Unknown Speaker 00:01 hoping and also waiting we suggest if everybody's you could sort of sit close to the projector because we have the cassette tape recorded for part of it and the sound will not carry well. So I'm afraid if you sit on the outskirts you might not be able to hear but Unknown Speaker 00:19 you. Newsletter in each issue we do a lesbian cultural or lesbian issue bibliography for instance, it says a listing of over 500 lesbian short stories. This is to help women who are well to help lesbians and all kinds of ways one way for instance, if you're in a feminine a woman studies class and you say to the professor, well, I'd like to do some work on lesbian short stories. And the professor says, oh, you can't there isn't such a thing. You just whip out your archives newsletter say, Oh, yes, or Oh 500 lesbian short stories. So it's a way to give you both cultural validity and a feeling of security. So short stories, both lesbian authored short stories and short stories with lesbian content, but always by lesbians. In other words, we don't have including in this one, we don't have an inclusion of a short story by a man about a lesbian that will be on another listing, right? This is all either lesbian, mostly lesbian authored, and lesbian thematic material. Now, for instance, we have listed all of Joanna Ross's short stories, and she doesn't write every short story with a lesbian scene, but she is a lesbian woman. And so we're listing her work as an example of lesbian imagination at work in creating other words, but anyway, why don't I just pass this around? And we if you'd like it sent in a confidential, you know, in a brown envelope, please let us know. That's very real. Yes, linearity. Issues. Yes, there. It's in this one. But I can tell you afterwards, and we can we'll send, we'll send for the fee of xeroxing the journalist free. And we just asked you to help with the xeroxing costs and we'll send you the back issues it's very irregular, Unknown Speaker 02:23 there will be one out never between me and those should we were wondering Unknown Speaker 02:33 why don't we just give a sense of what we're going to do? Unknown Speaker 02:36 I'm just gonna Well, I was gonna say first did any anybody? Did anybody just come out of the dining room to know whether that place is pretty much pretty much cleared? It is pretty much good. Unknown Speaker 02:45 Because we have a list but we're not going to take Unknown Speaker 02:53 no Unknown Speaker 02:56 one say we just want to share some background stuff and some of the things some of it I discussed at the larger meeting and I'm don't need to do this as a naysayer. Or as a whiner. Or as hahaha, you tried your best and look how you screwed up. But I think it's important to raise certain issues, and particularly since the theme of our talk is colonization. And I want to start with the history what I said we I came out in 1958. And I came out as a colonized woman, I came out into the colonized world of lesbians, the irony, and this is a very superficial thing is that the bar I attended, and I know anybody else here ever go to the sea colony? Yeah, well, place. The irony of that being its name, which I never understood while I was going there over the years. But we told the planning committee that we wanted to call this workshop reclaiming lesbian Herstory, the response of a colonized people. And I'm going to read from a book, sort of saying, where my way of thinking comes from, and we were told on the phone, I'm sorry, you can't do that. That title is to polemic, which I looked up to make sure it's one of those words, I'm never quite sure. And the definition being too controversial, too argumentative. And they gave us a choice, you either cannot speak or change your title. And I said to the woman, we will speak but we will make that an evidence of our colonization. We I said, I got on my high horse. And I said nobody can tell me who lived as a lesbian woman before there was a movement to give me the validity to do it that I was not a colonized person. But in order to get access to you, we agreed to do that, but we wanted to raise that as an issue. The other issue that came up is why we're in this room. We were called yesterday and we were told that since many of the workshops we're going to have slideshows, all the good rooms had been given away. In one room they had left for us was was a room with a window that would not have sufficient had a broken blind so there was no way of ensuring darkness we can had to choose between that room in this room, which seats 200 women and I said to the woman on the phone, but that really isn't a choice at all. We can give a slideshow in a room where we can keep the light out. And we would like a more intimate surroundings. All I am saying is that I think there are issues involved in us being a lesbian presents here. And I given the hierarchy of concerns. I think that lesbian history and lesbian culture was looked upon as perhaps an afterthought. It was politically correct to have us, but we really weren't allowed to define ourselves in the way we wanted to, and maybe we can return to that as an issue. What we're going to do today is first talk a little bit about the background of the archives. Present a slideshow that takes has three stages. The first is a history of the archives itself, and it's accompanied by a cassette tape, which we're in the process of making better, but it may be difficult to hear so particularly in this size room, which is another reason we wanted a smaller room. The second crop, we laughingly say we go live, and it's a selection of slides, covering aspects of lesbian culture in the archives, which I speak to and you're welcome at any point to interrupt, it's a little hard with a cassette tape recorder. But when we're speaking, the last part is fun. It's just pictures of lesbian women sent to us from all over the country set to lesbian music. Then when we end we are prepared, prepared to discuss here today, anything you would like, we are prepared to discuss issues in doing research about lesbian subjects, ranging from the Eleanor Roosevelt book, you know, to, to work that we know other women have done to your own experiences with censorship, we are prepared to discuss difficulties in doing lesbian research, we are prepared to discuss all the work that is being done. For instance, there is now a lesbian history network throughout the country. And we can discuss that with you because we're members of that we can talk about the old lesbian world and the new lesbian, we're really open. We can talk about class and race as it affects lesbian culture. So we're really open to any kind of discussion afterwards. Unknown Speaker 07:11 I'm sorry. I want to read from a book this is called the colonizer and the colonized by Albert mimic. In my other life, I teach in a Third World Studies program called the SEEK program at Queens College. And I've been teaching it for 12 years, and I'm out as a lesbian. There, because the students demanded it pretty much. But I was reading for class. This was around five or six years ago, I was reading this book from my classwork. And I came across this paragraph and I'm going to read it I'm going to change the pronouns from he to shoot, which is how I read it. It's talking about the sense of memory of history that the colonized has, and he writes, we should add that she draws less and less from her past. The colonizer never even recognized. Thank you never even recognize that she had one. Everyone knows that the commoner whose origins are unknown has no history. Let us ask the colonized herself, just us. Who are his folk heroes, his great popular leaders, her greats, her sages, at most, she may be able to give us a few names and complete disorder, and