September 7, 2015 • 48 mins
Betty Friedan, author of "The Feminine Mystique," once infamously referred to radical lesbian feminists as a "lavender menace" that threatened the credibility of the National Organization for Women. Cristen and Caroline revisit the homophobic rift within second-wave feminism and the development of lesbian feminism in the 1970s.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you from house supports
not come hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and today we're talking about the Lavender
Menace and Caroline, when you first heard the phrase lavender menace,
(00:25):
what came to mind? Probably Grimace from the McDonald's Dads
from the eighties. Oh, Grimmath, Yeah, Grimmace do I don't know,
but I for years I got I got Grimmace on
my hand, but Burglar mixed up, so then it really
wouldn't be a lavender menace Grimmace coming along stealing all
your cheeseburger. But I think Grimace was just like a
(00:47):
purple gum drop of happiness. I don't know. Well, the
lavender Menace has nothing to do with cheeseburgers, nothing to
do with fast food corporations, and sadly, Caroline, nothing to
do with your childhood. No, it's probably better than it doesn't.
So the Lavender Menace is a not so sunny but
(01:09):
also kind of radical and amazing chapter of second wave
feminist history that we wanted to talk about because A
I don't think a lot of people know about it,
and B it is informative to the relationship today between
feminism and sexual orientation. Um. And this also is a
(01:34):
snapshot of what happens when intersectionality doesn't really exist, because
we usually think of intersectionality in terms of ethnicity. And
it's also instructive to for understanding the cultural climate when
second wave feminism and more specifically women's liberation was really
(01:59):
taking off and developing and becoming this large scale political
movement in tandem with things like civil rights and gay
rights also beginning to organize. But what is the lavender menace? Well,
as it relates to women's liberation and the second way feminism,
(02:23):
it was initially a term that journalist Susan Brown Miller
attributes to Betty for Dan, she of feminine mystique fame uh,
when describing the potential credibility threat that was posed to
the National Organization of Women and really feminism at large
by aligning with lesbians. Well, this was specifically referring to
(02:47):
radical lesbians at the time who considered women only relationships
to be a necessary cornerstone of feminism. And we're going
to talk about radical lesbians and lesbian feminism in the
second half of the podcast US but It's important to
clarify that this was focused specifically on a group of women,
(03:09):
and some bright young person out there today might be thinking, well,
why wouldn't you want lesbians or pan sexual women or
bisexual women in your feminist movement? That seems weird, and
it does, but it had a lot to do with,
like I said, the credibility threat that people like Betty
for Dan perceived. Uh. They were so worried that because
(03:32):
there was this fear of homosexuality at the time, and
this fear of lesbians, that they would almost hate the
message basically. So to give you an idea though, of
what degree of homophobia we are talking about in ne
A guy named Frank Scaprio wrote in Variations and Sexual
Behavior that quote, female homosexuality is becoming an increasingly important problem.
(03:58):
It's believed by some that women are becoming rapidly defeminized
as a result of their overt desire for emancipation, and
that this psychic masculinization of American women contributes to frigidity.
Some sexologists fear that this defeminization trend may seriously affect
(04:18):
the sexual happiness of modern women, and, as is still
the case today, the go to insults for feminists at
the time were that they were frigid, that they didn't
want to shave their legs, and that they were man
hating lesbians. And that was really the most insulting thing
(04:43):
that you could tell a woman at the time, because
again homophobia, and also it was the seventies, y'all. Yeah,
And so in order to fight the stereotypes now, the
National Organization for Women initially thought it best to distance
itself from anything that might tie the group or the
women in the group to lesbianism or lesbians, or the
(05:06):
hint that someone might not have shaved their legs that day.
So they certainly were not going to add any sort
of lesbian agenda to their overall agenda. Well, and it
was specifically to radical lesbians that they were concerned about, because,
as we'll talk about more in the second half of
the podcast when we get into a discussion about lesbian feminism, Um,
(05:26):
there were women at the time who considered women only
relationships to be a necessary cornerstone of feminism. In order
to fully resist the patriarchy, you got to fully resist
the penis. We're talking about in the bedroom too, that's right.
So how did the lavender menace play out. Well, we've
(05:48):
got to go back to nineteen sixty three when Betty
for Dan publishes The Feminine Mystique, which was revolutionary absolutely
for the time, but for a very specific group of women.
Some of the criticisms are probably not new to many
of our listeners, and we read about this uh in
The Atlantic and a piece by Ashley Fetters. A lot
(06:09):
of people criticized the book as being not only classist,
applying only to perhaps middle or upper middle class or
wealthy white suburban housewives, but also saying that it was racist,
that it literally only did apply to white women and
left out the concerns of women of color. And of
(06:31):
course there was the point that it was not exactly
embracing of gay people and that it was homophobic. Yeah.
At one point, for Dan links quote the National Embrace
of the Feminine Mystique to gay men, referring to male
homosexuality as a murky smog. So that doesn't sound exactly
(06:53):
open minded. Yeah, she had based her idea of male
homosexuality as a murky smog on Kinsey's research about gay
men that was based on men he had talked to
in prison and in bars. So it's it's kind of
unfortunate when you're basing kind of your thesis on shaky research. Well,
(07:15):
and she certainly, certainly certainly did not have lesbians in
mind when she wrote The Femininiste. I mean, if you
read it today, it's very clear that she is talking
to a very specific, white, upwardly mobile group of women.
And then three years later, in nineteen sixty nine, relations
between lesbian feminists and straight feminists took a negative turn
(07:38):
when now omitted the New York chapter of the Daughters
of Bilidus, which was the first civil and political lesbian
organization in the United States, from its sponsors because again,
like we talked about for Dan and the powers that
were in the National Organization for Women said, you know what,
(07:58):
we need to distance our salves from the quote unquote
lesbian agenda. And you know what lesbian leader Rita may
Brown said in response was see you later. Now I
am out of here. Yeah. Rina may Brown, who is
an all around pretty nifty woman. She is featured over
on makers the PBS, a O L partnership that celebrates
(08:22):
amazing women, and she certainly is once so I recommend
you head over there and learn all about Rita may Brown.
But that year late nine into early nineteen seventy, New
York Times magazine journalist Susan Brown Miller, who mentioned earlier
who herself was a legitimate part of the feminist movement,
was assigned to cover women's liberation. And it's worth noting
(08:43):
that brown Miller only got this assignment after a male
reporter they originally tapped to cover it was shut down
because the women just were like, I don't feel like
talking to a guy about this. Yeah, no way, no
way where women's lively gonna be like, hey, yeah, come
on and fella down. You're not going to mock us
at all. So on March fifteenth, nine seventy, brown Miller's
(09:08):
piece Sisterhood Is Powerful is published in New York Times magazine,
and this is really when the whole lavender menace thing
kind of blows up. So it includes this bit she wrote, quote.
The super sensitivity of the movement to the lesbian issue
and the existence of a few militant lesbians within the
(09:28):
movement once prompted for Dan herself to grouse about the
lavender menace that was threatening to warp the image of
women's rights. A lavender herring, perhaps, but surely no clear
and present danger. And of course brown Miller meant the
herring comment to discredit for Dan and for Dan's nervousness
(09:50):
about lesbians and including lesbians in the movement. However, unfortunately
a lot of radical lesbians took it to discredit them,
as if brown Miller was saying, don't worry about those
little lesbians. They're not going to be able to organize
and cause any sort of political upheaval. So, in response
to this whole thing, members of the Gay Liberation Front
(10:11):
break off to form the Radical Lesbians, who also call
themselves the Lavender Menace. They're reclaiming this insult, you know,
attributed to for Dan, and they decide that they are
going to organize and strike back at now Yeah, and
so on May one, ninety they strike the Second Congress
(10:33):
to unite women and they quote unquote zapp the event.
So basically they had plans in advance. They run in,
they turn out the lights in this gathering of women.
They end up storming the stage once the lights come on.
There they are, they're on stage, they're in the aisles,
and they hand out copies of the woman identified woman
and they happen to be wearing some pretty cool homemade
(10:55):
lavender minace shirts, which would be awesome if those were circulated. Again,
not saying you have to buy anyone, but would be great.
So the Woman Identified Woman, by the way, was the
Radical Lesbians manifesto, and Caroline, can I read a little
bit from the beginning of the Woman Identified Woman please?
I mean, this is one of the best intros to
(11:15):
like a pamphlet type thing that I've ever read. Yeah,
and I posted this on our Instagram and the comments
on it were pretty entertaining. What is a lesbian? A
lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the
point of explosion. She is the woman who, often, beginning
(11:37):
at an extremely early age, acts in accordance with her
inner compulsion to be a more complete and freer human
being than her society, perhaps then but certainly later, cares
to allow her. The Radical Lesbians, in other words, we're
not messing around, because being a lesbian was not only
(11:58):
sexual orientation. It was an entire political philosophy in a
lot of ways, and it actually turned out pretty well.
