloseness, and yet her face squashing into mine, like my first memory ofRegina, Gina squashing her red-cheeked face into mine. Later everyone
leaving, I sat on the desk by the door, I said good-by, that evening
beautiful to me, some sort of actual embodiment of my triumph over thetiredness of the whole week, of the day, of the long wait on the bus. I said
plenty when I got to Jay's house. I wouldn't let her get a word in, I had an
opinion about everyone, about everything said. I loved the flatness of her
bed on the wooden platform, loved being next to the wall, on the inside,
loved the half-Vicks, half-garden vegetable smell of her as we went tosleep.

***
Last night I spoke to Regina on the phone. Her mother had gatherednine dozen gladiolas into the house to welcome her! I'm looking now atthe bricks laid to form patterns and thinking how the most I have "built"
is my altar from time to time. There was the altar I built beside the ocean
once, a part of the ocean I got to by finding my way through a coconut
palm forest. Big rocks carried through the forest and pressed against thesand. This morning my body has a dignity. I feel very beautiful and evenwearing clothes is alright with me.

***
I carried Gina's plant here in its round glass bowl. I'll take care of it.
Through loving it, repotting it into something clay, something moreporous, I'll return to my love for her, I'll weed that love of our too-close
contact of the last few months, our too-great differences. Such a melody
in me this morning. The bushy green plant that even so needs care, is glad
to be here with me, watching the birds on the round brick roof and feelingthe breeze. I stayed home this morning, burned the purple candle, thetemple candle of work, of writing. I read Jay's letter, not the reading thatmakes sense, just the reading of words skipping around, skipping toward
some sort of fountain, some sort of happiness in me.

24Jhe three drawingd t eginning with the w0mljn-diren are fo t e cOnditl.ered a deried .

J did them thinking 0/ our amphitian emergence /rom water. Beginning with one
direnlwomljn em.erging info two, J am trting fo comtine two e!emenl4 0/ wimmin,
earthinedd and /Iuidity; onenedd with muhiphcity, duggedting /rieruhhip and25

J-t i:J ha,.d /0,. me to lalk atout the:Je pen and ink:J. J-t i:J ha,.d to placeinle"p"etation:J on rrnjtlw, a,.chet'lpe:J, mind image:J. So lake it /0,. what the'l a,.e tome, what t~'1 ma'l te to 'Iou, what the'l tecome to an'l wom'ln looking at them.

.J jee themaj~'imho!ic 01 our '~injjler" wjjlom, our intuitive Imowledge

0/ ourorigin, our apparent and hidden jtre~th.

DRA WINGS by Joanna Spilman
27

j<TAKlNG- f1ou.Je~
-----

•

SO~(/(VN-

NEITHER PROFIT NOR SALVATION
by Barbara GrierNote: The following speech was given by Barbara Grier as Keynote speaker
on Lesbian Day at the Women's Week festival at San Jose State University on
March 10, 1977.

In the last several months while I've prepared, or tried to prepare, tospeak to you today, I've often thought--talking to myself in the bathroom
mirror, riding back and forth to work,--how extremely arrogant it is foranyone to get up in front of a group and pretend to be able to discuss in
15, 20, 40 minutes the subject of Lesbians and Lesbianism.
I'm 43 years old. I've spent virtually my entire life from age 14 studying
the subject. (If I have five more lifetimes ahead of me, I'll barely begin toscratch the surface, even though I've specialized primarily in one tiny
aspect of the panorama of our existence, the Lesbian in literature,
because, after all, there are millions of Lesbians.) There are millions ofLesbians in the United States. Not thousands nor hundreds of thousands,
but millions of women who are Lesbians. We have many things incommon, but we have many more things not in common with one
another. What is true for one of us may not be true for hundreds ofthousands of us in different personal circumstances.
Probably the Lesbians sitting in this room have a little higher sense ofwhat we call" consciousness" but maybe not even that, because I'll bet
there are some closeted Lesbians in this room too. In fact, there areprobably a few secret Lesbians sitting out there listening to me now. And
as I'm talking, you're beginning to shake inside or squirm a little. There's
bound to be some of you out there. There are always some of you in every
room where there are a few women, always. Every time you ride a bus
and there are a handful of women on the bus, someone on that bus isprobably a closet Lesbian, maybe several someones on that bus. In fact,
the closet, that ridiculous place, may be just exactly the only other thing
we have in common besides the basic one, that we are Lesbians.
28

I'm not even sure that I want to try to define the word Lesbian in front ofa group like this. Those of you out there who know what the word means
don't need any explanation, and those of you who do not, why are you
here? But the closet, we all know about closets. We hang our coats, .
shirts, pants, shoes, lives in closets. In fact, not just some of us, not just a
few of us, not half of us, or three quarters but more like 95% of us live ourlives in closets.
Now, even the closet folk have differing levels of "closetism" ... I guess
we'll coin a word. Some of us live in closets part of the time, some of us
live in closets, say, 75% of the time and 25% we're out of the closet. We
have select people to be out of the closet with. We're out of the closet withall of our gay friends, for example, and five select heterosexual
individuals that we've chosen throughout our lives to decide to confer thegreat honor on them of telling them that we're Lesbians, and holding very
still for a few moments and looking into their eyes for fear they'll flinch,back up, turn away, reject us outright, as if it mattered. As if it mattereda damn bit. It is the closet that is our sin and shame.
There's been a lot of talk since the late 1960's about coming out of thecloset. There've been marches and speeches. There'll be many more
speeches, at least, if not so many marches since marching doesn't seem tobe this year's thing. Thef/~'ll be some slogans:"2,4,6,8, gay is just as good as straight"3,5,7,9, Lesbians are mighty fine"
The first slogan is an insult, and the second slogan is silly.
There will be speeches and more slogans. There will be another tiny
percentile point rise at the end of the year in the number of visible
Lesbians. This or that artist, this or that writer, this or that composer,
this or that politician, this or that priest, this or that minister. A few moreof us will come out of the closet. Come out, come out, wherever you are.
That will be very good for them and that will be very good for the handfulof people whose lives they touch and it will probably even be somewhat
beneficial for the Lesbians who have access to their public derring-do andtake some comfort from their acts .
.But coming out of the closet is getting to be less and less of an option andmore and more of an obligation. It is not a matter of "you ought tobecause it's healthier to live like an open free person" or "you ought tobecause it's easier" because deception is difficult at best ... you have tocarry it forward and it keeps you busy looking over your shoulder on bothsides. And you ought to because being in the closet is not necessary any
longer. It's a moral obligation. It's not a matter of coming out of thecloset because it's good for you. It's not a matter of coming out of thecloset because it's good for your lover, because you're going to feel better,because it'll eventually loosen up your relationship with your family or
loosen up your relationships with your neighbors or help at work. It has
nothing to do with that. You need to come out of the closet because you
know you're a Lesbian and everyone of you who stays in the closet makes
it harder for the woman down the street to come out of the closet. We help
oppress each other, we are our own oppression. We even have a few

women out there who are ashamed of being Lesbians. That's hard to
imagine, I know, but it's true. There are still Lesbians out there who areashamed of being Lesbians. Incomprehensible, illogica l, of course, but it
exists. Now, there are a few people who remain in the closet and enjoy
being uncomfortable about being Lesbians, and I'm not sure if anything I
say here today is going to have any effect on any of them. But there aresome weird people everywhere, there are even some weird Lesbians, so if
you're weird in this way, fine, stay in the closet, I'm not talking to you.
I'm talking to the run-of-the-mill Lesbians out there, the women who do
not belong in the closet, are not comfortable in the closet, don't reallywant to be in the closet, but think for some real or imagined reason ... andimagined reasons are every bit as good as real reasons ... that they mustremain there because if they don't stay in the closet, if they come out,
they're going to lose their jobs or no one will love them or people will pointat them on the street and laugh or their co-workers will have nothing to dowith them or well , make up your own reasons. I'm sure there are as manyreasons as there are closet cases out there.
But it's not a matter of choice any longer. I'm not really asking you tocome out of the closet, I'm telling you. You have to come out of the closet.
you have to come out. Not only do you have to, but the time has comewhere those of us who are out of the closet need to put pressure on those
who are in. And I don't mean unkind pressure but real pressure. We needto talk to the women we know who know that they are gay and that weknow they're gay and that they know we know they're gay but who for
one reason or another still remain in the closet. If there is a crusade in the
future, the crusade is to strengthen our numbers publicly . I mean makethose women who are Lesbians and know they are Lesbians stand up andbe counted . It is time to do so. Once again, I am not advocating that you
run around with sandwich boards, I am not saying you need to go out on
the street and chalk it in front of your house. I am saying that you need tostart acting like you really are. Don't lie, don't pretend. Behave as 'you
are, you' re a Lesbian, act like a Lesbian, be glad you're a Lesbian, tell theworld you're a Lesbian, subtly, of course. But make sure that every
thinking, intelligent person anywhere around you, that has any
relationship with you, however casual, is aware or likely to be aware ofyour orientation . It's the least you can do for the cause, it's the least you
can do for your own people. We have a terrible disadvantage .. . we aren'tmarked in some clear cut way. We can't be seen, we aren't visible. As
others have suggested, I too wish we'd all wake up lavender somemorning and solve that part of the problem . We cannot be seen andbecause we can't be seen, we can pretend, and in years past, perhaps
there were reasons for it. Perhaps it was better, perhaps it was easier topretend.
But it's not good anymore, it's not healthy, it doesn't feel good, it's notgood for you, and it's very bad for the movement. It's very bad for the
future. It's extremely bad for the young Lesbians now, the 10-year olds,
the 15-year olds, the ones who are 20 and looking to us as examples. Why
not make this world a little easier for everyone who comes after us? It's
30

really not too much to ask. Don't we owe the world that? Shouldn't our
passage through it enrich it? Shouldn't our having lived mean something
good for those who come after us? And what about our own lives? There
are an awful lot of young people in this world. Why should we reinforce inthem f~ar for the safety of any job? Why should you for a minute imagine
that you have to fear for your job? One of the reasons that women arehaving trouble in universities and in businesses on a professional level isthe closet. Many women who would be active in the women's movement,
women who have the knowledge and the wherewithall to do wonders are
cautious in many cases because they fear that if they rock the boat about
feminism, someone will come out with the fact that they 're closet
Lesbians and rock their boat back a little. I've heard that argument
offered up so many times, I can't count it. The way to combat it is tocome out first .
What it boils down to is this: when you start counting the women who
have succeeded on an historical level, you find that virtually all famous
women were Lesbians. Not all , but virtually all. Such enormous
quantities of them, such a proportion far out of reasonable belief thatyou're forced to come up with one of two conclusions. Either almost every
woman must be a Lesbian given the choice to be, which happens to be mypersonal opinion, or, if you can't accept that, you must at least accept
that those women who step out in the world and do something importantin it are Lesbians. It is unrealistic to believe that some social body is goingto turn upon all of the succes ful and creative women in the world and put
them out of commission by some kind of mass genocide. I rather doubtthat that's going to happen. For one thing, there are far too many womenfor it to happen . If all the Lesbians come out of the closet, think how
many famous women that's going to concern . Think for a minute in yourhead about every entertaider you can name who is gay, every movie starthat you know is a Lesbian. Think about that for a few minutes.
Then let's talk about all the women we learned about in school inliterature. Let's take one relatively small group -- American women poets.
Let's name the famous American women poets that we now havereasonable proof were Lesbians. There's Amy Lowell, and Emily
Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elinor Wylie and Sara Teasdale.
Get the point? Did you ever hear of any of those women? Could you get
through school without having heard of any of them? We can go on,
there's quite a list more. Let's see, who's the latest one to come out
publicly? Adrienne Rich was the winner of the National Book Award a
couple of years back. She's just come out, and Olga Broumas has
established her reputation on her Lesbian poetry . In fact, I have trouble
finding heterosexual women poets. Marianne Moore, as far as I know, isthe only famous American one, but I'm sure there are some others. Therejust aren't very many, for some reason, there just aren 't very many. So
when all these women come out, including all the women who work infactories and work on switchboards and run elevators and work for
Macy's Department Store as I do, when all the women come out, how is it
going to change the world? Well, for one thing, it's going to make it easier
for all of us to live in the world. It's going to make it impossible for people31to be fired for being Lesbians because it is going to be extremely difficult
to fire all the Lesbians and still run all the businesses, and all the schools,
and all the universities, and all the churches because you cannot get rid of
all your talent and keep everything moving forward properly . And anawful lot of talent would have to go. But I'm not really asking or cajolingor convincing, I'm trying to tell you in as kind a way as I can that it's time
to come out of the closet and it's time to make sure everyone around youcomes out of the closet too.
I'd like to tell you about my sister. My sister is five years younger than I
am. Her name is Diane. She lives less than an eighth of a mile away fromme in a valley in Missouri, forty miles east of Kansas City, Missouri . She
lives with another woman. They consider themselves married. They havea number of closeted gay friends like themselves, both male couples andLesbian couples. They're very open with them or at least as open as they
are able to be open with anybody or anything. They've both worked at thesame company for more than ten years and it's a company with a hundredor so employees. They've been together all of those years and in that
length of time, owned two pieces of property together. They stiII think,
and will tell you, that none of the people they work with know they're aLesbian couple. I don't think all the people they work with are that stupid
myself, but maybe they are. But when you ask them why they don't let
the people they work with know, for sure, they say they don't fear for
their jobs at all and they wouldn't mind if their bosses knew, but they'dhate for their co-workers to know they are Lesbians. Have you every
thought for a minute what people think of you if they don't think you're
Lesbians? Think about that. Do you really want to be thought
heterosexual? I personally do not. Think about it, just think about it.
I'd like to tell you about Donna, the woman I'm married to. She is headof several departments at the Kansas City, Missouri Public Library.
When we started living together over five years ago, I had been a patronof that library for 15 years or so. Needless to say, every librarian in thesystem had heard about the notorious Barbara Grier who collects thooose
books, so there would have been no possible way that Donna could haveremained in the closet in any sense. It's been a rich and reward ing
experience for her in every way .
I think I can demonstrate using her as an example how seriously it candisadvantage you to be known as a Lesbian. When we began living
together, she was an assistant in a department in the library, aprofessional librarian, simply one of many in a department. She's now
head of several departments and she's doubled her salary, and she's very
well thought of by everyone she works with, very well liked, and theyknow that she's a Lesbian. They know that we're a coup le. They don't
make a big point of it, they don't run around discussing it at great length,
at least not with Donna. But if it has caused her any inconvenience, she
hasn't noticed it.
But there's another comparison between my sister Diane and her life andthe life Donna and I enjoy, and it's probably the most important one.
32

There are young Lesbians in the library in various posItIOns who are
open, increasingly open, and they are using as their example the obvious,
unstated but present-presence of Donna in their lives. It's okay to be open
in the library. Not flamboyant, not troublesome, not obnoxious, but
open, casual, obvious. After all, why not?
I don't know how the young Lesbians at Diane's company feel about her
ludicrous behavior but I can guess. And if there are any shy and timid
ones, I hope they are not hurt by her bad example.
Now, coming out, despite everything you ever heard or feared, is notdifficult. I came out when I was 12 years old. I have been out ever sinceand I have been out with all the people I've ever been around. And I'm
not a special and not a privileged person. I worked in a non-professional
position in a public library. I worked for a mutual fund ca lled Hamilton
Funds. I've worked in a whole bunch of miscellaneous offices, the Singer
Sewing Machine Co., Pyramid Life Insurance, Macy's Department Store
where I now have a quasi-clerical job, but it's a perfectly ordinary puncha-timeclock kind of job , but every person in Macy 's knows who I am andwhat I do . There was an article about my life in Christopher Street
Magazine in October, L976. There's a dog-eared, tattered copy of
Christopher Street that went all over my department. Everybody in theplace read it and everyone came and talked to me. My boss, who is astereotype mal e-chauvinist-pig, oppressive person who dislikes everyth ing
that he doesn't particularly share an intimate acquaintance with, the kindof person who has a bumper sticker that reads "Take your boy hunting
and you won't go hunting your boy, ,. even my boss finds somehow an
obscure pride in my openness.
But I'm' not asking you, I'm telling you that you have to come out of thecloset. We have to, we all have to be out, we have to because there'
nowhere else to go. We've done all we can do as a sma ll , isolated,spotlighted public movement. It's not enough that every year a few
thousand kids come out of high school and decide, boy, oh boy, I'm goingto break with the enemy, my family, I'm going out and I'm going to live
my life. That's one kind of coming out. They've got a long way to go.
They're going to walk out of society and walk back into it, and walk Olltof it and back into it and go through a lot of changes, a lot of education
processes, a lot of jobs, a lot of things. Right now, I want all of those
women who have made their "place" in the world, I want all of those
women over 25 or so who have jobs and responsibilities and obligations
and functions to perform and a life of their own and don't-bother-me, I'IIcall-you, and I-don 't-see-why- I-should-do-that- because- I-did-it-allmyself, let-them-drag-themselves-up-by-their-bootstraps. I did it all
myself, let them drag themselves up by their bootstraps, I don't owe themanything. But you do. You owe them plenty. You owe them your wit andwisdom . You owe them all the suffering you went through passed by, theright not to have to go through it all just like you did. It's not that it
wouldn't make them stronger, perhaps, but it's just not neces ary
anymore. What is necessary is coming out. Coming out every day in every
way. Neither for profit nor salvation, but because this is the time to comeout.
33

DISTURBANCE
The mountain dark treacherous
wild with loneliness the nighthiding in its own shadow
Accented by a kerosene lamp
The smell of smoke from a wood-burning stovea rifle cocked & loaded in the corner.
Tonight three burly men outside my cabin door
Two Chicanos unkempt but smiling
The third man fat short whitea mean wide faceas greasy as a frying pan.
They stand so easy in my space
thinking nothing of it
I play my guitar to all the trees
The wide one grins his teeth as dirty as
any that I've read about or seen.