fewer and fewer as one goes down the generations, I think, yeah, right. There was Safwan Gertrude Stein. What happened to our people, the people, lesbians who lived during the Depression, lesbians working in factories, lesbians, like me from a single mother working class family, I, where are they? And the last sentence is the colonized seems condemned to lose her memory. And I stopped being I said, Wait, this is not only for my students, this is for me, the whole generational struggle of the lesbian women to come out every generation. Remember the old parties we used to have in the 60s consider about Anita, who was a lesbian Doris Day was a lesbian, you know, because. But that really was a deep political expression of deprivation that we had been cut off from our generations. And it is this memory that's at the heart of our dedication to the archives to put back generational connection. The other thing I want to read is to set the tone what I was talking about. I believe what the archives is dedicated to is reconstituting when I pulled the deep history of the lesbian people, and by the deep history, I mean, the lesbian people who are not usually included, their voices are not accessible. I mean, the lesbian women who spent their lives in mental institutions in prisons, who, in surfaces is freaks, biological freaks, the lesbian women who spend their lives passing for power, so they could have some autonomy. The lesbian women who spend their lives as outlaws is deviance and I always dedicate our slides. So, to the women who sat next to me at the sea colony, the women who are not here, many of them because they've lost their lives, many of them because they see no image of themselves here. That part of my dedication to the Archives is to, for us to put their voices. These are women who don't write books, they don't write scholarly articles. They live with great courage in many territories that are not conducive to life. One of the experiences I want to recreate for you was, again, coming out pre movement, why so many of us felt we were freaks, that we were biological freaks. And then, which gives a whole different meaning to the word deviance. I'm going to read this was one of the first books I ever read. To give myself an image of myself. It's called Sex variance. I read the description. The autobiographies presented here and the accompanying scientific data and the scientific data is pictures of nipples and clitoris is to show that lesbians had different nipples. Offer invaluable source material for all who must deal with the medical social problem of homosexuality. The Journal of the American Medical Association says to date this is the most useful scientific contribution to the subject when I read to you what they considered science, okay. And, but the wonderful thing about this is that this really was an autobiography. It's the first presentation of the lives of lesbian women speaking for themselves. If you can get through this description, I'll read it to you. Okay. This is Marvel W. This is a woman, family tendency to overweight and physical sturdiness. This is how they summarize her life. Right as a deviant subject notice they begin always with the physical description. Family tendency to overweight and physical sturdiness. Marvel missed affection of parents has always looked for some form of love she did not find rebellious since childhood, masculine physical constitution, played with boys Unknown Speaker 12:08 hated roughly dresses, awkwardly shy self conscious, resented menstrual periods, knew little about sex, but talk to free love. Remember that this is a litany of pathology. Attachment to grandmother transferred to mother and then to older girl. Overt relations disappointed in girl drank to excess, resentful and belligerent exploited one man rejected by another frustrated feels bitterly about inequality of sexes. That's because champion of the downtrodden. Yeah, and pathology. And then her summary of this woman's life, homosexual mutual juvenile. And part of our goal is to put full sentences back into this description. This woman doesn't even get sentences she gets phrases. Part of what we're trying to do is to recreate for women who either are not lesbians or women who came out since the feminist movement. What it was like to spend your life feeling you were a freak. And I think there's a meaningful message in it in a sense of what Betty was talking about, about madness and sanity. Okay. I also want to say by the way that there are five women in the collective okay, I tend to take over as I just did, Deb was supposed to do half of this and I just kept talking and on the fam I want you to know so that, that destroys a lot of myths about that. Okay. There are five women in the collective Deborah Ada, who's here with us today, Judas Schwartz, who's in Washington DC and she's writing a book on devoted friends. Always forget this devoted, loving, beloved companions and devoted friends. It's a history of lesbian women pre 20th century she found over 200 lesbian women who of course, have never been talked about and we'll talk about that further. George Brooks who is attending the Third World lesbian writers conference today as a part of our collective which is also going on today. And Valerie etnyre Who's a health food Cook Okay, so we want to do introduce yourself oh when I'm Jonas I talked so much okay. Y'all night everyone. Unknown Speaker 14:51 Five unique corporate roles and functions as they are referred to us that are doing it So, let's be adverse to archive this together and preserve records of lesbian lives in our city, so that future generations of lesbians will have ready access to material relevant to their lives. The process of gathering this material will also serve to uncover and collect our hurts during the night because previously by patriarchal historian, and the interests of the culture, which preserve the existence of these archives will enable us to analyze, evaluate and celebrate the lesbian experience. We anticipate that the archives will encourage lesbians to record their experiences. In order to formulate our living history. We are guided by the following principle. All lesbian women must have access to the archives, the collection must be kept intact, that extra lesbians and everybody bought or sold, the archives must be housed within the lesbian community, not in a patriarchal institution, to our newsletter, number two, march 1976. Many women have come to us the archives tend to be comforted by the living growing strength of our community. These are most exciting visits, because they reach the deepest reason for our existence and affirmation of our continuous in time as a creator, self cherishing family of women comma visited since December 22. I arrived I've been nurtured by the archive. By your time energy. Thank you such as this we want to hunger for desperately. I think that's what we will hear and the simpler rules my own. Not only are you reading science, but you're hearing our voices. You also get to play with my own words in this space, my mind dense like nature, because we come to come alive again. And this space contributes to the to this process. The Archives methodology has new meaning to the struggle the overwhelming Sunday already my mother, Laurie. Unknown Speaker 17:06 A wonderful way to revitalize the afternoon, Unknown Speaker 17:08 Lynn and Linda. Unknown Speaker 17:15 Thank you. Unknown Speaker 17:16 Thank you, Pat. Your threshing levy agreed amongst New York's greatness. I look forward to returning with friends and force and I'll spread the word an orphan Prusa This is just one of the three so excited to discover I can care about history about scholarship to say because mine is the worst of the stages if anybody cares