It seems like the Radical Lesbians ended up leading workshops
at the Second Congress to unite women talking about how
to educate other women about their politics and platforms and
(12:24):
the thing though that's really interesting to consider. I mean, again,
this is not that long ago. It's in the early seventies, um,
but but still might seem so foreign for us today.
But there was this real conflict um for straight feminists
who were concerned maybe not so much with lesbianism in particular,
(12:46):
but really the focus on sex. There was this misconception
that everything was all just about sex, and that lesbians
were telling them, well, no, instead of having sex with men,
you have to now have X with women. And Coott
was one of the writers of this time who took
issue with that, and she was essentially saying in one
(13:07):
pamphlet we read from I think ninety one so the
following year after the Second Congress, to women that it shouldn't,
in her opinion, it shouldn't be about who you're sleeping with,
whether you want to be a radical lesbian, or you're straight,
or you're a sexual or whoever you are. That true
political power doesn't lie, and who gets in your bed
is what you do with it. So fine, you want
(13:29):
to say that you're gonna be a lesbian to align
yourself with the radical lesbians, or that you just are
a lesbian, like that's all well and good. Take that anger,
that willingness to turn away from men and the patriarchy
and actually put it towards dismantling the system. Well, and
it's worth noting to how women's liberation had really been
(13:51):
considered a refuge from all of those cultural sexual pressures
that women in the time had been feeling. So it
is a understandable that some reacted with hesitation. But with
this knowledge, radical lesbians really pivoted their message away from
sex because for them it was not about sex, But
(14:14):
when it came to the sex factor, they emphasized sensuality, lifestyle,
and purity, essentially saying like these are the purest possible
kinds of relationships that women can have. Because also there
was a criticism that well, lesbians were simply mimicking the
male role and just to sexually exploit women, which of
(14:37):
course also was not the case. Yeah, they're really removing
sexuality from their message to make it more about not
being dependent on men. Part of that was to clarify
the message. Part of that, I think was to make
the more mainstream street feminists comfortable so that like everybody
can get along and sort of work together, because Rina
may Brown pointed out over in one of her videos
(15:00):
over at Makers that prior to the Lavender min Is
striking the Second Congress to Unite women, basically after for
Dan had kicked the lesbians out, the movement really suffered.
It became weaker, it became more divided. You took out
a passionate element from your movement. So of course it's
going to be weaker. And so whether they are considering
(15:21):
themselves radical lesbians or whether they're sort of pivoting their
message to make the mainstream a little more comfortable, they're saying,
let's work together and fight for political power. Well well,
speaking of politics, so one point that Rita may Brown
maid whom we should note is a best selling author,
(15:41):
She argued that when those lesbians initially left that movement,
that they took the culture with them, and that the
only thing now was focused on we're just straight political platforms,
as is really still the case today in a lot
of ways and terms of um quote unquote mainstream feminism.
(16:03):
But we do see the factions coming back together again
at least a little bit. In September nine, the National
Now Conference passed a resolution on lesbian as a legitimate
concern of feminism as well as it should be noted
the quote double oppression of minority women. So finally, in
(16:25):
ninety one, now is starting to like really pay attention
to the fact that, hey, not all this white straight women. Um.
And it's also in nineteen seventy one that the Radical
Lesbians disband, and also too, in a show of solidarity
to to kind of see how this is progressing, some
straight feminists started identifying as political lesbians just to you know,
(16:52):
really ally themselves with those women. And so it took
a minute, but in nine seventies seven, fre Dan herself
for cants that lavender menace bigotry and pledges support for
lesbian's rights by seconding the motion to support Lesbian Rights
at a Women's Confidence in Houston. It was held to
(17:13):
ratify the United Nations Platforms for Women. And we should
say too that in the maker's interviews, which if you
can't tell, yeah, you should watch them, and those makers
interviews with Rida may Brown, she does talk specifically about
Betty fre Dan, and she says I always respected her.
I didn't always agree with her, obviously, but she was
(17:36):
instrumental in this massive movement, and she kind of laughs
about how Fredan was always very hesitant to say anything
publicly about how she had been wrong on the so
called lesbian issue. But I thought it was notable of
Rida May Brown to just be like, yeah, I mean
(17:56):
I respected her, but I mean it didn't mean I
necessarily liked her all the time, which again to me,
just goes to show how she's a pretty cool lady
brand a Brown, and I should say to Caroline that.
In the HBO documentary about Gloria Steinham, this issue also
gets a brief mention, and Steinham talks about how she
(18:19):
and fre Dan definitely did not see eye to eye
when it came to the gay issue, because that was
something that Steinham always stood on behalf of in terms
of being more inclusive. So props to Gloria, you know,
all glow um. But now that we've talked about, you know,
(18:41):
what the lavender menace was, we do want to talk
more about lesbian feminism and get a little bit more
into radical feminism that was going on in the seventies
and eighties again, because I feel like this is history,
feminist history that we might know about in broad brushstrokes,
(19:02):
but maybe not in more of the details. Well, and
I mean, I think that's part of the problem, in
that voices of women outside of that white, middle class,
straight mainstream have frequently been and consistently been uh silenced
or just place lower on the totem pole. And I
(19:24):
just think too that it's important for us to understand
how feminism has evolved and all of the various schools
of thought that are contained within it. And I mean
the fact of the matter is, as we'll talk about
more when we get into lesbian feminism, that you know,
(19:46):
trying to find the perfect feminism, I think it is
rather impossible, and it's perhaps more beneficial rather than seeking perfection,
to glean the lessons learned earned from and through these
various feminisms. Yeah, well, I mean exactly feminisms plural, because yes,
(20:08):
I mean I think if you're going to use a
broad brush and paint with a broad feminist brush, yes,
everyone who might consider themselves a feminist would talk about
uh political standing, rights, access, gender equality. Yeah, but there
are more nuances, although some of those nuances are more
radical than others. So in the nineteen seventies, as second
(20:31):
wave feminism and women's literation is developing. This thing called
cultural feminism is really branching into major directions. There's the
idea of resisting sexism by changing institutions, things that we
would think about today in terms of like getting for
aggressive feminist women elected to office, women owned businesses, starting
(20:55):
and supporting those. And then there was an option out
from that which took things a little bit further, to
say the least, and this was lesbian separatism. Yeah, this
was this was sort of what made Betty for Dan
uncomfortable when she was heading up now and so in
the late sixties and seventies and even really today, to
(21:18):
some extent, some women's liberationists believed that not only were
feminism and lesbianism inextricably linked and that that was the
lifestyle that you should pursue and aspire to, but that
literally the women who considered themselves to be radical lesbians
were the vanguard of the feminist movement. They said, hey,
(21:40):
we rejected these patriarchal sex roles, We rejected men before
any of you guys did. We're the we're the original
hipster of the feminist movement. And it was this separation,
or this desire to be separate that did sort of
drive a lot of people away, but it certainly attracted
a lot of people to that movement as well. Yeah,
and in terms of that idea of lesbians being the
(22:04):
vanguard of the feminist movement, um, we can go back
quickly to the Woman Identified Woman Manifesto, which at one
point said only women can give each other a new
sense of self. We must be available and supportive to
one another and give our commitment and our love. And
that's something to keep in mind in terms of how
(22:27):
radical feminism not only called for gender equality but also
liberation from sex roles, which of course the radical lesbians
would then take a step farther. And this was something
that Ann Cote wrote about in nineteen seventy one, and
we found it over at the Chicago Women's Liberation Union
(22:47):
Archive online, which is a really great resource. Um. So,
Anne wrote about how other gay women see lesbianism as
much more than a defining term for the sex of
your bed partner of them. It's a total life commitment
to a life with women in an entire system of
worldview and life living. And that also gets to why
(23:11):
you know, we're using the term lesbianism, which makes it
sound like not like a sexual orientation or even identity,
but rather this whole thing, because it was this whole thing,
an entire worldview. Yeah, because, as Ancott also pointed out,
she was like, hey, ladies, like, it's fine if you're
a lesbian, but sexism and sex roles that you're talking
(23:31):
about don't disappear just because you're not sleeping with men,
just because you're sleeping with women. And so she was
sort of pushing for well, I don't know that she's
pushing for lesbianism as you were just talking about a
Christian but she was pushing for just a little bit
of an oop behind turning the idea of turning away
from men. Ladies, Let's get some o. Yeah, let's get
(23:53):
some get some volumes, get our op back, and don't
just turn away from men. Sure fine, but use as
a political force. Use your efforts and your energy as
a political force. I'm just imagining feminism as a woman's
head of hair, and this whole radical lesbian thing being
like a bumpet, you know, in in these terms one
(24:14):
of those would it be like a bun donut thing?