34"Goodbye Guy," he says
Curls his lip around the second word
his way to tell me that he knows
lam a dyke
His male ego erect His IQ of minus 20
His primitive hate the hate of every man
for a woman
who sins against his entire sex
by omission.

My stomach churns at his departure
Remembering a sawed-off Southern truck driverwith a greasy crewcut and short mean teeth
Six years ago he tried to rape me
I was 22
struggling for my lifecaught between the shelter of the trees
and his semi on the other side
I had taken the half-mile ride
for which I had to pay
inside his arms
His cock unzippered hardagainst my unsuspecting jeans.
"I have to be back by four. " I was logical.
H e wa s amused.
H e tried to smear his fa ce across my mouth.
I tried to remember how to kill him.
The truth is that he let me go.
His goodwill. Hi s enj oyment.
I ran away thanking him.
M y voice high-pitched obsequious
Dramatizing the story later
to hide my powerlessness.
Thank ya Thank ya massah
Let this poor defenseless creature go
She is only a woman .
I am only a woman
remembering that terrified woman's criesthat pulling at survivalthat groveling on the groundT he face of his unquestioned power thenHis whim to let me go or rape and kill me.
Tonight my rifle makes no sound
But if you come inside that door
Fat Greasy Frying Pan man
Sawed-off Southern Trucker or
Any man who thinks he might
Trample on my space again
I will not hesitate to throw this trigger backAnd send your head across the peaceful trees
Then cry only for your violence
That sits aching in my fingers
On the trigger of this gun.

- Chocolate Waters
35

PRACTICE.

A DREAM.

The woman tells me to remember Diana, the Goddess
and to screamwhen I am in danger.
I stay alert and watch the speaker
but danger does not come where one is looking.
A man appears next to me, close
about to run his hand up me like a piano keyboard.
I find my voice and scream.
I remembered Diana.
I wake shaken, but feeling I did well.

- Ellen Bass36

''/or the number %utlaw:J

0/ womeni:J a circle wider than hi:Jtorlj "AN OPTIONAL HISTORY

If in some other life I had been a scop,a wandering poetmoving from village to village
circle of light in the primitive mind
woman trapped in a male bodyearning my living by my readings
free to wander through the silence where the women dwelled,
I could tell you straight in the eyethat while the men burned the manuscripts andplayed the thrust and parry gameswith monsters of their own invention,
the women recited their strength to themselvesand carried the memory of the race
strapped to their shoulders and tied to their tongues,
keeping alive the truth of the xx chromosomes
knowing their silhouette was survival's future tense.
And later when the women found themselves trading
the vast plains for feudal tenancy
barred from priesthood, knighthood, selfhood
they tended the plagues
while the church burned the women to cure the earth
The survivors hunched over their labor
their rounded shoulders not enough of an apology
keeping watch by the gummy mouth
where the teeth of death had rotted
and they confessed to their daughterswith each drop from their nipples
that they would rather be Maid Marion
riding off with the outlaw Robin Hoodfor they knew who she really was
and why celibate Tuck was faithful to her.
And they knew nothing of the continent of incontinent womendraped in buffalo robes
who covered their bodies when the men grew tired of them
who used rocks for birth control when they were not tired
and when the rocks failed38

w~rmed their infants with their lactation and lamentationand discovered that the secrets of the shamans
contained only instructions for making a rattle
and so, painted their visions on cambric shirts
waiting out the ghost dance.

