1919年出版的诗集《风景与幻景》(Vues et Visions)由克劳德创作,插图则由苏珊娜绘制。同时,她还在1930年出版的她俩作为伴侣的首部合作作品《未实现的自白》(Aveux non Avenus,即《否认:或取消的自白》)中的照片拼贴画上署名。这本书收录了克劳德的格言、插曲和回忆,由诗歌和散文片段组成,并配有摄影拼贴画。文字与视觉元素共同强化了艺术家对意识、性和身份的不断拓展的认知,她们认为这些是相互关联又支离破碎同时也非常易变的。1923年,克劳德从文学领域拓展到戏剧、摄影和写作领域,与美国侨民、异国情调的舞者比阿特丽斯·万格一起成为了神秘艺术之友联盟的创始成员之一,比阿特丽斯·万格是诗人、超现实主义创始人安德烈·布勒东的朋友。5
法国共产党察觉到威胁后,通过成立自己的组织做出回应。这两个团体继续发生冲突,原因在于共产党不信任知识分子和艺术家,而超现实主义者拒绝将革命视为狭隘的阶级斗争,也拒绝在唯物主义的革命观中定位梦境和无意识的作用。1934年,克劳德发表了她的第一篇马克思主义论文《巴黎赌局已开》(Bets are on)。她引用《马尔多罗之歌》The Song of Maldoror的作者洛特雷阿蒙伯爵Comte de Lautréamont和兰波Rimbaud的诗歌,热情地捍卫了诗歌在面对“意识形态一致性(即对诗歌本身的否定)”时对自主性的需求。8
最初,“女儿们”在公开与保密之间小心翼翼地保持平衡。她们最早开展的项目之一就是在客厅里就女同性恋者关心的问题进行一系列讨论。她们把这些以咖啡为媒介的非正式聚会称为“闲聊咖啡会”。参加者不必表明自己是同性恋者; 该组织的成员资格向所有有兴趣进一步了解同性恋“问题”的女性开放。甚至该组织所选择的名称也为其提供了避免意外曝光的掩护。通过采用一首晦涩的19世纪情诗(《比莉蒂斯之歌》Songs of Bilitis)的标题,据说这首诗是由传说中希腊教师兼诗人萨福的一位虚构女情人所作,她们可以向那些“知情”的女性表明自己是一个同性恋团体,同时又能避免引起整个社会不必要的关注。
《阶梯》杂志封面和内容的变化,体现了女同性恋运动的演变。该杂志最初以女性的钢笔画为特色,但在1964年,在芭芭拉·吉廷斯(Barbara Gittings)担任编辑期间,《阶梯》开始展示凯·拉胡森拍摄的女同性恋照片。吉廷斯还在杂志封面用粗体字添加了“女同性恋评论”字样。其内容始终以女同性恋为中心,但又不拘一格。除了提供不断发展的同性恋解放运动的信息外,《阶梯》还向欣赏的读者群体推介女诗人和作家,从玛丽昂·齐默·布拉德利(Marion Zimmer Bradley)和珍妮特·霍华德·福斯特(Jeanette Howard Foster)再到瓦莱丽·泰勒(Valerie Taylor)和丽塔·梅·布朗(Rita Mae Brown)。1957年,《阶梯》推出的创新之一是由长期撰稿人兼最后一任编辑吉恩·达蒙(Gene Damon6,即芭芭拉·格里尔撰写的每月对所有女同性恋主题出版物的评论“女同性恋文献”(“Lesbiana”)。另一个创新是读者来信专栏,在接下来的14年里,该专栏刊登来自全球各地的信件。在该杂志早期的内容中,有两篇篇幅较长、富有思想性的文章,署名“L. H. N.,纽约,纽约”,在杂志创刊几个月内就寄给了编辑。这两封信对新团体的事业表示祝贺,并全文刊登; 几年之内,其作者、剧作家洛林·汉斯贝里(她在签名中加上了夫姓内米罗夫)凭借她那部关于美国种族关系的犀利戏剧《阳光下的葡萄干》(A Raisin in the Sun)(1959 年)引起了轰动。
在十年时间里,战略分歧以及地域差异影响了“女儿会”(Daughters)的组织决策。1965年,在东海岸,吉廷斯、拉胡森和埃克斯坦是少数参与早期同性恋公开抗议活动的女同性恋者。在接下来的十年里,她们在华盛顿、纽约和费城的联邦大楼前进行抗议,挑战政府政策以及媒体所热衷的对同性恋者的模糊刻板印象。在旧金山,马丁(Martin)和莱昂(Lyon),以及塔尔马奇(Talmadge)、邦纳和沃克认识到消除同性恋“罪恶”观念的重要性,并将工作重点放在宗教领袖身上。1965年,他们与泰德·麦尔文纳(Ted McIlvenna)合作,麦尔文纳是一位富有同情心的牧师,他在该市贫困的田德隆区(Tenderloin)帮助离家出走的青少年,他们共同创立了宗教与同性恋委员会(Council on Religion and the Homosexual)。他们在主流教会中结交的盟友为推动同性恋权利立法提供了支持。在芝加哥,像芭芭拉·麦克莱恩(Barbara McLain)这样的“女儿会”领导人与马特辛社的活动家合作,呼吁人们关注困扰他们社区的骚扰和暴力问题。这一步骤促成了美国最早的警察暴力监督网络之一的成立,该网络至今仍在运作。
6. Gene Damon:美国作家和出版商。在编辑了女同性恋民权组织 Daughters of Bilitis 出版的 《The Ladder》杂志后,她与他人共同创立了一家女同性恋图书出版公司 Naiad Press,该公司经过宣传后成为世界上最大的女同性恋书籍出版商。她建立了重要的女同性恋文学集,并编目并附有主题的详细索引。
“We were fi ghting the church, the couch, and the courts.”
