Carolyn Gage
  • Home
    • Butch Visibility Project
    • Bio and Vitae
    • Endorsements
    • Production History
    • Catalog of Books and Plays
    • Online Essays >
      • Lesbian Culture and History Essays
      • Theatre Essays
      • Feminist Essays
      • Tributes/Obituaries
      • Reviews
    • Interviews >
      • Audio/Video Interviews
      • Print Interviews
  • Books and CD's
    • Gage Play Anthologies
    • Feminist Thought And Spirituality
    • Lesbian Theatre
    • CD's and DVD's
    • Anthologies with Other Authors
    • Journal Anthologies
  • Plays
    • One-Woman Shows >
      • The Second Coming of Joan of Arc
      • La Seconde Venue de Jeanne d'Arc
      • Joana Dark - a re-volta
      • Giovanna d'Arco - la rivolta
      • ВТОРОТО ПРИШЕСТВИЕ НА ЖАНА Д’АРК (Bulgarian tranlsation of The Second Coming of Joan
      • 贞德再临_中文 (Mandarin translation of The Second Coming of Joan of Arc)
      • The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman
      • Crossing the Rapelands
    • Musicals >
      • The Amazon All-Stars
      • Babe! An Olympian Musical
      • How to Write a Country-Western Song
      • Leading Ladies
      • Women on the Land
    • Full-Length Plays >
      • The Abolition Plays
      • The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women
      • AXED!
      • Black Star
      • Coming About
      • Esther and Vashti
      • The Goddess Tour
      • In McClintock's Corn
      • Sappho in Love
      • The Spindle
      • Stigmata
      • Thanatron
      • Ugly Ducklings
    • One-Acts >
      • Ain't Got No - I Got Life
      • The A-Mazing Yamashita and the Millennial Gold-Diggers
      • Artemisia and Hildegard
      • Battered on Broadway
      • Bite My Thumb
      • The Boundary Trial of John Proctor
      • Cookin' with Typhoid Mary
      • The Countess and the Lesbians
      • The Drum Lesson
      • Easter Sunday
      • Entr'acte or The Night Eva Le Gallienne Was Raped
      • The Evil That Men Do: The Story of Thalidomide
      • Female Nude Seated
      • The Gage and Mr. Comstock
      • The Greatest Actress Who Ever Lived
      • Harriet Tubman Visits A Therapist
      • Head in the Game
      • Hermeneutic Circlejerk
      • Heterosexuals Anonymous
      • Jane Addams and the Devil Baby
      • A Labor Play
      • Lace Curtain Irish
      • Lighting Martha
      • Little Sister
      • Louisa May Incest
      • Mason-Dixon
      • The Obligatory Scene
      • The P.E. Teacher
      • The Parmachene Belle
      • The Pele Chant
      • Planchette
      • The Poorly-Written Play Festival
      • Radicals
      • The Rules of the Playground
      • Souvenirs from Eden
      • Starpattern
      • 'Til the Fat Lady Sings
      • Valerie Solanas At Matteawan
    • Short Short Plays >
      • 52 Pickup
      • At Sea
      • Black Eye
      • El Bobo
      • Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter
      • The Clarity of Pizza
      • The Great Fire
      • Hrotsvitha's Vision
      • The Intimacy Coordinator
      • The Ladies' Room
      • Miss Le Gallienne Announces the New Season
      • On the Other Hand
      • Patricide
      • The Pickle Play
    • Dramatic Adaptations >
      • Amy Lowell: In Her Own Words
      • Brett Remembers
      • Deep Haven
      • El Bobo (one-act play)
      • El Bobo (short screenplay)
      • Emily & Sue >
        • Touring Production of Emily & Sue >
          • The Creative Team
          • Director's Vision
          • Adaptor's notes
          • Open Me Carefully
      • I Have Come to Show You Death
      • Speak Fully The One Awful Word
      • We Too Are Drifting (Screenplay)
    • Special Index: Plays That Deal with Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls
    • Special Index: Women's History Plays
    • Special Index: Romantic Plays with Happy Endings
  • Touring Work
    • Performances >
      • Lace Curtain Irish
      • Crossing the Rapelands
      • The Parmachene Belle (performance)
      • Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter (performance)
      • Gage on Stage
    • Lectures >
      • Lizzie Borden and Lesbian Theatre
      • The Secret Life of Lesbians
      • Paradigms and Paradigm-Shifting
      • When Sex Is Not the Metaphor For Intimacy
      • Meeting the Ghost of Hamlet's Father
      • A Theatrical Journey Through Maine's Lesbian History
      • Tara and Other Lies
      • Teena Brandon's Inconvenient Truth
    • Workshops >
      • The Art of the Dramatic Monologue
      • Acting Lesbian
      • Interrupting Racism: A Workshop
      • Playwriting Techniques for Poets and Fiction Writers
      • Ugly Ducklings Workshop
    • Residencies
    • The Lesbian Tent Revival >
      • Testimonials
      • The Lesbian Tent Revival Radio Hour Podcasts
      • The Lesbian Tent Revival Sermon on Dying Well
      • Sermons for a Lesbian Tent Revival
      • Supplemental Sermons
      • Hotter Than Hell
      • The Synapse Pendant
    • Cauldron & Labrys >
      • A Brief History
      • Upcoming Productions
  • Calendar
    • Gage Performances and Appearances
    • Productions of Gage's Work
  • Contact/Storefront
    • Privacy Policy
  • Blog

