Immediately, to those who attended the event, I owe a personal apology for the manner in which the open discussion proceeded. As the head moderator, I am clear now that I didn’t do the work of setting ground rules or giving an overall context for the discussion.

Since it was the first question which followed the round table comments—concerning transgender women and their acceptance into the activist women’s community—that created a contentious situation, I need to say that Aunt Lute unequivocally supports gender diversity and personal choice.

Our commitment to social justice is inclusive and based on a desire to understand each other across our differences—in a manner that is thoughtful and moves us forward; in a manner that gives us a place to stand in which we can respect ourselves, a position from which we can respect others. Through our books we attempt to do just that, and our intention at La Peña was to provide a respectful forum in which to speak about and understand differences in the lesbian and queer women community across generations.

Where the evening was successful, there was a respectful discussion—or the beginning of one—about difference. And a number of clarifying statements about the importance of issues which varied across generations; across class and race; across gender diversity. Where the evening faltered briefly was when someone’s anger indicated an unwillingness to listen to different viewpoints but rather to aim hostility and demeaning statements towards others.

Both the success and failure were edifying. And they lead me to want to ask questions of those who come to the Simple Revolution blog. Because the large majority of Aunt Lute authors are women and lesbians, and because Aunt Lute identifies itself as a grassroots press trying to make ourselves available to those women who feel without voice, we too are attempting to understand what the future needs are…what social change needs to happen to meet needs not being met in the larger society. That’s the discussion we wish we’d had time to have.

For me, the best outcome of the “Struggle, Then and Now” evening is the certainty that dialogues need to happen—many dialogues need to happen. What is it like to get old and go to senior centers where your lesbianism becomes a liability again? What is it like to make a choice to transform one’s gender, in a myriad of possible ways, and be vulnerable to a hateful, murderous society? What is it like as a 20-year-old woman of color lesbian who is rejected by her family? Can we as activists address all these inequalities and dangers? And how? Do we need new alliances?

And will this activism look different from 40 or 50 years ago? Will our activism, for instance, have an element of spirituality? Some heartfelt way of allowing ourselves to bridge difference? (This is a subject that both Judy Grahn and Gloria Anzadúa have written about extensively in their later work.)

With all of these questions on my mind, I’d like to pose—for discussion on this blog—one of the thoughtful questions written by an Aunt Lute staff member: one of the questions we’d planned to ask on April 26th, had there been time:

How do people relate to the word “struggle” and to this model of activism that seems to apply some form of opposition? Is it a struggle for, a struggle against, a struggle with? If so, for/against/with whom? We often hear how activists “burn out”. Are there alternate words or models to “struggle”?

I think a wider discussion about activism and methods of struggle might better help us frame some of the very difficult and complex issues faced by women, lesbians and transgender women today. I would like to continue the discussion and hope you will too.

Thanks,

Joan Pinkvoss
Co-founder of Aunt Lute Books

I had an Italian Catholic name back then―long letters and lots of a’s & e’s and lli’s. If only I could have erased the last feminizing vowels, I would have been a boy.

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

This verse spoke to me so passionately―I knew the eyes that formulated me as well―and I felt like I was pinned and wriggling. Today I am still wriggling, on the pin of a binary gender system that even contemporary queer culture seems to embrace. Somewhere between 1992 and 2002, the distinction between transsexual and transgender has been blurred―and now there is an assumption that if one is transgender (which I would argue most people live on this continuum―like sexuality) that one is switching from one pronoun to the other. There has also been a trend towards extinction of the butch-lesbian with the flourishing of the trans-man identity.

I am BOTH/AND. That is my gender identity. This is currently the most queer identity I am aware of (although if you study Queer history, Indigenous history, or Indian culture you will easily find there was once a holy place for the both/ands). In this white supremacist capitalist patriarchy―WSCP, as bell hooks so aptly refers to it―this culture only loves “MAN,” I cannot and will not succumb to this pressure to pass, to go stealth, and become a white man with all of the power both overt and subtle that comes along with that choice until woman is truly free. The place I exist, both/and & the body we occupy transgresses the binary and represents true gender warrior nature―the looks I get, the people and children wondering who and what I am.

This place of both/and allows my creative expression to flourish. It allows for the consciousness of bleeding as well as all the strength of being a boy. Being both/and says―I am all of the above―I am human. My gender and my sexual orientation are all flavors of me―I am butch, I am lesbian, I am transgender, I am queer, I am gay, I am faerie, I am wizard, etc…It is not one or the other―unless you want to keep living in the frame of patriarchy.