in by the archives is worth a lot to share. Unknown Speaker 17:44 Each time I come Unknown Speaker 17:45 back to my search, my mind Unknown Speaker 17:51 uses the mosaic Unknown Speaker 17:52 Thank you for having me I'm so glad that lesbian women store these archives as they are alive through my life. Thank you so much. I am personally looking forward to electricity, plumbing or building maintenance. These are almost exclusively male environments and the archives is aggressive Saturday is safe to be myself with loving admiration. You gave me the chance to sunlight through the mancave for posterity, take I spend my birthday today doing further research for my paper, Unknown Speaker 18:37 I would say Unknown Speaker 18:40 thanks for doing this. It helps to my peers across the US that they try to burn us again. It is sweet for me to find lesbian lesbian refuge in this city where I grew up and was dedicated to heterosexuality as either radical restate its level of clarity in this man city. We are truly strong and his advisors and friends I will send you a picture ritual course three years have been told we don't exist, especially as artists. And here is the documentation is not only our assistance or excellence or courage or dreams that are reality. I feel overwhelmed. I've been filled with the courage. Thank you for being here. Eleanor. Here at the London cafes in my life when keep the most pressing edge of change my the rock shows for me Unknown Speaker 19:48 it's so extraordinary. Unknown Speaker 19:50 I am overwhelmed by all material. I wish I had a month to sit in here. There's never enough time On it's wonderful we know that it really is a place for our heritage to be preserved every day. Thank you for doing this for us you thank you for being here and doing this in Baltimore. I'm excited to see my plays and your collection also the word collaboration between K casts and myself and never reveal the validity theatre company we're a part of because of you our bandwidth we have 200 participants better and we want to see for myself like Unknown Speaker 20:41 that just a second I never thought it would be that option again. And I realize it's my right to come home to the world thanks to you and all the Wiser terms for showing me that right Unknown Speaker 20:57 we ask everyone we were meant to participate in leaving accounts because the minute we asked for signed a letter or drawing a photograph or a song and all lined up we limited the responsibility of collecting the published material but we know the vast creative power of waiting were the voices who think they have nothing to say and yet the strength and beauty of our culture every day we asked for moments of cherishing. Name is up. You This is where we find Unknown Speaker 23:27 each slide you're sort of microcosmic in the sense of symbolizes a part of the collection idea about the collection. When I speak, I refer to the lesbian people, which is my God. This is a slide showing some of our lesbian journals that go back to 1948. We have the first known lesbian journal that was produced in this country called viceversa in 1948. But these are this is a slide showing the vulnerability and the scattered pneus of those creations. Never before has there been one place where single issues for instance, one to one only came out once, that was all that lesbian community could sustain that time here to produce. And so what having us in one place is sort of putting the family back together again, but they all are each a history of a lesbian community at an historical time. Again, the same thing with newspapers being part of the archives, we are witnesses to many births and deaths. It touches us in a very deep way. For instance, Latins a woman, women here remember reading it? Sure. Also, we do this to show how quickly yesterday because history because a lot of the women died. I think around I'm not I don't have all my years here but three or four years ago, a little bit longer. Women's rad This is anybody here participate in that takeover. This was in the early 1970 in New York when radical women took over at Martha's shellings among Anyway, on all these materials are there for you with the archives. We also are trying to keep a record of the growth of the lesbian imagination through our publications. And for instance here is just an example of the changes they have gone through. I think the real deep meaning of the slides is the love we have for our own cultural creations. This is a university unit how much they pay for one letter by James Joyce right? For we find our culture on sale for five cents, we're looking for some of our books by our office, we find them on church sales within the community no longer wants them in their collection. So we really are turning the world upside down by saying we prize what our women do as deeply and hopefully in a more living way than this society prizes. Its cultural artifacts. Anyway, here's an example for instance, died when we made the slide diaper still alive. Well, it isn't anymore but diet which grew out of cow Ray, which grew out of the other side. So you if you're interested in doing a study of listening to medication, we have an example here. We are also concerned with changing the way lesbian creators have been presented by the colonizer. For instance, I think there is one movie and again, I have to go to Gertrude Stein, because she's the one who they allowed to stand in some ways. Have any of you seen that movie for where she speaks and talks? Who's and who. It's a movie when it showed women really Oh, that's true as a real person when we're trying to change that we eventually would love to have videotape scripts has everything to do with the kinds of silences we've been herded that we're trying to add. And this is how the workplace is we're doing with Elsa good loader, Elsa, good load is an 80 year old poet now, from California, she was in the movie word is out. You may have seen her. Elsa has sent to us a tape so you can hear her voice. And it talks about coming out in Germany in the early 1900s of her visiting the Institute of Human Sexuality, which was one of the first buildings destroyed by the Nazis. Because it was considered so radical in its work, which says something about the whole history of sexuality and how we are radical as devious people. We had her first published work, you can't it's a big blue book. It's called an anthology of American women poets. It came out in 1939. And it has several lesbian poets in it. So it's one of the first anthologies, including those clips, because they were not known that way. And then her original work and her letters. And all of this is available for you to look at. We believe that we've always had this gut feeling the way a lesbian woman does anything is different. But we've never had the data in one place to support that. So what we ask is any lesbian woman who creates anything, it doesn't have to have a lesbian scene to send us a copy of her work. Because we believe for instance, how lesbian biologist solves a problem is different. We believe how lesbian taxi driver drives a cab is different. Now, this might just be a form of romanticization, we don't know. But we are trying to get materials together to give the future a chance to see if that's true. Unknown Speaker 28:10 Okay, these are some of the most precious slides all the other things you saw were published materials, what we make a plea for is for every lesbian women to send to the archives. Evidences of how survive, for instance, these are droids and again, it's a small sampling of calendars and cards that lesbian women created to send to each other to mock special days, because they could not find an image that suited their life, in the culture around us are incredibly