These are the words of activists Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. They are describing a time, fifty years ago, when a handful of lesbians challenged the widespread demonization of female same sex love by American religious leaders, psychiatrists, psychologists, lawyers, and lawmakers. The two women still insist that they did not intend to start a revolution. In September 1955, when Martin and Lyon accepted an invitation to meet with three other lesbian couples in San Francisco, the main topic of conversation was forming a social club for “gay girls.” Out of their discussions grew the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first national lesbian rights organization in the United States.
The story of DOB provides a unique example of women’s activism during a time in contemporary U.S. history often portrayed by historians as socially and politically quiescent. DOB’s particular style of mobilizing lesbians—what historian Marc Stein has termed “militantly respectable” organizing— provides examples of strategies that have been effective in repressive political climates.
To fully understand DOB, we must place it in its cold war context. As historian Ruth Rosen has written, “the fifties were an age of cognitive dissonance: millions of people believed in ideals that poorly described their own experience. The decade quarantined dissent and oozed conformity” (1). Although Alfred Kinsey’s postwar studies of human sexuality showed the prevalence of homosexual attraction for “normal” American women and men, gay men and lesbians were dismissed from federal employment, fi red from private industry, and deprived of custody of their children, just because they desired the “wrong” sex. They were regularly harassed, and often arrested, by local vice squads at gay-friendly bars and restaurants, then humiliated when their names and addresses were printed on the front pages of hometown newspapers. “Homosexual” was synonymous with “pervert” and “subversive.”
Initially, the Daughters performed a careful balancing act between visibility and secrecy. One of their first programs was a series of living- room discussions on issues of interest to lesbians. They called the informal coffee- fueled gatherings “Gab ‘n’ Javas.” A woman did not have to identify herself as gay to attend; membership was open to all females interested in learning more about the “problems” of homosexuality. Even the name the Daughters chose for the group provided shelter from unwitting exposure. By using the title of an obscure nineteenth century erotic poem (Songs of Bilitis), supposedly written by a mythical female lover of the legendary Greek teacher and poet Sappho, they could signal that they were a gay group to those women who were “in the know” yet shield themselves from unwanted attention from society at large.