Yeah too, I like the bump of stock bun. Yeah. Um,
So when it comes though to lesbian separatism. They were
advocating for living away from men entirely because they really
believed that liberation meant living away from men, that that
(24:35):
was the only way to truly achieve female liberation. And
it's worth noting that this group was very much more
on the fringes. But out of this though, a lot
of women only spaces emerge, some of which were more
of the consciousness raising types of like the safe spaces
(24:55):
that we think of more in terms of online spaces today,
but they also went as far as entire living arrangements
that you know, specifically banned men from the premises. Well yeah,
and as Rita may Brown talks about in some of
the maker's videos, it was literally like the first time
that some of these women had ever experienced anything like that,
(25:17):
I mean, and talking about it aside from from whether
you were a lesbian or not. Um she talks about
how the trajectory of so many women's lives was just Okay,
you're someone's child, and then maybe you go to college
and probably might live in a sorority house, so you're
still living with other women, but still with the goal
of well, as soon does that phase of your life
(25:38):
is over, You're going to be in someone else's house, uh,
in marriage, so you never quite break out and learn
to live life on your own. And so they were
definitely advocating for women almost to learn how to live,
how to be on their own and be themselves and
be okay with that. Yes. An example of this was
(26:01):
a group called the Furies that splintered off from the
Radical Lesbians, and they were collective trying to prove that
they could live without men, to the point actually that
activist Alice Wolfson was told that she could not bring
her infant son to a Furies meeting because he had
(26:22):
a penis, Like literally no pains allowed. That baby is
the enemy. And the Furies, who I want to say,
Rita May Brown was a part of. Weren't just living together.
They created their own newspaper. They had a childcare center,
although I wonder the childcare center accepted boy babies as well.
(26:45):
I'm gonna assume so. And they also, as she talks about,
had a car repair school, because back then, as is now,
women taking their car to the shop was usually not
that fun of an experience. Yeah, and Brown talks about
how this group ended up inspiring other such collective houses
(27:08):
or safe spaces and even women's festivals where yeah, sure
you had women performing and women attending, but you also
had women on the tech side running the lights, running
the sound and all of that stuff which paved the
way for Lilith Fair. Thank you so much the end. Also,
I'm now wondering, with all of the nineties nostalgia happening,
will Lilith Fair come back? Well, I just saw Sarah
(27:29):
maclocklin just performed somewhere. I'm so informative, but I grew
up like listening to that somewhere on the planet Saram
Glocklin played a guitar. And one example of how this
was happening to not only in New York this, uh,
if we go over to Seattle, there was a y
m c A there that became a hub for feminist
(27:51):
activity in organizing and really became one of those women
only spaces, and it actually moved away from the y
m c A to further demarcate it as a safe
space for women so that you wouldn't like walk out
the door and then all these guys going to the
y UM. And we mentioned this too in our episode
(28:13):
a while back on women and farming. Yeah, exactly. It
was the nineteen seventies Women's Land movement Women with a Y.
You had radical feminist farming, separatist agricultural communities things like
Yellow Hammer and Woman Share in order to achieve that
effort to fully liberate themselves from men and from the patriarchy.
(28:34):
And we had cited a great piece in Modern Farmer,
which I believe in that episode, Kristen and I could
not stop talking about how that was our new favorite magazine.
And speaking of magazines, these groups even had their own
independent publications and newsletters like Country Woman and so as
we talked about in that episode. Not to like completely
go off on a tangent, but it almost wasn't so
(28:56):
much about the farming. It was certainly obviously there was
an effort to grow food and eat it, but it
was just more of that idea of like, look, we
don't need men to provide our every little need. And
did that desire for independence also get into what could
be considered misonry of just straight up man hating. Yeah,
(29:23):
I mean the answer is yeah, yeah, to the point
where even butch lesbians were looked down upon, considered unhealthy.
It's not it's not healthy for for lesbians or lesbianism
or feminism for you to try to assume the role
of the man, because you know, not only are you
trying to put yourself above someone who is feminine or female,
(29:45):
but you're adapting the same like sexual objectification that men do. Yeah,
it was referred to as male identified role playing and
something that was very dangerous and and in some of
these circles, rather than masculine, feminine androgeny was the philosophical
(30:07):
And you do have people like Valeria Salani's writing things
like the Scum Manifesto, which described women as essentially perfect
and men as the sources of all that's wrong with
the world. And this is beyond examining something through the
lens of a patriarchy, but rather looking at the individual
(30:31):
men as humans and saying you are you, individually are
the root of all evil, not these structures, that societal
structures that we have erected and um. In Scum Manifesto,
Salonis maintains that true love can only exist between two women.
And the thing is, I mean again, we said a
(30:52):
few minutes ago that all the feminisms are not perfect,
and this is by no means perfect, That is, by
no means inclusive in a way, this is doing exactly
what feminism in its essence of gender equality is fighting against,
which is deliberately excluding roughly half the population and kind
(31:13):
of echoing that. Maybe not the same exact sentiment, but
Adrian Rich who was writing at the time to envisioned
a lesbian continuum of woman identifications. So maybe you were
actually literally a lesbian, or maybe you were just turning
away from men, but she felt, or she wrote that
she felt that these types of connections would end up
(31:33):
weakening heterosexualities embrace of the patriarchy. So yeah, you had
actual literal man hating, individual man hating, and then you
had people saying, we just whether you're a real lesbian
or a political lesbian, we just have to turn away
from men and the things that men have set up
in society. And considering the context of the time, I
(31:58):
can understand where some of these women were coming from,
where it probably did feel necessary to divorce themselves entirely
of what was such a heinously sexist culture at the time.
But standing where we are today, um that that doesn't
seem like much of a path toward progress, because you
(32:20):
also have issues like bisexual erasure going on as well,
because sleeping with men, according to some, was considered prostituting yourself.
So obviously, you know, you have political lesbianism, and if
I mean, if you're still attracted to men in whatever
way that might be, that's just not okay if you
want to achieve your full feminist potential. And of course,
(32:42):
when it comes to race and class issues, lesbian feminism
wasn't all encompassing and intersectional either, which is kind of
ironic considering that this broke off from the quote unquote
mainstream movement because of feeling isolated and ignored and overlooked
(33:05):
and simply disliked. And while radical lesbians certainly vocally supported
all women, it still was a mostly white, middle class
and educated community of women talking about things. It's not like,
Asrida may Brown, It's not like a lot of these
activists were thinking about women who might be in a
(33:27):
poor inner city environment, or in a poor farm community
or working at a diner. There were people who were
less economically advantaged, who were on the margins, who weren't
really included in this movement. Well, I mean, and even
if they were living in one of those communities. As
you know, some of these women have talked about since
(33:48):
if they didn't have kind of the lingo in the
background and the college education, um, they were considered, you know,
just just sort of I don't want to say hicks
in a way, but but kind of they were the
ones who would get more of a sidea in terms
of their gender presentation if they were dressing more butch
(34:12):
um and and things like that. And there was also
a group of black lesbians at one point who felt
excluded from the whiteness of lesbian feminism and the straightness
of black feminism and the sexism of the Black Power
movement and ended up breaking off to form their own
group called the Kombahi River Collective in nineteen seventy five,
(34:36):
and the collective statement they wrote in nineteen seventy seven
kind of sums up all of these things, all of
these oversights. You know, still, after all of these layers
of you know, groups, breaking off of groups, breaking off
of groups, finally you know they are able to have
(34:56):
a space where they're specific needs and concerns are valued.
And in their collective statement they specify how committed they
are to struggling against oppression, including racial, sexual, heterosexual, and
class oppression, and They write that we see as our
particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based
(35:19):
upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking.
The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives.