My woman-ness is situated in a sexist patriarchal world while I occupy the challenging liminal transgender space of both/and. It was difficult to have my female fully actualized because I am hated for that part, both by the world and my own internalized sexism. The outward transphobic world hates my both/and as does my own internalized oppression that has trouble negotiating it.

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

As a feminist, I understand how every aspect of society is situated in this patriarchal frame, including how most people understand feminism itself. In choosing my name, I realized that I wanted to claim the revelations of Prufrock, at the same time injecting a feminist libratory consciousness. I was already using Animal as my name because it busted the frame of “woman” open from the societal rules of “woman-ness”―to a wild and free archetype. I love how it is one of the few genderless nouns―animal―it can be both/and simultaneously; the earliest animals are, in fact― both/and! It also alludes to the crab of Prufrock―but with the openness and ability of shape shifting. To me, it is Feminist Prufrock.

My name sets me up to the world for interaction―sometimes joyful, sometimes feared―it reveals who I am dealing with in how they interact with the name. In a way, it is magic tool. The name Animal Prufrock is a product and catalyst of alchemy. It is a way for me to live both the struggle & the consciousness I would like to see awakened in more of us.

Thinking about those times makes me want to ask questions of younger people—especially LBGT younger people—who are engaged in today’s problems:

What do you see as your most pressing issues?

What in society do you think needs to change? Is it jobs and housing? Is it how to keep a lover? Is it social justice? Is it not wanting to be defined or boxed in?

What do you hope for your future? 

Do you feel a need for community around you or is it enough to have Facebook and Twitter? To have a virtual community?

Are cross-generational friendships important to you?

I am genuinely interested in your responses and promise to check back here often. I’m excited to participate in a real dialogue around your concerns.

I’m not sure if Skip then took us up to the needle called “Little Square Top” on the left with its several small peaks or if he took us through the rim walls and past the “Dark Saddle” notch to the pointy pinnacle just to the right of “Organ Needle,” or even—which would have suited his nature—up Organ Needle itself. It’s all pretty much the same height, though Organ Needle is the highest, at 9, 012 feet above sea level.

The usable air had noticeably thinned as we puffed our way up solid granite, using hands, knees, elbows, reaching what turned out to be layers of toothy spires like a shark’s mouth near the top, stopping to rest among a number of them, in a wash of sand and brush nestled between the bare spikes. Jan sprawled exhausted on the ground. Skip went on ahead without us. In the time he was gone I realized that Jan was sexually attractive, lying on the ground, with her muscled working class female body and short dark hair. Plus, she was breathing heavily in the oxygen starved air.  My rush of feeling shocked me, since I wasn’t in love with her, and had not so much as kissed any woman, and I had to look away.

Skip returned, his long legs angular as he balanced in the narrow terrain of granite spikes now surrounding us.

“You should come on up—it’s only 80 feet up, it’s not hard.  And at the top, the stone is so thin and pointed you can practically throw your arm over it, and see the whole Tularosa Plain.  You can see into Mexico.”

We were surrounded by the teeth of the dragon, standing in the open maw, and she held her great breath. I looked at him, looked at the spire of greyblue mountain top not very far above us, and looked at Jan looking suddenly frail with her eyes closed on the ground.  And I said no. If she couldn’t go, I wouldn’t go either. Skip, watching me shake my head, was dumbfounded, repeated his entreaty. I looked at my feet as I shook my head, feeling both strong in my decision and disappointed that I wouldn’t get to see the other side, wouldn’t get to think of myself as a “get to the top” sort of person. Yet here in this grand moment, witnessed by the ever-changing Organ Mountains, I sealed my pact with women.  “Whither thou goest, I will go,” as biblical Ruth had said to her mother-in-law, Naomi.  And the inverse, “I will not go anywhere without taking you with me.”

________________

September 2011

Parker is listing major movements that impacted her and her generation, from the peaceful marches for integration led by Martin Luther King to the early “Black Power” message of Malcolm X, which would morph into the vanguard message “Power to the People,” issuing from the Black Panthers led by Huey Newton. Here in California the writings and actions of George Jackson, a black prisoner in Soledad who advocated prisoner self-defense, and the activism of Angela Davis, whose work toward ending the prison-industrial complex and its neo-slavery has been tireless, caught the imaginations of all kinds of progressive young people in 1970, Pat Parker, according to her poem, obviously among them.