If in this life I would be the self-same wandering poetmoving from enclave to enclave
free woman in my own body
I would tell you straight in the eyethat women have been too long half in shadow
half in light
more half than wholeeach of us looking at each otheras if from around some corner
yet sensing all out there in the breasts catching the lightand though the men continue minting the earth
we can do more than gossip the legends to ourselves,for the number of outlaws of women is a circle wider than history.
for the numbers of oqtlaws of womenis a circle wider than-history- Sandia39

~~~~~~~~~~I~ To SWLtTaA.W\Sr~.1A ~It~ I
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Dear Catherine and Harriet,
It was when I tried to think of people who would appreciate asubscription to Sinister Wisdom that I realized more than ever how
shockingly isolated I am and have been for too long--yes, in this great
metropolis! Though I am taking steps to remedy that, as of now I comeup with a total blank. Continuing to search my mind for candidates, I
devised a better-than-nothing solution: a list I submit for honorary gift
subscriptions: Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Amy Lowell, Willa
Cather, Margaret Anderson, Susan B. Anthony, Sara Teasdale, CareyThomas, Edith Hamilton, Vita Sackville-West, and Renee Vivien.
Regretfully, I wasn't able to include everyone because I'm far fromwealthy. But there's no one I want to encourage more than you.
I have the first three issues of SW and a sub for the next three. I'mcontinually re-reading them. I think I should stop by Page One,
Pasadena, as I do at least once a week, and stock up on spares! I read
Adrienne Rich's important statement again and again because I love
hearing her say it--almost as though it were a poem.
And Tee Corinne's cover! Can you imagine how much I desire a print
or poster of that? Loveliest thing I've ever seen! (I'm sure multitudes are
telling you the same thing.)
Now--having taken care of business, there is a further communication-mainly an extension of your discussion of The Ladder--that I want toshare with you. In the mic4t of many details I'll be as concise as possible.
. I happened to be living in Los Angeles when The Ladder first appeared
and I knew some of the women who worked on it, who started it. I knew
the ones who lived in L.A. very well. I have most of the early issues
including the first one, the latest being January, 1961. It is ironic that I
find these much more interesting now than I did then--for in those days I
regarded it as a rather pitiful sheet. The art work was atrocious and thefiction! Sophomoric, wildly hysterical, gauche--and embarrassing.
"Homeward, " the first story they printed, was typical and seemed to set
the tone for much that followed. Gene Damon's stories were somewhat
better. and "Masquerade" rather amusingly romantic. I even have a few
copies 0/ Vice Versa somewhere--and knew the young woman who"published" it--1947-48. Her list was limited--she typed each entire issue.
(See The Ladder, Book Review, Vol. 1, No.3). Today I acknowledge
The Ladder as a very valuable document, a towering monument in our
history. Everything they printed contained a view of the way things were.
Many women in those days were the way they appeared in the fiction. It
was actually often sadistically frustrating. And there was much energy
spent on the subject of was it a sickness? even a "Study of Personality
Variables of Homosexual Women" (The Ladder, Vol. 3, No.8) in which
I participated. (It was entertaining--I got to draw pictures.)41

I was never a member of the DOB [Daughters of Bilitis}--although theFeds thought I was and I underwent some devastating harassment in the
60's. They even got inside my house one time. (My friend admitted them,and when I reached home later, they seemed disconcerted that we weren't
cringing.) Five years later, after lots of money, energy and hours with a(woman) attorney, I had a hearing and was granted my security
clearance. People I worked with were supportive--none of them gay.
Anyway, those agents had taken telephoto pictures of DOB's everywhere,
at the beach, even in their own backyards--they were shown to me, but I
couldn't "identify" any of them. But that's a whole other story. The
effects were longer lasting than I like to think of.
At the time The Ladder appeared, an organization called One, Inc.,
founded by male homosexuals, had been established for four years in Los
Angeles. Beginning in January, 1953, they published a monthly called
One Magazine: The Homosexual Viewpoint. I became involved with thatin April, '53, first doing the mailing which I enjoyed, until the editor
raided my wastebasket, rescuing discards and discovering my artistic
potential. I was on the editorial staff for a while--several women workedon the mag from time to time--and by July of 1954 I had graduated to Art
Director as Eve Elloree, doing the production work--layout, paste-up,
type selection and most of the drawings and covers. Many of us, though
not all, thought we should use pseudonyms in those days. I picked Elloree
out of the atlas--I liked the sound of it--a little town about 120 miles southof you.
One, Inc., as well as DOB and The Ladder, did a lot of thegroundwork, part of a foundation we are building on today. There waseven an obscenity ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in our favor. (SeeOne Magazine, February, 1958.)
If it hadn't been for One, I would most likely have devoted more ofmyself to The Ladder. If it were today, I know I would. But I didn't havethe ability to focus then that I have now. As it was, I worked with One
until around 1964 when the magazine ceased publication.
I assure you, it is astonishing to see the changes since those beginnings!
What an abundance of superb writers, artists and thinkers we have now!
What love, sharing, determination, self-respect, courage, energy andspirit!
Yes, a network exists--and I'm passionately a part of it, and yes my
Lesbian imagination is constantly developing and yes, it's truly an
exhilarating time to be living!
My deepest thanks to you-Joan Corbin
La Crescenta, California

42Photograph and detail by CLEMENTINA HA WARDEN

43

Photograph and detail by l:LEMENTINA HAWARDEN
44

CLEMENTINA HAWARDEN, PHOTOGRAPHER
by Tee Corinne

Clementina, Lady Hawarden, was an enigmatic woman photographer
born in Scotland in 1822. She married at 23, gave birth to a son and diedat the age of 42. Graham Ovenden, editor of the only major publication
dealing with her work, refers to her as being "like Vita Sackville-West, a
mixture of the aristocratic north and the Mediterranean south. " Afterlooking at her photographs one wonders if there were other similarities
between Lady Hawarden and the prominent bisexual author, SackvilleWest.
In Hawarden's photographs of two women together, the women almost
always touch each other, often they embrace. Some couples seem about tokiss, others look as if a shared intimacy had just been interrupted. If these
women were posed in the same positions without clothing on it would be
impossible not to read the lesbian connotations clearly. If one individual
w.ere a man and the other; a woman the overt sexuality again would betaken for granted . The photographic ambiguity is a result of our lack of
specific biographical information combined with the Victorian exaltationof emotionally charged friendships between individuals of the same sex.
Most of us have been taught to read sentimentality rather than sexuality
into this type of image. (The danger of desexualizing work done in the lastcentury can most clearly be seen in Alice Austen's "The Darned Club"
which shows two pairs of women holding each other's waist. Austen(1866-1952) was a lesbian photographer who lived and worked near New
York City.)45

In Hawarden's work Ovenden refers to the "oppressed sexuality" andthe "languid, almost Sapphic sensuality" of her groupings of two women
together or of one "matched, Narcissus-like, with a mirror." Consistently
Hawarden produced solidly constructed images which imply that more isgoing on in them than what is actually shown. Her work seems toencompass a personal mythology (women together, women with large
mirrors, women leaning their heads against walls as if trying to breakthrough them) rather than the greco-roman allusions of her contemporary
Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879).
I like spending time with this woman's work, finding it both exciting
and disturbing. Mostly I want to know more about the women in the
pictures, more about Clementina herself. The majority of her
photographs are in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Perhaps
she also left written documents and more images than those in the
Academy Editions publication referred to above.
Note: Since photography books are often expensive, you may want to request that your local
library purchase copies. Written requests seem to get the best results. Optionally, you cansecure copies through inter· library loan.

Clementina, Lady Hawarden edited by Graham Ovenden, Academy Editions, London/St.
Martin's Press, N.Y., 1974.
Alice's World: The Life and Photography of an American Original, Alice Austen (18661952) Ann Novotny, Chatham Press, Old Greenwich, Conn., 1976. Available from
Research Reprints, 315 W. 78th St., N.Y. 10024.
Women of Photography: A Historical Survey. A catalogue, Margery Mann and Anne
Noggle, The San Francisco Museum of Art, 1975.
"Alice Austen - Photographs" by Penny House and Liza Cowan, an article appearing in"DYKE, A Quarterly" #3,1976.
"Alice Austen's World" by Ann Novotny, an article appearing in "HERESIES: A Feminist
Publication on Art and Politics" #3, 1977.

Note: All photographs by Clementina Hawarden are taken from Clementina, Lady
Hawarden, edited by Graham Ovenden. Permission to reprint requested.

46

Photograph and detail by CLEMENTINA HAW ARDEN
41l

Photograph and detail by CLEMENTINA HAWARDEN
49

The Hieroglyphics on the Bathroom Wall
The tub fills
like a pale Nile
its bed white as cartilage. Night after night,
folding towells, like Egyptian grave-cloths.
Seen through blue-green,
seen through blue,
the aqua limbs of the children. Rinsed
body of a girl oblong as a cocoon;archaic deep waist of a boy,legs set wide on the wide pelvis.
She towers over him in regal
Egyptian proportion.
Her amber head sports a red raven.
His dangling curls clasp caterpillars.
The ancient water parts for them.
I kneel before these gods,
hands drifting aimless in the water of death and memory,
wrinkles like stripes of grave-cloth acrossa bound brow.
I am the mummy
hidden in the pyramid of the family.
I followed the slick, bare feet of the gods
into the monstrous sandstone, slipped
through the secret door.
There is no way .out.
There are little dishes.
Oil of gold to bathe in.
Corn seeds to last four thousand years
and four thousand years of the patter of tiny feetacross my eyelids.
How the jewels in their delicate sandals
gleam!
- Sharon Olds

50

EGO

ego
is she who names herself
is i who identifies myself with me
and so creates my cosmos
ego
is focus of self in will to coherence in self-expressing
is connection of feel and dream and know
is non-denial of simultaneousand discontinuous affirmedego
is aggression not violence
and letting-be as letting-me-be(do you hear?)
one of a multidimensional self who accepts me:
discrete integer in a timeloss non-spatial correlative systemego is also part of a system defined by men,denied by them except as theirs
as constructkewpie-doll
puppetto keep all separate from each(even the witches they burned were separate,
puppets demonic to their mindless)and ever hanging from their strings(we hang but very loosely sisters
ready to fly free)ego mediates in malebetween an alienated fiction and an alien environment
or else denies itself in endless mystic cartwheels
or materialist encomiums to collective linear dichotomized
negations(this is dialectics, dear!){continued on page 541

51

..--- IV

1r£NJ'I-r!
/VItHING<
C ,R.e417 { v;Jc50;eVJ VIfL

ego translates,interprets self in a selfless mechanized male-construction,
malconstruct
ego is she the boundary-dwelling I
who will not say no to us or yes to it, to them at any pricethe force behind desire
self-empowering(they tried to rid us of these childhood habits,
bad, bad, habits,
but we chose to stay alive:
fifty mantra,
fifteen shocks,
stelazine, prisons, schoolingand rape,
but still we chose to stay alive, we choose)
ego says I will
and tries to heal the split-self, split-world heritage
they wrecked us:
self and world
inside-outside
being-doingsacred and profane
ego says I am
You areWeare
Lesbian, Sister, Witch
non-identical but very strong
connected
forging us a language
and a freedom
and a truth
I am powerful,I:
Ego-Myra Love, a poem to be read with the centerfold map

54

RESEARCHING LESBIAN HISTORY
Door Swingby Judith Schwarz

The basic problem in doing Lesbian history research (once you learn
the elementary skills) is this: can you ever be positive the woman you areresearching was a bona fide lesbian? What constitutes a definition oflesbianism? Is it stretching the historical facts to consider a woman alesbian if you cannot prove in any real iron-clad way that she ever had aphysical, sexually intimate relationship with another woman?
My own definition of a lesbian does not contain the absolute
requirement that a woman who loves and cherishes another woman as her
primary romantic attachment must have sexual contact with her before I
would call her a woman-Ioving-woman--a lesbian sister. Nevertheless,there are infinite degrees and levels of affection and commitment between
any two people. I am personally more interested in how these women
lived their lives outside of the standard protection and more acceptedsocial position of a male-female relationship, than I am in pinning an airtight label to any woman's sexuality. Before you even begin researching,
then, you must take time to define not only the basic term "lesbian," butalso why you are doing the research in the first place. What questions do
you want to answer? What is it you hope to find? Without questions, youwill find yourself in the hopeless position of facing mountains of material
without the vaguest idea how to begin making sense out of the chaos.
Assuming you do have questions--if only how the average lesbian lived
and loved in generations past--but you have only the barest notion how tostart your research, this essay will guide you through the early stages. *Hopefully, by the time you are ready to tackle your local archives orhistorical society, you will be knowledgable enough to continue on yourown.
. You begin with a few basic books and articles that will arm you withknowl~dge and skills you will find enormously helpful later. They are:American Historical Association. Guide to Historical Literature.
New York: Macmillan, 1961.
Barzun, Jacques, and Gran, Henry F. The Modern Researcher.
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977.
Handlin, Oscar, ed. Harvard Guide to American History.
Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1966.
James, Edward T., et aJ. Notable American Women: 1607-1950.
Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1971.
Katz, Jonathan, ed. Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A.
New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976.
Shafer, R.J. A Guide to Historical Method. Revised ed.
Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press. 1974.
*The specific information given assumes that you will be researching lesbiansin the United States.

55

Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. "The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between
Women in Nineteenth-Century America." Signs 1 (Fall 1975): 1-29.

The above books and article should all be available at your riearest
library. The only ones you may really wish to buy at this point are Katz's
Gay American History ($9.95) and 'The MOd.ern Researcher ($6.%). The
indispensable GAH is worth every penny (and more) , not only for its
detailed chapter by chapter bibliographies and fascinating contents, butalso for you to see the multitude of questions already being asked and thewealth of material you can examine for your own research. This book canalso give you a framework and a starting point for your own research, or it
may be exciting to discover that the particular question, era, or person
you are most interested in has not even been considered yet. Nothing canreplace that thrill when you realize that you are about to explore
completely new territory where no mind asking your particular questions
has ever been before. It is addictive.
The rest of the books are self-explanatory and will be extremely usefulat different stages of your work. There are also excellent bibliographies on
women's history you should consult, the most helpful of which are theones compiled by Gerda Lerner, The Common Woman collective ofCambridge, Mass., or Gene Damon's excellent bibliography of Lesbian
Literature. You may already be familiar with the vast possibilities forresearch in public libraries--if not, you will be surprised to know how
much primary work can be accomplished there once you learn how tomake use of their multitude of resources.
To be a truly effective researcher, you will need all of the following
ingredients, more or less:
1) an enjoyment of reading.
2} the previously mentioned background knowledge--and hopefully yourown reading over the years in gay and lesbian books and periodicals toknow what has already been done over and over to the point of boredom.
The world does not need another biography of Virginia Woolf or
Gertrude Stein (unless, of course, it is exceptionally brilliant).
3} a love of women. (How can you know what to look for if you haven 't afirst-hand knowledge of even that? If you are especially new to the many
aspects and varieties of lesbian life, you may wish to consult a few of themany biographies and non-fiction lesbian books available in any feminist
bookstore. )4} an historical imagination--which simply means that you realize how
very, very different and difficult life was for lesbians in the past. If you
plan to research pre-20th century women, you will find it helpful to begin
by reading not only Carroll Smith-Rosenberg' s article, but also Sarah
Aldridge's Cytherea's Breath (l976), and Isabel Miller's Patience andSarah (l971): two excellent novels which will help give you an historicalperspective on what it may have been like to be a lesbian in the 19th
century.
5} the soul of a detective--eager to track down elusive clues and minutedetails until you have found the last possible piece in the puzzle that is
every person's life.
566) patience for the long, dreary days when you seek and do not find adamn thing.
7) common sense-- both in the search itself (where to go, how to get into alibrary or archive that only allows in PhD candidates, etc.) and in the useof the material you find. Are you going to get it to other eager history
buffs in written form, as a slide show, on a television program, or as aplay--or were you planning to share your knowledge in even more creative
new ways? Remember how many of us are out here avidly awaiting yourdiscoveries--not only because of what your material may have to say thatis original and unique in itself but also because it may be the very lastpiece in our own puzzle that will help everything fit and make sense. You
do not need to be the world's greatest writer, only a persistent andtruthful one.
8) honesty. Never plagiarize another writer's material, always give credit
where it is due: another book, the library where you found the original
material (don't forget to ask their permission to use it for publication or
you will never see the inside of a rare book room or archive again. Be
subtle about how you will use it if you have to, ·but never lie--you lose in
the end.) Be extremely careful not to over-read or misread your material.
Sloppy research makes lousy history.
9) clean hands. I'm serious about this--if you are working in the
Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe (a treasure-trove of enormously valuable
letters, diaries, and other rare material on American women) and/or
other archives that contain rare and irreplaceable documents, please
remember that smudges, dirt, tears, or careless handling only make itharder for the next researcher. They also may mean the eventual
destruction of a document's usefulness forever. I will never forgive
whoever
it was that had eatena jam sandwich before she handled a letter.
I
by Margaret Fuller that I needed to use. By the time I read the letter, themost essential part was unreadable. Rage, despair, and curses most foul
did not make up for the heart-sick feeling that the document--and part ofMargaret Fuller--was forever lost. Be Careful! !
Let's say that you have found a woman you want to know more about,but so far she is only a name to you. For instance, you have read thearticle in Notable American Women on the economic historian and social
reformer, Katharine Coman (1857-1915), and become intrigued with thelast line: "After her death Katharine Lee Bates, with whom she had lived