You just can't separate these things from each other, which
is what people are still arguing in terms of uh
intersexual feminism today. These things do not exist in a
vacuum apart from each other. And it might sound like
(35:42):
the answer to all of this is, well, burn it
down feminists and less these lesbian feminists got it wrong
and radical feminism was horribly exclusive, so everything is terrible
about it. No, I don't think that that's the case
at all. A lot of us was laying the foundation
for feminist theory and when in studies and what would
eventually become queer theory, challenging a lot of and examining
(36:06):
in a productive kind of way things that people like
Adrian Rich you know, we're writing about um and just
pushing pushing it forward more and more. And UM, I
think I don't think there's anything wrong with admitting that
fringes exists on any kind of spectrum. And I think
(36:29):
that you know, we can learn things from them as well. Yeah,
I mean, we can learn things from the fringes just
as we can learn things from the mainstream. As long
as there are people like Susan b. Anthony or Betty
for Dan who in their individual waves of feminism did
a great deal to help people but also consciously excluded
(36:53):
many others. Um, I think we can just keep in
mind that these movements will always have fringes, people who
are willing to raise their hand and speak up and
say I don't see the world like that. I have
a voice to in this. Yeah, I mean, and it's
also important, I think, for us to know where we've
come from in order for us to better see where
(37:14):
we are and where we can go. It's just learning
from learning from the past about you know, then the
deuce and don'ts what worked and what didn't. Being being
afraid to acknowledge it too, I think is you know
doesn't do us any good either, So looking at it today, Yeah,
it's unfortunate that second wave feminism wasn't perfect. Wouldn't that
(37:38):
have been great if somehow standing right there in the
six season seventies with everything going on in culture where
it was if you know, one woman. We want to
put it all on the shoulders of like a group
of women of like you know, Betty for Dan or
Glorious dynam Arita may Brown or whoever, and say that
one of them somehow had perfect vision through all of that.
(37:59):
Would we have a podcast or wouldn't be the same?
I don't know that we would need one. I mean,
like who that's the question. It's like, would that have
even been possible to see through all that? There were
a number of women who were doing that, who were
being as inclusive as possible. Um, But I think it's
also you know too, if you were to talk to
(38:20):
lesbian separatists who are living back then today, they will
probably say, well, what other choice did we have? And
that's something to consider as well. So I am really
curious to hear listeners responses to this episode because it's
a little bit different from what we normally do. We
(38:41):
haven't taken a deeper dive just into a discreet chapter
in feminist history and quite a long time. So did
it leave you with any particular impression or does it
inform today's feminism a little bit more? For you? Caroline? Well,
(39:01):
I mean it just made me think about what happens
when groups of people are essentially forced out of a
movement and what can come from that, And yes, the
result can be radical, but I think really fascinating things
can come out of the work that excluded groups do,
and that can really trickle down and inform future movements
(39:22):
and future activists, because it's not as if the conversations
that radical lesbians and the lavender menace we're having in
the sixties and seventies, It's not as if those conversations
have gone away, oh exactly, yeah, And which is why
I think it's so important for us to understand this,
and for me, I was especially curious to learn more
(39:43):
about this concept of radical feminism, specifically happening in the
nineteen seventies, because being radical and being radical feminist is
still a go to insult today. I mean, these same
kinds of stereotypes and assumptions that Betty Rittan, you know,
was really trying to navigate now around in terms of
(40:06):
making you lesbian who hates men and never wants to
shave her legs, those things are still so alive and well.
And I noticed, especially on stuff I've Never Told you
YouTube channel, that the insults that I get if I
talk about feminism, are usually you're just you're you're radical feminists.
(40:28):
You're just one of those radical feminists. Or the compliment
in quotes that I get from people like that is, oh,
you're not like one of those radical feminists. But what
does it really mean? What do those people really know
what they're talking about? And when I respond to I
really know what I'm talking about? Because I don't, I
think the answer has been no. You know, I think
that radical feminism doesn't mean what a lot of people
(40:51):
think it means. Well, it seems like when people are
commenting on the YouTube videos, you're radical if you talk
or exists in the world as a woman outside of
the home, or even if you're in the home. Um
and so, no, I don't think that a lot of
people have this historical context in their back pocket about
(41:13):
women who actually were like no to heck with all
of this. Well, by that definition, the lazy, incorrect definition
of radical feminism is that it equals hating men, that
it equals mis andry, which that is not what radical
feminism was. Radical feminism promoted gender equality, but was and
(41:35):
is committed to, you know, dismantling these entire roles that
were set up as well. And this might be a
radical concept, but I think that that can coexist with
not hating men. I don't think that they're mutually exclusive.
But is there that ven diagram where we get into
(41:57):
you know, the not ironic mis anddrist space. Yeah, yeah,
it's possible. It is possible. Well, now get again, listeners.
We want to hear from you all of your thoughts
about the lavender menace and lesbian feminism and intersectionality and
where we've come from in the progress that still needs
to be made. Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot
(42:19):
com is our email address. You can also tweet us
at mom stuff podcasts or messages on Facebook, and we've
got a couple of messages to share with you right now. Well,
I have a letter here from Lena in response to
our Asian Fetish episode. She says, I was thrilled to
(42:40):
see that you recorded a podcast on yellow Fever. It
was definitely entertaining. But as far as describing it as
a preference, like preferring blondes or tall women, people don't
project personality traits and cultural traits onto people because they're
blonde are tall. Unfortunately, even those men who claim they
just like our look due to and to get upset
and we don't fit their stereotypes. As of today, we
(43:03):
are expected to take I love Asians as a compliment.
Men get more upset if Asian women reject them because
they feel somehow entitled, and this includes Asian men at times.
Among my friends, we've come up with our own ideas
about the type of man who have yellow fever, and
none of them are good. To be fair, a lot
of them have married interracially. Among husbands, the men in
(43:24):
our lives think of Asians as demure women who all
fit into one box, as laughable. While they have friends
who've said awkward things to all of us. The men
we partner with their embarrassed to repeat the things they've heard.
So as an Asian women, good guys do exist, They're
just a lot harder to find among the plethora of
men who are just creepy. As for Asian men, they
(43:44):
could use their own podcast. In part because they historically
took quote unquote female jobs, it was not to be
a threat to other men. When first immigrating to the US,
Asian men are systematically stereotype as being weak, feminine, unattractive,
and many things, they are simply not in most cases.
So thanks for another great podcast, and thanks for your
letter and episode suggestion, Lena, And I've got a letter
(44:07):
here from Elizabeth about the same episode, and Elizabeth wrote
us the most in depth letter, and Caroline, I honestly
wish I could sit here and read the whole thing,
but I cannot, so I'm going to read a couple
of excerpts. She begins, I was really pleased to hear
(44:27):
and listen to your podcast about Asian fetishes because it's
the thing I have to deal with as an Asian woman,
and it was nice to have a more diverse perspective
of the trials and tribulations of being female. The Asian
experience is particularly riddled with a lot of caveats, though,
and I feel like there's still more you could go into,
but perhaps a future podcast. And she goes on to
(44:48):
talk about the challenges of dating, and she says it
doesn't get much easier quote unquote dating in for Asians either,
because the dynamics of the Asian American population are different
and much more diverse than most other minority groups in
the US. My family is on the older side, and
it's been in the US since before Chinese exclusion, and
(45:09):
I found that gives me an interesting experience different from
many of my friends. The funny thing about your podcast
for me is that the media comments that Anime Wong
got about how she's Chinese and doesn't have an accent.
I still get today. Like just a few months ago,
I got picked up by an uber and it was
by some guy who was an immigrant himself. But when
he was speaking with me and I told him I
(45:31):
was Chinese American, he was literally shocked that I spoke
perfect English with no accent. That was this year. His
reasoning was that he picks up people from Korea Town
and from East l A who are Asian and maybe
second generation American, and they still have accents, so he
literally didn't think someone like me existed. That's kind of whatever.
But I explained to him that my family has been
(45:51):
in the country for over a century, so we're all
acclimated to being American and speaking English. And then later
on she goes on to talk about how all of
this illustrates a much bigger problem about growing up Asian American.
I don't think it's intentional on your part or even
on the part of anyone else trying to stand up
for Asians or promote Asian content. But one of the
(46:12):
really difficult things is getting people to understand the Asian
American interests and issues are different from Asian issues in
East Asia. That sounds really simple when I stated that way,
but in practice it's very hard. For instance, MTV and
other media companies aim a lot of their content for
Asians by using Asian bands, musicians, anime, movies, etcetera. At
Asian Americans and think that counts as content for us.
(46:35):
In some ways, it does, but no one pays attention
to Asian American bands or comedians or actors as much.
A lot of those same programs that work on making
the content don't go looking for the Asian American artists
growing up in San Francisco or l A. Instead of
looking locally in America, they go straight to Asia. Asians
from Asia don't speak to all of our issues as
(46:56):
Asian Americans. We do have an interest in that content.
That content isn't expressive of the spectrum of our entire
experiences Asian Americans. The where you really from questions universally
pissed all of us off. But also assuming that we
all have the same experience and like the same things.
Is also pretty annoying too, because it has a lot
to do with perspective, which is individual to every family
(47:19):
slash influx group that came in. So Elizabeth, thank you
so much for your insights. We've received so many letters
to about that episode and appreciate them um so much.