So now in 1974 she is using her new poem, “It’s a Simple Dream” to articulate a position taken on behalf of gay women and men and the efforts of queer people within leftist movements: “I have placed this body & mind/in lots of dreams/dreams of other people,” and then the poet continues with these startling emphatic lines:  “now I’m tired/now you listen!” Pat directly addresses the left and demands that gay people have full authentic entry into leftist movement: “now you listen!/ I have a dream too./it’s a simple dream.”

It’s not a simple dream of course, and therein lies the power of the poetry.  And the power of our movement, which promoted what I want to describe as “a simple revolution” for very complex purposes. To solve, or at least seriously address, all at the same time, issues of racism, classism, queerness, and feminism. Parker’s examples of how she had placed her body and mind in Maoist and Marxist movements, make it clear that anti-imperialism also must be part of this revolution. We were on quite a roll, as were militant feminists all over the country.

The lesbians who turned out for Gay Women’s Liberation meetings and actions had been involved in lots of movements, from Civil Rights to being allies of the Black Panthers.  Parker had been a member of the Black Panthers. Some self-defined as socialists, some communists, some sexual and women’s liberationists. Many more of the people attracted to our meetings had probably never belonged to anything resembling a party or a political affiliation, yet had been drawn to antiwar demonstrations.

To distance ourselves from the large theoretically-based political movements, those of us in my living collective often called ourselves “anarchists,” though let’s be careful here, as to us, “anarchism” certainly didn’t mean mindless violence; it meant militancy without ideology. Non-affiliated militancy. And “militancy” meant absolute insistence and persistence. We were activists, we weren’t laid back, we weren’t waiting for anyone else to liberate us. We opposed the Vietnam War yet were not necessarily into Peace and Love, more like “No Justice, No Peace.”

Not connected to a structured, overarching ideology also meant that the broad base of activist leaders, in roles that shifted personnel constantly, would also constantly stay in touch with what the people around us wanted to see happen and said they needed, rather than imposing shoulds from theories and tracts of the 19^th century. Everything was up for discussion. Now, bonded in activist loyalty to each other, we would help to open the floodgates of the multiple forms of feminism, those tempestuous, lively mass movements that have continually redefined themselves as they spread worldwide, with as many fractious factions and additions as rivers have feeder-creeks. Cultural workers, as we artists and performers were called, both reflected and led. We helped develop some terms, phrases and images that would initially stand in for ideology: women-loving-women, woman-centered, rape culture, male domination, patriarchy, male-identified, sisterhood, sister love, gyn-ecology, lesbian nation, army of lovers, dyke, common woman, commonality.

A “simple revolution” has no blueprint, and no preconceived outcome. It also has, ideally, no idealized leaders, though everyone involved is encouraged to take leadership. A “simple revolution” asks, “What do people say they need? What do I need? What does the economy and the earth and the spirit in people need? What does the ending of prejudice need? What do our authentic selves need?” Pat Parker’s poem brought her individual, specific needs into sharp relief to make the point that freedom has many paths, and all of them need to be taken into account for the genuine social revolution we envisioned to succeed.

________________

July 2011

Having been told so often, so many ways, how ugly we lesbians were—how plain how old-maidish how “no man would want you” how criminal, unwomanly, undesirable, dishonorable, disorderly, filthy, manhating, whorish, inhuman, insanely jealous, and just yucky we were in our very existence, we were astonished to discover our collective beauty.  I was not the only one to experience ecstatic exuberance and all-encompassing heart-opening desire at the women’s dances and to be swept up in a river of sheer beauty: sexy, powerful, gorgeous, lip-swelling hair-shaking spit-flowing eye-flashing, hip-rotating, knee twisting, thigh pumping, pheromone coursing, fingers expressing, sultry spicy sweat smelling complexly exhilarating female potentiality.  We raised up storms of change as we stomped the floor with our dancing, not because we were dancing, but because our dancing celebrated our commitment to each other.

The dancing was more about our eyes meeting than about touching, our arms and hips flashing out really big promises. Oxytocin, that hormonal mama love drug, flew everywhere. Aesthetics begins with erotic love, and now, because we had a viable movement, we had an aesthetic: we had beauty and courage and loyalty toward each other and toward ourselves. We had hot but somewhat undifferentiated desire that seemed to start as a hunger in our blood, a pulse-pain in our hearts—and what was it for, what was it for, what were we going to do with it? That was our question.