They also quickly established themselves as a non-profit organization, with by-laws, letterhead, and membership cards. The external symbols of corporate credibility helped them see themselves, as well as be seen by others, as a legitimate group. They opened their first office at 693 Mission Street in San Francisco in January 1957, sharing space with the Mattachine Society, an organization of gay men. The few women who were determined to find some sort of community sought out DOB in the Bay area, or found the New York office on lower Broadway. Kay Tobin (Lahusen) remembers, “I was so nervous! I mean, here I was, going to this lesbian group—and they had an office. I was so intimidated . . . until I got there” (2). What she found was a cluttered, claustrophobic space in which half a dozen women had gathered, but it was enough to convince her to join. For the next two decades, the tiny group of Daughters functioned like a highly structured women’s club and sometimes felt like a dysfunctional family. From 1958 to 1970, it was a national organization with local chapters, biennial conferences, and a membership averaging 200 women annually. In addition to San Francisco, there were active DOB groups in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston. Other U.S. cities—such as Dallas, Detroit, and New Orleans—as well as Melbourne, Australia, also had chapters for a few years in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Which lesbians were Daughters? While the organization’s membership was overwhelmingly white, it was not exclusively so. There were two women of color—a Filipina and a Chicana— among the initial organizers. A few African American women assumed positions of leadership within the organization at both national and chapter levels, such as Cleo Glenn (Bonner) and Pat Walker in San Francisco, and Ernestine Eckstein in New York. Bonner became the president of the national organization and led it for three years in the mid-1960s, the first woman of color to head a national gay rights group. Cuban-born Ada Bello was a leader in DOB’s Philadelphia Chapter in the late 1960s and Jeanne Córdova, of Irish and Mexican descent, helped revitalize the Los Angeles Chapter in the early 1970s. Artists like Nancie Gee and Alice Kobayashi contributed to DOB’s magazine, The Ladder. “Unlike many other groups in the 1950s,” remembers early member Billye Talmadge, “there were no color bars in DOB.” She goes on to note that “there were not just African-Americans, but Asians, Latinas . . . the driving force was that we were gay women” (3).
According to an early DOB membership survey, the first administered by lesbian activists themselves rather than professional researchers, a majority of the women in the organization were teachers. Some of them held professional positions in business or were employed as clerical workers, others had factory jobs or were unemployed. Most of the women who joined DOB in the late 1950s had gone to college; only a handful had served in the military in World War II or afterward. Most had at least some sexual or emotional involvement with the opposite sex. There was a fair amount of geographic mobility as well, and DOB members often moved to a different part of the country for work or a new love interest. Sometimes the result would be good for the Daughters personally and politically—when “Sandy” (Helen Sandoz) met and fell in love with “Sten” (Stella Rush) in 1957, she moved to Los Angeles so they could be together. The next year, they founded the Los Angeles Chapter.
Creating Lesbian Identity and Visibility
The Ladder may be one of the things that the Daughters is best known for. The same compact size as many academic or literary journals, the 25- to 60-page black-and-white magazine was the first ongoing monthly publication in the United States created by lesbians for lesbians. From 1956 to 1972, it was handed around among colleagues at work, at home, and at the bars; unfortunately for the organization’s meager treasury, most readers “borrowed” rather than paid for their copies. Repeatedly, lesbians who are now in their late 50s, 60s, and 70s describe their amazed reaction to finding a copy at a friend’s home or at one of the dozen newsstands and “alternative” bookstores around the country that sold it. “One day Audre (Lorde) and I stopped at our favorite newsstand on 8th Street in the Village and saw this little magazine. For lesbians! And there was an article in it by Iris Murdoch. We were thrilled,” remembers Blanche Wiesen Cook (4). For historian Cook, the groundbreaking biographer of Eleanor Roosevelt, and writer Lorde, the first black lesbian to be named New York’s Poet Laureate (1991), the discovery of The Ladder was further enhanced by its inclusion of the acclaimed British novelist. Iris Murdoch was renowned for her intellectually rigorous, provocative writings on moral and ethical issues in the 1950s and 1960s.