We always love your letters, mom stuff at house. Stuff
works dot Com is where you can send them and
thri links all of our social media as well as
all of our blogs, videos and podcasts with this one
(47:42):
with links to our sources so you can learn more
about the Lavender Menace. Head on over to stuff Mom
Never Told You dot com for moral this and thousands
of other topics. Doesn't have stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you from house supports
not come hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and today we're talking about the Lavender
Menace and Caroline, when you first heard the phrase lavender menace,
(00:25):
what came to mind? Probably Grimace from the McDonald's Dads
from the eighties. Oh, Grimmath, Yeah, Grimmace do I don't know,
but I for years I got I got Grimmace on
my hand, but Burglar mixed up, so then it really
wouldn't be a lavender menace Grimmace coming along stealing all
your cheeseburger. But I think Grimace was just like a
(00:47):
purple gum drop of happiness. I don't know. Well, the
lavender Menace has nothing to do with cheeseburgers, nothing to
do with fast food corporations, and sadly, Caroline, nothing to
do with your childhood. No, it's probably better than it doesn't.
So the Lavender Menace is a not so sunny but
(01:09):
also kind of radical and amazing chapter of second wave
feminist history that we wanted to talk about because A
I don't think a lot of people know about it,
and B it is informative to the relationship today between
feminism and sexual orientation. Um. And this also is a
(01:34):
snapshot of what happens when intersectionality doesn't really exist, because
we usually think of intersectionality in terms of ethnicity. And
it's also instructive to for understanding the cultural climate when
second wave feminism and more specifically women's liberation was really
(01:59):
taking off and developing and becoming this large scale political
movement in tandem with things like civil rights and gay
rights also beginning to organize. But what is the lavender menace? Well,
as it relates to women's liberation and the second way feminism,
(02:23):
it was initially a term that journalist Susan Brown Miller
attributes to Betty for Dan, she of feminine mystique fame uh,
when describing the potential credibility threat that was posed to
the National Organization of Women and really feminism at large
by aligning with lesbians. Well, this was specifically referring to
(02:47):
radical lesbians at the time who considered women only relationships
to be a necessary cornerstone of feminism. And we're going
to talk about radical lesbians and lesbian feminism in the
second half of the podcast US but It's important to
clarify that this was focused specifically on a group of women,
(03:09):
and some bright young person out there today might be thinking, well,
why wouldn't you want lesbians or pan sexual women or
bisexual women in your feminist movement? That seems weird, and
it does, but it had a lot to do with,
like I said, the credibility threat that people like Betty
for Dan perceived. Uh. They were so worried that because
(03:32):
there was this fear of homosexuality at the time, and
this fear of lesbians, that they would almost hate the
message basically. So to give you an idea though, of
what degree of homophobia we are talking about in ne
A guy named Frank Scaprio wrote in Variations and Sexual
Behavior that quote, female homosexuality is becoming an increasingly important problem.
(03:58):
It's believed by some that women are becoming rapidly defeminized
as a result of their overt desire for emancipation, and
that this psychic masculinization of American women contributes to frigidity.
Some sexologists fear that this defeminization trend may seriously affect
(04:18):
the sexual happiness of modern women, and, as is still
the case today, the go to insults for feminists at
the time were that they were frigid, that they didn't
want to shave their legs, and that they were man
hating lesbians. And that was really the most insulting thing
(04:43):
that you could tell a woman at the time, because
again homophobia, and also it was the seventies, y'all. Yeah,
And so in order to fight the stereotypes now, the
National Organization for Women initially thought it best to distance
itself from anything that might tie the group or the
women in the group to lesbianism or lesbians, or the
(05:06):
hint that someone might not have shaved their legs that day.
So they certainly were not going to add any sort
of lesbian agenda to their overall agenda. Well, and it
was specifically to radical lesbians that they were concerned about, because,
as we'll talk about more in the second half of
the podcast when we get into a discussion about lesbian feminism, Um,
(05:26):
there were women at the time who considered women only
relationships to be a necessary cornerstone of feminism. In order
to fully resist the patriarchy, you got to fully resist
the penis. We're talking about in the bedroom too, that's right.
So how did the lavender menace play out. Well, we've
(05:48):
got to go back to nineteen sixty three when Betty
for Dan publishes The Feminine Mystique, which was revolutionary absolutely
for the time, but for a very specific group of women.
Some of the criticisms are probably not new to many
of our listeners, and we read about this uh in
The Atlantic and a piece by Ashley Fetters. A lot
(06:09):
of people criticized the book as being not only classist,
applying only to perhaps middle or upper middle class or
wealthy white suburban housewives, but also saying that it was racist,
that it literally only did apply to white women and
left out the concerns of women of color. And of
(06:31):
course there was the point that it was not exactly
embracing of gay people and that it was homophobic. Yeah.
At one point, for Dan links quote the National Embrace
of the Feminine Mystique to gay men, referring to male
homosexuality as a murky smog. So that doesn't sound exactly
(06:53):
open minded. Yeah, she had based her idea of male
homosexuality as a murky smog on Kinsey's research about gay
men that was based on men he had talked to
in prison and in bars. So it's it's kind of
unfortunate when you're basing kind of your thesis on shaky research. Well,
(07:15):
and she certainly, certainly certainly did not have lesbians in
mind when she wrote The Femininiste. I mean, if you
read it today, it's very clear that she is talking
to a very specific, white, upwardly mobile group of women.
And then three years later, in nineteen sixty nine, relations
between lesbian feminists and straight feminists took a negative turn
(07:38):
when now omitted the New York chapter of the Daughters
of Bilidus, which was the first civil and political lesbian
organization in the United States, from its sponsors because again,
like we talked about for Dan and the powers that
were in the National Organization for Women said, you know what,
(07:58):
we need to distance our salves from the quote unquote
lesbian agenda. And you know what lesbian leader Rita may
Brown said in response was see you later. Now I
am out of here. Yeah. Rina may Brown, who is
an all around pretty nifty woman. She is featured over
on makers the PBS, a O L partnership that celebrates
(08:22):
amazing women, and she certainly is once so I recommend
you head over there and learn all about Rita may Brown.
But that year late nine into early nineteen seventy, New
York Times magazine journalist Susan Brown Miller, who mentioned earlier
who herself was a legitimate part of the feminist movement,
was assigned to cover women's liberation. And it's worth noting
(08:43):
that brown Miller only got this assignment after a male
reporter they originally tapped to cover it was shut down
because the women just were like, I don't feel like
talking to a guy about this. Yeah, no way, no
way where women's lively gonna be like, hey, yeah, come
on and fella down. You're not going to mock us
at all. So on March fifteenth, nine seventy, brown Miller's
(09:08):
piece Sisterhood Is Powerful is published in New York Times magazine,
and this is really when the whole lavender menace thing
kind of blows up. So it includes this bit she wrote, quote.
The super sensitivity of the movement to the lesbian issue
and the existence of a few militant lesbians within the
(09:28):
movement once prompted for Dan herself to grouse about the
lavender menace that was threatening to warp the image of
women's rights. A lavender herring, perhaps, but surely no clear
and present danger. And of course brown Miller meant the
herring comment to discredit for Dan and for Dan's nervousness
(09:50):
about lesbians and including lesbians in the movement. However, unfortunately
a lot of radical lesbians took it to discredit them,
as if brown Miller was saying, don't worry about those
little lesbians. They're not going to be able to organize
and cause any sort of political upheaval. So, in response
to this whole thing, members of the Gay Liberation Front
(10:11):
break off to form the Radical Lesbians, who also call
themselves the Lavender Menace. They're reclaiming this insult, you know,
attributed to for Dan, and they decide that they are
going to organize and strike back at now Yeah, and
so on May one, ninety they strike the Second Congress
(10:33):
to unite women and they quote unquote zapp the event.
So basically they had plans in advance. They run in,
they turn out the lights in this gathering of women.
They end up storming the stage once the lights come on.
There they are, they're on stage, they're in the aisles,
and they hand out copies of the woman identified woman
and they happen to be wearing some pretty cool homemade
(10:55):
lavender minace shirts, which would be awesome if those were circulated. Again,
not saying you have to buy anyone, but would be great.
So the Woman Identified Woman, by the way, was the
Radical Lesbians manifesto, and Caroline, can I read a little
bit from the beginning of the Woman Identified Woman please?
I mean, this is one of the best intros to
(11:15):
like a pamphlet type thing that I've ever read. Yeah,
and I posted this on our Instagram and the comments
on it were pretty entertaining. What is a lesbian? A
lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the
point of explosion. She is the woman who, often, beginning
(11:37):
at an extremely early age, acts in accordance with her
inner compulsion to be a more complete and freer human
being than her society, perhaps then but certainly later, cares
to allow her. The Radical Lesbians, in other words, we're
not messing around, because being a lesbian was not only
(11:58):
sexual orientation. It was an entire political philosophy in a
lot of ways, and it actually turned out pretty well.
