Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers (71 page)

17
. Jean Swallow,
Out from Under: Sober Dykes and Our Friends
(San Francisco: Spinsters Ink, 1983), introduction. A national lesbian health care survey, reported in the
Journal of the American Medical Association,
recorded far different statistics: while 25 percent of the respondents reported drinking several times a week, only 6 percent said they drank daily.
JAMA,
January 1, 1988,  p. 19. Personal interview with Diane, age 41, Boston, June 18, 1987.

18
. Personal interview with Stacy Raye, age 23, Berkeley, July 27, 1988. Boston meetings reported in Herman. San Francisco meetings reported in “Living Sober, 1988),”
Coming Up!
(August 1988), 9(11)111. In San Francisco the 1987 gay and lesbian Living Sober regional conference drew 4,000; the 1988 conference drew 5,000. Pride Institute discussed in
Journal of the American Medical Association
(January 1, 1988), 259(1):19.

19
. Personal interview with Janet, age 36, San Francisco, August 3, 1987.

20
. Personal interview with Maureen, age
36,
Fresno, February 27, 1988.

21
. Personal interview with Jody, age 47, San Antonio, March 27, 1988. Barbara Sang, “Some Existential Issues of Middle Aged Lesbians,” unpublished paper, 1987.

22
. Joy Schulenberg, “Parade Update,”
Coming Up!
(August 1987), 8(ii):16.

23
. Regarding suspicions by lesbians of color of tokenism among “progressive” white lesbians see, e.g., Cathy Cockrell, “NOW Lesbian Conference Sparks Internal Dissent,”
San Francisco Sentinel,
October 21, 1988, p. 3. Information also from personal interview (by telephone) with Camille Barber, age 34, and Loni, age 25, discussion leaders of Lesbians of Color rap group, Berkeley, August 11, 1988. In San Francisco during the late 1980s, a Native American woman, Barbara Cameron, was the co-chair for the Lesbian Agenda for Action and the vice president of the Alice B. Toklas Lesbian-Gay Democratic Club; Carmen Vasquez, a Chicana, was the coordinator of the Lesbian and Gay Health Organization and the president of the San Francisco Women’s Building Board; Pat Norman, a black, was the co-chair of the Gay and Lesbian National March on Washington; Melinda Paras, a Filipina, was a coordinator of the lesbian and gay Community United Against Violence.

24
. Personal interview with Abby Abinanti, age 40, San Francisco, August 12, 1987. Cf. Anu, a South Asian woman, who writes of going back to Calcutta for a visit and feeling both happy to be with Indians again and alienated because she could not talk about her lesbianism, yet she observes that the lesbian community in the States does the reverse: “denies the ‘Indianess’ that is so essential to who I am, but affirms the equally essential ‘lesbian’ in me,” “Notes from an Indian Diary,”
Anamika
(March 1986), 1(2)17–8. Personal interview with Mariana Romo-Carmona, age 35, New York, October 9, 1987. Gwendolyn Weindling, a black lesbian, also talks of the frustration of realizing that one’s feelings and perceptions cannot be validated by the white community. She complains that whenever she got emotional, white women found it intimidating and accused her of being angry: “I’ve come to understand emotionalism as being taboo in white ‘cultures’,” “Righteous Anger in Three Parts: Racism in the Lesbian Community—One Black Lesbian Perspective,” in Joan Gibbs and Sarah Bennett, eds.,
Top Ranking: A Collection of Articles on Racism and Classism in the Lesbian Community
(Brooklyn: February 3rd Press, 1980), pp. 76–77.

25
. June Chan, “Asian Lesbians of the East Coast,” panel presentation, Berkshire Women’s History Conference, Wellesley College, June 21, 1987.

26
. 
Phoenix Rising
(December/January 1987/88), 20:1. See also the
Asian Lesbians of the East Coast Newsletter,
which reiterates the group’s conviction that Asian lesbians must achieve visibility (no. 3, Summer 1986).

27
. Personal interview with Tobie, age 36, Kansas City, Mo., October 15, 1988. Private Eyes incident reported in
Womanews,
December/January 1986,  pp. 9, 14; February 1987, p. 1; March 1987, p.6; June 1987, p. 8; May 1987,  p. 6.

28
. Valley Fat Dykes, “Miss Fat Manners’ Rules of Etiquette,”
Common Lives/ Lesbian Lives
(1986), 20:83. Firing and appeal to lesbian community reported in
Lesbian News
(Santa Cruz), February 1988.

29
. Buffy Dunker with Jennifer Abod, “From the First Old Lesbians Conference,”
Sojourner,
July 1987. Shevy Healey, Welcome address; Jeanne Adleman, “We’re Here, We Won’t Go Away,” speech; Barbara McDonald, “A Movement of Old Lesbians,” speech: West Coast Conference and Celebration by and for Old Lesbians, April 24, 1987. Personal interview with Sally Binford, age 63, San Francisco, August 6, 1987.

30
. Barbara McDonald with Cynthia Rich,
Look Me in the Eye: Old Women, Aging, and Ageism
(San Francisco: Spinsters Ink, 1983); Baba Copper,
Over the Hill: Reflections on Ageism Between Women
(Freedom, Calif.: Crossing Press, 1988); also, Baba Copper,
Ageism in the Lesbian Community
(Freedom, Calif: Crossing Press, 1987).

31
. Susan R. Johnson et al., “Factors Influencing Lesbian Gynecological Care: A Preliminary Study,”
American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology
(May 1981), 140(1):23. Examples of books on lesbian pregnancy and parenting: Cheri Pies,
Considering Parenthood: A Workbook for Lesbians
(San Francisco: Spinsters/ Aunt Lute, 1985); Susan Robinson and H. F. Pizer,
How to Have a Baby Without a Man
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985). Examples of films:
We Are Family
(directed by Aimee Sands);
Choosing Children
(directed by Debra Chasnoff and Kim Kavsner).