for many years, wrote a series of sonnets in her memory, later publishedin Yellow Clover (1922)." You dash to the library and read (or orderthrough interlibrary loan) Yellow Clover, and cannot believe you've neverheard of this book, nor that it was published in 1922 and is so explicitly
written about the love between two women. Bates' grief over the loss ofher "Beloved," her "J oy-of- Life," Katharine Coman is somewhat
maudlin at times, but always intensely felt and openly admitted. (Theromantic in me burst into tears the first time I read the title poem.)"Hurrah! you say! "I've hit gold the first try!" And it looks easy
from here on -- after all, Katharine Lee Bates wrote the second national
anthem, "America the Beautiful," so there's bound to be a lot written
about her. Also, both Bates and Coman are in Notable American
Women, which gives you not only a brief but complete biography of thewomen, but also a detailed bibliography of all known sources on them.
But there is one problem--no one else has ever hinted that they wereanything other than "just good friends." In fact, the only major publishedbiography ever written about Bates was done by a niece of hers, and gives
only the barest nention of Katharine Coman--an amazing bit of pussyfooting around the truth when you realize that the women were an
acknowledged couple for over thirty-five years! After reading everything
you can get your hands on, you still know this couple represents a strong
lesbian relationship of the type that flourished in the many women 's
colleges at the turn of the century--but you have not one shred of proof.
Yes, you could write a convincing article just using the poems in Yellow
Clover and a few details found in other accounts of their lives. But you
want as complete and accurate a history of their lives as you can possibly
put together. Now that you have read all the secondary sources, you areready to begin searching for original letters, diaries and other material of
Bates and Coman which may have survived and been placed in archives
or collections where researchers may use them. (There are also other ways
to find original material and letters that have not been collected, such as
interviews with surviving relatives, letters to them asking what material
they may have in their possession and if you may have permission to
examine, xerox or publish it. By the time you get that far into yourresearch, though, you will undoubtedly know enough to complete it on
your own.)
The National Union Catalog of Ma.nuscript Collections, compiled by
the Library of Congress on a yearly basis since 1959, lists over 35,000
manuscript and archival collections in the United States. By looking up
Bates in the indexes to all the volumes, you discover the not remarkablefact that Wellesley College (where both women taught all their academic
lives) has a large collection of papers and documents in the Katharine Lee
Bates collection: 2200 items, to be exact. Other letters of hers are at
Boston Public Library in the rare book room, and at Schlesinger Libraryat Radcliffe College. Correspondence, poems and booklets by Bates arealso in the Earl Bowman Marlett Papers at DePauw University inGreencastle, Indiana. This information is all very fine if you happen tolive in either Greencastle., Indiana, or the Boston area. If not, your only
recourse is to write' to the respective libraries, ask for a list of what is in
their collections, and start praying to the Great Goddess for a little luck.
From here on, your knowledge of these women from your earlier
reading will let you know who they might have written to in a frank andopen manner about their life together, who their closest friends were, andwhat period of their lives they were separated and might have written toeach other. You will know, for instance, that their colleague, Vida
Scudder, also had a life-long relationship with the writer, Florence
Converse. Letters to Scudder or Converse, or others in their intimate
circle with strong women friendships , should be examined with special
care. It goes without saying that any letters between Bates and Comanshould definitely be analyzed with a fine eye for details that will help you
understand the relationship as it really was (not as you would like it tohave been). You will be relieved as much as you are saddened by the
infbrmation that the majority of the 2200 items at Wellesley are58correspondence and material relating only to Bates' poem "America theBeautiful." There is a diary of hers from 1866, but since she was only
seven years old at that time, it will not be much help except asbackground. But there are letters to Coman available, and many
photographs, and many other letters to close friends. You are on yourway. Don't expect positive proof, ever (how open are you even in this day
and age in your diary or letters? Would you be as open and frank if theyear were 1890? --Some were, of course); the chances of finding a diarythat is not only revealing but that also survived the ravages of time andlater relatives are minimal. Nevertheless, you may be lucky. The mostinteresting work is yet to be done on the local level in historical societiesthat receive mounds of moldy material, file them with only a cursory
glance at the contents, and let them gather dust until you come along andfind lesbian history just waiting for your experienced mind to perceive it.
I cannot emphasize this too strongly: don't just flounder around in thelibrary or archives. Go there with some sense of what it is you are looking
for, and a method of note-taking and research that will help save you
valuable time easily wasted in backtracking. What are you mostinterested in knowing? What questions are you eager to discover theanswers to--the honest and complete answers. II all you are curious about
is whether a particular woman went to bed with another woman, you will
be doomed from the very beginning. It is not that the question is not avalid one; it is simply a question that will rarely be answered to thecomplete satisfaction of either you or your audience. Also, that kind of
blunt question leaves so little room for historical imagination or discovery
that you are better oH sticking with books already researched by others
more eager to explore the subtleties of women's relationships. Remember
that. not all women with lesbi~n emotions and sexuality either recognize or
feel comfortable acting out their lesbianism, even today. Also, the merefact that a woman wore trousers or ties in an era of extreme feminine
fashion does not make her a bona fide lesbian--she may simply have been
doing the sensible thing any right-thinking independent woman would
have done. "Passing women" who lived as men were fighting othergrievances of women--they mayor may not have also been lesbians. Be
joyful when you find real evidence of our foresisters that will help us
understand our lesbian past, but also be careful about misreading one ofthose typically affectionate letters between women in the nineteenthcentury' as more of a relationship than it really was. The last thing weneed is more naive, not to say shamefully ignorant, lesbian history.
Once you begin doing lesbian research in original letters and diaries, I
guarantee you that you will never go back to secondary sources inlibraries again (except to do preliminary background work). Nothing will
ever match the excitement you will feel as a researcher when you hold inyour hands a battered, yellowing leather-bound diary over a hundredyears old, and read of a woman's experiences and thoughts on her
relationship with her woman "friend" that are so similar to your own
feelings you could have written them yourseU. I have laughed and criedand made an absolute public ass of myseU over more than one such
document. I can only wish for you that thrill of discovery, too.
59

Remembering Our Past
Remembering our past
starts simply. We go backto our childhood. We write
about the hallway windowthat looked into Zoffer's.
F lorence Zoffer, she asked my brotherto teach her tennis. She wanted him
for a boyfriend, mother said.
She was too old, had orange hair. I watched her
take off her blouse, hang it in
the closet, her slip.
We go back to our mothers and our fathers.
She was in nurse's training.
Eleven hour shifts.
When he took her to the movies, it was warm, quiet,
she fell asleep. He said
let's go sometime when you're not so tired.
There is no time, she said.
We tell the stories, ourgrandmother"s, his mother. She wasa pretty woman. When the coaltrain went by she
ran outside. They waved
to her and kicked coal off the car.
Our grandmothers, her mother.
I screamed when the train went by.
The noise. The rumble in the floor.
She told me, my boyfriend
is on the train. Come with me, see,we will wave to him. My boyfriend.
See. We waved. We waved.

60

We go back, her mother was
Sarah, her mother Nochoma.
We start with what we know.
Then we continue--her mother and hers.
Her mother and hers.
We are in lithuania, Russia.
We are in Poland, Yugoslavia.
We are in Sweden. Weare in Ireland.
Weare in Puerto.Rico. Weare in Mexico.
We are in Rome, Greece. Weare in
Mesopotamia, Crete. The names
go through their transformations
Sally, Sarah, Sappho, Selene, Ceres
Cybele, Sophia, Athene, Diana
Artemis, Anat, Isis, Ishtar, Astarte, Minerva, Dana
Tiamat, Potnia. Say the words.
Lycia, Athens, Lemnos, Lesbos
Cantatiria, Atlantis, Ca~l Huyuk
Mycenaeans, Anatolians, Lydia, Caria
Lavinia, Latium, Julia, Claudia, Rhea Silvia
Alalakh, Altamira, Anna Nin.
Say the words.
This is the beginning.

- EllenBBss

61

READING &WRITING& PUBLISHINGRETRIEVED FROM SILENCE: My Life and Times
with Daughters, Inc.
by Harriet Desmoines
December, 1977: Flat on my back, felled by a peculiar disease the only
symptoms of which are a slight fever and an overwhelming reluctance to
get out of bed. Sounds like mono, say experienced friends. Sounds likebattle fatigue, I say to myself. Review copies of Applesauce, I Must Not
Rock , and Angel Dance arrive in the mail. With an eerie sense that
history is repeating itself, I promise I'll review one of them for Sinister
Wisdom. Catherine leaves for Chicago to meet friends, find manuscripts,
make connections, and I proceed to the business of completely fallingapart in privacy while reading Daughters' latest.
Applesauce brings the past flooding back.

****... there's no such thing as anything. That's where the lesbian
writer starts.
(June Arnold, " Lesbian Fiction," Sinister Wisdom 2, p. 51)

Checkpoint #1:

November, 1973.

This story begins at home. "Home" is occupied by one handsomely
graying professor husband, three teenaged sons (his), two collie dogs
(theirs), and me ... 26, and possesseq of the telltale protruding eyes thatgenerally advertise lunatic-on-the-Ioose. I am chopping onions andconsidering whether to drink the Drano as a beforedinner or afterdinnertreat when the phone rings. The voice on the line belongs to another
Harriet, a gentler, older, more sophisticated but still fragile Harriet, whoallows as how it would be a great favor to her if I would review feminist
books for the Sunday paper. Unaware that her call is one more husband62

instigated therapy, I embrace the intoxicating theory that Harriets readeach other's minds and, pausing only to dump the Drano down the drain,rush to her workplace where I discover her carefully filing the first five
Daughters paperbacks at the very back of the bottom drawer of the mostobscure file cabinet in the rear annex of the newsroom. She turns, saying
over her shoulder, "You don 't suppose they're worth reviewing? " and I
lunge at the books, then pull back dumbfounded with the realization that
I've grabbed her hands in the process. I mumble several mortified
somethings and , clutching the five novels to my chest, flee down theescalator, home.

Now nan body felt extraordinary, the sense of feeling focussed
on nan palms as if one first experienced the metaphor literally... as if... aliveness existed independently and merely needed tobe called up.
(June Arnold, The Cook and the Carpenter. p. 261

In three nights and three days (inbetween making money, cooking,breaking up urchin battles, typing women's center stencils, vying for" heterosexual acrobat of the year," and various other Renaissance Girl
activities) , I read Rubyfruit Jungle , Nerves, Early Losses, The Treasure,and The Cook and the Carpenter. I read them again. I read thembackwards, I read them middle to outside, I go through and pick out thejuicy parts. I fall in love with the Carpenter, I fall in love with the Cook, I
fall in love with Three, I end up falling in love with every single female
character but one in June Arnold's novel, and I ecstatically congratulate
myself on having made no false guesses about the shared gender of her
lovers, despite the tricky pronoun na .
Then ,I review the only cryptic novel of the lot, The Treasure, adding
sho'r t paragraphs on the other four: a review which successfully avoids
any hint of Lesbian activity. I even contrive to review these two feminist
and three Lesbian feminist novels without once using the word sex, or theword oppression.
Time passes, amid nightmares of strangling on the backed-up saliva inmy throat. It is Christmas, and I grow more melodramatic by the hour. I
buy a typewriter, for salvation; but I keep two cans of Drano under thesink, for insurance. Finally, when the new year hits, I sit down to write
myself out of a suicide.

****I live in the boathouse now, writing my memoirs and getting
strange. Everyone who happened to me was extraordinary-but I didn't realize they were until I had left them and wasgone. J e ne regrette rien, as the song goes. Actually, I'm afraidof being arrested for murder if I show my face.
!Bertha Harris, Lover, p, 261

Nine months and 213 single-spaced journal pages later, I sit alone, in aroom of my own that rides like a fugitive ship above the women's center.
The professor-husband is on the eighth floor psych ward, his sons are
63

pouring paint on the women's center roof, my lover has left me because I
pay more attention to my typewriter than I do to her, and I have been
failing for three weeks to write a review of Angela Davis' autobiography.
Rolled under the typewriter platen is the draft of a letter to the other
Harriet, explaining why I am no longer able to write distanced, objective
reviews. In the very back of the bottom drawer of a battered file cabinet Ibought to organize my ambitions lies a note on stationery printed,"Daughters, Inc.: Publishers of Books by Women." I retrieve it and stareat the compressed, formal, backslanting hand. "Dear Harriet. Thanks somuch for writing & sending us your terrific review. Your support is deeply
appreciated & we hope that you send us your novel when you write
one .... "We have a lot of paper. Here is the typewriter. Why don't you
become a novelist? I urge you to become a novelist.
(Lover, p. 94)

The center is quiet, my ex-lover and her new lover long in bed, before I
tear the page from my typewriter and begin again. "Dear Harriet .... I'min the middle of something that's a lot like Flying, only more defined,
since it's a journal selected toward the specific story of leaving a marriage
and becoming a lesbian. It frightens me because it's my life and because
I've never written like this before. I can only manage to sit at the
typewriter if I imagine I'm composing a love present to women in thesame struggle I am .... "****Checkpoint #2:

January, 1975.

I have been a secretary, folded lingerie in department stores,
been a short order cook, dope peddler and thief, but I havenever written a novel before: start where the tap is runningand proceed. Invent, imagine, saw apart the lady in the big ,pine box! You have the power, yours the keys, do away withdead wood, bring back your dreams, Gome on kid, we know
you can.
(Elana Nachman, Riverfinger Women, p. 70)

Servant to an ideology concocted of equal parts feminism anddesperation, I write blindly on. Daughters in High School, Riverfinger
Women, and A True Story of a Drunken Mother have simultaneously
burst into sound, forming an insistent rhythm section in the back of myhead. Riverfinger Women shuttles around the dyke contingent of thewomen's center, passed from hand to hand with squeals, shouts, moans ofrecognition. Buzzing, popping, crackling, singing, the center is a live
wire, receiving information, tapping out information: these are our lives(beep), these are our lives (beep), the~e are our lives. The journal thatbegan as a delicate matter of personal survival becomes a communal
record. Sometimes it feels foggy, sometimes it feels cruel, but once in agreat while it feels like loving, like holding a mirror to the wymyn aroundme, murmuring, you didn't know you were a miracle? look. Gazelles
appear in the mirror, a doe, panthers; when I turn it to my own face it
64reflects a monkey. But everyone is reflecting now, everyone is writing
now, and the journals pass from hand to hand with squeals, shouts,
moans of recognition. The women's center newsletter becomes a babble ofgushing, furious voices--rhetoric and love poems to wymyn, all run off on
mimeo paper colored to match the newly painted center that (with its
mango walls and burnt red trim) looks like a hash smoker's dream: agiant marigold that glows softly in the dark.
In the midst of the whirlwind, seven of us converge. We talk together,breathe together on the subjects of how to untangle patriarchal language,
how to exorcise patriarchal values, how to cut away patriarchal
attachments. Weare Lesbians; together we become separatists, and wename ourselves, with much hilarity, "drastik dykes." Conspiring, we peelaway layers of lies, layers of constructed selves, stripping down, down,
down to touch the essential womyn surging up, released, from below.

****
NEWS RELEASE TO OFF OUR BACKS (which they didn't print)
International Telephone and Telegraph held its annual shareholders' meeting
Wednesday, May 7th, 1975, in Charlotte, North Carolina . By midmorning,a picket line of approximately thirty demonstrators from the People's Coali·tion Against ITT had formed outside the downtown Sheraton. Their number
was increased when a van suddenly pulled up and deposited seven women,
armed with leaflets and a six-foot papier mache penis labeled .. ITT. ". An
American flag flew from the head of the phallus, which was painted an ap'pro- .
priate mango and adorned with such slogans as, Knock ITT down before it
knocks you up .. ..

****Drastik dykes is an unlikely assortment of spirit sisters, given to theexpression of need, the expression of rage, and the taking of metaphorsliterally. After our public and private dramatics, we leave the women's
center -- in part, ,b ecause the women's center has already left us. Its
environment vanished, my journal is at an end. Together, we pick overthe bones of our experience, gnaw them, spit them out; and I search forthe bones of a book, a skeleton to hang my journal on . Three hundred
pages, four hundred pages, the flesh will not shape. I try to make it aspiral; Ii colfection of documents; an album; a collage;' I wrestle withpassage after long passage of introspective murk ,. maundering self-pities,
dribbling mundaneities, here and there flashes of w.h at seems now -- inthe utter collapse of my courage -- to have been more delusion than
dream . Nothing works. Nothing.

****
Checkpoint #3:

November, ,1975.

Seven drastik dykes, having sucked t~e last juices each from her own
past, each from our collective past, are reduced to tearing each other'smost present, most vulnerable skins. Three of us head north on the65strength (in my mind, at least) of one last-ditch fantasy: that some (any)speeding tough-talking boot-stomping naugahyde New York City dyke
will inform us what to do with ourselves next. We listen and take notes ofthis Lesbian feminist speaker and that Lesbian feminist speaker; weembroil ourselves in workshops, in strategy sessions; finally, we land
exhausted, bedraggled, and half-stunned at a party to celebrate thecoming-out of Daughters' third group of books: The Pumpkin Eater,
Happenthing in Travel On, Born to Struggle, and Sister Gin. Someone
introduces us as the troops from North Carolina, and June Arnold asks us
if we know the woman who reviewed Daughters' books for The Charlotte
Observer. With the unmistakably helpless feeling that I'm being witched,
I manage squeakily to reply, "I did." She laughs.
"You're Daisy, in Sister Gin."****
Catherine, Penny, and I ride the long way home in a lurching,bumping surreality, devouring our copies of Sister Gin in the back of thebus.
Sister Gin breaks silence, lifts taboos, renames -- transforming
menopause from ' death-of-the-woman to rebirth-of-the-girl, old wymyn
from patriarchy's waste product to feminism's front line fighters. It
uncovers the "revolutionary" potential of white Southern wymyn, ofcloseted .. professional" dykes, of Lesbian alcoholics, even -controversially enough -- of gin: "our sharp, clear inheritance of courage,as the witches knew: her brew." It does all these things, and more -including a sensitive because tentative exploration of the betrayals ofSouthern Black wymyn by Southern white wymyn and the continuing