The Disappearing L: Erasure of Lesbian Spaces and Culture

2/13/2017

13 Comments

 
Picture
Dr. Bonnie Morris’ eagerly awaited book The Disappearing L: Erasure of Lesbian Spaces and Culture is out now, and available in paperback. Buy it. It’s (borrowing a riff from Dr. Bon) “pure protein” for the soul… in an age of postmodern and sound-bite carbs. And we need protein, because, sisters, it’s time to build some muscles.
 
Okay. The book. It’s amazing, Amazonian. It does things that are supposedly not possible. Like lesbians. It’s often warm, personal, and personable… and at the same time impeccably researched and documented. She brings “scholarly standards to radical history.”  It’s engaging and accessible, stimulating and inspiring. It’s actually kind of everything.
 
Dr. Morris lays it right out from Page One, stating in her first sentence that she writes “as a woman, lesbian, and feminist; a dinosaur facing extinction in this new queer jungle. I’m writing now to describe what it looks like and feels like to be written out of history.”
 
Bam.

Picture
And what a history it was! Lesbian feminists in the late 20th century created a powerful movement, and we did it before the Internet. But as Dr. Bon notes, “By 2000, anything woman-identified had become proof of unthinkable allegiance to a retro gender binary.”
 
This, of course, did not happen to gay men. Why and how did it happen to lesbians? Dr. Bon, influenced early in life by Nancy Drew and Harriet the Spy, invites us to join her in solving this mystery… and she describes her treasure map:

“As cultural capital, the threatened art and music of this recent lesbian past is precious to me.”
 
It should be precious to all of us… not just lesbians, but anyone concerned with the rapidly eroding rights of women. Because, as we are seeing, when they came for the lesbians, it was the prelude for the abasement of all women.
 
Dr. Bon is a professor of women’s studies, and from this vantage point, she has been able to watch the process of erasure. She notes how the terms for identity most popular with her students include “queer, gay, bi, trans, or ally.” What did these have in common? “…they were all either gender-neutral or male-inclusive. These terms embraced masculine possibilities, or relationships with men, in ways that lesbian of course did not.”  In this lineup, “lesbian” is read as separatist, and the ignoring of men is nearly always conflated in patriarchy with hatred of men. This image, of course, is anathema to female activists or progressives.

Picture
In the world of Gender Studies and queer theory, lesbian history finds itself homeless. Even studies of girlhood are read as transphobic. In the colorful words of Dr. Bon, “For better or worse, the stereotype of the angry radical lesbian marching with fist raised against the patriarchy has been replaced by the embossed wedding invitation for Megan and Carmen.” As the New York Times trumpeted after the Supreme Court decision affirming same-sex marriage, “Separatism is for losers.”
 
So… that’s where we are. That’s just chapter one. The pundits have drawn an official curtain over three decades of radical, lesbian-feminist social change and a flowering of lesbian and feminist culture unprecedented in the history of the world. But…  Nothing to see here, folks. Let’s move along. Dr. Bon cannily uncovers one of the key mechanisms for our erasure: The lesbian stereotype so aggressively propagated erases our activism.

