The Banshees: A Literary History of Irish American Women (29 page)

for his war on women galvanized the very cohort he hoped to quash. By the

end of his fi rst term in 1984, it was women’s votes that decided state elec-

tions; by 1986, women so swayed the vote that Democrats regained control

of the Senate; by 1988, female Democrats infl uenced election results in forty

out of fi fty states (Davis 1991, 271–72). Thanks to women’s votes, Reagan’s

congressional agenda was effectively derailed (Davis 1991, 430).

4. Although pregnant characters in previous twentieth-century Irish Ameri-

can novels considered abortion, they either rejected it, miscarried, or started their

period.

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 133

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 133

7/3/2013 4:10:30 PM

7/3/2013 4:10:30 PM

134 | T H E B A N S H E E S

A Gran Fury

The Reagan administration also inadvertently hastened the growth of the

lesbian novel. Despite the spread of the AIDS pandemic, Reagan refused

to act; during his fi rst six years in offi ce he refused even to utter the word

“AIDS” in public. Consequently Burroughs Wellcome, the sole drug com-

pany authorized by the FDA to develop AIDS drugs, was able to get away

with charging as much $10,000 annually for the use of the drug AZT, which

no doubt contributed to twenty-fi ve thousand AIDS deaths during that

period (Martin 2011, 171–72). To bring attention to the epidemic as well

as to government inaction, ACT UP began to engage in public demonstra-

tions that combined civil disobedience and activism with theatrics. They

hung the FDA commissioner in effi gy, staged “die-ins,” nominated a pig for

president, and infi ltrated the Republican National Convention. Using fake

name badges, they somehow gained entrance to the Republican Women’s

Club, then stripped away their Republican “costumes” to reveal huge but-

tons reading LESBIANS FOR BUSH. But these people were deadly serious.

ACT UP was an acronym for the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power by

fi ghting back against the Reagan administration’s stonewalling. “To be a

movement activist during Reagan/Bush,” said one member, “was to work in

the Resistance,” for this was a “war to infl uence policy and widen the public

space to live as lesbian, gay, and bisexual people” (Vaid 1994, xi).

As the decade progressed without noticeable progress on the AIDS

front, ACT UP became more confrontational. In New York City, they held a

protest in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral that drew forty-fi ve hundred peo-

ple. They chose this site because they believed the Catholic Church fostered

homophobia, obstructed abortion rights, infl uenced the government’s stasis,

and was complicit in the lack of treatment for AIDS patients. Cardinal John

O’Connor was specifi cally targeted thanks to his documented antigay stance

as well as his role in convincing the Pope to reverse the National Conference

of Catholic Bishops’ stance on contraception, which led to
Humane Vitae
.

ACT UP was joined by visual artists and activists in Gran Fury. One

of their posters used a pink triangle—the Nazi symbol employed to indi-

cate homosexuals—reading “SILENCE = DEATH.” Having captured the

viewer’s attention, the next lines read, “Why is Reagan silent about AIDS?

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 134

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 134

7/3/2013 4:10:30 PM

7/3/2013 4:10:30 PM

1 9 8 0 S : T H E W A R O N W O M E N | 1 3 5

What is really going on at the Centers for Disease Control, the Federal Drug

Administration, and the Vatican? Gays and lesbians are not expendable . . .

Use your power . . . Vote . . . Boycott . . . Defend yourselves . . . Turn

anger, fear, grief into action” (Martin 2011, 177–80). Subsequent posters,

some displayed in the New Museum of Contemporary Art, railed against

the Reagan administration’s failure to act. One graphic representation fea-

tured pictures of the Nuremburg trials to equate the administration’s inac-

tion with American indifference, conservative commentators, and of course,

Nazis and their collaborators. As co-organizer Marlene McCarty explained,

“Gran Fury’s goal was to deliver messages to the mainstream world in the

most ‘raw and rambunctious’ way possible” (Martin 2011, 180–81).

