Unknown Speaker 00:01 Now, the things I say do not represent the viewpoint, necessarily a history project that this is my individual viewpoint and not a collective viewpoint. Also, this workshop is being taped. So I hope that we'll have a lot of discussion and if we get to the point and you want to participate in a discussion, but you don't want what you say taped, say so and we'll stop the tape, because some people don't the purpose of the tape is for the woman's point of view. But which means Oh, the lesbian Herstory archives will also have will have a cup of. Unknown Speaker 01:13 Tea How many of you saw the article in this week's boys on the gay backlash? Most of you, some of you didn't. We're at a particularly pressing moment, right now in history. In that there's a the Reagan administration is introducing a family protection bill into Congress. And this is an omnibus piece of legislation that covers all kinds of things that are alleged to protect the family, including such things as as forbidding state and local governments from inter being in cases of spouse or child abuse and other protective devices. But one of the things that this bill plans to do is forbid the spending of federal funding of any kind on individuals or groups who either advocate homosexuality or suggest that homosexuality might be an acceptable alternative lifestyle. And the congressional study group that to look at this piece of legislation said that if it were, in fact passed, that it could mean that lesbians and gay men would be disqualified from such things as Social Security benefits, welfare payments, unemployment benefits, as well as organizations which which have any kind of day outreach program would lose all their federal funding, and this piece of legislation has a decent chance of passing. So we're at a particularly pressing moment when lesbian feminists particularly and the feminist movement in generally and generally, just a whole coalition of progressive organizations, need to think very hard about theory and strategy. Because it's, it's, it's a survival issue, we have to figure out the best way to organize and to deal with these kinds of threats, because this is a very real threatening situation very serious. So most of this workshop is going to deal with a historical current period, that is, has some similarities to the what we're experiencing now. And that's the 1920s. Because in the 1920s, there was a significant conservative backlash and reaction against the feminist movement against the left, and a particularly virulent attack on lesbian relationships in the 20s. And so by looking at what was happening in the 20s, and trying to take it apart, and looking at the kinds of strategies, and resistance forms of resistance and theories that lesbians and other groups in the 20s tried, we can examine what they did that was useful, and a lot of what they did that wasn't to try and figure out what some of the best ways to approach are our own crisis at this point in time. Specifically, we'll look at some of the structural and economic changes that had been taking place from the 19th century up until the 20s. And look at the kinds of changes that were happening in the lives of women, the structural changes in the lives of women, and then we'll see how slowly the sort of cultural ideological milieu caught up with some of the changes that were happening, and that there was a real concern did attempt to limit and control the changes that had been happening through the late 19th century and up into the 20s. And we'll look at both the ideological attempts to limit and contain change, and at the ways that lesbians and specifically but also feminists and other resisting groups attempted to deal with the consolidation that was happening in the 20s. Unknown Speaker 05:31 What we what we are, what what I'm particularly interested in asking about the 20s is how heterosexuality, which was being, the structure of heterosexuality was being challenged and undermined by a lot of different groups, up to the 20s. But during the 20s, heterosexuality was redefined that there was a lot of new sexual a huge spate of new sexual theories that were generated in the 20s. In the phases of changes that were happening that attempted to restructure heterosexuality redefine the basis of the heterosexual family, and contain it within the limits of a patriarchal capitalist system. Unknown Speaker 06:20 How many of you are at all familiar with the literature on lesbian history? How many of you have seen William patterns book? Just? Well, most half of you, I guess. One of the viewpoints that I think lesbian history is beginning to confirm is that heterosexuality is a social convention, and that the forms and bases of heterosexuality change over time, that there's nothing natural or inevitable about heterosexuality for for either the majority of women or for any individual woman. And I think if you look at the 20s closely, we I want to try and see if the 20s support the kind of revision of views about sexuality, that lesbian history up to this point seems to require. I'm not going to read a paper, I'm just going to try and put some of these things together. And I'm only going to talk for about half an hour or so. So most of the workshop will be devoted, I hope to discussion so that we can talk about both the kinds of issues that were addressed in the morning session, and, and the things that I brought up here, so that we can talk about both about the 20s. And what happened in the 20s. And about what that means for us, when we tried to put together theories and strategies for resistance. When I looked at the list of who signed up for the workshop, I noticed that some of you are historians or have historical backgrounds, some of you are in literature and some of you. So since not all of you are historians, I'm going to give you some background on the 20s. Those of you who already know this, bear with me, it'll be sketchy. I just before I actually get to what was happening in terms of lesbians, I just want to fill in some of the historical background for you. And that's during the course of the 19th century, there was an enormous expansion of capitalist organization of the economy. And it was characterized by three primary developments, one being the decline of the family economy, which was the household basis for production, that during the course of the 19th century, wage labor began to expand. And the markets for industrially produced goods also began to expand rather rapidly in the 19th century, this has been going on for some time, but the 19th century was a very rapid period for growth in the industrial capitalism in the United States. And this kind of rapid growth had some consequences for the organization of gender. Although capitalism did not create a gender hierarchy, and that in fact, as we all know, male dominance preceded the expansion of capitalism in the 19th century, the way that capitalism expanded in the 19th century did reorder or Unknown Speaker 09:48 change some of the relations and the ways in which gender was structured in the 19th century. One of these you're probably familiar with is the creation of in the boardwalk class set But spheres for men and women and ideology of separate spheres where there was a world for men and there was a world for women. This way of looking at gender relations really wasn't possible under the conditions of a family economy because everybody pretty much worked in the same space, even though they didn't have the same chores necessarily, they work in the same space. But as wage labor for men particularly expanded during the 19th century, men were more and more moved outside of the household and women were privatized within the household and the ideology of separate spheres, at least for the bourgeois classes was very strong in the 19th century. Also, there was a lot of gross exploitation of working class men and women during the 19th century as a result of the rise of capitalism, that conditions material conditions for a large parts of the population degenerated rapidly up until the late part of the 19th century one there was some improvement for some sectors of the working class. Also, there was a very large expansion in the consumer goods market that to to replace home production. Those sectors of the population who could afford it began to replace the things that they had produced in the home with things that they bought in the marketplace that had been produced by industrial capitalism. Now, all of this, all of these developments during the 19th century, reached a point of consolidation in the late 19th century that there was a very rapid period of expansion from the early 19th century towards the late part of the 19th century. And in the late 19th century, there was a period of consolidation of this new system of industrial capitalism. During the late night, well, all during the 19th century, but particularly during the latter part of the 19th century, all kinds of Rifat radical and reform groups resisted, or tried to take issue with or take control of the really inexplicable kinds of changes that were going on in people's lives. A lot of these changes were