Picture
White-girl music?  The “women’s music” movement had its roots in African American blues, in the protest songs of the 60’s—and earlier, and in appropriation of the male-dominated genre of rock-and-roll. Dr. Bon reminds us of the “Varied Voices of the Black Woman” tour. Diversity? Lesbian feminist festivals and concerts almost without exception offered sliding scale tickets as well as sign language interpretation. Accessibility was a priority right out of the gate.
 
And what about the “women-only” events? What about them…?  Wasn’t anybody noting the men-only offerings of the entire rest of the culture. In the words of lesbian photographer  JEB (Joan E. Biren), “There was nothing in the culture that nourished us.”
 
“… so many women were desperate for positive reflections of lesbian life that just to be at a lesbian-majority event was thrilling; actually enlightening. Joining together to create this temporary  majority at women-only concerts allowed audiences to experience (for the first time) an environment where lesbians were in charge of what was said about lesbian lives.”


Picture
The women’s music festivals were all about diversity, community, and family… and, in the pre-Internet days, the political grapevine.  The entire first chapter, “The Soundtrack of Our Awakening” is breath-taking. I felt as if I was leaning over the shoulder of a master archeologist, unearthing cultural treasure after cultural treasure, proving the existence of a time and a place that had become as mythical as Atlantis. Just this chapter alone is worth the price of the book!
 
But wait… there’s more. That’s only the beginning. The second chapter, “By the Time I Got to Wombstock.” This is the chapter about the festivals—the women’s music festivals. As Dr. Bon notes, “Thousands and thousands of lesbians experienced at least one such festival as part of their personal and political awakening in the quarter-century between 1974 and 1999.”
 
I remember so clearly my first festival. It was the West Coast Women’s Music Festival, produced by Robin Tyler. It completely rocked my world. It changed me forever. Later I would attend the West Coast Lesbian Festival, the East Coast Lesbian Festival, Campfest, the Gulf Coast Womyn’s Festival, and the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. I went to “Michfest” for fourteen years, contributing programming to it for nine.

Picture

My experience of these festivals is so outside the context of everything to do with the patriarchy that I am at a loss for words in describing it. What I would say for the last quarter century was just “see for yourself.”
 
But Dr. Bon finds the words:

“Were festivals designed to be lesbian erotic vacation spaces? Or were they reflective, goddess-centered spirituality breaks from rampant sexism and homophobia in society? Or training camps for lesbian political nationhood? …Against this backdrop of recovery meetings and nude partying, hopeful diversity and angry processing, the nation’s best all-female stages evolved over time, a music and comedy performance history  that should be central to any reconstructed narrative.”
 
She cites Robert McRuer in his research on gay and lesbian utopian communities:

“The emphasis for many lesbian feminists had shifted from engagement with, or transformation of, the outside world, to removal from that world and the structures of patriarchy and capitalism that sustained it… despite the fact that it was an outdoor event, the spatial orientation at women’s music festivals was inward.”
 

This subject is so charged for me, I am overwhelmed just attempting to review the writing of another author! All I can say is thank the goddess for Dr. Morris. Seriously. She has chronicled assiduously forty years of the jewel in the crown of lesbian feminist culture, and in this chapter, she presents us with a comprehensive history of the roots of the festivals, the lineups of performers, profiles of the largest one, and an in-depth analysis of the controversies surrounding the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.

Picture
In the second half of this chapter, Dr. Bon opens up to share her own personal journey with the festivals and how she came to transform her passion for this culture into the archiving of it. As a nineteen-year-old college sophomore, she bought her first ticket to the Michigan festival. The year was 1981, and the festival was five years old.
 
She shares with us the tender pages of her journal of the experience, beginning with the eighteen-hour road trip on a privately chartered Greyhound bus. In spite of the all-night party on the bus and being rained out of her tent, her relationship with festival culture was consummated on that trip: “This is my life choice. I have been silent because so much of what I feel has already been expressed so eloquently by others before me in this movement. But I want to capture it all, for it has captured me.” 
 