links, twisted but still holding, between them. But in the back of that
Trailways bus, I noticed none of these -- only the forgotten feeling of
release: release of courage, release of anger, release of laughter, release of'
female self. One long ecstatic whoosh.
When I was a Marxist, I would write over and over in the corners ofnotebooks, I want theory that is consciousness of transformation. And in
the journal I tried to make myself a parable of transformation, a parable
of womyn awaking, as though by working through my own destiny I
would discover what might save wymyn as a class. Or: by reading about,writing about, talking about, listening to what might save wymyn as aclass, I might copy the general in individual terms and thereby savemyself. Theory was failing me, journaling had driven me blathery, when
miraculously it all appeared there, in a novel: the transformation of
suppressed impulse into authentic female speech; the transformation ofpassivity into authentic female action (a gang of old wymyn stripping
rapists, tyipg them to boards and leaving them in the streets is authentic,
it must be, il gives me such profound satisfaction). It was all there: thetransformations of consciousness, the. peeling away of inhibitions -- withthe pullings back, the defections to cowardice, the spiralling progress, theironies of Lesbian lives tumbling one on top of the other, oddly shaped
crystals refracting light.
Sister Gin was not properly a "novel" at all to me; it was an apparition.
66

****

But one is very much like the other, anyway. And if you can't
discern difference between the original and the reproduction,then difference does not exist: they are the same, although
they take up separate blocks of time and space and maychange one's ideas about the course of history.
(Lover. p. 60)

Later I would think about Daisy, who is a slight youthful figure caught
in little more than two brush strokes: telltale eyes, and ambition. She
wasn't me, she was me, she was more real than the phantom "I" of 400
journal pages. I thought about the plot (contrived? romantic? fantastic?)
and the setting (Wilmington, North Carolina -- characterized by a politics
most nearly kin to that of the night riders, the gestapo, and the ton ton
macoutes). That plot? in that place? None of it was real, none of it waseven possible. And yet .... Seven unlikely members of the Shirley Temples
Emeritae captured more of the essential rebellion fermenting in sevendrastik dykes than I could record, living that rebellion. Somehow, I had
left out the most important parts.

****
Checkpoint 114: December, 1977.
Review of Applesauce by June Arnold, for Sinister Wisdom 115.
A First Draft.

She said that for a dozen years of her life she'd been left alone,to spread unnoticed over the land, as she put it. And then she
became female and had to wear dresses. She said that dresses
with shapes of their own surrounded her body and forbade it
to wander off into indistinct outlines; dresses closeted her andconfined her into the standard girl-mold and wouldn't let hergo, held her there until she thought she would burst or ripthem away. She said she sometimes did slip out and shift free,
but that she was caught and reprimanded and poured backinto her mold with such fierceness and loss of love that she
often couldn't muster the energy to escape with.
(Applesauce , p. 78)

Applesauce, while seeming to grow by putting out flowering shoots inall directions, as fantastically wi ld a novel as one could wish for, assumes
finally the shape of a perfectly prtmed parable. (parable: a casting side byside ... any saying that expresses something in terms of somethingelse ... enigmatical, dark saying... ) In it, "the primary struggle of awoman to be a woman" emerges as a succession of violent selftransformations. Liza -- who until she is twelve is herself -- becomes
Eloise, the inorgasmic heterosexual kitten who drives her car off thebridge into the San Jacinto river and becomes Rebecca, the maleidentified intellectual who is torn apart by sharks when she begins
menstruating in the ocean and becomes Lila, the earth mother who dies
falling out of an apple tree and becomes Gus, the emotionally paralyzed
male alter ego who carefully builds a room in which to explode and, so
67doing, becomes again Liza, female self without outline, without walls, "a'bursting' vitality."
An instructive thought: compare Applesauce to the novel whose title
baldly announces a similar intention, How to Save Your Own Life, inwhich -- by understanding the problem shallowly and attacking it headon -- Erica Jong fails even to save her own intelligence ....

****... my only criterion for choosing to include something, imagined or real, was whether or not it touched the floor of me.
(author's Ioreward, Applesauce)

The threads are all slipping from my hands. Get hold of your self, I tell
my self, but which one? First, I was the voice of a journal, then I was acharacter in a novel, now I'm one leg of a magazine.
This time like the first time I'm reviewing somebody else's novel. I castthem side by side: then and now. Now and then: they make a darksaying, a paradox, like but unlike. I'm writing "reviews" I swore I'dnever write again, but this time the context is not The Charlotte Observer.
This time the environment is womyn-space. An environment in which
networks of wymyn touching, two at a time, three, seven at a time,
happen naturally, without expectation, without planning, without
predetermination -- touchings almost accidental, almost by design.
In writing my journal I tried to connect my life, some other wymyn's
lives, all other wymyn's lives -- I failed because I forced the connections.
All I knew to do next was to help make another environment for another"journal" to grow in, and then lie in wait, watching for the touchings to
begin, the synapses to spark, the messages to relay ....
Writing this "review," I begin to feel a bit the happiness of clarity. But
the most important part is still missing -- what it is that I so want, thetormenting, elusive object of my desire, desire and object conjured up
whole by wymyn's words, cast down by wymyn's words, called up again
and again by new words. The source. That which connects a voice in ajournal, a character in a novel, a leg of a magazine.

****
We're peeling off layers -- of inhibition and of what we've
learned -- and trying to recapture that which is the source ofliterature, which is intuition totally engaged with intellectuality, with a sense of arrogance about it.
(Bertha Harris, "Lesbian Fiction," Sinister Wisdom 2, p. 44)

WHICH
ASPECT
OF
THE
CRAFT
OF
WITCHESDO
YOU
PRACTICE(Alice Molloy, In Other Words, p. 16)

68

Typesetting Leigh Star's "Lesbian Feminism as an Altered State ofConsciousness," I'm suddenly struck by her section on Witchcraft!
Psychic Tools/History. A witch was/is a knower of changes, a changer,
she who transforms energy, she whose knowledge is a knowledge of theearth, she whose will emanates from the core, from the five-pointed
energy focus: sex, self-awareness, passion, pride and power.

What is it I so want? Only this: the witch's doing. The power totransform energy. The power to juggle spheres of sound, the power tokeep them in the air, the power to transmute the tumbling words into
mirrors, crystal spheres glinting in the sun, reflecting doe wymyn,
panther wymyn, gazelle wymyn ....
.... you didn't know you were a miracle? Look.

****
One thing leads to another... and the nature of all kinds ofrapture, including this, is that it must clothe itself in disguise .
... There is no ending that is, eventually, not happy.
(Lover, p. 208)
Angel Dance by M .F. Beal
Applesauce by June Arnold
Born to Struggle by May Hobbs
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Early Losses by Pat Burch
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Lover by Bertha Harris
Nerves by Blanche Boyd
The Opoponax by Monique Wittig
The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer
River/inger Women by Elana Nachman
Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
Sister Gin by June Arnold
The Treasure by Selma Lagerlof
A True Story of a Drunken Mother by Nancy Lee HallYou Can Have It When I'm Through with It by Betty Webb Mace

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WRITING and POLITICKING as PRIVILEGE
by Gloria Gyn

Once there was a bright, strong woman who lived in an ordinary town.
She had always had a natural curiosity and loved learning, but becauseof her poor background, she tried to prepare herself for a life of working,instead of taking courses to prepare herself for college. Her knowledge of
the world was that if you didn't work, you didn't eat, and to attend
college was out of the question. Like many women of her class, however,marriage seemed a way out; having babies kept her out of work for a shortperiod, but added to her responsibilities, along with housework and a
regular paid job. Her job was necessary because there was never enoughmoney for living expenses, not to mention luxuries.
She always wanted to write, but never felt educated enough, and when
her marriage ended after three years and the total responsibility for her
own support and her two children fell completely on her, there was little
time to think, let alone try to write.
When the women's movement began attracting her attention in the late1960's, she felt it was something she could relate too-after all, she worked
for a living, was as independent as she could possibly be, and didn't
depend on men for anything. What she found in the women's movement
was a lot of talking and writing, study groups, and intimidation. Those
women were educated and they wanted people to know it! If men would
not listen to them, women would have to. It was so difficult to understanda lot of what was being written, because of all the big words used, and thelanguage was so different. She also discovered that what all the theory
boiled down to was simply rhetoric--none of it dealt with the reality of the
lives of most women she knew, including her own. She felt she had to try
to be like the educated women in the women's movement to be accepted.
It was -almost the same as when she was growing up; the sense of not
being as good, not being middle class, not having the privilege of making
choices for herself. Ironically, it was those women who made her become
class conscious as she had never been before. When she was younger, she
had pretty much accepted who she was, although she hated her classposition and was often made to feel ashamed of being poor.
What angered her a lot was that she tried to live her life according to
her principles; she tried to change her life, working with women, trying tolearn, and trying to educate as well. She saw many of her ideas go down
the drain because she was neither speaker nor writer enough to express
her ideas "properly." It was made clear to her that she lacked"credentials," and she remained a patronized "token."71

So she decided to go back to college, which turned into a disaster.
Because she was an outspoken feminist, she had trouble. She was always
having to compromise, just to be allowed to swallow all that malepropaganda (which she had discovered "higher learning" was all about).
She was the only student in the local junior college women's associationand had the same feelings of intimidation she experienced in the women's
movement; even though she had more experience working with women,
she lacked those god damn "credentials. "She quit school and had a nervous breakdown and it was in thepsychiatric ward that she came out as a Lesbian to herself. She became
part of the Lesbian community and began reading Lesbian writings.
More frustration .
This intrepid would-be writer finds herself trying to make sense of thetheoretical works of women like Daly, Rich and others and falling on her
face . She still feels without credentials, unknowledgeable, ignorant.
And she is sad and angry.
Sad that Lesbians must use the elitist, bullshit language and style of theuniversity. Angry that men are able to read Lesbian works when Lesbians
are not able to.
Sad and angry that there seems t o be a Lesbian "star" system. Sad andangry that there is plenty of educated theory and not enough everyday
practice. The competition among Lesbian writers for being the loudest (ifnot clearest) voice seems apparent. Does all that male education reallywork for women, or does it trap them squarely in male values? Does itreally take prestige and credentials for even Lesbians to be heard?
In the words of one young working-class Lesbian friend, commenting
on Lesbian writing, "Sometimes I feel like becoming a separatist-separating myself from the whole Lesbian trip , including separatists! "What happens to women like these who have something to say,important ideas to express? Where is their vehicle, if not in Lesbian
publications? These women use the oral tradition that women have 'usedthrough the ages, having no other way. They pass their culture along toeach other through love and trust, denying the patriarchal value system.
They defy the twin oppressions of "scholarship" and "authority" without
loss of any intelligence, living out their beliefs without benefit of maleapproval. Their language is not of the university, but of love of eachother--and no amount of theory will change that.
Perhaps more women would or could write (in their own way) about
what they are thinking and doing if it were their "vocation." But most
women who are fighting for economic survival don't have that privilege,
and writing is a privilege. Lesbian and feminist presses need to take ahard look at who they are reaching, writers at who they are writing for ,publishers who they are publishing, and at the privilege they have as aresult. The dominance of degreed, " star" writers in Lesbian and feminist
publications smacks of elitism and tell of their politics. The seduction of
the university is complete. Their "products" control Lesbian and feminist
publishing and writing, and they in turn continue to oppress workingclass women.
It's an easy way out to write for the academic crowd; it's a far moredifficult task to write for the common woman.
72THE RAPE OF DIANACatherine interviews Casey Czarnik and Coletta Reid

On October 25, 1977, between fi ve and seven a. m., DI A A P RESS, a publisherof Lesbian feminist book ~, was in vaded by professional vand als who successfull yeluded the a larm system, and using the chemica ls at hand in the shop proceeded todamage nega tives, plates, paste- up copy, unbound books, printing equi pment,
telephones, addin g machines and typewriters; and to ransack fil es, storage ca binets.
desks. At this tim e (J anuary, 1978 ) no person has been arrested for this crime.
Coletta R eid-- editor, writer, publisher--and Casey Czarnik-- gra phic arti t,
designer , printer--founded DIA A PR ESS in Ba ltimore in 1972. In the spring of1977 the press moved to Oa kl and , Ca . It is now a mu ch larger organization,
employing severa l women. Its structural principles, its politica l philosophy, and its
economic policies have been the subj ect of serious, bitter controversy in feminist
publishing. I have agonized a great deal over the issues ra ised by th e controversy andam not yet ready to write about it. But in December I knew tha t I wanted to talk to
Coletta and Casey, knew that it was vita lly im portant to me to learn how they felt
about the terrible attack on their crea tion and their la bor. I met them in C hicago,
where the three of us were attending the M LA convention. The following interview
took place in the Ladies' Powder Room (the only place we could find to plug in thetape recorded of the Palmer House on December 29, 1977.

Catherine: What was your immediate emotional response to thevandalism?
Coletta: I think the most upsetting part of what happened for me wascoming in the shop that morning and seeing most of the work we'd done
for the past five years destroyed. The original pasteup of Songs to a
Handsome Woman, the first book we published, was torn down the
middle on every page; and as I looked at it and saw back to the past--themany hours spent in setting type, pasting-up copy, hand collating thatfirst book--I realized that this act of vandalism against us was truly that ofpeople who hated women's culture and women's labor. It is a profoundly
shocking experience to feel that there are people in this world who are so
opposed to women's defining themselves that they would make such an
attack on the very things that you have produced with your own hands.
73

Catherine: Did you arrive later at the shop, Casey?
Casey: We walked in about the same time. I didn't feel anything rightaway--I was numb. I started calling the police and dealing with getting
everyone home. I went immediately to survey the damage--check thepresses out. My first impression was that the presses were not wrecked,
but later I discovered that a lot of damage had been done to them--subtle
things to water and ink systems that took hours to clean up. I wanted tosee it all so I could absorb it; I didn't want any surprises later, so I kept
going around looking at everything, then talked to the police, tried tofigure out how the vandals had gotten in-Catherine: So you were suppressing your feelings .. . ?
Casey: Yes, I was really holding in, just reacting to necessity verypractically, and I wouldn't allow a lot of emotion right away. Later I
couldn't sleep--and well, it's been quite awhile now and I still don't sleep
well--but then I couldn't sleep. Someone always had to be at the shop, I
just couldn't go away and leave it. I felt it was vulnerable, that more
could happen, that someone was out to get us, that someone really hated
us, that it was really hateful and spiteful, and that someone would do it
again. I felt very vulnerable. And I had a strong emotional reaction to thepaste-up area because that was a lot of what I did. To this day, I can't go
and look at the damage to the covers, because I know I'll have to redo a
lot of art work. My reaction is almost that I don't want to know, and yet I
have to know to continue. For awhile, I went around thinking how glad I
was that I hadn't finished certain things--all my covers, all my artwork-because they would just have been destroyed anyway. And that's what my
attitude has been since then--that I don't want to do extra work for fearthat it will all be for nothing. It's been hard enough to go along these past
six years because you never get full appreciation from people, but when
you have a direct attack against you it's almost like someone is saying
they don't want you to be alive.
Catherine: Had you ever in your whole life felt that strongly violated?
Casey: No, you see, that's the longest period of my life that I've put somuch of myself into what I still believe in, and felt that I had reallyaccomplished something worthwhile.
Coletta: My emotional reaction was very different from Casey's. I think I
was the only person to burst into loud tears at the shop within fiveminutes of seeing what had happened. My first reaction and what I still
think is that it was an attack by the FBI. I felt that they had known that
we were on the verge finally of reaching a lot more women with our books
and that they had stopped us. I started raging and screaming at the wallsthat every time we would reach the point of building more of a mass
movement that they would stop us, and that I hated men, hated the pigs,
hated the government, and I raged on and on. And I still feel that way-that we were at a point of publishing a book that had the possibility ofreaching a lot more women and of getting our books into a lot more
bookstores; that publishing the Elizabeth Gould Davis manuscript would
have put us over that very tight margin to the point of being able to hire74

more women to be sales representatives around the country. I think that
distribution and sales are the biggest problems women's presses have andwe were trying to make enough money to solve these problems. And now
we don't have the money to do what we planned for the next year.
Financially the attack was so well-directed and so smart: it was aimed at
our financia.l survival. We as a women's business are always so close to
the edge of being able to continue, so an attack like this has been a severe
blow--a disaster.
Catherine: Did you ever consider giving up?
Coletta: Yes. I didn 't think that right away, but about three weeks later I
went into a severe depression in which I felt like it wasn't worth itanymore, and the reason why I think I went into that depression was that
we were not able to make any kind of comeback. You see, in the first
three weeks everyone at the press worked as hard as they could to try toclean things up and get the presses printing again, and after three weeks
of hard work, of keeping our morale up as best we could, we were still
unable to operate as a print shop. And I think that that's when the full
impact of what the vandalism meant hit me. Up until then I'd kept