really wrenching for people or they were incomprehensible for people. And there was a wide proliferation of reform and radical groups from all through the 19th century, but particularly in the late 19th century, there was a particularly sharp rise in both the radicalism and the extent of organized resistance, both to capitalism and to patriarchy, that there was a rise in the women's movement expanded from the mid 19th century up until the early part of the 20th century, along with the labor movement and other forms of resistance and experimentation. These groups were formed both to resist or to modify, or to experiment with new forms of social organization. Unknown Speaker 12:58 By the end of the 19th century, feminism represented a major social movement. It overlapped and intertwined with other reform and radical movements took to pose a complex challenge to the consolidating outlines of a capitalist patriarchal social structure in the late 19th century. And there was enough flux, enough chaos and enough change that radicals and feminists and during the late 19th century, early part of the 20th century, felt that they had a real chance of getting control of what was going on, that many, many of these groups were very optimistic about their chances of taking control of the economic structure or of the gender structure, and of affecting major socialist major social changes in the late 19th century in the first decade of the 20th century. The importance of the 1920s is that it's during the 1920s that all of this resistance begins to dry off, that there is a powerful reactionary move, there is red baiting deportations, all kinds of conservative attempts to control radical and reform movements, and their and radical inform and reform movements during the 20s, in fact, do begin to decline lose their effectiveness become disorganized. And a lot of the structural changes that had been happening at such a really rapid rate during the 19th century, began to slow down in the 20s. And what happened in the 20s was that it was a period of really conservative consolidation of social change during the 20s. The kinds of changes that had really, really, people felt had radical potential as the 19th century wore on, in the 1920s. The capitalist economic structure, the liberal state, and In the patriarchal gender relations were consolidated. And the the really significant challenges to those forms of organization were contained in the 20s. That was the first time that that people who were involved in radical change really began to feel that they were losing. The feminist movement on the heels of the suffrage victory in 1920, began to disintegrate. The National American Women's Suffrage Association, which became a league of women voters after the suffrage amendment was passed dropped to 1/10 of its original membership. The Women's Trade Union League and the consumers league disintegrated. The general Federation of women's clubs, which during the late 19th century, pushed a lot of feminist reforms, retrenched to privatized and conservative politics. Now, some of the changes that had been happening in terms of the occupational structure, and the organization of the economy up until the 20s, was that there was a big jump in the late part of the 19th century, and particularly in the first decade in the 20th century, in the proportion of women who worked for wages, it jumped from 1910s and not for 19 119 10. It jumped from 20.4 to 25.2% of all women worked, that percentage jumped. It went up again to 23.3% in 1920. But from 1920 to 1930, there was very little change, that sort of expansion was arrested. And during the 20s, the percentage of women who helped jobs jumped by only 1%. According to the 1920 census, 8 million women in 437. job classifications were employed, that they constituted 20.4% of the total labor force, and they were 23.3% of the female population. Out of the of these women workers, by far the vast majority were domestics, farm laborers and unskilled factory workers who worked under the most exploited and difficult conditions. Only 11.9% of the employed women were professionals. 30% were clerical workers, there was an enormous expansion in the number of clerical jobs from the late 19th into the into the 20th century and clerical jobs jumped from being the eighth largest occupational group for women in 1910, to being the third largest in 1920. Unknown Speaker 17:42 of the women who were industrially employed, almost all of these women were unskilled workers. Only 6.6% of them were organized into any kind of labor, union, and only 8% of organized women workers of organized workers in the United States were women. So women were unskilled factory workers or domestics or foreign laborers, and they were much less likely to be organized or to have any of the kinds of protections against gross exploitation that some male workers had. After an enormous expansion in women's education in the late 19th century, in the 20s, the proportion women's proportion of the total college popular population declined from 43.3% in 1920, to 42, from 47% in 1920, to 43% in 1930. It doesn't seem like a big drop, but it had been expanding so rapidly that it was really very obvious that it leveled off and began to decline somewhat. And the absolute number of women doctors, for instance, also declined from 1910 to 1930, as some of the gains that had been identified as gains by women in the feminist movement began to level off in the 20s. So the changes that were occurring during the 19th century, especially in the later part in the first half of the 19th century, in the first decades of the 20th, began to slow up by the 1920s as the new economic and gender structure that had been developing all all of this time solidified. Women were working in larger numbers than ever before married women were more likely to work. Birth control was practiced by more people than ever before divorce was more likely one in 15. Marriages would end in divorce in 1900. And that was one in seven marriages in 1928. But women were segregated in in women's occupations that were poorly paid and unorganized. Women married younger and more often than they ever had. The gains that the feminist movement had made in the early part of the 20th century began to be eroded and the feminist movement faltered in, in so called prosperous times, arms, which the 20s is, things looked really very grim for women and for workers to. But there was the prosperity that people refer to when they think about the 20s has to do with the enormous expansion of mass production in the 20s. In fact, income, the gross national product in the 20s was redistributed upward. During the 20s, the top portion of the population received a higher and higher proportion of the total wealth, there was a real upper concentration of wealth during the 20s. And that's what people mean when they say it was prosperous. The productive capacities of the capitalist industrial structure grew so quickly, up until and during the 19th 2019 20s, under conditions of mass production and competition, that it became necessary to create new markets very rapidly because all of these goods were being produced, and there weren't enough people who had enough money to buy them. So new markets needed to be created. There was an aggressive attempt to sell new products to people who weren't necessarily all that enthusiastic about buying what the industrial capital structure was producing, through the use of advertising and psychology. How many of you know Stuart UN's book captains of consciousness? It's really very interesting. It's talks about the math of the growth in the advertising industry and the use of psychology, by the advertising industry in the 20s, to manipulate people into buying what capitalism was producing in the 20s. This was an imperative of capitalist survival that these new markets be created for the goods that were being produced. It was also a convenient way to, to control the labor force, insofar as you could get people to accept that the purchase of goods rather than the control of work, was the good life. Then you had a new handle on controlling radical movements in the labor and labor militancy you could get labor groups to demand higher wages so they could buy more, rather than having them demand actual control over the work process. The Helen and Robert Lynn's book on Middletown report that the Muncie Indiana Chamber of Commerce announced during the 20s the first responsibility of an American to his country is no longer that of a citizen but of a consumer consumer. Consumption is a necessity and they weren't kidding. In the 1920s. It was Unknown Speaker 22:33 during the 20s. The sale of more of washing machines doubled. 