The changing cover and content of The Ladder illustrate the lesbian movement’s evolution. The magazine initially featured pen-and-ink drawings of women but in 1964, under the editorship of Barbara Gittings, The Ladder began showcasing photos of lesbians taken by Kay Lahusen. Gittings also added the words “A Lesbian Review” in boldface type to the front of the magazine. The content was always lesbian-centered yet eclectic. In addition to providing information on the growing homophile movement, The Ladder promoted female poets and writers—from Marion Zimmer Bradley and Jeanette Howard Foster to Valerie Taylor and Rita Mae Brown—to an appreciative audience. A monthly review of any and all lesbian-themed publications, “Lesbiana,” written by longtime Ladder contributor and final editor Gene Damon (Barbara Grier) was one of the innovations The Ladder introduced in 1957. Another was the letters to the editor column, which featured correspondence from around the globe for the next fourteen years. Among the early riches to be found in its pages are two long, thoughtful pieces, signed “L. H. N., New York, New York,” which were sent to the editor within a few months of the magazine’s debut. Offering congratulations for the new group’s undertakings, the letters were printed in their entirety; within a few years, their author, playwright Lorraine Hansberry (who added her married name, Nemiroff, to her signature), would cause a sensation with her searing drama on American race relations, A Raisin in the Sun (1959).
DOB leaders also used their publication to recruit research participants. Florence Conrad (Jaffy), DOB’s longtime Research Director, believed passionately that the best way to change public perceptions of lesbians was by changing what was written about them in the established medical and scientifi c literature. DOB, Jaffy argued, could help researchers find healthy, functioning, noninstitutionalized lesbian subjects for study. By the mid-1960s, however, some DOB leaders such as Gittings rejected the suggestion that the organization rely on anyone but its members in defining the mental health of gay women and men. “Emphasis on research has had its day,” she headlined in The Ladder. It was time to take action (5).
Within ten years’ time, strategic disagreements as well as geographic differences influenced the Daughters’ organizing decisions. In 1965, on the East Coast, Gittings, Lahusen, and Eckstein were three of a handful of lesbians who joined early gay public protests. They picketed federal buildings in Washington, New York, and Philadelphia for the rest of the decade, challenging government policies as well as the shadowy stereotypes of gay people so popular with the media. In San Francisco, Martin and Lyon, along with Talmadge, Bonner, and Walker, recognized the importance of exorcizing the “sin” of homosexuality and focused on religious leaders. Working with Ted McIlvenna, a sympathetic minister who aided runaway youth in the city’s poor Tenderloin district, they helped create the Council on Religion and the Homosexual in 1965. The allies they made within mainstream churches helped develop support for gay rights legislation. In Chicago, DOB leaders like Barbara McLain worked with Mattachine activists to call attention to the harassment and violence that plagued their communities. This step led to the founding of one of the first police brutality monitoring networks in the country, which continues to operate today.
Feminism and the Fall of The Ladder
The interplay between “the personal” and “the political” in DOB’s programs and goals is evident from the organization’s beginnings. Women who came to the get-togethers mainly to meet a new girlfriend often got more than they bargained for. For example, the “Gab ‘n’ Java” gatherings provided sites where women could talk about issues they had never before dared to express openly. As one woman’s story after another was shared and validated within the safety of the small group, DOB members realized that it was not just their own sense of self-esteem but society’s attitudes and policies that needed to change. Their magazine also helped DOB members defi ne their awareness of gender differences between lesbians and gay men, and stress their solidarity with heterosexual women on the need for gender equality. The Ladder was one of the few national publications where essays critiquing women’s second-class status in society could be found in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and it regularly printed poetry, short stories, and reviews of fiction and nonfiction with a decidedly feminist slant.