It seems like the Radical Lesbians ended up leading workshops
at the Second Congress to unite women talking about how
to educate other women about their politics and platforms and
(12:24):
the thing though that's really interesting to consider. I mean, again,
this is not that long ago. It's in the early seventies, um,
but but still might seem so foreign for us today.
But there was this real conflict um for straight feminists
who were concerned maybe not so much with lesbianism in particular,
(12:46):
but really the focus on sex. There was this misconception
that everything was all just about sex, and that lesbians
were telling them, well, no, instead of having sex with men,
you have to now have X with women. And Coott
was one of the writers of this time who took
issue with that, and she was essentially saying in one
(13:07):
pamphlet we read from I think ninety one so the
following year after the Second Congress, to women that it shouldn't,
in her opinion, it shouldn't be about who you're sleeping with,
whether you want to be a radical lesbian, or you're straight,
or you're a sexual or whoever you are. That true
political power doesn't lie, and who gets in your bed
is what you do with it. So fine, you want
(13:29):
to say that you're gonna be a lesbian to align
yourself with the radical lesbians, or that you just are
a lesbian, like that's all well and good. Take that anger,
that willingness to turn away from men and the patriarchy
and actually put it towards dismantling the system. Well, and
it's worth noting to how women's liberation had really been
(13:51):
considered a refuge from all of those cultural sexual pressures
that women in the time had been feeling. So it
is a understandable that some reacted with hesitation. But with
this knowledge, radical lesbians really pivoted their message away from
sex because for them it was not about sex, But
(14:14):
when it came to the sex factor, they emphasized sensuality, lifestyle,
and purity, essentially saying like these are the purest possible
kinds of relationships that women can have. Because also there
was a criticism that well, lesbians were simply mimicking the
male role and just to sexually exploit women, which of
(14:37):
course also was not the case. Yeah, they're really removing
sexuality from their message to make it more about not
being dependent on men. Part of that was to clarify
the message. Part of that, I think was to make
the more mainstream street feminists comfortable so that like everybody
can get along and sort of work together, because Rina
may Brown pointed out over in one of her videos
(15:00):
over at Makers that prior to the Lavender min Is
striking the Second Congress to Unite women, basically after for
Dan had kicked the lesbians out, the movement really suffered.
It became weaker, it became more divided. You took out
a passionate element from your movement. So of course it's
going to be weaker. And so whether they are considering
(15:21):
themselves radical lesbians or whether they're sort of pivoting their
message to make the mainstream a little more comfortable, they're saying,
let's work together and fight for political power. Well well,
speaking of politics, so one point that Rita may Brown
maid whom we should note is a best selling author,
(15:41):
She argued that when those lesbians initially left that movement,
that they took the culture with them, and that the
only thing now was focused on we're just straight political platforms,
as is really still the case today in a lot
of ways and terms of um quote unquote mainstream feminism.
(16:03):
But we do see the factions coming back together again
at least a little bit. In September nine, the National
Now Conference passed a resolution on lesbian as a legitimate
concern of feminism as well as it should be noted
the quote double oppression of minority women. So finally, in
(16:25):
ninety one, now is starting to like really pay attention
to the fact that, hey, not all this white straight women. Um.
And it's also in nineteen seventy one that the Radical
Lesbians disband, and also too, in a show of solidarity
to to kind of see how this is progressing, some
straight feminists started identifying as political lesbians just to you know,
(16:52):
really ally themselves with those women. And so it took
a minute, but in nine seventies seven, fre Dan herself
for cants that lavender menace bigotry and pledges support for
lesbian's rights by seconding the motion to support Lesbian Rights
at a Women's Confidence in Houston. It was held to
(17:13):
ratify the United Nations Platforms for Women. And we should
say too that in the maker's interviews, which if you
can't tell, yeah, you should watch them, and those makers
interviews with Rida may Brown, she does talk specifically about
Betty fre Dan, and she says I always respected her.
I didn't always agree with her, obviously, but she was
(17:36):
instrumental in this massive movement, and she kind of laughs
about how Fredan was always very hesitant to say anything
publicly about how she had been wrong on the so
called lesbian issue. But I thought it was notable of
Rida May Brown to just be like, yeah, I mean
(17:56):
I respected her, but I mean it didn't mean I
necessarily liked her all the time, which again to me,
just goes to show how she's a pretty cool lady
brand a Brown, and I should say to Caroline that.
In the HBO documentary about Gloria Steinham, this issue also
gets a brief mention, and Steinham talks about how she
(18:19):
and fre Dan definitely did not see eye to eye
when it came to the gay issue, because that was
something that Steinham always stood on behalf of in terms
of being more inclusive. So props to Gloria, you know,
all glow um. But now that we've talked about, you know,
(18:41):
what the lavender menace was, we do want to talk
more about lesbian feminism and get a little bit more
into radical feminism that was going on in the seventies
and eighties again, because I feel like this is history,
feminist history that we might know about in broad brushstrokes,
(19:02):
but maybe not in more of the details. Well, and
I mean, I think that's part of the problem, in
that voices of women outside of that white, middle class,
straight mainstream have frequently been and consistently been uh silenced
or just place lower on the totem pole. And I
(19:24):
just think too that it's important for us to understand
how feminism has evolved and all of the various schools
of thought that are contained within it. And I mean
the fact of the matter is, as we'll talk about
more when we get into lesbian feminism, that you know,
(19:46):
trying to find the perfect feminism, I think it is
rather impossible, and it's perhaps more beneficial rather than seeking perfection,
to glean the lessons learned earned from and through these
various feminisms. Yeah, well, I mean exactly feminisms plural, because yes,
(20:08):
I mean I think if you're going to use a
broad brush and paint with a broad feminist brush, yes,
everyone who might consider themselves a feminist would talk about
uh political standing, rights, access, gender equality. Yeah, but there
are more nuances, although some of those nuances are more
radical than others. So in the nineteen seventies, as second
(20:31):
wave feminism and women's literation is developing. This thing called
cultural feminism is really branching into major directions. There's the
idea of resisting sexism by changing institutions, things that we
would think about today in terms of like getting for
aggressive feminist women elected to office, women owned businesses, starting
(20:55):
and supporting those. And then there was an option out
from that which took things a little bit further, to
say the least, and this was lesbian separatism. Yeah, this
was this was sort of what made Betty for Dan
uncomfortable when she was heading up now and so in
the late sixties and seventies and even really today, to
(21:18):
some extent, some women's liberationists believed that not only were
feminism and lesbianism inextricably linked and that that was the
lifestyle that you should pursue and aspire to, but that
literally the women who considered themselves to be radical lesbians
were the vanguard of the feminist movement. They said, hey,
(21:40):
we rejected these patriarchal sex roles, We rejected men before
any of you guys did. We're the we're the original
hipster of the feminist movement. And it was this separation,
or this desire to be separate that did sort of
drive a lot of people away, but it certainly attracted
a lot of people to that movement as well. Yeah,
and in terms of that idea of lesbians being the
(22:04):
vanguard of the feminist movement, um, we can go back
quickly to the Woman Identified Woman Manifesto, which at one
point said only women can give each other a new
sense of self. We must be available and supportive to
one another and give our commitment and our love. And
that's something to keep in mind in terms of how
(22:27):
radical feminism not only called for gender equality but also
liberation from sex roles, which of course the radical lesbians
would then take a step farther. And this was something
that Ann Cote wrote about in nineteen seventy one, and
we found it over at the Chicago Women's Liberation Union
(22:47):
Archive online, which is a really great resource. Um. So,
Anne wrote about how other gay women see lesbianism as
much more than a defining term for the sex of
your bed partner of them. It's a total life commitment
to a life with women in an entire system of
worldview and life living. And that also gets to why
(23:11):
you know, we're using the term lesbianism, which makes it
sound like not like a sexual orientation or even identity,
but rather this whole thing, because it was this whole thing,
an entire worldview. Yeah, because, as Ancott also pointed out,
she was like, hey, ladies, like, it's fine if you're
a lesbian, but sexism and sex roles that you're talking
(23:31):
about don't disappear just because you're not sleeping with men,
just because you're sleeping with women. And so she was
sort of pushing for well, I don't know that she's
pushing for lesbianism as you were just talking about a
Christian but she was pushing for just a little bit
of an oop behind turning the idea of turning away
from men. Ladies, Let's get some o. Yeah, let's get
(23:53):
some get some volumes, get our op back, and don't
just turn away from men. Sure fine, but use as
a political force. Use your efforts and your energy as
a political force. I'm just imagining feminism as a woman's
head of hair, and this whole radical lesbian thing being
like a bumpet, you know, in in these terms one
(24:14):
of those would it be like a bun donut thing?