2000 vacuum cleaners were sold in 1914 36,000 were sold in 1923. commercial laundry has increased their business by 57% between 1914 and 1924. By 1929, there were more than 25 million auto registrations and almost 70% of American homes were equipped with electricity. By 1920. The majority of American homemakers purchase bread manufactured by large baking companies and bought readymade clothing. Estimates of the weekly film audience range from 60 to 100 million. The commercial icon created by all of this during the 20s was the flapper. And she by no means represented the typical woman as we just went over the statistics for what women's actual work experience was like, or even she didn't even represent the typical single working woman. During the 20s. She was the consuming beauty and sex oriented darling of mass production and distribution. Actually, for most women, she was a cruel joke. plastered on mass produced publications as the Ladies Home Journal announced during the 20s, the arrival of the cosmetic age, the flapper image reinterpreted the meaning of female freedom and autonomy in the 20s in the interests of patriarchy, and capitalism. For instance, Stuart you and tells the story about how the tobacco industry wanted to figure out how to sell more cigarettes to women. And so they consulted a brill who was a liberal psychoanalyst at the time and asked him how they could do this. And he told them that, well, women wanted freedom and autonomy, so make the cigarette the symbol of freedom and autonomy and they would buy it. So the tobacco industry hired 20 young women to march in the Easter Parade in New York City, smoking cigarettes, and they build it as they build it as a freedom March. But feminists, were still around in the 20s. We're not particularly fooled by all of this. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, for instance, had some comments that she made in her autobiography about what was happening in terms of the pushing of this image of the new woman in the 20s. She wrote, this new century now past its first quarter has seen the achievement of many of the things so ardently striving for in the last, but it's like climbing a mountain range. If surmounted peak only shows more and higher ones. For instance, we have attained full suffrage for women. This was never to me the summum bottom. It was to many of its advocates, but I did expect better things of women. They remained, for instance, as much the slaves of fashion as before lifting their skirts baring their backs exhibiting their legs pattering their noses behaving just as foolishly as ever, if not more, so. I have no objection to legs as Barris faces when necessary. The one piece bathing suit is precisely is right for women. As for men, it is an exhilarating sight to see men and women swimming together walking or running on the beaches together free equal, not stressing sex. But these gleaming nudes and the streetcar, for instance, have no raison d'etre are merely an exhibition neither timely nor my any, nor by any means always attractive. I have seen legs yards of them, one might say, with knee and thigh and full evidence, which so far from being desirable were fairly repellent. The fine women who were making such advance and all manner of business and professional achievements are going on in increasing numbers. More and more are girls expect to work to earn to be independent, but on the other hand, the gold digger is is rampant, and as ever as greedy and shameless. There is a splendid stir and push among our youth, which is called a revolt against pretty much everything that was before Good, excellent necessary, but what have they to propose instead, so far, there has not been put forth by all this revolted youth any social improvement that I have heard of? Much has heard of the advantage of repudiating tradition, superstition, old legends, dogmas, conventions, little is heard of any clear newly established truth, there is now nothing to prevent women from becoming as fully human in their social development as men, and although just now they seem more anxious to exhibit sex than ever. The real progress in humaneness is there and will and will gradually overcome this backwash of primitive femininity. Anyway, Jane Addams also had a lot to say about how upset she was that that a lot of young women seemed to be buying this commercialized image of freedom in the 20s. The flapper image is skewed serious political protest and female company. She was ardently heterosexual, spurned old maids and bought her way to happiness. She was the capitalist patriarchy ideal of liberated womanhood. As a matter of fact, one college textbook which was published in 1937, explained that feminists in the 19th century had made only small gains but quote, since then household electrical appliances have done more to emancipate women and all the generations of agitation by militant suffragettes. It's a major reinterpretation of what female freedom is all about. Unknown Speaker 27:36 Well, you might wonder what all this has to do with lesbians. Actually a lot during the 19th century. How many of you are familiar with Carol Smith Rosen burns article. So, you know, this literature then the idea is that that close relationships between women were ubiquitous, but they existed simultaneously with with almost universal heterosexual marriage. That heterosexual marriage was economically necessary for women before wage labor expanded to such to enough to allow some women to support themselves independently. And but within this context of of universally imposed heterosexual marriage, there was a lot of latitude for loving relationships between women during the turn of the 20th century, with the expansion of wage labor for women, the possibility of some economic independence for some women. The past, the possibility began to develop of permanent commitments between women that would not exist side by side with heterosexual marriage on its former basis of economic necessity, but in fact, could exist as an alternative to heterosexual marriage. Also, at the turn of the century, there was the rise in the feminist challenge to the gender structure. And the the, the response to all of this was the beginnings of an anti feminist lesbian stereotype in the medical literature, probably you're familiar with all of this. In the 1920s, there was an aggressive attempt to redefine heterosexuality. Give it a new basis, because it was understood that the economic necessity basis of heterosexual marriage had been eroded. So, as heterosexuality began to be redefined, giving it some giving some concessions to feminist demands and female realities. There was a somewhat liberalized sexual theory that was developed in the 20s. But it involved the aggressive enforcement of heterosexual behavior for all women. The old standard of normality, and there were really aggressive attacks on female friendships, on unmarried women and on lesbian relationships. Unknown Speaker 30:16 Now, even the late 19 century six ologists overlapped their images of the feminist and the lesbian who they defined as congenital craft Eddings. Book psychopaths sexualised his descriptions of lesbians involve masculine behavior of philosophical interests, an interest in rough play or a desire for, for the vote. And that this, this, these were some of the characteristics. These were some of the characteristics of the of the congenital lesbian as defined by craft ebbing. Also, Havelock Ellis, who wrote following craft Eben, who was a little bit more liberal in that he thought that since lesbianism was congenital, you didn't need to punish it. He still had the same sets of overlap there. There's a lot of overlap in their writing between the lesbian, the independent woman, the frigid wife and the feminist. These are very overlapping characters in Alice's work. For instance, also there was William Lee Howard writing in 1900, who wrote that the female possessed of masculine ideas of independence, the very agent who would sit in public highways and lift up her pseudo virile voice proclaiming her sole right to decide questions of war or religion, or the value of celibacy and the curse of women's impurity. And that disgusting, antisocial being the female sexual pervert are simply different degrees of the same class degenerates. In 1895, Dr. James Weir, who perhaps you're familiar with, he treated Charlotte Perkins Gilman. He was he really made the rounds. Every woman who has been at all prominent in advancing the cause of equal rights and its entirety, has either given evidences of masculine femininity, or has shown conclusively that she was the victim of psychosocial abans. So I don't think that you can separate in terms of the minds of the medical establishment who's producing this literature, you I don't think you can separate their desire to define sexual deviancy from their desire to attack feminists, and contain the challenge to the gender structure that was being posed by the women's movement in the late 19th century. Now, during the 1920s, this relatively specialized literature which which had expanded very rapidly, the literature on sex just skyrocketed first in the medical journals in the late 19th century, but during the 20s, it went public, especially with the popularization of Freudian theories, literature on sexuality and on sex and marriage just was everywhere beginning in the 20s. It was written by mostly male counselors, psychologists, sociologists and doctors. It co opted some of the ideas of earlier sex radicals such as Edward Carpenter, and Goldman or FW Stella Brown. Pushing for easier divorce, liberalized