precious. They are the things we do not have from the past. And we want to make sure that we have them to give. And we always make this joke if you're in a relationship that ends and we know how painful then you know what the first temptation is? Right? Everything, everything you know to go, I save Unknown Speaker 28:55 everything like Unknown Speaker 28:59 to go to homes and prices and go through the garbage and collect the photographs that were too painful and save them and we say this we are the shopping bag ladies of the community while we collect pain as well as beauty in the sense that what is it because it's so immediate one is once pain also is historical record. So we make a plea don't throw anything away without thinking about it. Again, this is a very precious slides. And these are some bars we now have hundreds of photographs. We started something called a national lesbian photograph drive. We want to leave a record that will break myths about us. We want to show people of the future but primarily lesbians that we came from all classes that we came from all races that we spoke all languages and that we lived through all life periods. Because you know there are very few for instance, photographs of aging has been done. Okay. And lesbians across the country have responded by sending us in snapshots of themselves from infancy on. And can we ask every woman who's sitting here who can hear us to consider doing that we have a way of duplicating photographs, so we don't have to keep photographs, we can return them. Also the same thing with tapes, we asked lesbian women to sit down and just take an hour out of your life, make a tape about anything you would like to talk about. But we can also supply a list of subjects in any direction. But we have over 500 cassette tapes, and they're incredible, and how they document our victories and our pains and our joys. These are some organization cat right, my cat Unknown Speaker 30:48 was introduced. Unknown Speaker 30:50 I think she wants an open relation. Anyway. This is our DOB file is anybody who was a member of New York dob, whatever, could you just tell me what happened to it? When I came in? I was 20 years old. And under age, I went to dob and they made an exception. And let me in because I stood at the door. You know why they had to do that what happens? Same thing with the ladder because you they were considered a pornographic ruin, just the way their publication is. And never police rated DOB regularly in the hope of trying to get an underage woman but I think 20 I think 21 or 18? Well, DOB just folded I lost certain point, because of organizational changes. Also history was changing. Those of us I would, for instance, went to one meeting of DOB I came I was a bar person. I was living in which family relationship for most of my lesbian life. And I went into the OB and I felt like this is the everybody, here's a school teacher. That's what I felt it wasn't true saying. And then what happened was things like LFL GAA the old firehouse got started. So see, there's a whole history here. It's a history we don't have, we're not allowed to study unless we studied ourselves. But anyway, these are the Working Papers of dob, who are a woman was going to throw these away. And she heard about us and said, I'll send them to you. And we're preserving them with the notations of the women who are who are planning. If you read these papers, certain myths break down, for instance, there was a lesbian movement before feminism, and it was feminists. There were women putting together conferences. It's just an incredible genealogy that gets set up. I'm talking to my daughters. Sorry, yes. Don't assume anything. I see your hand up there. Right. DOB is Daughters of the leaders in the earliest lesbian civil rights organization in the country. Its primary. Do you want to come in? Yeah. Yes. Come on that ahead. It started in California, it spread throughout the country, it produced gene Damon who's Barbara Greer put out the ladder, which for many of us, was our only lesbian publications down 50s in the 60s, right there. And again, we have all that material there for you to look at. Oh, we change the slide. Okay. This is some individual, lesbian creators have shown great trust in us. You know, this is a culture that sells cultural products, while it destroys the people who create rentals, thinking about Native American culture. And for someone, for instance, this is the work of Joanna Ross. And what you want to Ross has done is Xerox everything she's ever written and sent us copies. And so I always say on a winter day, if you want someone wonderful to read to come and spend the day Adrienne Rich also has given us original galleys, and her working notes were woman born and this is libraries offered her 1000s of dollars for that material. We are grassroots archives. Well, we can answer all kinds of questions. But again, we're saying this is an act of faith in us as a people that we can do this that we can take our culture and preserve it from generation to generation with love and caring and accessibility for all lesbian women. For all women, right. This is the work by a woman in our collective Judas Schwartz, who's writing a book I told you about. And again, Judith is a grassroots historian. She's not funded by a university. She's not funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. She's funded by her coming out as a lesbian woman in the 50s. By our own love for her culture, and what she's discovered. There's a listing we had in the archives I've said of those 200 women, who she can document are lesbians from around 1802 up to chuck kind of quite as nice as 14. This is an article she read called researching lesbian history. It's a way of saying to any woman, you don't have to go to school to do this work. You don't have to be consider yourself a scholar. It is a people's test to put their history back together again. And what she has done is just showing you ways to do it. That's a book she discovered for us. We have material in the archives going back to around the 1850s. If we include those me photographers, this is the The Autobiography of a tomboy. But Jeanette Gilder that was 1900. Genetic yoga was a lesbian woman who lived with another woman for many years. She was a journalist. This is her early autobiography. And when you read it, it is like, you see what I call icon images. She talks about cutting her hair, so she can run in the streets wearing her brother's clothes. That's 1900. So there are all kinds of connections. And that is due to this is Judas exemplifying another piece of work. She's Unknown Speaker 35:39 God bless America. Unknown Speaker 35:41 Exactly. Katherine Lee Bates is a lesbian woman who has been discovered by Judith Katherine Lee Bates is also the author of America the Beautiful so every time that song is sung, it's a lesbian song. Interesting thing if you hear the words of that, so we went to see the electric horseman and it was, it is not a military song. It is a song built on love of the earth of the planet. That's an interesting insight. Another thing, none of us are archivist, I teach Third World Studies and writing. Deb is a psychologist, Valerie's a healthy Cook, Georgia Works with computers. And women will always say well, how can you be an art? How can you be an artist you don't have the money to have the space, you don't have the skills? Well, we're learning and women are helping us an example of that is our lesbian feminist card catalog. We are trying to devise a way of handling on materials that reflect our principles. For instance, one thing we catalog women's, we catalog works under women's first name, rather than last name is an effort. Because we're it's a symbolic effort to de emphasize patriarchal