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LESBIAN_RADIO_REACTIONS

                                                             December 23, 2014
                                                             February 19, 2015
                                                             February 19, 2019

During one of the (many,           LESBIAN_SEPRATIST_RADIO
interminable) on-air fundraising
events at WBAI, I heard Larry
Josephson comment that when he        Larry Josephson was an an interesting
talked to people around New York      member of the WBAI crew-- his take
he often heard the complaint          was that WBAI was a *free speech*
that WBAI didn't broadcast            station, not a left wing station--
anything except crazy stuff like      it was supposed to provide access to
those lesbian feminists.              marginalized voices.

Josephson's point was that they          He once took the trouble to record
were talking about a *single*            an interview with members of the
program" out of a week of                American Nazi party, on the
programming. And yet... something        general principle that it's easy
about this one show stuck in             to support freedom for your
people's minds as the epitome of         friends, but respecting the right of
craziness, symptomatic of the            free speech of even some Nazis was
problem with the whole station.          the real test of integrity.

                                                     In recent years, the
   I don't remember where Josephson went             tension between "free
   with this point, but I would guess he             speech radio" and "left
   wanted to remind people that there was            wing radio" has been
   all sorts of stuff on the air at that             resolved by leaning left.
   station, and Josephson being Josephson            The Pacifica radio slogan
   he was probably making the same point             has shifted to from "free
   that I would: it was a virtue of WBAI             speech radio" to "peace
   that they would put some "crazy                   and freedom radio".
   extremists" on the air-- certainly no
   one else would.

It could be, of course, that the central
trouble is that "crazy" doesn't go over quite
as well when it's done in a female voice.

But then, I must say that at the time when I
was listening to these folks, they struck me      (And not outrageous in a
as pretty outrageous                              good way-- and I think that
                                                  usage was a few years in
In those days, the reverse gender bias            the future, anyway).
seemed transparently hypocritical: sexism        
justified in the name of anti-sexism.            
                                                 
                                        The separatists movements of that
   You could argue that it was a        era haven't aged well-- and at
   tactical error for WBAI as an        present I think a lot of people
   institution to put that show         have forgotten they existed.
   on the air.
                                                       I went looking for
   Providing access for marginalized voices            printed references
   is one thing, but marginalizing yourself            documenting this
   in the process doesn't do any good.                 part of the scene...

                                                           LEATHER_MENACE
   The sub-culture of lesbian sepratists seems to be
   what gave rise to the stereotype about feminists
   as man-hating lesbians.  You wouldn't think that
   the lesbian seperatists were ubiquitous enough to
   even have any kind of widespread influence, but
   something about them seemed to stick in people's
   heads.  They were arguably a more extreme form of
   an attitude underlying feminist thought at the time.

        Later, in the early-80s I heard one woman
        comment sarcastically "You know, *some* of
        us like to fraternize with the enemy!"





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