thinking that with a lot of hard work we can get back in production again,
but in fact, they effectively ruined our production for three months, theyeffectively got rid of half our fall books, they effectively put off
publication of the rest of our fall books until the spring, they effectively
got rid of the reprints so we didn't have any Ladder books to sell yet. So
then I thought why is it worth it? why have I been killing myself working
12 hours a day for six years, why have I taught myself skills that are hard,stood up to male printers, male salesmen, male bookstores, and for noreason, in order to be crushed within a half hour? The vulnerability ofwomen's culture and of wom~n who are independent and try to stand on
their own really struck me. And the necessity for women to bond together
to support each other was crucial at that point, because I felt that without
the support of women across the country, who sent us dollar bills, who
sent us letters, who sent us postcards, who said don't bother to write andthank me just continue, was the only thing that saved me at that point.
Casey: Coming on this trip is to try to raise our morale.'Catherine: Has it helped?
Casey: Oh yes, it's been very good. It's been important to talk to people
who felt that what Diana Press is doing is good and valuable. But when I
see the press operating again, I'll feel better.
Coletta: I think one of the things that has been crucial to Diana Press andhas distinguished us from other women publishers has been that we've felt
this tremendous commitment to production, to women gaining control ofproduction by actually learning to do the work themselves, and what
Casey and I get the most personal satisfaction out of is seeing things run,and seeing finished books come out that we can hold and flip through andsay, look how well this is typeset, and look how beautifully printed it is,and look at the binding, and so when nothing is running, it's like we have75

nothing to get hold of in terms of satisfaction. I think we're both very tied
to the production in terms of how we feel about ourselves and our work,and the production was what they stopped.
Send contributions and book orders to Diana Press, 4400 Market St., Oakland, Ca. 94608.
Books currently available are listed below. Include 15% for postage and handling: Edward
the Dyke and Other Poems by Judy Grahn, 2.50; She Who: a graphic book of poems by
Judy Grahn, 6.00; Child of Myself by Pat Parker, 2.00; Pit Stop by Pat Parker, 2.00; A
Plain Brown Rapper by Rita Mae Brown. 5.00; Sex Variant Women in Literature by
Jeannette Foster, 8.00; The Ladder anthologies: Lesbian Lives, 5.75; The Lesbians
Home Journal, 5.75; and The Lavender Herring, 5.75, edited by Barbara Grier andColetta Reid; All Our Lives: A Woman' s Songbook, 6.50; Selene: The Most Famous
Bull Leaper on Earth by Z. Budapest & Carol Clement, 3.75; Class and Feminism;Lesbianism and the Women's Movement, and Women Remembered, edited by
Charlotte Bunch & Nancy Myron, 2.25 each.

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The Flesh Made World
Her hands hold handto small of back handto back of head
weave meinto a web of certainty
place mein the lightning pattern,
center. Arachne aurea
shakes the web
lightly.
I rock herewith herand rhythmin the threadsof arms and legs
the circle of the world .
. Minnie Bruce Prattin sleep the child triumphs
head rested on my heartbeat
breasts flattened back to bone
a fragrance of talc and apricots
purges musk from the air
her flesh retreats to brief innocence
after the thicklimbed storm of sex
while i'm left awake and aging
to consider chronology. Holly Lu Conant

80

SleepAs you sleep, chestnuts
hide behind your lids.
Flirting with the dark ,they penetrate luminous dreams.
I am sitting on crisp sheets,
watching you flip
through a rash of situations,
your mood mirroredby the corners of your applesweet mouth.

My eyes lower; your long lines
vee like victory, mine,
my orchid.

Delugefor Susan
I move out of the dream:
moist, dulcet, inwardly
thick as the labor of bees.
Swimming, a tongue treads,
moves more deeply, curling.

Morning, elusive as the dream,
I am folded back,gently fingered
as a broken sparrow's wing.

I turn into myself
upon awakening,
after the deluge.
Lifting my lids,
I see my image in your eyes.
Will you always sing to me so sweetly?

- Robin Kaplan

81THE POLITICS OF WHOLENESS II:

Lesbian Feminism as an Altered Stateof Consciousness
by Susan Leigh StarREVIEW: In Other Words
by Alice Molloy
Oakland Women's Press Collective, 1977

One of my goa ls has bee n to transmit information
and altitudes in a manner such that th eprocess its self is transmilted/ rece ived, notjust the end product. The process. a process. a
way of see ing. hea ring. a way of processing.
(p. viIn Other Words: Notes on the PoLitics and MoraLe ofSurvivaL is a Whole Lesbian Catalogue of Delights andChallenges; one of those rare books that is a tool and a
resource. For three years Alice Molloy wrote down, clippedout and annotated her own ideas and a wide range of
information about consciousness, feminism, attention andthe structures of "reality." The result, thanks to thecooperation of Oakland Women's Press Collective {andhours and hours of patient typing and layout by Alice} is abook whose form and content are congruent, are nonlinear,with power to alter.
o order. send $8.50 + 50c postage/ handling to Alice Molloy. 4205A
Terrace Street. Oakland. CA 946 11 .

There is no point in setting Ollt a whole trip
wh ere i say this is
my theory. here' s th e proof.
building up a edifa ce. no poin t in lay in g my tripon people ....
it's simply beca use it doesn' t work. it justgives peop le some thing. an other thing, to build
li p resistance aga inst. and go away with enoughinformation to build up an opposin g structure.
(p. vi)82

In Other Words is an accurate title; and one of the impactsof the book is to show that "in other words" means "in otherworlds. " Alice Molloy grabs the English language by its
roots and shakes: how has this language structured our(patriarchal) reality? How can we pay more attention (attension) to it?
.... so we talked feminism, anarchism , and lesbianism, and discovered
we were talking witch craft.
as, the craft of witches.
witch craft, thetechnology of anarchy.
for example, the right toprescribe for your self.
things got even more in teresting. andwhen we started talking witch craft, as
anarchist feminist lesbians, it turned
out to be paranoid schizophrenia. andit feels good.
{p. ivl

Part of the craft of witches is learning to be aware of what
is holding your attention. Alice provides instructions on how
to be aware, to notice what is holding your attention: thestructure of language, body language, interpersonal politics.

she creates a
to language

I

resistancel

resist:+ sistere.
to take a stand~I I

She looks at Latin root words; her goal is to ( r<:ls!st being
manipulated by them. "Organizing language in a way thatmakes sense, i believe will further progress in the area ofphysiology, states of consciousness, call it what you will.
emotions. behaviour. craft. power and its uses." (In Other
Words, p. vi)
I quote from the book throughout this article, andconsider the article in part as a dialogue with Alice/her book(cited as lOW, with page number).
An experiment with form: we talked the other day about
being sick of seeing rave reviews in feminist magazines.
Better to try to convey information about/ in conjunction
with the book in case you won 't have time or money to readit. A useful review.
83

In the issue before last I wrote an article entitled "ThePolitics of Wholeness: Feminism and the New Spirituality,"
which criticized male systems of "spirituality" and statedthat Lesbian feminism is a "necessary but not sufficient"condition for" enlightenment. "Enlightenment is a bald and dangerous word although I
did mean it quite seriously in the humorous context above.
Most of me abhors writing about "spirituality" or psychic
powers. I'm afraid to produce writing about instead of tools
for; afraid of freezing on paper the lineaments of a world thatis new and that is, above all, motion.
With this in mind I offer the following as a tool, a story
and an ideal. I see it as the beginning of a map for a Lesbian
feminist psychology: that is, a political awareness of our own
psyche-logic that cannot be translated or symbolically
imposed upon. 'Introduction
The language and metaphors for the changes weexperience as becoming Lesbians have often been reflectionsof patriarchal reality: a reality which may bend and stretch
around the edges to include us as a "sexual preference" or"gay women"; as "out of the closet" or "into only making
love with women," but which cannot include us if we
articulate our experience as a different and incompatible
reality. One way I have found to do this is to describe
Lesbian feminism as an (or the) altered state ofconsciousness.
This article is for Mary Daly, who introduced me to feminist theory.
Judith Musick, Robin Linden, Artemis March. and Julia Stanley
helped to formulate and refine several of the ideas presented here.
Other womyn's insights are also footnoted . Thank you!

To talk about consciousness is to talk about structures ofawareness: energy that is channeled through paths ofattention. The term "altered state of consciousness" hasbeen used in psychology and religion to imply a very deeplychanged (from some baseline or "normal" state) system ofmental- physical structures.
To add the word "politics" means that the baseline fromwhich the alterations take place is a socially-created,coercively maintained power structure.
I find it useful to think of Lesbian feminism as an alteredstate of consciousness in some of the same ways one would
think of tripping, meditative states, hypnosis, visions or
hallucinations as "alterations" of a "baseline" state ofconsciousness. Both Lesbian feminism and states liketripping take place outside of the everyday structures that
habituate* one to living. They occur in a place where takingfor-granted stops; where ordinariness and custom dissolve.
The basic reaction from status quo society toward both ofthem has been that they represent a type of madness;something beyond the pale, untranslatable. Given enoughtime, the system tries to find a way to reduce the threat to*habituate is a great word. The etymology is related to habit, fromthe Latin habituare , to bring into a condition; also to have, to be constituted, to be. "Holding, having ... hence the way in which one holds or
has oneself, i.e. the mode or condition in which one is, exists, or ex hibits oneself, a} externally; hence demeanour, outward appearance.
fa shion of body, mode of clothing oneself, dress ... b} in mind, characteror liIe; hence, mental constitution, character ... way of dealing with
84 things... " (OED)implies change from something into something else.
Unfortunately this simple fact has been widely ignored
among psychologists of consciousness; it is not uncommon toread whole books of theories about consciousness-alteringand never find the slightest mention of what theconsciousness has been altered from. What is missing, ofcourse, is an exploration of the "normal" state ofconsciousness; the very thing that is so taken for granted that
it is nearly impossible to see.
Tart mentions the baseline state of consciousness in his
work, and I think he does intuit the importance of exploring
its dimensions in order to chart changes from it. But he neverdoes more than mention its existence, and never its content.
By designing theory which purports to explain changes ofconsciousness, but which ignores who invests in the statusquo and how they teach us to ignore cosmic energy in thefirst place, the psychologists and philosophers of alteredstates of consciousness contribute to the idea that theauthorship of reality is arbitrary. Tart could even make thefollowing statements about the "social construction ofreality":itself that the presence of this other world creates. Thus, forexample, the initial potentials for radical change thatperception-altering drugs caused were quickly ripped off into
the language of humanism, love, .peace and brotherhood. It
became fashionable to study marijuana and LSD in thelaboratories; to use the drugs to alleviate the boredom ofliving inside the social structures without challenging them.

Power Versus Energy(or: I Don't Need Life I'm High on Dope)
The reason for the cooptation of these altered states ofconsciousness is that they remained apolitical. Drug users
and meditators became alienated from the system, or
perhaps decided to work to "change" it; but no one
articulated what it is about the system that works to suppress
altered states of consciousness, or what the culturalinvestment in containing those states as private
individualized experiences is.
The theory that was written in the late sixties and earlyseventies that addressed "altered states of consciousness"(sometimes called the 'psychology of consciousness') leaned
heavily on the idea of "energy": tuning into cosmic energy,
re-channeling psychic energy, aligning one's vibrations withthe universe. Psychologists like Robert Ornstein and Charles
Tart developed elaborate diagrams and explanations for howmental energy (consciousness) changes within a person's
mind while under the influence of drugs or during
meditation. 1
One key concept which underlies all theories about alteredstates of consciousness is quite simply that a changed state85

One of the greatest problems in studying consciousness and alteredstates of consciousness is an implicit prejudice that tends to make us
distort all sorts of information about states of consciousness. When you
know you have a prejudice you are not completely caught by it, for you
can question whether the bias is really useful and possibly try to change
it or compensate for it. But when a prejudice is implicit it controls
you ...
The prejudice discussed in this chapter is the belief that our ordinary
state of consciousness is somehow natural. It is a very deep-seated andimplicit prejudice. (State.! of C01l8cW1U1IeI8, p. 34)

language that can say in no uncertain terms: this new world
challenges everything. Its potential goes as deep asperception itself, as wide as a totally new political structure.
When seen from the baseline, it throws us into madness, intochaos, into an other world.
Language is like an oil that slips through consciousness
and its attendant structures; almost imperceptible while themachinery is working unquestioned. Lesbian feminism is analteration from the structures--linguistic, neurological,
emotional, historical, physical--that reflect our experienceback to us and which we are coerced into accepting through"female socialization. "1 stress the view that we are prisoners of our ordinary sta te ofconsciousness, victims of our consensus reality, because it is necessary
to become aware of this if we are to have any hope of transcending it. ofdeveloping a science of the mind that is not culturally limited. IStatesof ConsciolLSness , p. 48)

and then use the generic "he" all through his writing; andnot hint that consensus reality requires a consensus-oreal
people who believe in the prejudices mentioned above, andwho react when those prejudices are challenged . He assumes
that reality-creating and maintaining is arbitrary, and that"transcending" it can be done apolitically.
As a Lesbian feminist, I make no such assumption. I want
to examine the politics of reality maintaining, and answer thefollowing questions:in whose interest is it to maintain the consensus reality? If
we are "prisoners," who is guarding the prison and whatmeans of coercion are used to keep us there? Who threatens
the existing created reality? Why , and under what
conditions? What is involved in creating an alter* reality?
I want to name names.

Perception, Cognition and Lesbianism
My favorite sign in the Gay Pride March in San Francisco
read: "Lesbianism is More Than a Sexual Preference." As I
mentioned above, one of the ways that we are tolerated is tobe defined as women with tastes that run a little counter tothe usual. Women who have certain feelings the origin of
which may be uncertain but which can be included in thesmorgasbord of sexual "preferences" that "happen" to"people. "I propose that there is a vital component of Lesbian
feminism that has been theoretically ignored in descriptionsof the "etiology" of Lesbianism: a perceptual, cognitive

Patriarchy as a state of consciousness and a consensus
reality has depended upon the silence of Lesbians.
It's vitally importantthat we begin to name {and therefore create and strengthen}our reality-changing for the depth change that it is. In orderto talk clearly about our changes and possibilities, we need a*1 use the word "alter" here to imply changed, altered; instead of" alternate," which implies a freely-chosen preference. 286component. I think that Lesbian feminists see and think
things that are counter to patriarchal description s of rea1ity.
as well as feeling that which is forbidd en. *The implication of this view is that Lesbian feminism iscreated as an altered state of consciousness (cognition,
perception) by women who are willing to question theperceptual bases of our worlds. It doesn 't just come out offeelings, or just out of political analysis.
And when something "happens" that is an alternative to acoercively enforced social structure (heterosexuality in thiscase ), it doesn't happen without someone making it happen ,making decisions, saying no to coercion , resisting, creatiQg. I
don't just prefer to do something that requires a challenge ofreality to do; and when I give language to my realitychallenging, I destroy old worlds and create new ones.
Whenever a Lesbian writes or speaks about herseU it is apolitical act, because it is our silence that has underpinned*It seems od d to be posing these as different because I don't believe
they are. t)f course. The purpose for phrasing it this way is to fill in a
gap in both th e way we think of ourselves and how we are conce ptualized by patriarchal ideology. Also. psychologists have traditionall yposed perception and cognition as different processes (i.e., using yoursenses and then con5truing/ thinking about the "data" ), a nd psychologica l institutions for the control of sensing and construing depend on
maintaining the sp lit. Among ourselves. far from the interface ofworlds. we ca n say loudly that thinking feeling and seeing are not diIferent processes for us-- and perhaps coin new term s that can encompass all of what was previously meant by these parts. Thus, Margie
Ada ms' song about the unicorn stand s in counterpoint to patriarchal
thought: "seein g is believing. in the things you see ... "patriarchy for centuries . B ecause we do not fit into
patriarchy's basic structures, our language has both thepower to shatter and to expose. Conjoined, the words of
Lesbian feminists represent the politicization of the deepest
structures of consciousness.
Women have been driven mad , "gaslighted " Ior centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instin cts in a culture which validates
onl y male experience. The truth of our bodies and our minds has been
mystified to us. We therefore have a primary obligation to each other :not to und ermin e each other 's sense of rea lity for the sa ke of exped iency; not to gaslight each other.
Women have oIten Ielt insane when cleaving to the truth of our experience. Our future depends on the sanity of each oI us, and we have a
profound stak e, beyond the personal, in the project of describing our
rea lity as candidly and full y as we ca n to each other.
-from Adrienne Rich 's Wo men and Honor:

Some Notes on Lying. 3

When I speak directly I feel it throughout my whole body.
The sensation of not translating is quite distinct; a newexperience for me. As most of us, I have always been a
Lesbian a witch a madwoman inside. But until I began to
speak directly (and can't always do that all the time yet) fromthat experience, it was not empowered with reality. It had
neither the power to be reality or to challenge the static
reality handed to me growing up.

Naming the Content of Lesbian Feminist Consciousness

87

By "state of consciousness" I mean something more
precise than mood, feelings, or passing perceptions. A stateof consciousness is "a uniq!le , dynamic pattern or

A Model For Lesbian Feminist
Psychology Of Consciousness(I ndividual- Transpersona/)l'nonreification,systems sense

~

J/

~

§!;r/{leaiC!

five-wayenergychannel(pentacle)

t

.t-

l:

.~

f:;

~

"8

,/10

."":'i~'11 t'

!1

~
~

S

~1lO'Oc

~

~

~

.:§'§

-t
~ dishabituation~

Patriarchal Coercion:
forced silence
language (theirs)
reification
habituation
ageism
rOr1'anCI!
physical attack /patriarchal iatrogenesis

configuration of psychological structures, an active system of
psychological subsystems." Although each of the s\lbs~ruc­tures, or any of them, can change from time to time. theoverall patterns of a state of consciousness remain
recognizably the same.