sex within marriage, especially sexual satisfaction for women within marriage democratized relations between husband and wife, fewer restrictions on premarital sex and birth control. But essentially, it redefined heterosexuality in order to save it, in order to save male supremacy and to enhance the consumer economy at the same time, sex was now healthy and sex was good. So it was loving marriage so it was buying so with commodity oriented pleasure and leisure, lesbianism, feminism, spinsterhood frigidity Puritanism, in short, any form of withholding or resistance by women was not only bad, it was sick and pathetic in the 20s. These books as much as they celebrated heterosexual marriage and fulfillment showed extreme anxiety about the possibility of compatibility between women and men. And they identified feminism as a particular threat. Consider the anxiety latent in some of these titles, sexual hostility in marriage, the sexual crisis, the marriage crisis, emotional adjustment in marriage. These books were everywhere. One particularly well known example of popularized sex theory, is the 1927 book. companionate marriage, Unknown Speaker 34:52 which you've probably heard of, it was serialized in red book was a very popular book in the 20s Oh, Um, it's it's authors judge Ben Lindsey, who was a judge in juvenile court and Wainwright Evans. were advocating the kind of liberalized companionate marriage or heterosexual family life that I was describing before. He says companionate marriage is legal marriage with legalized birth control and with the right to divorce by mutual consent for childless couples, usually without payment of alimony. My cute little save, but also, I mean, most of this book sings the praises of sexual freedom and, and a democratize relations between women and men and marriage. But it also contains sentiments like this. I know women who have never married and who want to who need marriage badly. They have the notion that they have sublimated all the sex they've got and feminist careers. But I've concluded with respect to such people that they either haven't gotten much or else there is an unused surplus of bottled up sex inside of them that more than accounts for their nerves and their peculiarities. In addition, of course, they missed the companionship, the human elements of marriage, and they lose heavily by that. More than that, I've concluded that many of these people who think they have sublimated their sex impulses into something they call higher have really translated them into perversions and disorders, and a general inability to live think and feel right. The psychoanalysts call that introversion? I believe. So. While heterosexuality was being put forth as the road to fulfillment for women, there was extreme anxiety about actually getting women to participate in this and there was a counter attack on any conceivable alternative to it. Another book, also published in the 20s, by Floyd Dell, who was a novelist, sort of pink novelist in the 20s, part of the Greenwich Village literary circle, wrote this book, it's called Loving the machine age. It was another really well known book, how many of you have heard this book it was specifically written to quote to popularize a modern and scientific view of behavior and thereby to help people to live happy and successful lives. Loving the Machine Age argues that the modern economic system, the machine age, has made the patriarchal or parent controlled family system obsolete. And Dell set himself up as a revolutionary arguing that more liberated sex and mating habits among the young are better that their reaction against patriarchal family that they're more biologically natural than anything that ever preceded them, and homosexuality, he believes is a remnant of patriarchal repression, and sex segregation. He says it will be shown that by the destruction of the patriarchal family and its accompanying sexual social, social institutions, modern machinery has laid the basis for a more biologically normal family life that has existed throughout the whole of the historical period, or indeed in the whole life of mankind. As for romantic love, it will be shown that modern life puts it back where it biologically belongs, as a part of the normal love pattern, which leads through courtship and love choice to mating and family life, instead of is in the patriarchal era, leaving it outside as an illusion to be pursued in homosexuality, prostitution, patronage and polite adultery, serving nearby as a safety valve to ensure the stability of the loveless system. A loveless arranged marriage is characteristic of the patriarchal system, in brief modernity reestablishes family life on the basis of romantic love. Only people trained to live modern lives can live them successfully in love and work. To train young people for adjustments to the patriarchal system is to train them for homosexuality, prostitution and Prof. Prostitution, polite adultery or sacred celibacy. And insofar as they cannot, with social approval and inward satisfaction nowadays leads such careers, they are doomed to neurotic mal adjustments to the actualities of life. So, oh also there are chapter titles within here which also indicate the same the anxiety I was talking about. Unknown Speaker 39:31 About here. chapter titled delay and failure in reaching the heterosexual goal. Juvenile Delinquency in boys juvenile delinquency in girls, adolescents and heterosexuality is a chapter title subheadings, heterosexual development and adolescence and obstacles to heterosexual development. heterosexuality was something which had to be achieved and it wasn't easy, although it was the most natural thing in the world. Another book, written in the 20s, by Dr. Van De well, he wrote a trilogy, a very well known trilogy, one of which is called ideal marriage. It's that marriage manual that was popular all the way through the 50s. This particular book is called Sexual tensions in marriage, but its original title was sex hostility in marriage. And the subject of this book is the incompatibility of men and women, and how you've got to fix it because they have to get married and have babies and it's not easy to do. So it addresses gender incompatibility very directly. Some of the chapter titles are really amazing. Chapter Two was called primary and secondary sexual aversion. One of the chapters is called hatred of men and old mates. A large part of this book is also devoted to developing the contrast between masculine and feminine. And their chapter after chapter after chapter differences between the sexes, the physiological basis of the differences between the sexes, and how in order to have happy love and marriage, you have got to get women particularly to accept the natural differences between the sexes, which they're not really all that enthusiastic about. Here's a chapter a subheading, a married relationship in which the woman allows herself to be guided by her husband is in harmony, both with the nature of the man and the woman. Next subtitle, the woman is fortunate who can believe in her husband. But the next subtitle is, if the man lacks the necessary qualities for this, the woman's behavior as if may work wonders some times. It's really incredible. The next section is called feminism and marriage. He has this to say about feminism. He's, he doesn't want to really totally condemn it. He says, Even although this movement has arisen for the most obvious and justifiable reasons, even if it has brought or hopes to bring an improvement in or complete removal of intolerable conditions and laws, affecting numerous unmarried women, that divorced the really unhappily married widows and to a certain extent, those married women, whose married life is unhappy for reasons of a special nature, even if, even if feminism has made it possible for these women to find satisfaction in life outside marriage. Nevertheless, it produces, owing to many of its fundamental ideas and slogans, and because of the usual manner of speaking of most of its propagators, a state of mind both in unmarried women and unmarried women susceptible to its influence, which is definitely opposed the outlook built with above the previous chapter headings. I am therefore convinced that feminism has a more or less unfavorable influence on the foundations of marriage, and on the mental disposition in many marriages. So, the entire this entire volume is addressed to dealing with the challenges that feminism in was posing to the basis of heterosexuality and to try and redefine heterosexuality to provide fulfillment love, freedom, and fulfillment for women. Knowing that that is a really incredibly difficult thing to do. These riders and all of this literature this is you know, there's a massive literature like this was attempting to reestablish a shaky and problematic heterosexual couple upon a new foundation of sexual fulfillment. gender hierarchy was to be loosened in some respects, but essentially maintained feminism and lesbianism were twin challenges that came in for a unified assault. Also, those of you who are familiar with Lillian Fatima's work, she talks a lot about the popular literature, novels and magazine fiction, and how love relationships between women were portrayed in very positive terms, up until the 20s, at which point, young women who developed crushes on other women began to commit suicide and degenerate and I'm not really familiar with the popular literature, but those of you who I know some of you are, but Lillian Sandemans worker, Jeanette Foster's book, sex variant, women and literature can lead you to Unknown Speaker 44:19 some of that material. Now, these attempts to enforce heterosexuality by making it appear attractive and by attacking and stigmatizing female love and friendship, or even just spinsterhood was not wholly successful. There's evidence of widespread resistance in the existence of alternatives to the male dominated heterosexual family in the 20s. There are some surveys and about the experience of ordinary women, ordinary women, they really weren't ordinary women. They were the upper ranges of the economic spectrum. In the 20s. There's the bolos study of lesbians in Salt Lake City, Utah. How many of you know about that And then there's Kathy B. Davis a survey of factors in the sex lives of 1200 women in which 50% had homo erotic relationships. 