Yeah too, I like the bump of stock bun. Yeah. Um,
So when it comes though to lesbian separatism. They were
advocating for living away from men entirely because they really
believed that liberation meant living away from men, that that
(24:35):
was the only way to truly achieve female liberation. And
it's worth noting that this group was very much more
on the fringes. But out of this though, a lot
of women only spaces emerge, some of which were more
of the consciousness raising types of like the safe spaces
(24:55):
that we think of more in terms of online spaces today,
but they also went as far as entire living arrangements
that you know, specifically banned men from the premises. Well yeah,
and as Rita may Brown talks about in some of
the maker's videos, it was literally like the first time
that some of these women had ever experienced anything like that,
(25:17):
I mean, and talking about it aside from from whether
you were a lesbian or not. Um she talks about
how the trajectory of so many women's lives was just Okay,
you're someone's child, and then maybe you go to college
and probably might live in a sorority house, so you're
still living with other women, but still with the goal
of well, as soon does that phase of your life
(25:38):
is over, You're going to be in someone else's house, uh,
in marriage, so you never quite break out and learn
to live life on your own. And so they were
definitely advocating for women almost to learn how to live,
how to be on their own and be themselves and
be okay with that. Yes. An example of this was
(26:01):
a group called the Furies that splintered off from the
Radical Lesbians, and they were collective trying to prove that
they could live without men, to the point actually that
activist Alice Wolfson was told that she could not bring
her infant son to a Furies meeting because he had
(26:22):
a penis, Like literally no pains allowed. That baby is
the enemy. And the Furies, who I want to say,
Rita May Brown was a part of. Weren't just living together.
They created their own newspaper. They had a childcare center,
although I wonder the childcare center accepted boy babies as well.
(26:45):
I'm gonna assume so. And they also, as she talks about,
had a car repair school, because back then, as is now,
women taking their car to the shop was usually not
that fun of an experience. Yeah, and Brown talks about
how this group ended up inspiring other such collective houses
(27:08):
or safe spaces and even women's festivals where yeah, sure
you had women performing and women attending, but you also
had women on the tech side running the lights, running
the sound and all of that stuff which paved the
way for Lilith Fair. Thank you so much the end. Also,
I'm now wondering, with all of the nineties nostalgia happening,
will Lilith Fair come back? Well, I just saw Sarah
(27:29):
maclocklin just performed somewhere. I'm so informative, but I grew
up like listening to that somewhere on the planet Saram
Glocklin played a guitar. And one example of how this
was happening to not only in New York this, uh,
if we go over to Seattle, there was a y
m c A there that became a hub for feminist
(27:51):
activity in organizing and really became one of those women
only spaces, and it actually moved away from the y
m c A to further demarcate it as a safe
space for women so that you wouldn't like walk out
the door and then all these guys going to the
y UM. And we mentioned this too in our episode
(28:13):
a while back on women and farming. Yeah, exactly. It
was the nineteen seventies Women's Land movement Women with a Y.
You had radical feminist farming, separatist agricultural communities things like
Yellow Hammer and Woman Share in order to achieve that
effort to fully liberate themselves from men and from the patriarchy.
(28:34):
And we had cited a great piece in Modern Farmer,
which I believe in that episode, Kristen and I could
not stop talking about how that was our new favorite magazine.
And speaking of magazines, these groups even had their own
independent publications and newsletters like Country Woman and so as
we talked about in that episode. Not to like completely
go off on a tangent, but it almost wasn't so
(28:56):
much about the farming. It was certainly obviously there was
an effort to grow food and eat it, but it
was just more of that idea of like, look, we
don't need men to provide our every little need. And
did that desire for independence also get into what could
be considered misonry of just straight up man hating. Yeah,
(29:23):
I mean the answer is yeah, yeah, to the point
where even butch lesbians were looked down upon, considered unhealthy.
It's not it's not healthy for for lesbians or lesbianism
or feminism for you to try to assume the role
of the man, because you know, not only are you
trying to put yourself above someone who is feminine or female,
(29:45):
but you're adapting the same like sexual objectification that men do. Yeah,
it was referred to as male identified role playing and
something that was very dangerous and and in some of
these circles, rather than masculine, feminine androgeny was the philosophical
(30:07):
And you do have people like Valeria Salani's writing things
like the Scum Manifesto, which described women as essentially perfect
and men as the sources of all that's wrong with
the world. And this is beyond examining something through the
lens of a patriarchy, but rather looking at the individual
(30:31):
men as humans and saying you are you, individually are
the root of all evil, not these structures, that societal
structures that we have erected and um. In Scum Manifesto,
Salonis maintains that true love can only exist between two women.
And the thing is, I mean again, we said a
(30:52):
few minutes ago that all the feminisms are not perfect,
and this is by no means perfect, That is, by
no means inclusive in a way, this is doing exactly
what feminism in its essence of gender equality is fighting against,
which is deliberately excluding roughly half the population and kind
(31:13):
of echoing that. Maybe not the same exact sentiment, but
Adrian Rich who was writing at the time to envisioned
a lesbian continuum of woman identifications. So maybe you were
actually literally a lesbian, or maybe you were just turning
away from men, but she felt, or she wrote that
she felt that these types of connections would end up
(31:33):
weakening heterosexualities embrace of the patriarchy. So yeah, you had
actual literal man hating, individual man hating, and then you
had people saying, we just whether you're a real lesbian
or a political lesbian, we just have to turn away
from men and the things that men have set up
in society. And considering the context of the time, I
(31:58):
can understand where some of these women were coming from,
where it probably did feel necessary to divorce themselves entirely
of what was such a heinously sexist culture at the time.
But standing where we are today, um that that doesn't
seem like much of a path toward progress, because you
(32:20):
also have issues like bisexual erasure going on as well,
because sleeping with men, according to some, was considered prostituting yourself.
So obviously, you know, you have political lesbianism, and if
I mean, if you're still attracted to men in whatever
way that might be, that's just not okay if you
want to achieve your full feminist potential. And of course,
(32:42):
when it comes to race and class issues, lesbian feminism
wasn't all encompassing and intersectional either, which is kind of
ironic considering that this broke off from the quote unquote
mainstream movement because of feeling isolated and ignored and overlooked
(33:05):
and simply disliked. And while radical lesbians certainly vocally supported
all women, it still was a mostly white, middle class
and educated community of women talking about things. It's not like,
Asrida may Brown, It's not like a lot of these
activists were thinking about women who might be in a
(33:27):
poor inner city environment, or in a poor farm community
or working at a diner. There were people who were
less economically advantaged, who were on the margins, who weren't
really included in this movement. Well, I mean, and even
if they were living in one of those communities. As
you know, some of these women have talked about since
(33:48):
if they didn't have kind of the lingo in the
background and the college education, um, they were considered, you know,
just just sort of I don't want to say hicks
in a way, but but kind of they were the
ones who would get more of a sidea in terms
of their gender presentation if they were dressing more butch
(34:12):
um and and things like that. And there was also
a group of black lesbians at one point who felt
excluded from the whiteness of lesbian feminism and the straightness
of black feminism and the sexism of the Black Power
movement and ended up breaking off to form their own
group called the Kombahi River Collective in nineteen seventy five,
(34:36):
and the collective statement they wrote in nineteen seventy seven
kind of sums up all of these things, all of
these oversights. You know, still, after all of these layers
of you know, groups, breaking off of groups, breaking off
of groups, finally you know they are able to have
(34:56):
a space where they're specific needs and concerns are valued.
And in their collective statement they specify how committed they
are to struggling against oppression, including racial, sexual, heterosexual, and
class oppression, and They write that we see as our
particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based
(35:19):
upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking.
The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives.
You just can't separate these things from each other, which
is what people are still arguing in terms of uh
intersexual feminism today. These things do not exist in a
vacuum apart from each other. And it might sound like
(35:42):
the answer to all of this is, well, burn it
down feminists and less these lesbian feminists got it wrong
and radical feminism was horribly exclusive, so everything is terrible
about it. No, I don't think that that's the case
at all. A lot of us was laying the foundation
for feminist theory and when in studies and what would
eventually become queer theory, challenging a lot of and examining
(36:06):
in a productive kind of way things that people like
Adrian Rich you know, we're writing about um and just
pushing pushing it forward more and more. And UM, I
think I don't think there's anything wrong with admitting that
fringes exists on any kind of spectrum. And I think
(36:29):
that you know, we can learn things from them as well. Yeah,
I mean, we can learn things from the fringes just
as we can learn things from the mainstream. As long
as there are people like Susan b. Anthony or Betty
for Dan who in their individual waves of feminism did
a great deal to help people but also consciously excluded
(36:53):
many others. Um, I think we can just keep in
mind that these movements will always have fringes, people who
are willing to raise their hand and speak up and
say I don't see the world like that. I have
a voice to in this. Yeah, I mean, and it's
also important, I think, for us to know where we've
come from in order for us to better see where
(37:14):
we are and where we can go. It's just learning
from learning from the past about you know, then the
deuce and don'ts what worked and what didn't. Being being
afraid to acknowledge it too, I think is you know
doesn't do us any good either, So looking at it today, Yeah,
it's unfortunate that second wave feminism wasn't perfect. Wouldn't that
(37:38):
have been great if somehow standing right there in the
six season seventies with everything going on in culture where
it was if you know, one woman. We want to
put it all on the shoulders of like a group
of women of like you know, Betty for Dan or
Glorious dynam Arita may Brown or whoever, and say that
one of them somehow had perfect vision through all of that.