lineage. Given that the last name now it's all symbolic, because really how many of us choose any of our names, but it's to make a statement. The other thing I like to say is we are the only card catalog in the world that has rich and famous subject headings. Okay, again, this is precious, we ask every woman who writes in whatever way to send us a copy of her writings, I think we have close to maybe 2000 pieces of unpublished lesbian poetry. We are the one place that never sends out rejection letters. We are not concerned whether we invade women, so many women are silenced by their own fear of judgment. That everything we have to say, as lesbian women, is crucial to be said is to be valued. And it all sits on the same shelf. It's a wonderful, sort of you see shoulder to shoulder, Amy Lowell and Judy Grog and then a woman from Nebraska who just stopped by to give a love poem to us. If anybody here writes, please send us a copy of your work over 500 women a year, visit the archives of sit with a cup of tea and read your words, if you want, we can we have your address so they can write to you about it, we protect copyright, nothing is can be reproduced from the archives without your permission, but it's a way of self valuing. We also see the archives as a political act. And that's another way we're different. We think from traditional archives. I made references reference to it before, you know most artists, anybody here tried to work in an archives or university holding of archival material. You know, usually there's rules of access. You can't get in unless you're a bonafide graduate student or you have a letter or something. The other thing we feel is most archives sort of keep having to say they worship history rather than changing. We are saying that the archives exist to give the lesbian people strength in their struggle. We don't exist as a quiet spectator. We are part of the people that we are documented because the people are us. And we have an evidence of that is our lesbian mothers collection. We have all the legal briefs that have been put out by the lesbian mothers National Defense Fund. We have newspaper clippings, and we have lawyers and lesbian mothers working at the archives, putting together legal briefs. And that's just a symbolic statement of how political the act of archiving is when we tell you later, for instance, that we were not allowed to cooperate as an archivist by this government, you will understand some other details of it. Okay, we are very concerned that the archives, and that the lesbian community in general does not reflect the divisions we were talking about this morning class and race. And this is a slide just showing a small amount of the works we have on black lesbian women, third world lesbian women, Latinos, in all languages lesbian speak we're also concerned with breaking down the myth of monolingualism. We have love love poetry and Spanish, French German In Hebrew, Italian, I always leave out some, but any woman here who speaks another language who speaks her own language, please make it take for us right at home for us write a letter in your language. Unknown Speaker 40:17 This is what I call it. This is a slide of the globalization. Valerie Taylor came to visit us and there's a story you should talk also about Jeanette Foster. Valerie Taylor is a woman now in her 60s She was right. She was an old time lesbian woman, political activist. When she was published by the boys as she calls them, you can see her works around the corner you see it returned to Lesbos whisper their love, right? That's when she was calling us. When she's writing. In the love of her own people. She appears in the middle layer, and you can see the change. That's a drawing by T. Corinne, who's here today. I know she's here, but she's at the conference produced by Nyad press, which is a lesbian press. But the slide also says something else went down retail visited us, she brought us that she was for their love on top. She said that was the London version. When her book was released in London. It was released in Johannesburg, South Africa at the same time, and it was immediately banned as being revolutionary. And Valerie looked at us and said in a racist apartheid country, they consider me revolutionary in my own country, they consider me trash. It was a very, she was very proud of being banned. South Africa. We are also collecting this is just to give you a sense of the scope, we collect everything. We are very been sensitized to the plight of the lesbian dividual artists. And if there's anyone here, who can speak to that, we discovered for instance, that many times when lesbians come out as artists, they lose their access to hanging space. We are collected to use our every pool as a gallery for lesbian women's work, which you will see when it comes to the house. We also have over 300 posters, it was one of the earliest and you can look at their technique. This is before women's graphics collected. This is coming out of Chicago. It's one of the first lesbian music groups to hold family woman this was in a pile and a woman centered that had clothes and this was being thrown away to the garbage and a woman saw it and saved in the center to us. Okay, this is a slide in Memorial two, and also in cherishing of passing women. We co sponsored a slideshow called lesbian Masquerade. Did anybody see it yesterday, about passing women in San Francisco passing women are passing is one of the ways working class women survived as lesbians, the way they still survive as lesbian. And I think that's what I tried to talk about this morning that there are parts of our community we have not reached out to because we've judged their lives. We've said they're not feminist. They're into roles. They don't understand this, and yet we try so hard to reach homophobic feminists. And for me, that raises a paradox because these are my people. The this is a centerfold from the Daily News 1939, a woman found that she was picking up linoleum down on East Ninth Street and found it as floor stuffing underneath the what is what's the what's his husband in quotes? That's a woman, Minerva Phipps, who lived her whole life married to other women. And this is what passing women were usually discovered when they were arrested. Or when they were ill, because then they were forcibly undressed. Many passing women were arrested for wearing men's clothing, spent many years in jail, many were put in mental institutions. And I think it's important that we start reclaiming this history, as well as Virginia Woolf. Political Unknown Speaker 44:03 alright, I said, I referred to us as a people, because that's my knowledge of my own life that we lived as a people and one of the things the archives is concerned with is that each region's thought discovering its own lesbian folklore that if we are a people, we should have those survival mannerisms that people have and it's the information is starting to come in. There's a very exciting work being done. I think it's going to transform all our concepts of what the feminist movement means what all time lesbian means it's the buffalo lesbian Oral History Project, a group of three women are working on doing a oral history of the buffalo lesbian community going back to the 1920s One of the things they discovered was the blue star. The Blue Star was won by working lesbian women under their watches or bracelets when they wanted to pass this was in the 20s in the 30s. When they wanted to make themselves known to each other they read removed the bracelet or the watch, and there's a Blue Star school. So they tattooed it on their skin as a way of identifying themselves. We also discovered that in this area in Buffalo, there was one taxi company that allowed lesbian women to