The 1960s brought second-wave feminism and everybody got along! Different perspectives were heard and issues were discussed openly and respectfully! Or at least that’s what should have happened. But the straights and gays weren’t as friendly as one would have hoped. The two sides clashed as the second-wave feminists thought the lesbians hindered the cause and the lesbians thought the second-wave feminists were dicks. The fight resulted in big-time feminist Betty Friedan labelling the lesbians ‘a lavender menace’.
The lavender lesbian insult was a favourite for straights during the early days of the Cold War, a companion to US Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunt against communists commonly known as the Red Scare.
McCarthy figured there was a meaningful link between communism and homosexuality. His ridiculous suspicion saw thousands of homosexual men and women fired from government services on the basis that they were a national security threat. McCarthy claimed homosexuals were easy to manipulate and that the communists would be able to turn them. If Sarah Paulson was a hardened communist, I know I wouldn’t be able to resist, so maybe the real question is: just how hot were these commies?
The whole debacle was dubbed the Lavender Scare, and not only destroyed the lives of several homosexual men and women but also effeminate straight men, or women who dared to go to work wearing… trousers.
But why lavender? What does this purple plant normally associated with sneezing and the elderly have to do with lesbians? Well, this moreish mask of mauve goes all the way back to the times of our dearest Sappho, who used the colour to describe her female frolics in various violet flower beds. Lesbians soon started using violets and lavender plants to express their lesbianism, especially when wanting to catch a lady’s eye. So, you can understand that the lesbian community was not best pleased when the second-wave feminists used it as a slur.
It was a shame, because second-wave feminists were doing some great work. Sure, they continued to ignore people of colour just as the first-wave feminists did before them. For example, when white feminists wanted the pill and reproductive freedom, feminists of colour agreed, but also wanted to stop other things that affected them like forced sterilisation. White feminists weren’t interested in that, because not many white women were being forcibly sterilised. Plus, they were still pretty hung up on working rather than looking after the house, although the feminists of colour were like, ‘We’ve been doing both for years!’ And, yes, sure, the second-wave feminists also continued to ostracise lesbians and were worried that their association with them would hinder political change. Take the heterosexual feminist Susan Brownmiller, for instance, who attempted to get the lesbians on her side by downplaying Betty Friedan’s ‘lavender menace’ insult and instead referring to lesbians as ‘a lavender herring, perhaps, but no clear and present danger’. A herring? A herring?! What made her think that lesbians would find that funny? Fortunately, because lesbians are resourceful and famously very funny, they reclaimed the insult and used it in protest at an event held by the National Organization for Women, of which Betty Friedan was president. The protesters all wore T-shirts with the words ‘I am a Lavender Herring’ and ‘Lavender Menace’ and took to the stage demanding representation for lesbians.
So yeah, second-wave feminists… they… um… they… well they must have helped somehow!
One of the most visible protesters was the civil rights activist and writer Rita Mae Brown, who went on to help create The Furies Collective, a lesbian separatist feminist group that regarded heterosexuality as the origin of oppression. The group identified as political lesbians in that they promoted the idea that sexual orientation was a politically feminist choice and a positive alternative to heterosexuality. According to the mantra of political lesbianism, you didn’t even need to have sex with a woman, you just had to really hate the patriarchy.
Interestingly, Rita Mae Brown did not identify herself as a lesbian and was vocal about her views on sexuality and labels. In 2015, Rita Mae told the Washington Post:
I love language, I love literature, I love history, and I’m not even remotely interested in being gay. I find that one of those completely useless and confining categories. Those are definitions from our oppressors if you will. I would use them warily. I would certainly not define myself – ever – in the terms of my oppressor. If you accept these terms, you’re now lumped in a group. Now, you may need to be lumped in a group politically in order to fight that oppression; I understand that, but I don’t accept it.
The bisexual community was angry too. They were unhappy with the way the lesbian community had treated them and rejected them. They were also unhappy with the way the straight community had treated them and rejected them. And they weren’t the only ones. The trans community felt like they had no space within the walls of their own identity group. They were right, and even today they are still lingering in limbo, belonging to a wider community that either asks them to quietly stand at the back, or leave the room entirely.
The Latina lesbians and the Black lesbians (Salsa Soul Sisters, Mujeres Creando), the Asian lesbians (Asian Lesbians of the East Coast, Asian Pacifica Sisters) and the millions of other lesbians who also weren’t white all had their own individual movements too. They were angry at the white lesbian feminists because they had made everything about them and failed to recognise all the issues entangled at the intersection of race, gender and class. This, along with a shared hatred of heteronormativity, erupted into a game-changing political statement that helped create the LGBTQIA+ movement that we see today.