The unique, dynamic configuration of consciousness thatis Lesbian feminism is both individual (personal) andgeneralizable as a recognizable common state ofconsciousness (political).
In order to more clearly communicate an "alter reality,"
I'll describe how I conceptualize several matrices orcomponents of my own awarenessl consciousness. They arenames of parts of myself; a personal! personal configurafion.
But they are also me as a Lesbian feministwitchspiritualsexualpolitical, etc. The names are drawn from common
experience, and perhaps can reflect back out toward thatexperience for other womyn. 4
The matrices are layered in varying thicknesses around acore of silence and language, of inner "space" (sometimes
that I'm aware of, sometimes not) and are constantly
shifting, in motion. They are political, real, and material.
1. language, which encircles and roots in all the others
2. habituation (awareness and attention)
3. intensity I courageltime
4. nonreificationl systems sensei ambiguity
5. relationship to patriarchy
6. witchcraft/psychic tools/history
7. identification
8. physical being
9. love/ romancel sex
10. grace/wonder

Notes for the Model:This is my visual conce ptualization of Lesbian Feminist con ~cio u s­
At thl' center is II five-wa y energy channel whose fi ve points
svmbolizt' SI'x/ Desire, Pllssiori. Pride. Power and Humor/ Crea tivity( ~I' If-I" 'rsrective l. I've found it IIsefulto think of these as parts of a sysh'm without confounding them. The points circle around an inner coreof Self, chosen silence and chosen language. The outer ,!!ircle represen ts
the boundary of our consciousness \vith patriarchy: the inner arrows
suggest mobility and a highly-charged energy area. The outer area,
patriarchy, is sy mbolized by the larger arrows (coercion).
nl'~~.

The rea SOl) for the " individual-transpersonal" nolation on the top of
the chart is that while this model is drawn in terms of an individual
womon's psyche, it is also a composite of womyn's (Lesbian feminists' )con sciousne~s as I've perceived it in a general way. This, like any
theory. is a statement of how I perceive, how I perceive myself andothers.
.
Because of my limitations in drawing, the model is frozen in timeand ~pace. Remember while looking at it that an accurate model would
have many thousands of circles overlapping and in different relations
to patriarchy and to each matrix.

0. . .

89

Language arises from necessity and from power: the needto name and the political power to do so. The need and thepower function together to shape a reality bounded by thelanguage. The worlds, the realities are not contained in thelanguage; rather, the language reflects and in turn shapes
them in a changing and systemic way. The farther limits oflanguage are thus the farther limits of reality, but neither iscausal. If the language incorporates and reflects mobility,change, and non-reification (i.e., Lesbian feminist language)
the reality need not be "bounded" in the usual sense.
U nchosen silence can come from either a lack of language
oc a lack of hearer. As Lesbians we have experienced all
thrp./:,: lack of language, lack of audience, lack of both words
and listeners.
The three lacks produce different kinds of madness,madnesses which are maximized and accentuated bypatriarchy in historically changing patterns.

The chart above shows that severa l of the matrices have aboundary-maintaining or filtering aspect as well as a creative
aspect. The chart can't grasp the element of time or of social
interaction , the changing layers and dim en sion s ofconsciousness, but should be imagined within patriarchy as amobile and creative strategy for its destruction. At the sametime, it is affected by its presence wilhin that coercive social
structure, and thus is historica lly placed in the present, at atime when our social reality is still precarious.
Below, I describe the fun ction/structure of each of thematrices--again, they can only analytically be separated. In
reality, they fun ction as an interlocking system, irreducible.

LANGUAGE... the fundamental coerciveness of society lies not in its machin eril's of.
socia l control but in its power to co nstitute itse lf a nd to imrost' itse lf as
reality . The pa radigma tic case of this is la nguage .

TimeMarking the passage of time in new ways could be amethod of uttering ourselves. Celebrating solstices and moonphase~ instead of Christ's birthday and wartime victories andcapitalist work-weekends; expressions of rage and power on
the anniversaries of things like the banning of The Well of
Loneliness or the vandalism of Diana Press; honoring
menarches and menopauses.

To deny rea lity as it has bee n socia lly dl'f ined ·is tn risk falling into irreality, because it is well· nigh imposs ibl e in the long run to kl'ep lip
a lone and without social sllrrort one·s own co unter·d efinition s of th ..
world. When the socia ll y defin ed reality ha s come to be idpn tifil'C l wi th
the ultimate rea lity of th e uni verse. th l'n its d l'nialtakf's on th!' \lualitl·of ev il as well as madnl'ss.
I from Th e Sacred Ca nopy !'The first and most important matrix is language. As far as
we can extend language is as far as our imagination goes.
The first and most important matrix is silence. As far as
we can extend silence is as far as our imagination goes.

90

Dreams
Dreams can provide new language. I had a dream .of aworld in which there were only three words to describe
different ways of being:
labyns--cutting, incisive, warrior-womon;
labyrinth--complex, weaving in and out, mystery;labia--unfolding, wonder, gentleness;from which I wrote this poem:
labyrislabia
labyrinth
ArtemisI have dared to spin your name into the small hollows
tucked beside my cervix
I have plaited your open soul between my hands
labyrinthlabia
labyrismy core of language.
I am Amazon,
left breast unscathed.
speaker and essence
this truth leaps from my brain:
we are the first and last structure of madness;
its constituent form.
And from our siLence
are woven all the cycles in which madness
articuLates
its nature.

Were-order priOrities, we choose to use certain words
more and more frequently. We name what we use, what wehave, what we care for. It begins with the body, reclaiming
territory, and extends to the imagination, creating territory.
Monique Wittig's The Lesbian BodY' is thus a stake in"irreality," in madness that way: an initial defining ofterritory, hitherto silenced .
Getting down to the nitty-gritty of changing the language
we are habituated to is a collective undertaking. Here are acouple of instances I have experienced .

Names
Are you aLlright?
Do you sleep at night?
Do you have enough time
to use your mind?
Do you remember
your own name?
-Meg Christian91

Our names are basic. I took back a great deal of strengthand power when I decided to choose my own name, and canstill be reminded when I use it that it is a symbol, anaspiration, a source of self (the Star is a Tarot card
representing integration of inner and outer, dreams andaction) .
The names that womyn choose represent a rite of passage
into Lesbian feminist culture; a refusal of the naming of thechild (non-person) by the adult (in power), and of the womyn
and children by the father.

HABITUATION (ATTENTION and AWARENESS)"What holds my attention has my energy."(lOW, p . 5)
We are habituated to patriarchy . Femininity is a habit-learned.
In psychology, habituation is a precise term that applies tothe inability to perceive a stimulus afterit's been presented to
you a number of times. Your brain waves literally flatten out
and stop responding to it after a short period of time.
There are Zen monks who have trained themselves, bycontro ll ing their attention patterns (maintaining theirawareness), never to habituate to anything. 7 In other words,
they notice every time a stimulus is presented to them. In one
experiment, a tope was presented to them a number of times
and their brain waves registered at the same intensity eachtime. Subjects without the training became habituated to thetone quickly; within three or four times, they stopped being""
able to really notice or perceive the tone.
I have always been particularly struck by this experiment.
I know the one way "they" can really get to me is to bore me
to death. Patriarchy produces an endless drone of empty
words, of sameness, of contentless messages that have linear
and monotonic rhythms. I usually "tune out" the messages,
try to ignore them in order to have some sanity. But I'm
actually not convinced that this is the best thing to do--thedrone does take some of my energy even by doing this. The
hum and buzz of noise, even where I do not perceive it assound (i.e., as meaningful), requires a portion of my 92

attention. And, like it or not, some of the messages do get in.
Am I more well-guarded if I try to ignore them, or if I can
pay a controlled amount of attention to them and not be
drugged by them? A further lesson to be learned from theZen monks is that while they noticed each tone, arid
registered it in their brains, they did not physiologically react
much to each tone. In other words, they knew precisely (i. e. ,just so much but not more) what was being presented tothem, but were not affected by it beyond the noticing.
the rhythm , the beat, the tempo , iI it isdifferent Irom mine, i will begin to feelagitated. or, i ca n be lulled into th e otherrhythm . babies are lulled to sleep more ope.. ly, thelulling to sleep of adu lts is more co(lOW, p. 8)
Ca lmly, lucid ly, I repeat (and I cry, and I rail, and I pronounce, and I
explain, by speech and by wri ting, to the end): I believe in the generality
in the profundity, of th e fa ct of mi sogynism: yes, always and everywhere, in the home of the cap ita list, or of the pro leta riat- . . I believe inphallocratism at every second , of everyone, in each class and eachcountry ...
T he fact of misogy nism, as with all repressive relations, is not crea ted
from the good will of Tom , Di ck and Harry. It stems, cruelly, fromindividuals. It is the starting point for institutions, it maintains mental
structures. One will not be able to understand the feminine state of
wretchedness if one does not fundamenta lly grasp it as such: a community , historical, genera l, daily, world-wide phenomenon, a fundamental relation between women and non-women ..... 1t affects all
cu ltures ... it is at once the most intimate of our particular life and themost common of our co llective. It is th e air we breathe.
--Le feminisme ou La mort (Feminism or Death) by Francoised'Eaubonne 8 (my translation)

I think the most strategic survival skill is to neither beagitated by the input of patriarchal energy nor to be hIlled
into ignoring it. We should know precisely what is being put
out at us; and I am not saying to defect from our anger or to" plan" our responses. We must learn not to let them deploy
our attention into mindless structures; and learn to turn ourown attention into mobile, political, exciting structures.
Language
Alice speaks of "becoming literal" as a way of counteracting the lulling effect of patriarchal language. Good
examples of what she means by literalness can be found in
Alice in Wonderland--much of the humor of the book hinges
on taking the metaphors of language literally.
Going into the puns, as well as into the etymology of thelanguage, does help to dishabituate from it. For example,
Alix Dobkin takes a step away from the language byemphasizing the "coincidental" construction of certain
words:
if we don't let maneuvering keep us apart,
if we don't let manipulators keep us apart,
if we don 't let manpower keep us apart,or mankind keep us apart
we'vewon--

what i mean is
we ain't got it easy-but we' ve got it.

(from "Talking Lesbian, " Lavender Jane
Loves Women)

and so doing refuses to partake of a linear or "serious" sameform refuting of oppression.
93

Which turns into my next point, that another way tosidestep boredom is to put our arguments into surprising
form:
Humor
Humor is a way of confronting people indirectly--ofdishabituating them. Patriarchy has used ridicule andreduction to cripple us and stop us from taking ourselves
intensely; but we use humor to defend ourselves from being
lulled into their structures.
Humor consists essentially in being outside of ordinary
structures. An apocryphal story was circulating at one point
when Susan Saxe gave her T.V. message: "I will fight on as a
womon, a Lesbian and an Amazon"--the FBI had seized on
the word "Amazon" and was frantically running it throughtheir computers, trying to decode the "secret message" Saxe
had presented to the womyn of the world.
" Your friend is not a warrior," he said. " If he were, he would knowthat the worst thing one can do is to confront human beings bluntly. ""What does a warrior do, don Juan?""A warrior proceeds strategically. ""I still don't understand what you mean."" I mean that if our friend were a warrior he would help his child tostop the world. "" How can my friend do that? "" If one wants to stop our fellow men one must always be outside thecircle that presses them. That way one can always direct the pressure. "(Journey to Ixtlan)'

To be outside the circle that presses them.
To be authors of our own open circle.

INTENSITY/COURAGE/TIME"The thing to do when you're impatient," he proceeded, "is to turn toyour left and ask advice from your death. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your dea th makes a gesture to you, or if you catch aglimpse of it, or if you just have the feeling that your companion isthere watching you ... ··H e replied that the issue of our death was never pressed far enough.
And 1 argued that it would be meaningless for me to dwell upon mydeath, since such a thought would only bring discomfort alld fear.
"You're full of crap! " he exclaimed. "Death is the only wise advisor
that we have. Whenever you feel. as you always do, that everything isgoing wrong and you're about to be annihilated. turn to your death andask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch . Your death will tell you, ·1
haven't touched you yet."(from Journey to Ixtlan)I.

We have refused, or begun to refuse, a great deal of theinstitutionalized death that is dealt to womyn. We feel it so
deeply when we see other women accepting the death: a gutlevel horror of living death.
Claiming one's intensity is a profoundly feminist act. We
each have a history as Lesbian feminists of being told not totake it all so "seriously, dear"--I'm certain. "You can't haveeverything," they say. But as Lesbians we refused to settle.
Why we did not settle is a better etiological question to ask
about Lesbians than "how did this pathology occur?" But
the most useful question for us is: how did we not settle?
Each of us has extricated herself from some or all of thegender system, and each of us has had (and some of us nearlyalone) to figure out a strategy for doing so. What were thestrategies?
94

When asked once why certain people were self-actualizing,
psychologist Abraham Maslow couldn't answer . He finallycame up with something called the "chutzpah factor": anextra bit of spunk coming from no one knows where.
We need to name the silent strategies by which Lesbians
have used our chutzpah factor to affirm self: to name, shareand teach it as resistance to bullshit; the power to question
authority; the refusa.l to settle for less.

Age/Aging/Ageism
One of the heaviest tactics of muting our intensity andcourage is anchoring and imprisoning the way we perceive
age and aging. Ageism and sexism/patriarchy stand inincredibly complex relation to each other, and there isn't
space here to more than mention it. The motif I carry in mymind is that men have found it necessary to reduce the threefold nature of womyn--Virgin, Crone and Mother--which
was once found (or could be found) in all wimmin at all times
to only one or another, frozen in time.
An essay/story by River Malcolm helped me imagine theconsciousness-shattering/building possibilities.. of an ageistless world:
They say we do not occupy a part of time, that each of our lives is a
consciousness which extends through the whole of time. Each of ourconsciousnesses is a way of knowing, a knowledge, a conception of thewhole of time. Therefore there are many times, and not one. Therefore
we are each elder to the other.
They say elder is the term of greatest respect, with which we remindourselves that we are listening to a sovereign and separate truth which
we can never reduce or contain within our way of knowing ...
(from "The Women Talk About How They Live")l1

NONREIFICATIONISYSTEMS SENSEIAMBIGUITY
The women say that they perceive their bodies in their entiret}'. Theysay that they do not favour any of its parts on thp ground that it wasform erl y a forbiddpn object. Thpy say that they do not want to become
prison ers (If their own ideology .
(from Les Guerilleres 112

To form a movement that is really movement. Byquestioning every assumption, a really mobile vision .
To build into our ideology a nonreification clause:
one mu st have a vision:
but then put the visionout of thp wa y. so to speak. of tl1P vision
th a t is actuall y crea ted
Istep by stppl in the outerworld. Otherwise. th e vision
blocks the vision.
1l0W. p. 41 I

In 1948 Simone de Beauvoir wrote The Ethics ofAmbiguity--an incisive statement of the sameness of allpolitical formulae and how they interact with the psychologyof the individual. She proposes there a mode of politics thatsidesteps simplicity without negating political action; a wayof crpating a vision, as the quote from In Other Words
suggests, while not idolizing the vision or proselytizing for it.
Lesbian feminists are uniquely advantaged to opt for
ambiguity, complexity, mobility, change. Balanced on theedge of patriarchy, we see the danger of falling into it, or
falling out of it into a mirror image of it. Mary Daly's
concept of "boundary dwelling" describes a high-energy
state, an interface which demands constant self-scrutiny andchange, motion. And maintaining an ethics of ambiguity also
req uires a systems sense--seeing that all the parts work

together; anyone thing affected affects the whole system .
The personal is the political is the everything else. Patriarchy
is systematic: thorough , one by one, linear. Feminist analysis
is systemic: of the whole, nonlinear, from the perspective of
the outsider.
TO BE lIeft brainl AND NOT TO BE Iright bra inl
THAT IS THE ANSWER.
IIOW. p. Sill

Maintaining the vision, opting for complexity is difficult andexhausting. All of us have been trained to think in terms of
simple solutions, formulas which produce cause-and-effectchanges.
Much of what is narrowly termed "politics" seems to rest on a longing
for certainty even at the cost of honesty, for an analysis which. once
given, need not be re-examined. Such is the dead-endedness--forwomen--of Marxism in our time.
Truthfulness anywhere mea ns a heightened complexity. But it is amovement into evolution. Women are only beginning to un cover ourown truths; many of us would be grateful for some rest in that strugglp.
would bp glad just to lie down with the sherds we havE' painfully unearthed. and be satisfied with those. Often I fpplthis likp an px hall stioll
in my own body.
The politics worth having, the relationships worth 1lIl\'ing. cit>nHlllcithat we delve still dee per.
(from Women and Honor: Some No tes on Lyingl

To reify any part of our complex vision is to jeopardize
both our honor and our viability as a world.

95

The idea that the perceptual interpretations that make up our world
have a flow is congruous with the fact that they run uninterruptedly
and are rarely, if ever, open to question. In fact, the reality of theworld we know is so taken for granted that the basic premise of sorcery, that our reality is merely one of many descriptions, could hardly
be taken as a serious proposition."

RELATIONSHIP TO PATRIARCHY
the awareness of rape
spoken or unspoken, thethreat of violence

It has been important for me to begin describing
patriarchy (the system wherein rape is possible) to myself asa constructed reality; as one of many possible descriptions of
the world. But again, not as an arbitrary description:
someone(s) authored and continue to author (an ongoingverb, not one-time) the structures. Invested in, authored by,those who profit from it.
we should at least understand just what it is the system has been doing
to us, and the extent to which they are getting better at it. "better"doesn't begin to describe it; they are making a qualitative leap in their~bility to keep us locked in our places.
definitely a challenge. an occasion to rise to. (lOW, p. iv)
institutionalized

the individual loses power to institute when
there is institutionalization
the institution
acquires the powerlies at the periphery of my consciousness during even thesimplest act

THE PLOT AGAINST US(lOW, p. 3)

the line between rape and rapefreedom
circumscribes our lives. We must begin to image/ imagine aworld where rape is unthinkable, impossible.
96

****
I think that how we conceptuali~e ourselves in terms offighting or "trying to change the world/ create a new one" isvitally important. One of the values of thinking about ourlives as altered states of consciousness is in helping us toconceive tbe outrageous, the unthinkable, the mad: the very