However, the appeal of women’s liberation to some of DOB’s most prominent activists in the late 1960s, and their desire to utilize respected resources like The Ladder to promote feminism, caused a split within DOB’s leadership that by 1970 was irreparable. That summer, one month before DOB’s biennial convention, national president Rita Laporte took the magazine’s mailing list and production materials from San Francisco to her new home in Nevada so that she and editor Barbara Grier could publish The Ladder privately.
DOB’s longtime leaders, including Lyon, Martin, Gittings, and Lahusen, were infuriated by this action. The loss of The Ladder caused a crisis of faith and friendship that has yet to be resolved. What Grier describes today as an effort to save a valuable publication from the death throes of a weak and ineffectual organization, other former Daughters insist was nothing less than theft. They assert that Grier and Laporte caused DOB’s demise by “stealing” their prized publication, which was the organization’s most valuable asset. Grier argues that The Ladder by 1970 was increasingly functioning as its own entity. As editor, she wanted the freedom to expand its feminist orientation and build on its legacy as the only established American lesbian magazine with a significant distribution network and publishing history.
Unfortunately, The Ladder could not survive without the organization that had given it life. Over the next two years, Grier recruited up-and-coming as well as well-known feminist writers and expanded the magazine’s circulation to nearly 4,000. The increase in readership, however, caused financial problems. “The simple truth is that we couldn’t afford to keep printing and mailing a high-quality magazine without accepting ads our readers wouldn’t want,” she said in 2003 to explain why she stopped publishing The Ladder in 1972 (6). With her partner Donna McBride and two other women, Grier then founded Naiad Press, a successful women’s publishing company. She used The Ladder’s mailing list to announce the new enterprise.
Through the 1970s DOB continued to provide a home for lesbians, at least on the local level. Chapters were granted autonomy and the right to continue organizing under the “Daughters of Bilitis” name in 1970 and many continued their work for the rest of the decade. The Boston Chapter was active until 1995. Then, as in 1955, DOB was many things to many women. It was where a lesbian could go to meet a new girlfriend, begin to heal a broken heart, or find validation for her life. It was a circle of friends to share good times and bad, a network of peer counselors who offered support and guidance, a resource center for questions about homosexuality. It was an arena for social action. The Daughters’ mix of personal support and political debate brought women to activism who never would have defined themselves as agents for change.
Despite the dominant culture of conformity so characteristic of the cold war years, the Daughters educated and organized lesbians, advocating for their inclusion in U.S. society. They adapted the postwar rhetoric of integration and equality to challenge their society not only on its homophobia but on its sexism.
Endnotes
1. Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How The Modern Women’s Movement
Changed America (New York: Viking, 2000), 8.
2. Kay Lahusen, interview with author, April 23, 2002.
3. Billye Talmadge, interview with author, March 30, 2002.
4. Blanche Wiesen Cook, discussion with author, September 5, 2004.
5. The Ladder 10 (October 1965): 10.
6. Barbara Grier, interview with author, December 29, 2003.
Resources
Primary Sources
Bullough, Vern L., ed. Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context. New York: Harrington Park Press, 2002.
Córdova, Jeanne. Kicking the Habit: A Lesbian Nun Story; An Autobiographical Novel. Hollywood, CA: Multiple Dimensions, 1990.
Marcus, Eric. Making Gay History: The Half-Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights. New York: Perennial, 2002.
Martin, Del and Phyllis Lyon. Lesbian/Woman. 20th anniversary ed. Volcano, CA: Volcano Press, 1991, 1972.
Tobin, Kay and Randy Wicker. The Gay Crusaders. New York: Paperback Library, 1972.
Secondary Sources
Boyd, Nan Alamilla. Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
Capsuto, Steven. Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television, 1930s to the Present. New York: Ballantine Books, 2000.
Cook, Blanche Wiesen. “Female Support Networks and Political Activism: Lillian Wald, Crystal Eastman, Emma Goldman.” Chrysalis 3 (Autumn 1977): 43-61.
D’Emilio, John. Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.
Duberman, Martin. Stonewall. New York: Dutton, 1993.