25% had homosexual experience that established that, that lesbian relationships were not at all uncommon in the 20s that there was, we have every reason to believe that there was a widespread existence of lesbian behavior in the 20s. There are also a lot of biographies of the lives of woman identified women. The work of Blanche Cook, and Judith Swartz and Francis Dougherty deals with the lives of a wide range of individual women loving women in the 20s women like V discutir, Jane Addams, Natalie Barney Janet and Radcliffe Hall published the Well of Loneliness. Also, there was worked by Gertrude Stein and Rene Vivianne. And literature during this period gives us some idea of our pixelated visions of alternatives to heterosexual family life in the 20s male dominated heterosexual family life in the 20s. The structural trend is up to the 20s in the lives of women while bringing on repression in reaction to limit them. They did make possible a lesbian lifestyle and female existence outside male control more than had previously been possible. And it does appear that lesbians have appeared and spread up through the 20s. The problem is that the kinds of resistance that we can find in the 20s was overall limited and ineffective. For instance, it either internalized the congenital medical theories of homosexuality as in Radcliffe halls book, or it hid itself, as in the bullet study of lesbians in Salt Lake City, Utah, or it limited itself to a personal and often elitist solution to male control, like the Natalie Barney salon, or it was self destructive as in when a man's work, or it was contained and crippled by male influences in the case of Virginia Woolf. So although we have a lot of evidence of alternatives and of resistance, we can't really find in the 20s a theory or an alternative that really works for us as a way out of the social enforcement and the imposition of heterosexuality and male dominance. For us today. We need to work to fashion a theory and a strategy to resist the current attacks on his body, right? We need to develop the strengths that we already have and avoid the limitations of our predecessors. Our situation today is a little different from what it was in the 20s. This is a depression not a capitalist boom, we are experiencing more direct repression rather than the combination of liberalisation and repression that existed in the 20s. But the similarity between the two periods is that a period of great change and challenge is being followed by a reaction meant to check that change, and to consolidate capitalism and patriarchy. In the face of the challenges of recent decades. The lesbian feminist community since the late 60s, early 70s, has produced two major strategies that I can identify. The first one was the earliest one, and that was the one contained in the woman identified woman paper, radical lesbians. It's found in the theory of the Furious collective, it's found in the Alex Dobkins music and most recently in the work of Abyan rich. And that's basically the any woman can be a lesbian theory, Unknown Speaker 49:06 which takes the position that heterosexuality is a social convention, that it's not usual normal or natural or inevitable for any particular woman and not for most women that like femininity. It's an it's a social invention, meant to contain the possibility of female autonomy. And this this position developed early in the feminist movement is, I think, the one best supported by the historical evidence a little later on, and we have developed the strategy most visibly represented by the National Task Force. And that's that, and there are lesbian feminists within the National Gay taskforce that would argue that we were either born that way which is back to the congenital theorycraft or being or we became that way through psychological forces before the age of three, which is going back to Freudian theory, or, and that we are therefore no threat, and you should leave us alone. In a period of repression, when a defensive when when a lesbian feminist community and the progressive left in general is under attack, the temptation will be to adopt the latter approach, because it's more expedient in the short run, as in the campaign against the briga initiative in California, to argue that we were born that way, we're fixed in our sexual preference, you heterosexual or heterosexual lesbians are lesbians, if we teach your children, it won't have any influence on them. It's a defensive strategy, which basically accepts that there would be something wrong if we did influence your children to be lesbian or gay. And, but the pressure is on now, to take that viewpoint to organize as lesbian feminists within the mainstream feminist movement within the progressive coalition taking this viewpoint and saying, We are no threat to heterosexual organization of gender, we are no threat to male dominance, we have no threat to capitalism, we are no threat to your children, we are no threat because we can't help ourselves. Even in, you know, sometimes we put and sometimes we would, we would, if we could. I think our only real hope, as a movement is though, to expand the former vision, the one developed in the early part of the movement. And, and that's, I think, the only way that we can avoid the failures of lesbian resistance in the 1920s. And that's to hold on to reality, to see heterosexuality as socially enforced and as a mainstay in the oppression of women. That to demand that the feminist movement not only fight economic discrimination, political repression, and physical abuse, but that heterosexuality as an institution, as an imposed form of behavior is something that the feminist movement has to challenge the entire feminist movement, particularly the lesbian feminist movement, because it's clear as to us, but the entire feminist movement needs to, in order not to be trapped and contained by the attempt of the right in the 80s. To check social change. We can't let go of our earlier radical insights. We must fight not only for the civil rights of lesbian and gay minority, but against the very idea that heterosexuality is natural, inevitable or fix for anybody to be free all women must be free to love and make commitments to other women, women free of censure. We have a really Yeah, yeah. I was. Unknown Speaker 53:21 I was struck one by the fact that, you know, these blank books were from Jane Addams 40 years. And the fact also Jane has become a Nobel Prize piece and yet permitted Hull House to be used as a crude eccentric States Army. And there seems to be a very, I think we have to recognize it. And this is where I think the work has to be done a woman who got co opted and admitted Unknown Speaker 53:46 that CO option, Unknown Speaker 53:48 and Jane Addams was one of them. And willing was the other and they committed themselves to be co opted to become extremely conservative. And so the with crystal Eastman was attacked. And I think that that's really important for us that we that we haven't yet quite looked at. The other thing I think it's important is, is that it doesn't help me to know the day after you didn't do. I think it's really important that that list is kind of positive. Or that this happened at Union Theological Seminary case where Joe Clark was kicked out of Memphis, working for them because she identified that she was cooperating the homophobia by refusing to come around. And there was a coalition of women and men of gay lesbian straight. And what we refused to do was to say when gay lesbian or straight Methodist ordination committee interviewed some women for nations, they refused to answer about the sexuality. And so they turned down to the what were lesbians in the work, which was interesting. But, but the idea was that we presented united. And I think that's really important. Unknown Speaker 55:09 They were laid over again a year later. No, they never said, they never, they never went back. They refused to identify themselves sexually. But they were