things that will surprise them. In terms of our own
consciousness, we must become chameleons, quick-change
artists, while avoiding deception and lack of identification
with ourselves. For a long time now I have thought in termsof guerrilla wadare; that I am a resistance fighter. What weare facing is a massive war being waged against us at every
level (physical, moral, psychological and spiritual), and inthat context it is difficult to talk about the "ideal" shape of a"politically correct" plan of action. I feel the need to give fullcredence to our battle scars, to trusting that each of us will dowhat she can where she is with the tools that she has. (Not toignore the possibility of coopting or pouring our energy out
for nothing; not to ignore the utter necessity for visions andpossibilities. )What I am saying here is that what I am habituated to isprecisely what makes me dangerous to myself and to otherwimmin, and also what makes me predictable in terms of thesystem. I cannot imagine myself out of patriarchy in terms ofwishing away the violence and the brainwashing; b~t I must
imagine myself out of patriarchy in order to know what mybottom line is, and how to make it bottomer.
The more serious (and Less Serious) I become, the more
ways I become alter in the deepest senSe with relation topatriarchy, and at the same time alter with relation to oldselves. Thus, the ways we do that are both individual andpolitical; for me, writing theory is a way of envisioning (en-to place within; vision--placing my perception within avision). The theory I wrap with alter visions is a weapon/
tool/ defense/ grace and meaning.

WITCHCRAFT/PSYCHIC TOOLS/HISTORY,
I take the word witch as seriously as the word Lesbian intalking about myself. Historically and politically, the word
has had many meanings: as a female-centered religion, as anancient form of social organization based on agricultural andlunar cycles, as a resistance to patriarchy/Christianity, as
healer, wise womon, as knower and user of psychic
skills/ power.
For myself, now, I center the word in a combination ofhistorical/ traditional meanings and new feminist ones
implying strong, powedul, self-identified womon. Thereexists still a small pagan community, hidden for the mostpart, now male and female, who have preserved some part ofthe old traditions handed down through and before the
burJ?ing times. They are linked by a common choice offemale symbolism and energy in their rituals (the Goddess),
preserved in a fragmented, pluralistic (not that pluralism isnegative) tradition. Part of the pagan community is incontact with the "spiritual feminist community" in someplaces.
I am learning what I can of the old traditions, rooting
myself in a goddess-centered religion. There is nocounterpart in god-centeredness nor in what is usually called
97 religion--just as maleness is not the counterpart for
femaleness.

I'm very scared of institutionalization of any of this.
A womon in my coven pointed out that Wicca (witchcraft)means "knower of changes or changer." Fundamentally, tobe a witch means to have the ability to transform energy,
embedding the transformations 1) in a knowledge andrespect for the natural rhythms of the earth, and 2) in a fivefold energy system, symbolized by the pentacle. The five
points of the pentacle stand for sex, for self-awareness, forpassion, for pride and for power. These points rest, in turn,reflexively, on change and transformation, andunderstanding them as a system negates the possibility of
power-over or of fetishizing anyone of them. The ability totransform, to change, to create refers always back to a coreself:

witchcraft is not an exercise of
but a focusing in the will and throughindrawing to the center and outward
shooting forth to connect to encom pass to effect(quoted in part, unpublished poem, with permission© 1977 Myra Love)

Politics
Berger has described, unconsciously, the politics offeminist witchcraft with relation to patriarchy:
The sheltering quality of social order becomes especially evident if
one looks at the marginal situations in the life of the individual, that is,
at situations in which he (sic) is driven close to or beyond the boundaries of the order that determines his routine, everyday existence. Suchmarginal situations commonly occur in dreams and fantasy ... Whatever the epistemological status of these constellations (usually decided
upon much too sanguinely by psychiatry, precisely because it is firmly
rooted in the everyday, 'official,' social definitions of reality), their profound terror for the individual lies in the threat they constitute to his
previously operative nomos (constructed world) ...
... in other words, the marginal situations of human existence reveal the
innate precariousness of all social worlds. Every socially defined reality
remains threatened by lurking ' irrealities.' Every socially constructednomos must face the constant possibility of its collapse into anomy. 15

and you who think to seek for meknow that your seeKing and yearning
shall avail you notunless you know the mystery:that if that which you seek you find not within you
you shall never find it without
for behold, I have been with you from the beginningand I am that which is attained at the end of desire.
(Invocation to the Star-Goddess)

Myra Love has expressed some of the self-referent powerof witchcraft in her poem "Sister-witch":
pure will:
focus in transforming
flame burns onfinely narrow fierce flamerages up from her source98

A hunch: psychic skills are like any others, it's 99%
practice and taking it seriously while practicing. Crafting.
Paying attention to all of the input from the environment:
dreams, hunches, "funny feelings," all the things that you
might dismiss as nonsense (and some might indeed benonsense! ).

The system you embed your psychic skills in can be looked
at separately from the skills. In other words, the CIA and theRussian KGB can learn to do mind control and ESP
experiments. But the system also gives form and shape to theskills: there is a function and structure to the politics ofwitchcraft.
Alice has a drawing in the front of her book that says,
witch or feminist alone, or Lesbian alone, or anarchist alone
is fascist.
I wouldn't choose to use that word--I feel it belongs to anwhole other order of murderers and politicians and torturers.
But I think I know what she means. When all of thosepotentialities--witch, Lesbian, anarchist and feminist--cometogether, something very different happens from anyone or
two of them separately. I would rather look at them when
they're connected, and compare that to patriarchal statusquo, than to take one element at a time and compare it towhat it's not. UH.

IDENTIFICATION" Have you had sex with girls much before? "" Only since I've been at the Rubber Rose. Between Miss Adrian andDelores, every eligible male's been scared away from here, and there's
usually trouble of one kind or another if we fool around with the hicks
in Mottburg. That leaves your fingers or other women, and at least
half the cowgirls on the ranch have been in each other's pants by now.
There's not a queer among 'em, either. It's just a nice, natural thing to
do. Girls are so close and soft. Why did it take me all these years tolearn that it's okay to roll around with 'em? It's 'specially good when
it's somebody you really like a lot." She hugged Sissy and sugardoodled a few kisses around her neck and ears.
(from Even Cowgirh Get the Blue& ".

Consciousness is rOQted in experience but altered bylinguistic awareness. * The statement "I am a Lesbian"
could describe the womyn's awareness of their experiences.
Robbins chooses to say, "There's not a queer among 'em."
T he difference is one of worlds, of reality, of cognition and of
consciousness. By choosing to deny the interrelatedness of
the women's actions with the gender system, Robbins
annihilates the political, patterned nature of their silencing.
He coats the women's sexuality with a phony glaze ofacceptance--eHectively silencing for the naive reader any
awareness of the reality of Lesbian oppression, the bloodstruggle each of us has made, going from aloneness to
Lesbian-identification.

visionary ecology
political joy
individualistic collectivity
a tradition of constant change
and always the question:
what knowledge was destroyed with thenine million burned?
with what was it replaced?
99• Analyses of shamanism and the alteration of consciousness in a cul·ture, for example, always examine the induction of the altered state
and the trsrulation of the experience into a system of interrelated
explanations, woven into the culture.

betrayal which results from love-relationships (romancerelationships) we I commit!
ourselves to.
a

As most of us, I spent high school immersed in silence.
The womon I loved and toward whom I directed all of myemotional energies was not my lover in a genital sense; yet,even had we been, I doubt that the linguistic category of"friendship" could have been cracked open in our minds-owe
never talked about sexuality and making physical love
wouldn't have altered that.

The romance can't be simply analyzed in terms of"monogamy" or "nonmonogamy," although the romance isusually placed within the overlaid structure of monogamy.
Our consciousness is bounded withm the li~its of our ability
to conceive of ourselves as alone and healthy--Le., not"involved" in a "relationship" which delimits our sexuality,or our sense of ourselves.

Lesbian is the word, the label, the condition that holds women in line.
When a woman hears this word tossed her way, she knows she is stepping out of line. She knows that she has crossed the terrible boundaryof her sex role. She recoils, Rhe protests, she resha pes her actions togain approval. Lesbian is a label invented by the man to throw at any
woman who dares to be his equa l, who dares to challenge his preroglltives (including that of all women as part of the exchange medium
among men), who dares to assert the primacy of her own needs.
(from The Woman-Identified Woman)"

Weare taught to sexually respond rather than sexuallycreate.
The state of falling in love can obscure our ability to love.
Hunting.
Objects.
Emotion-binding that is like footbinding and miIidbinding.

The womyn' s movement forced me to a choice between
silence and naming: the word Lesbian compelled me like amoth. And as soon as I spoke the words, I am a Lesbian, I
knew there was no going back. The alteration of ourconsciousness through the identification of ourselves as
Lesbians is in some ways the profoundest alteration of all, it
is the keystone of our arching consciousness.

But the openness, the vulnerability, the power and passion
and pride. The sex. The selfawareness--also parts of ourconsciousness in an opening way.
open-open to another person: the willingness to
let that person put me through changes, as mostclearly indicated in body-loving. I will let
you touch me. My body armor will be down.
I wiIllet the feelings happen, permeate me. I
will be vulnerable.

ROMANCE/LOVE/SEX
Romance is the bottom line for change for many of us, theplace where we abandon honor and the reality of ' our own
perceptions. All of the creations (community, politics,
friendships, work) we build can be jeopardized by the100

I want to put you through changes. rare for me.
Don't yet understand the wanting or the nonwanting.

But for me the result of this. when both parties
are open-open, is that they can then begin toexchange what i've been calling secrets; thethoughts, feelings that one hardly says to
one's self; these thoughts can not be elaborated
on, expanded--until they are spoken to an otherperson. For our revolution to move forward.
they must surface.
(lOW, p. 241

healing requires a different time orientation and a great dealof responsibility (not delegating any of the responsibility out
to a doctor or another--they can't cure).

GRACE/WONDER
In order to be a sorcerer a (wolman must be passionate. A passionate
woman has ea rthl y belongings and things dear to her--if nothing else,
just the path where she walks ....
"Only as a warrior can one survive the path of knowledge, " he sa id," Because the art of a warrior is to balance the terror of being a woman
with the wonder of being a woman."
I gazed at the two of them, each in turn. Their eyes were clear andpeaceful.. . . For an instant I think I saw. I saw the loneliness of woman
as a gigantic wave which had been frozen in front of me, held back by
th e invisibl e wall of a metaphor.
(from Journey to Ixtlanl*' ·PHYSICAL BEING
Many of us, and me not least of all, are held by Western
medicine. Even at feminist health centers a lot of the healthcare is based oftentimes on Western premises: i.e., drugs"cure"; diseases are "caught"; you "naturally" get "sicker"
as you get older, etc.
I don't know enough to convey much useful information
here that can't be found elsewhere easily (information on
herbs, acupuncture, fasting, nutrition, psychic healing). I
have been able to heal myself of fairly serious illness several
times; enough to know that I can take care of myself if I
want to.
Some general discoveries: we need to learn thateverything that goes into our bodies (energy in any form)*
has an effect. Bodies don't let you get away with anything
permanently. Ever.
Mostly what Western medicine provides is a temporaryand speedy suppression of symptoms. Which living inspeeded-up U.S. many of us need to use to keep up. Self*Lesbians age reall y differently than straight women, lor example.
Look at our faces.

Perceiving the enormity, the monstrosity of what has been
done to womyn--and feeling the wonder of being alive andloving womyn. As a Lesbian, a monster, I create degrees of
freedom that are magical.
Lesbian feminism: terror and wonder in dialectic. The Beastand the Goddess.
I cannot write about the wonder yet without putting it into
relation with the struggle it took/ takes to create the space tofeel it. Yet the joy, the magic, the unfolding is central to ourconsciousness, in whatever counterpoint to the death culture
trying to destroy it. We create a genuinely passionate
wonder.
101*1 changed the "generic" masculine to femal e, which makes the passage true.

Afterword
In the first issue of Sinister Wisdom Julia Stanley wrote ofher experience of writing as a personal dialogue, withoneself, as a way of creating a challenge and new honor for
oneself:... .1 believe that every speech act involves personal risk on the part ofthe speaker or writer , if she is being honest with hersel!. And 1 believethat taking this risk is necessary and healthy .. .. As I wrote th e fa ble,and as I spoke it a t the GAU conference, 'I was shaking, sha kin g beca use my self was " on the line." 1 was frightened; and I am stillfrightened when 1 read it, because I cann ot match my words. But I
was writing out of my sel!, writing of a selI that does not yet exist, a self
tha t has not been born. But I am engaged in dialogue with her.' ·Writing theory is for me an intense dialogue with myself: theintegration of all of my ex perience, all of m ytransformations. I don't cover everything of course in writing
something; but I am committed to a methodology of honor-not ignoring any relevant questions in order to impose myview of reality in a dishonest way. I see this as what"science" has proposed, but the antithesis of what it has
become in men 's hands and minds.
The state of consciousness I've tried to give language tohere exists as an ideal, not a "fact." At best, I catch glimpsesof it in its totality: moments of self-awareness in the middleof busyness and change.
Footnotes

1. See, for exa mple, States of Consciousness by Charles Tart (NY: Dutton,
1975 ) and The Psychology of Consciousness (SF: Freeman, 1972 1 byRobert Ornstein.
102

2. Distin ction developed in conversa tion with Artemis March, Santa Cruz,
California, 1977 .
3. Adrienn e Rich , Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying (Pittsburgh,
P ennsylvania: Motheroot Publications, 1977 ). Availabl e for $1. 50 fromM otheroot, 214 D ewey St. , Pittsburgh, Pa. 15218.
4. The wom yn in Boston I interviewed for my senior thesis helped me crystallize some of these ideas as well. " Feminism as a Process of Change and
the P sychology of Consciousness: A Com para tive Structural Ana lysis,"
unpublished ma nu script, 1975 .
5. P eter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of
R eligion (NY: D oubl eda y, 1967 ), p. 37 and p. 39.
6. M oniq ue Wittig, Th e Lesbian Body, transl. Dav id Le Yay (NY: William
Morrow, 1975 1.
"I . Kasa matsu and Hira i, "An E lectroencephalographic Study on the Zen
Med ita tion," in C harl es Tart, ed ., A ltered S tates of Consciousness (NY:Anchor Books, 1972 1, pps. 501 -514.
8. Francoise d 'Eaubonne, Le feminisme ou La mort (Paris: P ierre Horay
Editeur, 1974), pp. 18-1 9.
9. Carlos Castaneda, Journey to lxtlan (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1972 ), p. 11.
lO. Ibid, p. 55.
11. River Ma lcolm , " Th e Women T a lk a bout H ow They Live," S inister
Wisdom , 3, Spring, 1977, pp. 23-26.
12. M Olliq ue Wittig, Les Gueri/leres, (NY: Avon, 1973 ), pp. 57-58 .
l 3. Sim one de Bea uvoir, The Ethics of A mbiguity (NJ: Citadel, 1972).
14. Journey to Ixtlan, p. 9.
15. Th e Sacred Canopy, pp. 22-23.
16. Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (NY: Bantam Books, 19761,
pp. 180-181.
17. Artemis March, E llen Bedoz, Cynthia Funk, Rita Mae Brown, Lois
Hart, and Barbara Gladstone, with other Radicalesbia ns, The W omanIdentified Woman (NY Women's Liberation Center, mimeo, 1970 1.
18. pp. 314-315.
19. Julia P. Stanley, "A C ursory and P recursory History of Language andthe T elling of It, " S inister Wisdom , 1, July, 1976, p. 12.

CONTRIBUTORS' NOTESEllen Bass teaches writing workshops for women in Santa Cruz, California. Her mostrecent volume of poetry, Of Separateness and Merging, has just been published by Autumn
Press. This summer she'll be offering a week-long writing workshop for beginning andexperienced writers and she welcomes inquiries.
Michelle Cliff lives and works in New York City.
Holly Lu Conant. "i was born 22 years ago, am not dead yet & am writing furiously inbetween ... i somehow graduated from guiUord college & am a vegetarian & a quaker. " Holly
Lu now lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Joan Corbin lives in La Crescenta, California.
Tee Corinne is a graphic artist in San Francisco and does PearlChild Productions.
Flying Clouds. "I am living in Los Angeles where I have a good job. I hope to live in
Oklahoma in the country in a few years time. I am very excited about writing. "Barbara Grier. "I was born in 1933 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and raised all over the UnitedStates. I am a writer, a bibliographer, a lecturer, a publisher, an editor and I have been
active in· the gay movement (Lesbian, Lesbian/feminist, homophile, homosexual, gay)under its various and sundry names since 1956."
Gloria Gyn, Lesbian gadfly, lives in Charlotte, N.C.
Robin Kaplan lives in New York City and is the managing editor of Christopher Street
magazine.
Melanie Kaye and Paula King recently did a combined show of Melanie's writing andPaula's stitchery and graphics at the Women 's Studies Gallery, Portland State University.
Myra Love lives in Berkeley, California.
Emily Oddwoman, sometimes known as Emily Erwin Culpepper, is a woman-identified
rebel from Georgia, now living in Cambridge, Mass. , a feminist free thinker, and fascinatedwith menstruation and myth making.
Sharon Olds teaches poetry in New York City. Recent poems of hers have appeared in Ms.
and Conditions.
Minnie Bruce Pratt teaches English and lives with Emma, Ti-Grace, June, and Rita (hercats) .
Adrienne Rich's most recent volume of poetry is The Dream of a Common Language,
W.W. Norton, 1978.
Sandia (Bear). "Came out, 1974. My first book coming out this year: At the Sweet Hour ofHand in Hand, a translation of Renee Vivien's poetry. My next book, Children of thesecond Birth , is also wanting someone to bring her out. "Judith Schwarz teaches a course on lesbian history at the Washington, D.C. Area Women's
Center and is researching a book o~ lesbian history tentatively called, " Close Friends andDevoted Companions."
Claudia Scott lives in Philadelphia. Portrait, a book of her earlier poetry, was published by
Lavender Press.
Joanna Spilman lives in Chicago. (She is a double Scorpio, which may account for theintensity of her work.)
Susan Leigh Star lives and works in San Francisco.
Chocolate Waters is a Denver Dyke Poet Aqueerian. "Disturbance" is part of her second
SOc postage
book of poems, Take Me Like a Photograph, which can be ordered for $4.00
from Eggplant Press, P.O. Box 18641, Denver, CO 80218.

+

103

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COMING NEXT, "THE FAT AND LOVELY ONE"A double issue, including "Lesbians and Literature: The Transformationof silence into Language and Action" -- Mary Daly, Audre Lorde, Judith
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