O, sweet bird of youth… I wish that starry-eyed nineteen-year-old could have known what awaited her… a hundred festivals, thousands of women, hundreds of thousands of words. By 1986, her graduate school training had put her well on her way to being a professional historian. Her note-taking expanded into tape recordings. Eventually, she began to invite women at the festivals to journal along with her.
 
These journals were so much more than “dear diaries.” In Dr. Bon’s own words:
 
“In creating a longitudinal festival journal before women had computers, blogs, Twitter, or Facebook, I ended up with an archive of how self-worth developed in a marginalized community.” 

What she was documenting was a miracle.

PictureRadical Faeries May Day Gathering
Lesbians, she reminds us, were still outlaws in the Eighties. Lesbian moms lost their kids. Lesbian kids lost their homes. Unlike other marginalized populations, we rarely had families who had or backs, much less shared our identities and could transmit the culture.

And we were not gays. We were lesbians, specifically females. On top of the homophobia, we were combating the ubiquitous misogyny that too often considered  rape, battery and harassment to be our fault. But we found each other, we began to share our stories, and then we celebrated ourselves. These celebrations were not just part of a movement toward liberation. They were an embodiment of the liberation itself. Radical beyond description… except that Dr. Bon was doing just that.
 
Why no coverage?  Aside from the obvious biases against women and homosexuals, Dr. Bon offers and additional explanation: AIDS. She notes how the Radical Faerie movement of the 1980’s, a movement among gay men, embraced separatist retreats in nature as part of identity-building. This generation, however, was ravaged by the AIDS epidemic. The heyday of lesbian culture coincided with the plague years for gay men, and, as a result, many of the men who were in sympathy with this culture and who might have been able to provide a supportive context for it for future historians did not survive.
 
Then, there is the rise and fall of the lesbian-owned businesses, especially the women’s bookstores, which were sanctuaries and clearing houses for entire communities of lesbians.

PictureAntigone Bookstore in Tucson
And… the  Internet… The difficulty of archiving pre-Internet and the great ease of hijacking narratives in the post-Internet era. Googling these festivals, one is most likely to land on websites dismissing them at transphobic, benighted, and historically  insignificant. In Dr. Bon’s words:

“In the realm of social media and political rhetoric, [women born female] lesbians and trans women were cruelly set against one another in the ongoing battle over the Michigan Women’s Music Festival. This has successfully rewritten recent history to portray lesbian cultural  activists as both privileged and oppressive, burying other realities.” 

Unlike most of those who write on this subject, Dr. Bon was actually there. She was there for nearly forty years.
 
The Disappearing L has a fascinating chapter “Imagining an Eruv,” where Dr. Bon documents the history of Jewish lesbian-feminists in the lesbian culture. She talks about the struggle for a separate “Jewish Tent” at the Michigan Festival, the eventual realization of that dream, and then the permutations of that institution. Drawing parallels between the identities of Jews and lesbians, she compares strategies for preservation of culture.
 
The Disappearing L is so rich in detail and anecdote, so enlightening in analyses, I am at loss to do it justice. This book, and Dr. Bon’s archive, which is at the Schlesinger Library, are treasures.  I feel blessed to have been a part of this time, this culture, and to have walked with so many of these women… and I feel blessed that someone has preserved the record and the artifacts of this “Golden Age.”

PictureDr. Bonnie J. Morris


From Dr. Bon's website:

A lifetime of teaching women's history.

Q: IS SHE STILL CARRYING THAT NOTEBOOK AROUND?

A: Yes--and still writing in it with a fountain pen.

Q: How many journals has Bon filled by now?

A: One hundred and seventy-nine; they jam the bookshelf my father built for me when I was three. On my table, catching sunlight and moonlight, is a bowl of fountain pens. Come choose your weapon: Sheaffer, Lamy, Watermark.


"My research interests and available guest speeches include women's sports, the women's music movement since the mid-1970s, Jewish women's history, and other female-identified communities across time....

I've traveled the world as a professor and guest speaker. Appearances include both University of Waikato and Victoria University in New Zealand; Reykjavik University in Iceland; the Women's Education, Reserach and Resource Center of University College in Dublin, Ireland; Tel Aviv University in Israel; Queens College in Ontario, Canada; and Anna Daresh Women's College in Madras, India. Bring me in to speak at YOUR next women's history event!"