Given the history of Irish American women writers, it is not surprising

that they reacted to the Reagan mindset through an outpouring of creative

works promoting and defending lesbian issues. In 1980, Peggy Shaw and

Lois Weaver started putting on the Women’s One World festivals; in 1983,

Holly Hughes produced
The Well of Horniness
, a parody of Radclyffe Hall’s

lesbian novel,
The Well of Loneliness
(Bona 2004, 229). Between 1984 and

1987, when lesbian novels were coming out at a pace of twenty-three per year

(Zimmerman 1990, 207), Irish American women contributed almost one

half of this number.5 Unlike the 1970s “coming out” novels, 1980s novels

such as Maureen Brady’s
Folly
celebrated the lesbian mother (Zimmerman

1990, 45).
Folly
(1982) refl ects the tone of Reagan conservatism as well as

lesbians’ desire for normalcy. Rather than exploring steamy relationships,

the importance of home is highlighted (Zimmerman 1990, 91–92). Home

becomes a metaphor for the community of
women (Faderman 1991, 280) as

5. Irish American lesbian novels published in the 1980s include: Maureen

Brady,
Give Me Your Good Ear
(1981),
Folly
(1982), and
The Question She Put to
Herself
(1987); Elizabeth Dean,
As the Road Curves
(1988); Nisa Donnelly,
The Bar
Stories
(1989); Catherine Ennis,
To the Lightening
(1988); Evelyn Kennedy,
Cher-ished Love
(1988); Lee Lynch,
Toothpick House
(1983),
Old Dyke Tales
(1984),
Swash-buckler
(1985),
Home in Your Hands
(1986),
Dusty’s Queen of Hearts Diner
(1987); Vicki McConnell,
Mrs. Porter’s Letter
(1982),
The Burnton Widows
(1984),
Double
Daughter
(1988); Diana McRae,
All the Muscle You Need
(1988); and Patricia A.

Murphy,
Searching for Spring
(1987) and
We Walk the Back of the Tiger
(1988).

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 135

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 135

7/3/2013 4:10:30 PM

7/3/2013 4:10:30 PM

136 | T H E B A N S H E E S

the female workers in this novel defy their corrupt bosses and leave to form

their own company.

The theme of community runs throughout lesbian novels published

in the 1980s. Valerie Miner’s 1981 novel,
Blood Sisters
, recounts its failure

among women in the Irish Republican Army, whereas her 1982 work,
Move-

ment
, traces the gradual emergence of a feminist consciousness (Bona 2004,

232–33). Miner’s
Murder in the English Department
(1982),
Winter’s Edge

(1984), and
All Good Women
(1987), demonstrate the power of women’s

friendships. Nisa Donnelly’s
The Bar Stories
(1989) refl ects different aspects

of the lesbian community, including alcoholism and recovery, as these

women gather at Babe’s bar for company and support. Similarly, Lee Lynch’s

Dusty’s Queen of Hearts Diner
(1987) serves as a locus for the novel’s action,

representing what Zimmerman refers to as the “Lesbian Nation” (1990,

218–19), while her essays in
The Amazon Trail
(1988)—ranging from “The

Good Life,” “Gay Lit,” and “Gay Rites,” to “Portraits and The Geography

of Gay”—opened the closet door on that nation for all to see.
Mrs. Por-

ter’s Letter
(1982) and
The Burnton Widows
(1984), by Vicki P. McConnell,

expand this notion. In the latter novel she shows gays and lesbians uniting

to support each other in reaction to 1980s conservatism. As one character

explains, “don’t think we don’t have our own network. . . . People with no

civil rights have a historic bonding” (181).

