[PREV - UNDERGROUND_BEFORE_NET] [TOP]
LESBIAN_SEPRATIST_RADIO
December 23, 2014
February 19, 2015
February 19, 2019
Let's begin my "remembrances of things feminist" with one of the
more interesting feminist sub-cultures of the 70s, one that
seems nearly forgotten today: the "lesbian separatists", who
were apparently inspired by the black separatist movement.
This was a group of women who decided that they'd be better off
if they found ways of living without dealing with men at all.
There was one show in particular on the air at WBAI
where a group of lesbian separatists held court-- they
lamented the fact that so many of the phone-callers were
male, and announced that they simply were not going to
take any calls from anyone but women. This provoked
even more outrage than you might expect-- remember the
widespread policy at WBAI of open-access to the
airwaves, their pride at doing no call screening
whatsoever, and here you had a group of people not only
with a screening policy, but a blatantly sexist one
(albeit "reverse" sexist). They rather gleefully
hung-up on deep male voice after deep male voice, only
occasionally getting a call from a woman--
Many of the women they did talk to (as
I remember it) didn't really share
their enthusiasm for this project.
If this contentious environment was
supposed to be "welcoming to women"
I'm afraid it was flop.
At this late date I really only remember little bits and pieces
about what they had to say. I remember one conversation where
one woman said something dismissive of women who wear skirts, and
another woman in the room chimed in "I'm wearing a skirt!".
She explained that this was a recommended treatment for yeast
infections. The first woman sounded slightly embarassed, and
said in an attempt at covering herself "I don't ogle anybody."
Consider:
(1) skirts? Why would you care about
whether a woman was wearing a skirt or
the then ubiquitous blue jeans? And
the woman who was wearing one felt the This particular feminism
need to justify it, she had to make seemed oddly restricted,
clear it wasn't a matter of personal colorless, joyless... it
taste. was stuck on making a show
of high-mindedness
(2) the speaker took pride in being
oblivious about appearences. A I once remarked that
lesbian who liked *looking* at other 70s-style feminism had
women would be treating them as a mere rigid ideas about gender
"sexual object". roles-- this is the kind
of thing I meant.
They were presenting a philosophy of
a new way of living, but they didn't
seem to be comfortable with being
human beings.
On another occasion a lesbian folk-singer was being
interviewed, and she was asked the question "So, what do you
think of Dory Previn?" The singer responded in a very stiff
and cold manner-- she seemed insulted at the comparison-- she
commented that Dory Previn was singing *about* her problems,
rather than *solving* her problems.
At the time, I thought that was pretty funny: meaning
that Dory Previn sometimes sings about relationships
with men? Women were required to be pure lesbians,
and not bisexual traitors like Dory Previn?
But it occurs to me that the meaning might
be a little different. One of Dory Previn's
better known songs was "Angels and Devils
The Following Day" (1971), which was
essentially about how she liked a rough and
crude guy (who "bruised my breast") more
than an intellectual guy with some
complicated guilt emotions.
The range of sexual reactions woman were
allowed to have by the feminism of the 70s
was considerably more narrow than that.
--------
[NEXT - LESBIAN_RADIO_REACTIONS]