like we're doing. I'm just saying that that by every woman I knew who went up to the board when they asked, Are you a lesbian? Are you heterosexual? And they said, he refused to answer that question. And I saw your lesbian. And they said, Yeah, there was there. There Unknown Speaker 55:37 are women doing that. Unknown Speaker 55:39 Yeah. But it's hard to keep up. I mean, this week, we work very, very hard to use. And those people have graduated. And we have the struggle goes on. Every every three years. We'll get recruited. Unknown Speaker 55:57 We could do one thing. throughout the conference, women's Unknown Speaker 56:15 there's certain types of forces. Like how long Unknown Speaker 56:22 you could attend his life in relationship. Unknown Speaker 56:25 He wasn't. And one thing about redefinition, it was not really, it wasn't that sexuality, Unknown Speaker 56:43 hostility and aggression Unknown Speaker 56:46 really come into this. For the first time, they mentioned that I'm doing a lot of work in the 60s and take the first lesson in the 1950s. They did what they do they use psychology. They use political activism to free them from psychology. But just historically, I think Oh, my God, actually, from the mindset that, well, it Unknown Speaker 57:25 was both it was a it was a step forward, that limited itself and the nature of the step that was taken, which is what I think Unknown Speaker 57:31 is very clear about the limitations. Unknown Speaker 57:38 And also one of the things that women Unknown Speaker 57:48 we're also finding that women became, they became the things that were plotted out and also presented in the site, and the same thing, I think, there may be able to go parallel, Phyllis gets up there, which is what we told them to do to Colin is go, we said he'll get solidarity to march. I'm addicted to that. Today, Christine. Unknown Speaker 58:15 I love what is happening. Vertical solidarity. We gave them that come up with some sort of analysis. But how we keep our solidarity and because without Unknown Speaker 58:43 you just following up going along yet, it seems to me that what we often look at as a conservative women, historically have been in this has been fighting to retain the female base. And there is not just now is an incredible basis, women and women, right? all the way along. And these women have been looking to feminism, saying Oh, you're going to be just like men, that they're going to be like them. And so putting down feminist and lesbian feminist as betraying women and seeing their basic power as being a real woman, even though they wouldn't use the term feminist written by that. And instead, write yourself from your perspective and see feminism as threatening women's power. And we developed an analysis that really talks about that based on the community, what happened. Unknown Speaker 59:41 There was another interesting thing, I think, another parallel between the 80s and the 20s, in this sense, and that's that there's a commercial representation of what a feminist is, right? And she carries a briefcase and she works at IBM. And she's very, she is sort of she's not the flapper. She's in the 1980s version of the flapper and a lot of women I think that that's a really cute, and they're right it is. The problem is that they then confuse feminism with that commercial representation of feminism, if that's the only feminism they know, and they think it's horrible. Unknown Speaker 1:00:17 And they also experienced them coming along and saying, Your life isn't good enough and putting down the house lights and volunteer work and all that. So that somehow as feminists, you need to develop an analysis, which comprehends what is one kind of power, not just to find power. Dale, can I ask you, what Unknown Speaker 1:00:37 is them just puts down? I remember, this is what, I don't know of any of any feminists. Unknown Speaker 1:00:44 I hear what you're saying, you know, I believe that there's a great that these women are not just idiots that when we develop an analysis that says the family contains the structures of oppression for women, that they hear of women's power and family as being attacked. And here's an untenable tension, again, because they have deceived themselves. And many women who've been forced into the workforce, and who haven't had a refuge in the family have a similar experience. Well, you know, so much for women's liberation, we've been so called liberated all the time, and we want something else. And, you know, there's, what I'm saying is that there's a reality in these objections which we need to hear and comprehend and RnL. Unknown Speaker 1:01:37 raise a question. I was thinking about things that are said, racism as well. It's true, obviously, if you're just talking if you're looking at things through the lens of capitalism, or capitalism. So the nouns heterosexism. As another token, what happens to funny what's happening? It seems that another thing that's equally separate and important, is racism in the society. Ethnicity this whole time? Well, Unknown Speaker 1:02:19 the literature that I looked at, for this went to put this thing together with all this sort of sex literature, and all that kind of, was really aimed at a particular was not as was not aimed at the majority of women. It was not aimed at immigrants. It was not aimed at factory workers. It was aimed at clerical workers, professionals, et cetera. And so these people who wrote the sex literature, were not directly concerned with what was happening in terms of the immigrant and all of that, but there was tremendous concerns about race suicide. And I mean, immigration was a huge issue. And the desire to get the white middle class women to get married and have babies had a lot to do with anxiety about declining fertility rates and wanting to get women to cooperate and bringing them population, white populate white Native population, and all that. So it does, it falls into that framework. And that's very important addition to understand all this stuff, really, it should be put in that in that framework as well. You know, nativism and racism and fears about the immigrant hordes in the 20s. Unknown Speaker 1:03:35 So the literature tries to argue for biological discrimination is closely related to literature and social dominance. Unknown Speaker 1:03:42 Yeah, yes. Yes. Oh, yes. You had you didn't just have lesbian born in the late 19th century. You also had the criminal, the crazy person. Everybody who did anything that wasn't liked was born with a proclivity to do it. Yeah, theories of biological determination were also tied up very much with social Darwinism and fears of immigrant hordes and racism. Oh, yeah, Margaret Steiner was involved in the eugenics movement. Yeah, true. Unknown Speaker 1:04:26 This item is out of cartooning. And I think it's really interesting that music there's an expression of resistance for instance, her wild women don't sing and you know, is a real expression. Women identify resistance to heterosexual pop Adobo when Mama don't go is, you know, within that heterosexual Peridot, she's saying something about being independent and having rights and I think that, you know, be interesting to look at that. Lose black women's lose very close to Billie Holiday concludes sundown. Again, was not the news of the early 20s. Unknown Speaker 1:05:14 No, it was it was the it was the blues that the white commercial establishment decided to, you know, take out of the black community and market for everybody while the more women identified blues stayed in what race records, which ones, the blues, the more masochistic stuff got mass distribution as time went on. Unknown Speaker 1:05:45 Based on genuine curiosity, gypsies Unknown Speaker 1:05:50 reports Unknown Speaker 1:05:53 the Ku Klux Klan made a major appearance in the 20s as well. Yeah, well, they had been developing all within the latter part of the 19th century. And they really, yeah. Well, some of them began to be eroded in the 20s, too, as as new sort of more, you know, either psychoanalytic or or sociological, psychological explanation started to replace congenital theories, but Unknown Speaker 1:06:29 speaking directly to the resistance, and the types of resistance, you mentioned, seem to be very private, to any organization. And if not in the 2020s. When do we first begin to see Unknown Speaker 1:06:45 lesbians and gay men working together? Well, Unknown Speaker 1:06:49 there's public resistance, in a sense, I mean, Radcliffe's whole book Rackleff. Halls book, while it was an individual product was certainly a public form of resistance. I mean, Djuna Barnes book, ladies Almanac was not I mean, that was a totally private thing. It was only only 550 copies of it were published and they were produced for a private audience. No, that's a totally private resistance nonetheless, but it's a private forum, read Chris Hallberg halls book when went public massively public. And it was conceived by Radcliffe Hall as as a public defense of lesbian behavior. So in that sense, it's a sort of had a political basis but organized? Well, really not until, not until the 50s 40s 50s. Unknown Speaker 1:07:38 The first 