Feminists played a key role in this growth. While complacent Americans

napped, feminists protested in the streets and in print against the “radical

dislocations, cruel injustices, and irreconcilable paradoxes that dominated the

American scene in the Reagan-Bush years” (Kauffman 1993, xv). Although

women’s studies had been a part of the academy since the 1970s, in the 1980s

their numbers doubled, with almost half of all universities offering course

work (Martin 2011, 165). Feminists moved beyond simply “discovering”

women in every fi eld to questioning the male-dominated paradigms govern-

ing them and expanding their analyses to include related issues of race and

class (Kauffman 1993, xviii). Mary Daly’s
Pure Lust
(1984) addressed the ways

male-created and male–dominated language oppressed women: “Women in

academia are killed softly by ‘his words,’ by the proliferation of bland and

boring texts, by the obligation always to return to elementary consciousness-

raising (consciousness-razing)—[an] objective achieved simply enough by the

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 136

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 136

7/3/2013 4:10:31 PM

7/3/2013 4:10:31 PM

1 9 8 0 S : T H E W A R O N W O M E N | 1 3 7

requirement that males be admitted to Women’s Studies classes. Women’s

Studies thus can serve the establishment of Boredom, becoming an agency of

anti-Change, anti-Metamorphosis” (Daly 1984, 324).

Across the university, feminist scholars challenged the disciplines’ canon-

ical structure, arguing that objectivity was impossible and exposing the hard

sciences’ biases.6 Irish American feminist analyses moved beyond the local

and the national to the international: Josephine Donovan illustrated the

breadth and depth of
Feminist Theory
by tracing its development from the

Enlightenment through the twentieth century, Kate Murray Millet’s
Going

to Iran
publicized the “brutal suppression” of the country’s women’s move-

ment, and Lin Farley publicized sexual harassment with
Sexual Shakedown
,

while Robin Morgan’s
Sisterhood is Global: The International Women’s Move-

ment Anthology
analyzed the many ways terrorism targets women (Kauff-

man 1993, xx). Such works outraged rightwing critics, who showed their

disdain by panning them (Kauffman 1993, 300–301). To call attention to

this practice, Joyce Carol Oates published
(Woman) Writer
, which exposed

the sexism of male publishers and reviewers.

During the 1980s, Oates also published nine novels and three collec-

tions of short stories.7 These works mark a continuation of her changing

focus fi rst observed at the end of the 1970s. Rather than serving as vehi-

cles for political commentary, these works are more introspective, refl ecting

6. Judith Stacey and Barrie Thorne took on sociological research in “The

Missing Feminist Revolution in Sociology”; Donna Haraway’s “The Biopolitics of

Postmodern Bodies” deconstructed the hard sciences; Gayle Rubin’s “Thinking Sex:

Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality” urged feminists to recognize

the effects of governmental interference on individuals’ sexual lives. The subtitle to

Trinh T. Minh-ha’s essay, “The Language of Nativism,” pointed out that anthro-

pology had become “A Scientifi c Conversation of Man with Man,” while Paula

Treichler’s “AIDS, Gender, and Biomedical Discourse” revealed that the “medical

profession’s negative stereotypes of the female body . . . put women at risk” (192).

7. Joyce Carol Oates’s fi ction published in the 1980s includes:
A Sentimental

Education
(1980),
Bellefl eur
(1980),
Angel of Light
(1981),
A Bloodsmoor Romance
(1982),
Last Days: Stories
(1984),
Mysteries of Winterthurn
(1984),
Raven’s Wing:
Stories
(1986),
Solstice
(1985),
Marya: A Life
(1986),
You Must Remember This
(1987),
The Assignation: Stories
(1988), and
American Appetites
(1989).

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 137

Barr Ebest 1st pages.indd 137

7/3/2013 4:10:31 PM

7/3/2013 4:10:31 PM

138 | T H E B A N S H E E S

Oates’s emerging feminist consciousness (Cologne-Brooks 2005, 90–91).

This new direction is attributed partly to Oates’s recognition that she needed

to move beyond a focus on failure—the theme of her last four 1970s nov-

els (95)—as well as her belief that “art has a moral role” (Oates 1981, 96).

Given the political climate, it is therefore not surprising that Oates’s histori-

cal works,
A Bloodsmoor Romance
(1982) and
Bellefl eur
(1980),
represent her fi rst straightforward feminist novels (96). In addition, Oates continues her

tradition of seeking community, expressed through female communal nar-

rators speaking as “we.” Even more specifi c to the themes dominating the

1980s, Oates’s plots feature daughters who reject identifi cation with their