Our solidarity was not an instant panacea, would not immediately restore us to full human status, make us citizens, help us understand our differences, turn us into nice people. But our solidarity and respect for each other was the strongest weapon we, or anyone, could have, and while it lasted we would use it to its fullest advantage. We could see qualities we seemed to have in common and begin to associate them with what we meant by “dyke,” like our willingness to be out in public with our militant lesbian poetry and clothes and postures and attitudes, and like the idealism that shone from our faces, and the honest, plain-spokenness of our speech, and our willingness to fight for justice. Even now those of us still acting as “activists” trust each other’s word know we can call on each other in certain kinds of crises and know we will show up.

This loyalty, I think, spread into the women’s movement as a whole, where women had bumped into the long-standing, entrenched misconception about female friendship being impossible. We heard a story about two straight women, mothers and ex-wives of leftist men, who had been together in a consciousness raising group and had decided to live together. They moved into the same house, sharing the same kitchen. Within days they were fighting, to the point, the story went, that they were out on the street screaming into each other’s faces, and pulling each other’s hair. And splitting up. This was the classic stereotype about women at the time—that we could never be friends with each other. Women were believed to be untrustworthy: jealous of each other, since all women were understood to be rivals for perpetually desirable men, or rivals for fame, “beauty” or success of any kind. This social disconnection is completely dangerous, as disconnected women will turn away when one of them is in trouble with a man or group of men—and by extension is in any kind of trouble—and will say, fearfully, cold-heartedly, mercilessly, ‘she must have brought it on herself.’

Our dyke networks in general had couple relationships but very free sexual interactions outside of these commitments. Perhaps I just wasn’t looking or didn’t go to the bars enough, but I didn’t see as much of that isolated couple-lockstep sexual jealousy among us as activist lesbians. The possessive jealousy, so typical of isolated and frightened lesbian couples, vaporized for awhile in the new openness. We became radiantly eroticized, toward all of us, and a sort of blanket of love permeated the air.  Out of this we committed to take risks for each other, to show up and put lives on the line. We had taken risks in other parts of the earlier, broader movement for civil rights and ending the war, but not with this same erotic suffusion. Now, this social loyalty to other lesbians, and by extension to women in general, impacted us very personally; we valued each other more than we had and thus valued ourselves more too. As female beings. This created loyalty to each other as lesbians and as women, which many of us had never experienced. As Laura Brown put it, “I love that we were making it up, being as strong as you could be, and as kind, and as loving as you could be. We had an ethic that love would make each other stronger…”

Over the next few years after 1970, this militant lover-love spread out experientially to bisexual and straight women in a diffused sort of way and produced a new loyalty among women. Women who fell in love with each other even for a short time or even in a virtually physical way—you know, dreams, fantasies, noticing their own attraction to a woman in a way that includes her breasts and lips but that isn’t competitive, and so being open to the possibility of physical sexual relationships even if never acted upon—women who now knew what it was or might be like to be intimate with another woman, and to be reflected positively in another woman’s eyes. This helped them love themselves more and it helped them understand each other empathically. As this love spread across many layers of society, women became more capable of female friendships and loyalties.

In the third year of our dyke revolution, in one section of my fifteen-page poem “A Woman Is Talking to Death,” I tried to capture this sense of lesbian love as a caring about other women. The section called “A Mock Interrogation” has these lines:

(from The Judy Grahn Reader. Aunt Lute Books. ©2009)

I set this poetic scene in my work and life situations, as well as in the movement as I experienced it. For me the love I felt for my comrade dyke/lovers never ended. Still today, women from that tumultuous era, even those with whom I had serious difficulties—I still love them. Seeing them again after forty years, again my insides melt. Interviewing any one of them, I notice the appealing slant of her cheekbone, the brightness of her eyes, the cocky turn of her head. This isn’t about sex; I had sex with very few of them. Though maybe it mattered that the permission was there, that we might have sex. Recently and somewhat mischievously I asked Pat Jackson, not having seen her for thirty-five years, not having ever had sex with her or even cuddled all night with her, if she had ever loved me. She looked at the wall, looked at the table, looked at the wall again. “Love you!” she said. “Love you?” another pause. She fixed brilliant blue eyes on me. “I would die for you.”

________________

April 2011