(37:59):
Would we have a podcast or wouldn't be the same?
I don't know that we would need one. I mean,
like who that's the question. It's like, would that have
even been possible to see through all that? There were
a number of women who were doing that, who were
being as inclusive as possible. Um, But I think it's
also you know too, if you were to talk to
(38:20):
lesbian separatists who are living back then today, they will
probably say, well, what other choice did we have? And
that's something to consider as well. So I am really
curious to hear listeners responses to this episode because it's
a little bit different from what we normally do. We
(38:41):
haven't taken a deeper dive just into a discreet chapter
in feminist history and quite a long time. So did
it leave you with any particular impression or does it
inform today's feminism a little bit more? For you? Caroline? Well,
(39:01):
I mean it just made me think about what happens
when groups of people are essentially forced out of a
movement and what can come from that, And yes, the
result can be radical, but I think really fascinating things
can come out of the work that excluded groups do,
and that can really trickle down and inform future movements
(39:22):
and future activists, because it's not as if the conversations
that radical lesbians and the lavender menace we're having in
the sixties and seventies, It's not as if those conversations
have gone away, oh exactly, yeah, And which is why
I think it's so important for us to understand this,
and for me, I was especially curious to learn more
(39:43):
about this concept of radical feminism, specifically happening in the
nineteen seventies, because being radical and being radical feminist is
still a go to insult today. I mean, these same
kinds of stereotypes and assumptions that Betty Rittan, you know,
was really trying to navigate now around in terms of
(40:06):
making you lesbian who hates men and never wants to
shave her legs, those things are still so alive and well.
And I noticed, especially on stuff I've Never Told you
YouTube channel, that the insults that I get if I
talk about feminism, are usually you're just you're you're radical feminists.
(40:28):
You're just one of those radical feminists. Or the compliment
in quotes that I get from people like that is, oh,
you're not like one of those radical feminists. But what
does it really mean? What do those people really know
what they're talking about? And when I respond to I
really know what I'm talking about? Because I don't, I
think the answer has been no. You know, I think
that radical feminism doesn't mean what a lot of people
(40:51):
think it means. Well, it seems like when people are
commenting on the YouTube videos, you're radical if you talk
or exists in the world as a woman outside of
the home, or even if you're in the home. Um
and so, no, I don't think that a lot of
people have this historical context in their back pocket about
(41:13):
women who actually were like no to heck with all
of this. Well, by that definition, the lazy, incorrect definition
of radical feminism is that it equals hating men, that
it equals mis andry, which that is not what radical
feminism was. Radical feminism promoted gender equality, but was and
(41:35):
is committed to, you know, dismantling these entire roles that
were set up as well. And this might be a
radical concept, but I think that that can coexist with
not hating men. I don't think that they're mutually exclusive.
But is there that ven diagram where we get into
(41:57):
you know, the not ironic mis anddrist space. Yeah, yeah,
it's possible. It is possible. Well, now get again, listeners.
We want to hear from you all of your thoughts
about the lavender menace and lesbian feminism and intersectionality and
where we've come from in the progress that still needs
to be made. Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot
(42:19):
com is our email address. You can also tweet us
at mom stuff podcasts or messages on Facebook, and we've
got a couple of messages to share with you right now. Well,
I have a letter here from Lena in response to
our Asian Fetish episode. She says, I was thrilled to
(42:40):
see that you recorded a podcast on yellow Fever. It
was definitely entertaining. But as far as describing it as
a preference, like preferring blondes or tall women, people don't
project personality traits and cultural traits onto people because they're
blonde are tall. Unfortunately, even those men who claim they
just like our look due to and to get upset
and we don't fit their stereotypes. As of today, we
(43:03):
are expected to take I love Asians as a compliment.
Men get more upset if Asian women reject them because
they feel somehow entitled, and this includes Asian men at times.
Among my friends, we've come up with our own ideas
about the type of man who have yellow fever, and
none of them are good. To be fair, a lot
of them have married interracially. Among husbands, the men in
(43:24):
our lives think of Asians as demure women who all
fit into one box, as laughable. While they have friends
who've said awkward things to all of us. The men
we partner with their embarrassed to repeat the things they've heard.
So as an Asian women, good guys do exist, They're
just a lot harder to find among the plethora of
men who are just creepy. As for Asian men, they
(43:44):
could use their own podcast. In part because they historically
took quote unquote female jobs, it was not to be
a threat to other men. When first immigrating to the US,
Asian men are systematically stereotype as being weak, feminine, unattractive,
and many things, they are simply not in most cases.
So thanks for another great podcast, and thanks for your
letter and episode suggestion, Lena, And I've got a letter
(44:07):
here from Elizabeth about the same episode, and Elizabeth wrote
us the most in depth letter, and Caroline, I honestly
wish I could sit here and read the whole thing,
but I cannot, so I'm going to read a couple
of excerpts. She begins, I was really pleased to hear
(44:27):
and listen to your podcast about Asian fetishes because it's
the thing I have to deal with as an Asian woman,
and it was nice to have a more diverse perspective
of the trials and tribulations of being female. The Asian
experience is particularly riddled with a lot of caveats, though,
and I feel like there's still more you could go into,
but perhaps a future podcast. And she goes on to
(44:48):
talk about the challenges of dating, and she says it
doesn't get much easier quote unquote dating in for Asians either,
because the dynamics of the Asian American population are different
and much more diverse than most other minority groups in
the US. My family is on the older side, and
it's been in the US since before Chinese exclusion, and
(45:09):
I found that gives me an interesting experience different from
many of my friends. The funny thing about your podcast
for me is that the media comments that Anime Wong
got about how she's Chinese and doesn't have an accent.
I still get today. Like just a few months ago,
I got picked up by an uber and it was
by some guy who was an immigrant himself. But when
he was speaking with me and I told him I
(45:31):
was Chinese American, he was literally shocked that I spoke
perfect English with no accent. That was this year. His
reasoning was that he picks up people from Korea Town
and from East l A who are Asian and maybe
second generation American, and they still have accents, so he
literally didn't think someone like me existed. That's kind of whatever.
But I explained to him that my family has been
(45:51):
in the country for over a century, so we're all
acclimated to being American and speaking English. And then later
on she goes on to talk about how all of
this illustrates a much bigger problem about growing up Asian American.
I don't think it's intentional on your part or even
on the part of anyone else trying to stand up
for Asians or promote Asian content. But one of the
(46:12):
really difficult things is getting people to understand the Asian
American interests and issues are different from Asian issues in
East Asia. That sounds really simple when I stated that way,
but in practice it's very hard. For instance, MTV and
other media companies aim a lot of their content for
Asians by using Asian bands, musicians, anime, movies, etcetera. At
Asian Americans and think that counts as content for us.
(46:35):
In some ways, it does, but no one pays attention
to Asian American bands or comedians or actors as much.
A lot of those same programs that work on making
the content don't go looking for the Asian American artists
growing up in San Francisco or l A. Instead of
looking locally in America, they go straight to Asia. Asians
from Asia don't speak to all of our issues as
(46:56):
Asian Americans. We do have an interest in that content.
That content isn't expressive of the spectrum of our entire
experiences Asian Americans. The where you really from questions universally
pissed all of us off. But also assuming that we
all have the same experience and like the same things.
Is also pretty annoying too, because it has a lot
to do with perspective, which is individual to every family
(47:19):
slash influx group that came in. So Elizabeth, thank you
so much for your insights. We've received so many letters
to about that episode and appreciate them um so much.
We always love your letters, mom stuff at house. Stuff
works dot Com is where you can send them and
thri links all of our social media as well as
all of our blogs, videos and podcasts with this one
(47:42):
with links to our sources so you can learn more
about the Lavender Menace. Head on over to stuff Mom
Never Told You dot com for moral this and thousands
of other topics. Doesn't have stuff works dot com
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