40. Unknown Speaker 1:07:43 minutes, leaves the band, no matter what. Unknown Speaker 1:07:52 But we do have gay bars in New York centers? Unknown Speaker 1:07:58 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. There was a, there was a very large, you know, lesbian subculture. And the twice, it was not an organized political movement, although there were political public Unknown Speaker 1:08:08 things like read the whole book, but Unknown Speaker 1:08:11 there was, I mean, just everything indicates that there was a large lesbians Unknown Speaker 1:08:19 because there were homosexual rights movements. In Germany, in Italy, but also in France and in England. But those were mainly male dominated groups, and they mainly considered the right and the difference. One of the bases I can underline the differences in organization of lesbian organization of gay men, is patriarchy. And the fact that in, for example, in the public schools, in England on the continent, it really had an institutionalization of homosexual relations with children and in the military, amongst officers and the officers. And many of those we can in military on the low in the lower ranks, were kept dying out again, we're we're hostages of one form or another so that they were actually the institution that accommodated we have homosexual hallway that was not that was different from how to Unknown Speaker 1:09:31 come ladies. Let us not forget the girls boarding school in the woman's Unknown Speaker 1:09:35 College. institution that accommodated women was marriage. And that's it. It's within marriage, that the rise of romantic friendships and all those things that in the 20s the literature is dumping on for flourishing. So it feels to me like that those differences are mediated by patrons have to be examined. Look at the business Human how. And it's interesting that it isn't until the middle of the 20th century that men and women get together and Unknown Speaker 1:10:10 there were a few in the German movement, but it wasn't there were Unknown Speaker 1:10:13 lesbians from the late 19th century on but they weren't you. Ellison's wife was off, he was defending his wife, and he was off and became even more intelligent. At the same time, yeah, I would say that was a mixed defense. Unknown Speaker 1:10:33 I think it can also be pointed out one of the few centers in Europe where again, is Unknown Speaker 1:10:40 comfortable over Unknown Speaker 1:10:43 in Ireland, you know, a haven, and in all that. Unknown Speaker 1:10:55 So I think that it's very significant in thinking about the 20s, that when you look at Unknown Speaker 1:11:00 the literature of Unknown Speaker 1:11:03 both liberalization and repression, the medical literature that you can't tell the lesbians from. Yes, it's very significant that lesbianism was not an identity separate from independence and autonomy. And, and that to the women in the 20s is the consolidation of an identification, and lesbian which has what was good sign in advance. Now, but before that, it's it's very difficult to talk about. We're about organized resistance as lesbians and then women were organized to resist patriarchy and a lot of different ways. And one of the ways we ended up being relationships and so forth, but talking about organizing on the basis of lesbians, you almost can't talk about it until the 35th year, because there was just such a such a wide range of, you know, that was lumped together and Unknown Speaker 1:12:08 I just, I'm going to read you another little business from to show you the overlap between feminism and lesbians, McGahn and sexologist. This is case number 160s. On crack Devon. Light reading now, if you ever get tired at night, you want something to port just this is really the physical and cyclical secondary sex characteristics were partly masculine partly from her love for sport, smoking and drinking, her preference for clothes cut in the fashion of men. Her lack of skill in and liking for female occupations, her love for the study of abstruse and philosophical subjects, her gait and carriage severe features deep voice robust skeleton, powerful muscles and absence of adipose Linares bore the stamp of the masculine character, the pelvis also Oh, then there are all these measurements you know, they measured everything for her to say that she was physically feminine but and Havelock Ellis wrote when in talking about particular about the sexual sexual inversion of women said that the the female sexual invert shows nothing of that sexual shyness and engaging air of weakness and dependence which are an invitation to men Unknown Speaker 1:13:37 would you say that lesbian feminism resistance one of the things is I really appreciate married gay like definition of what a lesbian is. And she simply says it's a woman who is who is woman identified and that's her concerns are for women and she doesn't give a damn who she goes to bed. And she feels the definition of lesbianism has been defined by the patriarchy of general contact among women and has prevented women from communicating with each other and so she's well not redefined was just said, you know, I don't care. I'm gonna claim Virginia Woolf. And I'm not gonna discuss whether she went to bed or not. Yeah, the Unknown Speaker 1:14:13 great genital contact debate rages sex study group that I'm in was thinking of the Journal of genital contact to resolve some of these complex issues. Who did what to whom and now it's Unknown Speaker 1:14:30 really saps our energy. If we have to go around and look back at Gini wolf one way would be to sack the left for two weeks and slept in the same room. I mean, just saps our energy doing that. So looking at what Virginia Woolf did Unknown Speaker 1:14:42 less of course, she describes herself in her letters and when you really want to know Unknown Speaker 1:14:48 Yeah, I think that's important to look for but I'm saying that that is our energy. Right, trying to prove it, but that also prevents women there you know, I work with you as well, like I work around ball More. And I see young women who say I'm a feminist, but and the reason I say that is they're damn different things label and label, a lesbian and a pastor, a man, and a man hater, a man hater, and hostile pitch. And when they say to me, you know, I mean, that's why I love them. Because that's what happens to Unknown Speaker 1:15:27 the problem is honey, you probably hate them anyway. Unknown Speaker 1:15:30 I don't know, the myth that they love man, you know, would come out about the hostility today. Right, the sexual hostility? I definitely look like that. Because I think myth has been so Unknown Speaker 1:15:48 but actually what there's an article in signs by Ellen Ross did anybody it's on sexual advice literature in the seventh week? Well, and she talks about the fact that a lot of the sexual advice literature in the 70s also deals with the fact that you know, men and women seem to be incompatible and this is a problem so that because they have to live together and they don't like each other very much and it's the same sort of thing only not they don't call it sex hostility and marriage though they call it open marriage. Yeah. Unknown Speaker 1:16:16 I think that's magnetizing. Resistance in your model for our waters. Unknown Speaker 1:16:28 What do you think that is the role that solicitations make for both the strength a man against running and actually, Unknown Speaker 1:16:40 I think that that question is best addressed to the entire group? Because if I had an answer I'd be on the barricades with it. Don't know what do you Well, we have what we call one gang Alliance. The Alliance the lesbian was always way up involved in this crisis. Everything behind putting pressure Unknown Speaker 1:17:22 in their seats, instantly provided gender with the mid side of women, you know, egg the one contextual situation that could you expect from so I was wondering if anybody had told it coalition is what repression comes down and the first thing is Unknown Speaker 1:17:52 it seems like it seems like a really Mickey Mouse thing to say. But on the one hand, we have to make coalition's when we have to, because we're going to all die if we don't if we don't make coalition's both with mainstream feminists and with gay men and with other progressive elements on the left, and we have to make coalition's to survive. But we have to find a way to do it without sacrificing our vision and our critiques of what's happening to us without sacrificing our ability to identify what the problems are within our own movement. And without sacrificing our vision to accommodate, you know, more moderate somebody else's more moderate keys, we have to try to work together without Unknown Speaker 1:18:35 sacrificing the radical patient. Unknown Speaker 1:18:39 coalition's are necessary because coming. This is really sticky with this kind of argument, basically, for a coalition of rights. And what is the pornography issue we're talking about with this movement, for instance, the anti trafficking movement about is the right gives us money to fight against pornography, we'll take it and and particularly the right, I think that Unknown