32
. Custody cases discussed in Karla Dobinski, “Lesbians and the Law,” in Karla Jay and Allen Young, eds.,
After You’re Out: Personal Experiences of Gay Men and Lesbians
(New York: Pyramid Books, 1977), pp. 156–57; film,
Sandy and Madeline’s Family
(1971); Judy Gerber and Leslie Mullin, “Lesbian Mothers: Rozzie and Harriet Raise a Family,”
Breakthrough
(Summer 1988), 12(1):27–32. Further information about lesbian mother battles for custody from personal interviews with Mariana Romo-Carmona, cited above; Tobie, age 36, Kansas City, Mo., October 15, 1988; Monarch, age 54, Kansas City, Mo., October 15, 1988. Lindsy Van Gelder, “Gay Gothic,”
Ms.,
July /August 1987, pp. 5–12. Courts have approved joint adoptions by lesbian couples in San Francisco and Alameda Counties. Baby boom: In 1986, in San Francisco alone at least 500 babies were known to have been born to lesbian mothers through donor insemination.

33
. Lesbian mothers’ groups listed in
Coming Up!
(August 1987) 8(11). Play group reported in Becky Dixon, “Lesbian Parenting,”
Bay Area Career Women Newsletter
(August/ September 1988), 8(4): 1 +. Exhortation in Cheryl Jones, “Motherliness,”
Coming Up!
(August 1987), 8(11): 14.

34
. Julie V. Iovine, “‘Lipsticks’ and Lords: Yale’s New Look,”
Wall Street Journal,
August 4, 1987, p. 24.

35
. For lesbian separatist communes still in existence in the 1980s see Joyce Cheney, ed.,
Lesbian Land
(Minneapolis: Word Weavers, 1985) and
Maize: A Lesbian Country Magazine.
Many of the women who write for the more radical lesbian periodicals such as
Common Lives/Lesbian Lives
still call themselves separatists. Personal interview with lesbian separatists Madeline, age 37, and Naomi, age 33, Berkeley, July 30, 1988. See also contemporary defenses of separatism, especially Sarah Hoagland, “Lesbian Separatism: An Empowering Reality,”
Sinister Wisdom
(Spring 1988), 34:23–33. Hoagland continued to maintain that separatism is an excellent strategy for challenging the system of patriarchy by “rendering it nonsense,” refusing to act according to the system’s rules and framework. Lesbian attachments discussed in Rima Shore, “Sisterhood—and My Brothers,”
Conditions: Eight
(Spring 1982), 3(2).

36
. Advertisement,
Coming Up!
(August 1987), 8(n):8.

37
. Quoted in Dennis Altman,
AIDS in the Mind of America: The Social, Political, and Psychological Impact of a New Epidemic
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987), p. 94.

38
. Ryan, p. 11.

39
. Cindy Patton,
Sex and Germs: The Politics of AIDS
(Boston: South End Press, 1985), pp. 3–4. Patton quotes at length antigay literature from right wing hate groups that claim AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuality: passim. Those few recorded instances of lesbian transmission of AIDS usually involve intravenous drug use coupled with sexual activity during menstruation or traumatic enough to cause bleeding: see, e.g., Michael Marmor et al.,
Annals of Internal Medicine
(December 1986), I05(6):969.

40
. Videotape of the march,
Part of the USA,
October 11, 1987, Girard Video Productions. See also Paul Horowitz, “Beyond the Gay Nation: Where Are We Marching?,”
Out/Look,
Spring 1988, pp. 7–21. Washington, D.C., police ultimately estimated the size of the march at 650,000:
Lesbian Connections
(July/August 1988), 11(1):4. Expectations and demands of the marchers discussed in Lori Ryan, “For Love and for Life, We’re Not Going Back,”
Visibilities
(Fall 1987), 1(2): 17.

41
. Vicki P. McConnell,
The Burnton Widows
(Tallahasse, Fla.: Naiad Press, 1984), p. 181. See Bonnie Zimmerman’s discussion of
The Burnton Widows
in
The Safe Sea of Women,
pp. 160–61.

42
. Personal interview with Lee Hudson, the mayor’s liaison to the lesbian and gay community, New York, December 19. 1988.

43
. Personal interview with Joanna, age 38, San Francisco, September 12, 1987. Sharon Ullman, “History and Current Concerns, or Making History Bigger,” Berkshire History of Women Conference, Wellesley College, Mass., June 21, 1987.

44
. Personal interview with Cynthia, age 49, Austin, Tex., April 1, 1988. More recently such “bisexual openness” has led some women who identified as lesbian to opt for heterosexuality and marriage, which by 1990 is beginning to create a sense of betrayal and anger among committed lesbians. See, e.g., Jan Clausen, “My Interesting Condition,”
Out/Look
(Winter 1990), 7:10–24 and the controversy that followed in the Letters section,
Out/Look
(Spring 1990), 8:4–5. Lesbians have now begun to call women who switch to heterosexuality “has-be-ans.”

45
. See Hannah Doress, “Maggie Rubenstein: Bisexual Rights Activist,”
Plexus
(Aug. 1987), 14(2):6–7. Also, space devoted to bisexual ads, etc., in
Coming Up!
(San Francisco). Mary Wings,
She Came Too Late
(Freedom, Calif.: Crossing Press, 1987), p. 39.

46
. Personal interview with Kriss, age 21, San Francisco, September 11, 1987.

47
. Sharon Raphael and Mina Robinson, “Love Relationships and Friendship Patterns,”
Alternate Lifestyles
(May 1980), 3(2): 207–209.

48
. Personal interview with Janet, age 36, San Francisco, August 3, 1987.