survive, because it was the only job was the only firm that would hire them and let them dress the way they wanted to remember, we're talking about the 20s, or the 30s. And so every lesbian woman there was in her 50s, and 60s knows that name of that company. And I suggested in every region in New York, across the country, we can find this folklore. If we value Unknown Speaker 45:33 you sort of we can interrupt I like to interrupt because this brings up an interesting question. I'm a lesbian who knows I'm a lesbian. Some people know I am. I'm a writer, I have books. I'm sure I'm not in your archives. I don't know whether to wear a big sign on. I don't even know who the other lesbians are. Because I'm a loner, as a writer, I'm a loner, I have to come here and look around, you know, and it's very disturbing to me. I don't know whether to wear a diamond on my nose. I mean, there must be some way that we can identify Unknown Speaker 46:01 did used to be it's very funny. We can talk about this one thing I want to say now you hear us right? That's why we said we speak here today, because we never miss a chance. Send us your works to the ER Oh, absolutely. We used to have something we called it we could always tell another lesbian. You know, we we teased about it. We said it was the sort of the third eye in a way but for instance, Pinky rings. Unknown Speaker 46:26 We had done that for years and nobody ever noticed Unknown Speaker 46:28 that you weren't. You aren't hanging around with the right folks. On Thursday I'm putting together a slideshow and I don't need to go over this. It's just that there are large issues called lesbian images pre 1970. And what it is, it's called is to re connect our family. We've shown it once we will show it in stages and women came to it who had never been to a feminist event. This is a picture of me, that's what I look like in 1962. I came out in 1958. And it's just a photograph, to get other women to send us their photographs, which is an unbelievable slideshow when you see it it is overwhelming and its impact, the courage the oppression. You can see it in faces what I call the innate feminism, the struggle to survive as women alone All right, we also have a lesbian artists slide registry, and we asked if there's any lesbian woman here as an artist if we can if you can send us one of Your works which we understand to take a slide of it and so in any of you who are interested in visual images to come to the archives and to look at these and this is just symbolic This is a work by Nancy freed who's a lesbian artists from California and I think that's now we go to music and faces last straw was the seventh day be Unknown Speaker 48:27 fathers give it up Unknown Speaker 48:33 everywhere. You because You are a woman and I am too and you are my sister my lover my friend. I'd like to be with you when they would leave you about self delusion and gray and. White to you know choose you all around you as men do. In case you need to To this day without a right and if we made his way Unknown Speaker 50:18 with us Unknown Speaker 50:25 to make love and began 10 Dogs someday and find my bed is yours and yours is mine I guess we go what we did was get a new one I'm Barbara beaver P A strange Hey live I kept all the records live with Unknown Speaker 51:48 me how can I learn to respond to I got when I came into the role the women loving women came in three by three and four blog for women loving women came in hand by hand and can live hand again and show the world more than you could they took care of each other their best they knew how and of each other's children if they had any how they lived in the world the women loving women learned as much as they were allowed and walked and wore their clothes the way they liked whenever they could they did whatever they knew to be happy or free and warm and worse and worse the women wanting women in America were called gay some liked it and some did not you got Oh again Why? You know y'all you Greetings everyone I want the whole world will apply for my job when day love it long day whoa whoa it that wrong love this one You ever wanted Unknown Speaker 58:55 to right Unknown Speaker 59:49 Right Okay, we're open to discuss anything if you're interested in knowing what lesbian women are doing around the country in the field of history we can. Okay, there's so much happening. First of all, in New York, there is something called the New York Lesbian and Gay Men's history research project. We're having a meeting tomorrow. In fact, they can give you the information. This is a national phenomena, almost every area now has one. It's an attempt to reclaim the regional history. All right, of each area lesbians work autonomously. We, for instance, in New York, we have already had a one day workshop on doing oral histories. Okay, there's a San Francisco lesbian, gay man's history research project is one in Boston, we want to do things like for instance, examine the history of bars in New York, each people have their own materials that's going on. There is also a newsletter. And if you'd like to receive it to sign up, there's a newsletter for people doing history, lesbian, history research. There is we're very proud we've given there are many archives springing up all over the country. There is now one in San Francisco, San Francisco, they're planning one in Philadelphia, there'll be one in the south, we're hoping that there's a whole network of archives, because what we've discovered is women come to the archives, not just to do research, but to get the strength to live every day, that they are a nourishing place. Also, the things we have are too important for one place to have them, because it is so political. But there is that going on. There are things being published, okay. For instance, there is a frontiers issue, lesbian history issue that has a bibliography of all the work that's been done on lesbian history, plus all the groups we've just listed. Okay. Unknown Speaker 1:01:52 That's right, Where's Unknown Speaker 1:01:52 where's okay? The Archives is in our home. It's a 215. We don't publish our address, because it's our home, but it's a 215. West 92nd Street. Let me just one thing that demo. Unknown Speaker 1:02:06 Oh, one thing we didn't say at the beginning was that we all work, we can do similar kinds of jobs we do. We all do work. So we work full time, while us in the evenings or on weekends, so we can set up an appointment. Unknown Speaker 1:02:19 Right? And we have Unknown Speaker 1:02:22 we have fliers up here about the archives. They have our Unknown Speaker 1:02:27 I just want to say that it's very, very nice when you send them something because you always get this nice thing back. And it's like a card, you know, they always acknowledge and it's really, really good to send them stuff. I'm Unknown Speaker 1:02:40 curious of all the women here, how many of you've been to the archives? Oh, good, because it's getting more and more. One thing, we are now something called the lesbian Herstory Educational Foundation, and we are tax exempt, which we just got. And that's a very big thing for us. I wanted to share with you a little bit about the politics of being a grassroots archives, we try to incorporate as lesbian Herstory archives and we got we have lesbian lawyer who's been donating her time and we say thank you to you much. She's never we she's never accepted money from us. She worked on this for like a year and a half. When a papers came back from the government, their first set of papers said how many guards do you have on your doors? They have really no concept of a grassroots or kind of movement. But when we read further, a lawyer pointed out to us one little thing that said, if you incorporate as an archives in New York