Speaker 1:19:06 will pick up particular issues that are very Unknown Speaker 1:19:11 divisive, for instance, the issue. I mean, I don't want to get into a discussion on that. But that is an issue that the coalition's become incredibly strange, who is getting involved with what legal action were, and there are the concrete arguments from various feminists that we should go into bed with strange bedfellows or whatever. So that I, you know, I don't even coalition but not that kind of the wind is real. To me, those who are extreme examples of maybe those are difficult, but I think those are areas where the mind becomes becomes body about Unknown Speaker 1:19:56 who you're making a coalition. Yeah, I think So I think there's a real clear and present danger in making any kind of coalition with any Right Wing Wing group for any reason. And that's that if you're a feminist who opposes various aspects of pornography, and then you make a coalition of a right wing, then they I mean, your issues get redefined. And the coalition gets built in a way that no longer represents your viewpoint to start with, it seems like a really Unknown Speaker 1:20:30 black folks said very seriously this morning, about who's doing the rumor spreading and who say this about one? I mean, I don't put a test and it's governmental agency to start. Unknown Speaker 1:20:57 mean just as a sphere, your biggest fear women? And I think they have is really women, I think they Unknown Speaker 1:21:04 are they're gonna play divisive issues for all their worth to rise. Unknown Speaker 1:21:08 So you know, I think you really have to say, I think Blanche said, who spread the rumor yesterday, it's great than this and lesbians cannot get it together. On and on, I think we've got to stop thinking, who's saying why. John, can you wash your hands a long time? Could you still hope? Unknown Speaker 1:21:24 I was thinking of trying to clarify for myself. What's the definition of resistances. And I think we tend to think about it in terms of organized political in traditional terms of political as organized groups, self conscious groups, for social change, and he had something like the structure of the women, community that's reporting the rollers, that's the lightest they were, they were they didn't like the wild ones coming out, because it was going to expose the idea that lesbian existed, and therefore they had this network support network of some time, it was the kind of resistance, activity and institution would be exposed. I don't know how to I don't know how to get into this more. But I think it's important to think about networks, the support network as a form of resistance and not just organization. Building Unknown Speaker 1:22:43 not us building a coalition with them, but building a coalition. Like there's better than there. Right? I mean, correct. Except, except that this morning. Well, but structurally speaking, the money is concentrated on their side, you know what I mean? I mean, no, I have no any woman who has as much money as cute. Accompany Philadelphia Unknown Speaker 1:23:29 groups like the Catholic Church, specific issues, also, I Unknown Speaker 1:23:32 mean, if you look at in who's who's interested, right serves, then is that the right serves the interests of people with a lot of money, so they get a lot of money. And, you know, we don't we serve the interests of people who don't have a lot of money. So we don't have a lot of money. So we have numbers potentially. Unknown Speaker 1:23:50 I'm often dreamt of going down to Wall Street, having 50,001 Go down watering pillows, and sitting in and stopping the exchange. Number one, you know, no, no, no, just in case. Even when the pillows are going down where they live, and then was using the numbers and stuff where they live. They don't live stream. I mean, I love to watch but I get tired and watches. And then they report and attempt to show that you were 50. And so I really would prefer to Unknown Speaker 1:24:27 or the cute trick of when the National Gay rights march that happened in Washington a year or so ago. There were what 200,000 People there? Well, the pope had fewer people. But the pope got an entire section of the Washington Post. And the the gay rights march which had more people got one photograph and a lot of 1000s of homosexuals marched today. Somebody told me they should just you know put queers take stroll underneath the photograph and I So, coverage Unknown Speaker 1:25:06 versus discussion agenda? Well, one thing that the right does have is an agenda. And it's a very clear agenda, and it may have 15 points on it. Everybody knows. One of the main tools to make sure. And it's just not, it doesn't appear to be present. Recall reason, coordination with a lot of sets, and each group could support short stuff short, Unknown Speaker 1:25:54 the article, the one on the gate on gay backlash, always talked about the way the right build this coalition. And I thought it was really interesting, because we're talking about the fact that the really the the rights agenda is really something that you cannot build a mass base of support for. So what you have to do is pick issues where you can build mass support, get that mass support to elect representatives, who can then enforce the whole agenda, which in fact, the mass base of support, cannot, would not support now that it's a matter of manipulating people in particular emotional issues in order to elect people to enforce a program, that even the rights own base would not support him home. Because there there can be no mass basis for the rights. Unknown Speaker 1:26:45 That he had been Unknown Speaker 1:26:46 labeled, according to the boyfriend, don't we get it out of the Democratic Party code? For them to be redefinition liberalism? To the right. Yeah. So I mean, it's a winning coalition. Obviously, like to sit down today and construct and agenda, or do we have to Unknown Speaker 1:27:13 have we haven't we there was an agenda that came up the Houston convention. Agenda, it's a wonderful agenda. Yeah. And it's an agenda that really could achieve a mass basis of support really has a real possibility of achieving a mass basis of support, and the way that the rights agenda doesn't, because it doesn't, it doesn't really serve the interests of anything but a tiny minority. But you know, getting it together to enact that agenda. It's something Unknown Speaker 1:27:41 inside with people who have all the information and support yourself, deliver the information to Unknown Speaker 1:27:52 everyone, everyone can get a free copy of it by supervisor central representative, a free copy of the government, Unknown Speaker 1:28:01 use your government, Unknown Speaker 1:28:02 before they tell you that cause your query, they can send it to you because it constitutes federal funding. Unknown Speaker 1:28:13 There is the beginning of attempts to emulate the the organizing tactics, the successful organizing tactics. So they're right. There is for instance, creating national mailing lists. And I wish I had addresses and all that kind of stuff. But you will find out that it's based in California, it's women with computers who think that we should do what they do for the right or wrong as they are offering free access to it. For individuals. That's one. I mean, these are small steps. But that's one thing that certainly worked directly into here. And Unknown Speaker 1:28:51 yeah, I want to pick up in this portion of the agenda. Because it isn't just a question with like your government and US government different question of who's organizing? Who is organizing this work? And what are we in this room doing and who we work with? And what happens? We got to work with people with ourselves. And these are very serious strategic questions. It's really time for us to begin to not just stop avoiding these questions. And I don't think that it's incorrect to say you build divisions in the women's movement and to make a difference. What I want to say is, there are divisions in the women's movement, and they don't go away by making jokes about that only by really seeing what the constituencies are defining these constituencies, and supporting people to organize in their own constituencies and to share the resources, the agendas that we feel we need that we have defined out of that and begin to say, well, I can support you in If we're going to be able to survive, it's going to be increasingly ill I hate to break it to you, right? We're here. People who are being most murdered today, black people and homosexuals. And so if it's not something that's gonna go away, we have to take much more seriously. But also that you make the beginning of your talk about what's actually going to be inactive legally. And figure out what are the queer the safe spaces, just as really scary. I mean, John has said about redefining resistance, and our notion of what's political. And I said earlier that we have to consider what's the power for women? I think we all just consider what's political. We don't have the chemical warfare. We don't have the police. But what do we have? We do have our own babies and we need to convert our problems into opportunities.