The Disappearing L can be ordered from the publisher for $22.

And here's an interview I did with Dr. Bon, sponsored by Green Woman Store for their telesummit on the environment in 2015.

13 Comments
Suzy Martin
2/15/2017 09:51:49 am

I am a 70 year old Lesnian Feminist. I was there.

Reply
Suze
2/17/2017 02:58:00 am

Reply
Conspiracy2Riot
2/16/2017 06:00:23 pm

What a refreshing, welcome article in the age of female erasure, ushered in by women who somehow have come to believe that male inclusiveness outweighs the class struggle women endure, and at this juncture, particularly Lesbians.

Thank you.

Reply
Sky Rose
3/8/2017 07:04:25 pm

What do I do to get the book, and to have something to publish on Facebook for others to learn of it? Thanks.

Reply
Carolyn Gage link
3/8/2017 09:31:40 pm

You can order it from any bookstore... or Amazon... Contact the author of the book for info on how to publicize. Her website is http://www.bonniejmorris.com/

Reply
robin fre
3/11/2017 10:44:18 am

Incredible I was there involved in music. Was partners with Kay Gardner for 20 years knew Mich fest well loving the community

Reply
sandra Kurjiaka
3/11/2017 01:43:01 pm

I have been saying that I hate this all inclusive queer title because it makes lesbians an unimportant part of the many. I remember all the struggles to have the L word included in the national organizations name. to say the L word was an act of bravery. The music fed our souls I am almost 76 and hate been made to disappear by the pc movement.

Reply
Rachel
4/3/2017 05:04:12 pm

I will be going back to calling myself a lesbian now.

Reply
Kathy Hogan
4/16/2017 10:15:19 am

What a great review, thank you so much. I met Bonnie at the festivals a few times, and it was clear, she was the real deal with her hard work and focus on getting it all down - in writing, interviews, and recordings. We're so lucky that we got someone of such heart, intelligence, and ability to create the historic record of this remarkable time. I was a (very) minor bit player on the women's music circuit (Kathy Fire), and was warmly welcomed by all the 'big kids,' from Meg Christina in the early days, to Alex Dobkins, Holly Near, Max Feldman, and the dozens of other big talents who created the soundtracks of our lives. Like all of us older lesbians who lived through the exciting explosion of lesbian culture and community, I'm feeling like a bit of a 'dykosaur' in recent years, in the disappearing. This is too long already, but just "thank you" for your great review, and additional massive "thank you" to the universe that we had the likes of Bonnie to help tell and preserve our story.

Reply
Gahan Kelley link
4/21/2017 10:52:45 pm

I was one of the three founders of Sisterhood Bookstore in Los Angeles . In those days we turned lesbian into a proud word. It took real courage to stand up to the constant questions " what's wrong with gay"? Or maybe "gay girls". I'll always call myself a lesbian feminst. Two words the patriarcy despises and I love.

Reply
Misty Wood
10/7/2020 04:31:47 pm

You've received support from the legendary Martina Navratilova on Twitter

https://twitter.com/Martina/status/1313833105401303048

Solidarity

Reply
Carolyn Gage link
10/7/2020 05:50:35 pm

Misty Wood... Thank you so much for sharing the Martina tweet. It made my day! And are on my newsletter list? https://carolyngage.weebly.com/contactstorefront.html

Reply
Misty Wood
10/7/2020 06:47:42 pm

Great!
I signed up for your newsletter, sure I'm interested in feminist news. Funny how I've renewed my active feminist in my retirement, feels needed.




Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Carolyn Gage

    “… Carolyn Gage is one of the best lesbian playwrights in America…”--Lambda Book Report, Los Angeles.

    SUBSCRIBE:
    To subscribe to the blog, scroll down and click on "RSS Feed". To subscribe to my newsletter, click here.

    Categories

    All
    Child Abuse
    Civil Rights
    Incest
    In Memoriam
    Interviews
    Lesbian Feminism
    Lesbian History
    Psychotropic Drugs
    Rape
    Reviews
    The Environment
    Women And Theatre
    Women's History

    Archives

    June 2022
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    July 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    September 2018
    June 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    July 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    August 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    October 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.