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Ain't I A Woman? newspapers, June 1970-July 1971

1971-06-04 "Ain't I a Woman?" Page 3

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dialogue AIAW collective had a discussion of an article called, "Gay vs Lesbian". The discussion was tumultuous and that was probably because the article talks about a subject about which there are a lot of fears, hostilities and insecurities. The article makes a distinction between newly gay women who have been gay for a long time (lesbians). When we discussed it all of us said things we would not have said any other time because we felt threatened. Newly gay women felt they had to defend themselves against the article's accusation that they have the option to return to men. But I as a gay woman who has been gay for a long time felt a defensiveness that I did not understand. Newly gay women were reacting to the article's division distinction by explaining how alike both sides were, how they experienced the same oppression and went through the same things. Somehow that really threatened be and made me say awful things that I really don't believe. What I seemed to be saying was that I was gayer than they were because they'd gotten to think it out first and I hadn't. I didn't want to let them into our community. AIAW had a meeting the other night at which we discussed my feelings. Now I have a good understanding of where they came from. I was protecting my identity as Lesbian. Once I was ashamed of it, hid it, felt that I was sick to love a woman, but now after years of struggle and the help of a growing gay community it has become something that I'm proud of. It was my years of pain and aloneness that seemed to be dismissed by the discussion - No acknowledgement that being a gay woman wasn't always this good. [hand drawn woman at right] It's easiest for me to understand how you feel about your identity as a lesbian if I think about how I feel about my identity as working class. Right now there are few people I trust on the issue of class. Few women I work with now have had my experience or even begun to understand my values. I become defensive when middle class women talk about class and really offended when women have had all kinds of middle class privileges begin to identify as poor because of a very recent experience of not having as much money as they've been used to. That they can use the word "poor" or the term "working-class" so lightly, that they can think of them as credentials somehow denies the pain they've brought me. But someday, Carrie, your class consciousness will be good - I know that - feel it by how hard you listen and how [hand drawn woman] seriously you deal with my criticisms. When that time comes will I be able to trust your perceptions or will I resent your not having had the pain I had? Still gayness and class aren't the same even though we both now there is some connection if we can only get that analysis worked out. If your background is middle class you weren't poor, period. But even if you have never identified yourself as a lesbian your background isn't necessarily heterosexual. And even if you never see the possibility of that gay identity you can experience the pain a woman feels always loving her best friends only to be rewarded by standing up at their weddings. I don't want to argue the hierarchy of oppression. Although I always felt gay pain I didn't have to work painfully through that identity alone as you did. In a very real sense what you have been through made it easier for me - when I finally said I was gay I wasn't alone - you and other women like you were supporting me. I can thank you for that but I can never go through what you did. One final thing: My defensiveness at that article and our discussion had something to do with it being implied that women coming out now are making a political decision. Even though we as women are changing the whole meaning of that work political, it still hits me wrong. Like if you said to me, "I have made this political decision to be working class," I'd wretch. Do you know what I am trying to say? It's been no thought-out, rational, political alternative - it's been more like a coming home - more gut level - more real and the dyke I feel inside me has no more option to return to a heterosexual world than any of us. It would actually be no option at all. If repression or financial problems caused any of us to turn to men it would not exactly be a free choice and would be terrifyingly painful. I think we understand each other. We have both felt the hurt that comes when someone seems to be dismissing lightly an important formative part of your life. But I can't help wondering whether one of the millions of women who were gay in high school or later for awhile and then for some reason or other got married, would feel the same hurt. I felt hurt because loving women was and is such a big part of my life. It was important in high school because I knew that I was only interested in boys because I was supposed to be. I would have liked to spend time with my girlfriends talking or playing softball, but I knew girls weren't supposed to be like that. It seems like I have spent my whole life trying to be like what everyone said girls should be. I was tomboy when I was younger and spent third-sixth grades wishing I wanted to be like other girls - wishing I wanted to wear a skirt to school and didn't like to play softball. Getting into seventh grade solved the skirt problem because then all girls had to wear dresses to school, but it was around that time that I fell in love with the minister's daughter. I knew that wasn't right because it was too strong a feeling -- stronger than any I'd had for a boy. I felt abnormal and alone and worried. Then when I finally kissed a woman and we made love, it was beautiful and I loved her very much. But I also knew it was not the way life was supposed to be for women and there was constant tension between what society said was right and what I felt was right for me. I felt sick and I hated the gayness in me and wanted it out. So being gay was important then because of the strength of the feeling and the energy I spent thinking and worrying and trying to go straight. Now it is important because after all those years of self-hatred, I've finally accepted myself as gay and would even rather not be any way else. Now to think of myself as a lesbian gives me strength and makes me feel proud of how far I've come -- finally proud. But what about the women who were gay for awhile and then went straight? (If you can ever really go straight. At one point in the middle of my trying to be straight period, I almost got married. If I had, it would have been disastrous and very unhappy for me.) Their gayness must be still smoldering, but as an ulcer within them. Hiding it and with no one to talk to, I wonder how it affects their lives? The changes I've gone through about the tomboy or butch thing are curious. It seems that up until recently I've tried to deny what I am. When I was a tomboy, I wished that I wasn't. When I got to high school and saw that I was small breasted and small hipped, I kept my hair long so that people wouldn't mistake me for a boy. Oh, that was so humiliating and when I finally did cut my hair, I would make myself wear a skirt everyday just to avoid being called a boy. It has been almost a year that I've been happy with myself about being gay. Increasingly over the year I've come to see and think about myself as feminine. Before when I would wear jeans and an old shirt I would look at myself and think "You look like a boy; you look ugly." But now even when I look real butchy, I look at myself and I see a woman and it seems to me anyone could tell. A Woman? June 4, 1971 3.
 
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