State, the government reserves the right to confiscate the collection, if they feel it is being misused. Now, at the same time, we are considering this New Jersey was considering law and making homosexuality a crime, you can see the danger, all we'd have to do is go ahead and they could decide services serving the lesbian people was a crime they would buy the collection which in money terms, as you heard, one of our principles is we will never bought or sell but it's worth 1000s of dollars in terms of first editions and things. They I could see us we being declared illegal as a people in Harvard University collecting our archives. So we drove back in the lawyer suggested that we create something else we would create this foundation, which we have. And they call the the archives and information resource room. Now why that makes a difference? I don't know, to our people we call it archives. Unknown Speaker 1:04:29 The difference has to do with something in the state of New York called the Board of Regents which maintains control over anything from archival, educational or academic. It's something we've all a very much under the influence of it shapes in a very strong and direct way. Our education from our earliest days that includes daycare centers all those things and has very strict guidelines on what they will and will not allow Unknown Speaker 1:04:57 any questions about censorship and Anybody here tried to do research on any issues of lesbian culture and run run into censorship problems? ahead or anything you'd like to say philosophy program Unknown Speaker 1:05:08 being said the usual male Oscars. Women philosophers, I'm funny vertical. I mean, I was the only time in class I've heard of Simone de Beauvoir was as a sidekick, but sorry. Unknown Speaker 1:05:27 My Justice continued on a project I was working on my thesis which was on walls, which was a lot of encouragement for because it's very stylish runner rules, man, like stop that I'm really looking for philosophy by women. And I'm just finding very difficult I was wondering if you you have any funny notes, we know encouragement. Department. Unknown Speaker 1:05:53 cussed me out. See if I just Unknown Speaker 1:05:54 want to tell you there's a book called The new French feminism's and it's lecan structuralist and Derridean people, and Vitek is one of them. There's a whole load of the new French feminism's. And if you're looking for something, Unknown Speaker 1:06:10 I guess, also another approach, which is I would suggest maybe redefining philosophy in the sense for instance, if you come to the archives and read the poetry, and I don't mean just from this period, but read statements, you may find a philosophy inherent in works that weren't labeled philosophy because even the labels we are given to categorize our thinking reflects choice. No, but come to the archives, and I bet you get inspiration. Unknown Speaker 1:06:39 Your arm, there are lots of lesbian philosophers working around the country. Unknown Speaker 1:06:43 But Sarah Hogan, we can put you in touch with women who are teaching linguists, and do we work philosophy of language and things? Yeah, I was gonna say there's Unknown Speaker 1:06:56 also philosophy nature thesis, which Unknown Speaker 1:07:03 became a thesis I read what I consider to Unknown Speaker 1:07:10 be current philosophies, which Unknown Speaker 1:07:12 are just Unknown Speaker 1:07:13 like that, as far as I'm concerned. Unknown Speaker 1:07:18 I'm also I think, we need a lesbian World Vision. I mean, I think you know, just like seeing if you just turn the world upside down, and you'll notice we always use the word lesbian, we don't use the word woman. And I think what women will say to us, why don't you call yourself a woman's archives? It would be easier. What are some women say, why don't you call yourself gay archives, and we very clearly say the word lesbian. Because we feel both in feminist groups. And in gay groups, the lesbian woman, the lesbian experience gets colonized. So we will go throughout the ages with the word lesbian, of course, if lesbians of the future decide that they were just dying, whatever stands for the unallowable word, that is what we will be. And we never question a woman when she comes to the archives, and every woman is invited, we are not open to men, which is another thing, we are illegal in terms of certain things, but we never ask a woman at the door, what is your sexual life. And of course, to us, it's more than sexual life, it's life. But for anytime the woman is in our home, and that archive, she shares in the noun of lesbian. And we hope it makes her feel very proud. Because that's the message of that room. So for us, we would say lesbian philosophy is how we when you ask, because there are feminist libraries around town. Unknown Speaker 1:08:37 You know, I'm involved in the, in the, in the church, and one of the most interesting things is most of the women who worked in the church during the 19th century, were lesbians, and trying to get that information out is very difficult. I mean, even, you know, prove it kind of thing. And you can't I mean, it's, it's virtually impossible. But we are slowly working on that. And we have quite a collection. I mean, the first woman ever ordained by the Methodist Church and how she was a lesbian, although, you know, they couldn't find enough. Unknown Speaker 1:09:11 I think, for instance, the Eleanor Roosevelt papers are wonderful case in point that what we are really discovering is that most of the social activists of many movements were lesbian women. One thing we always ask women to do, if you're a lesbian, and you participate in any social struggle, in an organization that documented send us a flyer of that organization with your name, for instance, I put I was in the civil rights, struggle, right. And then march from Selma. to Montgomery, I was in the anti nuclear this was all the 50s Right. But I was never in those movements as a lesbian, because that was reserved for the ball around. I mean, that was my other. And yet, I know we were there in numbers, because I met friends there and what we want the future to know as we said this morning, though, we were fighting it in daycare battles that we were fighting in wages for housework that we were fighting that we are in the forefront of social change. But unless we name ourselves, our daughters and I call every woman who chooses to be lesbian, our daughter will have to do the same searching the same sense of filling in empty places that we have to do. So, let us let let us say who we are before they tell us who we were not, which is what they have been doing. Unknown Speaker 1:10:36 Could you just describe one of the new positions? And Unknown Speaker 1:10:41 is it something that we walked over to? Be like, as, as free as, as anyone else? Or do you want to continue to sort of pattern together and establish? Unknown Speaker 1:11:05 I have a personal answer, Betty, did you want to say? Unknown Speaker 1:11:08 Well, I just want to say it just brings up the whole point this morning about the changing of the title of that panel, which I didn't have the presence of mind to know where to go with that I had. But it's it's it's the colonization as it has been imposed oppressed peoples by you know, anyone who wants to dominate and domination and pervades every aspect of one's life and you have to overthrow it. Absolutely. You have to overthrow it by all kinds of gestures like I imagined, it must have been very, very hard for people to go ahead with this panel. Yes, we will be faced with someone telling you that you can't use that term. Because what I've been thinking about, you know, during the course of lunch, everything is that that's then for them to not allow you to