Faderman, Lillian. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth Century America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
Freedman, Estelle B. “Boston Marriage, Free Love, and Fictive Kin: Historical Alternatives to Mainstream Marriage.” OAH Newsletter 32 (August 2004): 1.———. No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women.
New York: Ballantine Books, 2002.
Katz, Jonathan Ned. Gay American History: Lesbians & Gay Men in the U.S.A.: A Documentary History. Rev. ed. New York: Meridian, 1992, 1976.
Kennedy, Elizabeth Lapovsky and Madeline D. Davis. Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community. Reprint. New York: Penguin Books, 1994, 1993.
May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York: Basic Books, 1988.
Meeker, Martin. “Behind the Mask of Respectability: Reconsidering the Mattachine Society and Male Homophile Practice, 1950s and 1960s.”
Journal of the History of Sexuality 10 (January 2001): 78-116.
Rosen, Ruth. The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America. New York: Viking, 2000.
Rupp, Leila J. A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Love in America.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Soares, Manuela, “The Purloined Ladder: Its Place in Lesbian History.”
Journal of Homosexuality 34 (Winter 1998): 27-49.
Stein, Marc. City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-1972. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Videos
Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community. VHS. Directed by Greta Schiller and produced by Robert Rosenberg and John Scagliotti. New York: Cinema Guild, 1985.
Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives. VHS. Directed by Aerlyn Weissman and Lynne Fernie. Montréal: National Film Board of Canada, 1992.
Last Call at Maud’s. VHS. Directed by Paris Poirier and produced by The Maud’s Project. New York: Water Bearer Films, 1993.
No Secret Anymore: The Times of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. DVD. Directed and produced by Joan E. Biren (JEB) and produced by Dee Mosbacher. San Francisco: Frameline, 2003.
Word Is Out. VHS. Directed by Andrew Brown and produced by Peter Adair and Nancy Adair. New York: New Yorker Video, 1991, 1978.
(1.02%)艾丽斯·沃克的第一部长篇小说《格兰奇·科普兰的第三次生命》(The Third Life of Grange Copeland)发表。由于小说中塑造了自甘堕落的黑人男性形象,被多数评论家认为有悖于黑人作家要塑造正面的黑人男性群体形象的传统原则,一时间,她成为美国非裔文学批评界的众矢之的。
开始我以为它像张爱玲的《半生缘》,从比吕对春华说出“I Love you”的时候就到了“我们再也回不去了”的节点。读完后才发现,从最开始他们就再也回不去了。就算承认自己初恋是雅玲,但从头到尾比吕都没想过要介入要抢夺,就像他说的介绍给英雄以外的男人才会后悔,就像叔叔说的如果当初介绍的不是英雄而是其他歪瓜裂枣就好了。正因为英雄如此优秀才会相处如此只好,正因为如此只好就再也不会去想介入。一起长大一起比赛是这被子都不会再有一次的经历,由始至终比吕都想着他们好。即时到最后,故意大声说“最喜欢雅玲”也是和过去的告别,同时也是对英雄的报复。比吕大概没想到英雄还会玩重新选择这么一出游戏,原本是两个关上心门的人的别扭,却拉上他出场,对他来说也是极为难受的事了。
我可能挑了挑眉以示不解。现在已经是20世纪80年代而不是30年代,女性艺术家和作家的历史已经过了让人觉得激进的时候。“她们不是艺术家,”罗兰说,此时,瓦伦丁·彭罗斯《女性的礼物》(Gifts of Women)(1951年)中与诗歌相伴的梦幻而萦绕人心的摄影蒙太奇,以及李·米勒拍摄的战争受害者的震撼照片在我脑海中浮现。“当然,这些女性很重要,”他接着说,“但那是因为她们是我们的缪斯。”而她们将永远是缪斯——我记得当时我这样想——想象着她们永恒飘荡于远远低于她们的情人和同事——毕加索、米罗、恩斯特、曼·雷(Man Ray)等人所在之圈的——但丁地狱的圈内。