use that word, because somehow it is reserved through for me because my skin is black. And so we can say that black people are colonized. And then it means that you they have not the ability to transfer to make the transference of what they have been analyzed. I mean, that's what we are about feminists analyzing our oppression and being able to transfer that to other human conditions. And if you're not willing to do that, to a lesbian tradition, and you're not serious about my oppression, you're not serious about my colonization, you're not serious at all. It's a it's a whole liberal kind of put, I was talking about this Unknown Speaker 1:12:16 book before. But I want to answer Can I just say, because I'm sort of the old world, the my kind of sort of disappearing in some sense. Haven't I think I talked about what's true, I have a great love for the old days. I have a great love for that red light room and a sea colony. I have a great love for the bathroom line, I had a stand and while a woman wrapped toilet paper around two fists to give us enough to go to the toilet. I love that world. I've been writing about I will write about it for the rest of my life. I don't want to be normal. I don't want us to lose as a people the sense that we are marginal. I tried the sense that we are freaks. Because I think there is a wisdom and now I this is a romanticization This is my life I'm talking about. You see, so I love it because it was me. Also, because it was so much pain when I lived it in the 50s for instance that picks you so I hated myself those days. I went to a therapist, who told me I was an emotional cripple, that I was a child woman. I sat on buses and had teenage boys say don't sit next to her. She was a bulldog and want to put my head through windows. I walked down streets in those days and had people say what should we feed it? But at that time, I thought I deserved all of that. It's only now that's why I need to ask together. Deb is a woman who came out since feminism She saved my life in some ways. But that's inside of me. I don't want for instance speaking in a place like this, I laughed when I said I dedicated our slideshow to the women who sat next to me on Barzun telephone operators, hairdressers, taxi drivers, women who came in with bandage fists from putting them through walls or bandage faces from getting hit Butch femme couples, women who survived as a lesbian people before they were ever conference is a sort of a conference would have made us laugh hysterically in the 50s What a conference. It's like, you know, how do you get all the pirates together and have a conference? I really think that that one learns from being colonized. For instance, how we run the archives people said was Why don't you get a grant? Okay, from now? We'd No, that's not how at least we have different opinions on this on the collective but I feel a colonized people learns one thing you never asked those who put you out of history in the first place to put you back in that you use your we use our homes, we use the power that we have, but they can't touch our imagination. I mean, not that they haven't touched it. But they're I'm not saying that my analysis is the right one. It's a complicated analysis. It grows out of my own personal needs. I am got an intellectually intellectually attached to it, I would rather stay colonized in this society with the truths of my own life, then go to a feminist scholar conference and think I'm a fully accepted person. I wanted to call this freaks and feminism. Unknown Speaker 1:15:26 You seem very concerned with calling yourself a playground, a lot of us doing different. We have different experiences, and so on and so forth. It seems to me that we should be redefining lesbianism in such a way that we don't have to pin ourselves against other women say for ourselves in a negative sense. Unknown Speaker 1:16:03 Can I answer that? We're not freaks, because we looked at ourselves as sprigs. But because we're looked at as freaks, we're separated because the hours the other other women are separating us it's not that we are separated, is when you are viewed as a free, you begin to look at yourself that way. I was a heterosexual almost all of my life. I was married 23 years. I have three children. I didn't realize I mean, I knew when I was in my teens, I didn't even think about I never knew what a lesbian was. I didn't know what a clitoris was. So I was in my 30s. You know, so you know what I want to finish my point. Now, in my middle 40s. And I was already in the feminist movement since 69. I discovered I was a lesbian. There was no doubt in my mind. I mean, I could vomit when I thought of a man touching me. And me. And I was always connected to women, emotionally, but never sexually. Now suddenly, I became a different person. I felt a freak because I'm a writer, I felt the freak for other reasons. But now suddenly, I was. So when I think of myself as a freak. I think of myself as I really, I am connected to women. I'm connected to who I am. They're not connected as far as I'm concerned, but they're looking at music. And that's why I feel a free not because I am. Unknown Speaker 1:17:22 I'm saying is like I feel like a preacher because I do so Good Job says, I do something that gets me in trouble. And I get off the ship. At the same time. I feel like I'm doing the best thing in the world. are saying the same thing. Unknown Speaker 1:17:45 That I think when I use the word freak, if it sounds negative, I didn't mean to at all the pain of those early days was negative. I use it with great self love. To me. It's a very it's like turning a word around. You know, it's like it's I take it did that come across right? Word freak meaning that's what they called me. They called me dyke before I could say the word. They call me bold dyke before I could say the word and when when they said it, it killed a part of me. So now I say it. Yes. I am a freak. And I want to be a freak to a world of causes the kind of pain this world causes for all the issues we're talking about. But I also have very real memories. I have for instance, when we did the slideshow and passing woman, passing women, we spoke as if well, some of us spoke as if passing women no longer existed. And when we finished the slideshow, a woman stood up, who I had always thought was a gay man. And she said, I'm a passing woman. I'm not a historical oddity. I am here. And we got to know Diane, and we got to know the burden of judgment. She bears Mary feminist groups she looks into. That's what I mean that there are, I think there's a specific part of our history. Those of you who haven't experienced it, I guess. I'm trying to recreate it and you don't have to accept it. I'm very concerned with our what I call the deepest way when I started talking about, for instance, if you want to do lesbian research, history, not on famous women, but on working women, you know what you have to go to, you have to go to prison records, you have to go to the Surgeon General's list of women were picked up off the streets because they were odd because they were wearing men's clothes or because their relatives turned them in. That is the roots of our history. And I'm just one voice so you don't have to choose to listen to me. I want to put that voice back. I want those when I want us to remember where we came from, because we've been offered high places. But we're losing whole populations of our women. That like Betty said when she looked up there are not meant many third world women. Well, you should point out to me How many women here came out pre 1966? Yep, or 90s. But I'm just making a point that we've not we have lost women who have lived as lesbians their whole life and they never come to a feminist meeting. And we struggle so