28 June 1969. The tall, dark and handsome New York stone butch Stormé DeLarverie was having a drink at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, New York City. Back then, the Stonewall Inn was owned by the Mafia. It had no liquor licence, no running water and no fire exits, but it was the only bar in the city where two women could dance with one another. A slow dance trumps death by fire every time.
Because lesbianism was still rather unclear, and unlawful, it meant that cross-dressing was against the rules, so when a woman was caught not wearing at least three items of ‘female’ clothing like a dress, a skirt or two pairs of socks stuffed into a bra, she was arrested. These laws technically did not exist and were instead institutionalised in an extremely homophobic police institution that was prominent throughout the United States, especially New York. Not that it makes any of this any better.
At 1.30 a.m., the Stonewall Inn was raided by the police.
Stormé DeLarverie was, by this point, totally over it. She refused to leave, which inspired others to do the same. The police knew that they were outnumbered, so they instructed some people to go home. One of the officers tried to force Stormé into a waiting police wagon outside and hit her on the head with his baton. Stormé responded by punching him in the face, turning to the sea of onlookers who had gathered outside, and screaming, ‘Why don’t you guys do something?!’
This wasn’t the first time that the community had risen, especially in the United States. For instance, in 1959, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, drag queens and trans men and women all fought with the authorities at Cooper Do-nuts, a queer hangout in LA that was often subjected to police harassment. When the police arrived for another homophobic battering, the customers had had enough and retaliated by showering them with coffee cups and doughnuts.
Queer activists had been protesting for years. But there was something about the Stonewall Riots that was different. It was a decisive moment in history rather than a starting point, and the injuries to police officers far outweighed the injuries to the community. The community had fought back with fists and Molotov cocktails rather than coffee cups and doughnuts, and, even better, the police were shook.
Marsha P. Johnson (P for ‘Pay It No Mind’) and Sylvia Rivera were also there the night of the riot, although there have been various conflicting statements about the role they played. Marsha and Sylvia self-identified as drag queens as well as trans activists, and later became heavily involved in the Gay Liberation Front as well as the first Christopher Street Liberation Pride which occurred one year later to mark the anniversary of the riots. They also co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries organisation which provided shelter for homeless gay and trans street kids.
But even though the Stonewall Riots had brought the community together, it was still operating on a somewhat separatist philosophy that relegated drag queen/trans activists to the bottom of the ladder. As a result, Marsha and Sylvia received no help and were forced to pay the rent for the shelter with the money that they made through sex work on the street.
The gay and lesbian committee also decided to ban drag queens from their marches and parades because they said that they were giving the community a bad name. Hmm, where have we heard that before? Marsha and Sylvia ignored them and, during one of the parades, marched ahead of the other activists.
In 1992, Marsha P. Johnson’s body was found floating in the Hudson River. The death was deemed a suicide, despite a dubious head wound, and several witnesses stating that they had seen Marsha being harassed by a group of thugs the same night. Sylvia Rivera refused to believe that Marsha had done it on purpose because they had earlier made a pact that when the time came, they would die together.
Stormé DeLarverie continued to be a prominent figure on the scene and in the 1980s she worked as a bouncer for numerous lesbian bars in New York. She also volunteered as a street patrol worker, referring to herself as ‘the guardian of lesbians in the Village’ and their very own lesbian superhero. Stormé remained a bouncer until she was eighty-five years old and passed away in 2014.
In 2015, the movie Stonewall was released. The writers decided to focus on a group of fictional, mostly white gay male youths, as the main characters. The Black and butch lesbian Stormé DeLarverie was absent and replaced with a married, white, closeted lesbian who shows up around an hour into the film. Black drag queen and trans activist Marsha P. Johnson’s role was limited, and the Puerto Rican-Venezuelan-North American Sylvia Rivera didn’t even exist. Not only are queer people being written out of heterosexual history, but out of queer history too.
This isn’t new information. One example can be seen in the 1961 Hollywood movie The Children’s Hour starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine. The movie was loosely based on the true story of Scottish schoolmistresses Miss Woods and Miss Pirie, who in 1811 were accused of shacking up at school. It was their students who had dobbed them into the authorities after claiming that they had seen Miss Woods climbing into bed with Miss Pirie. The students then said that the bed would shake followed by that all too familiar ‘wet sound’ and shrieks of ‘oh, do it darling’ and again, that all too familiar saying, ‘oh you are in the wrong place’.
The teachers ended up losing their school and were shunned by their community. The movie followed suit, and while it certainly contained lesbian subtext, Audrey Hepburn was given a real-life husband to play with and the lesbian element was seriously frowned upon, as in, it was something that should never ever ever ever ever happen and look at all the awful and bad things that will happen to you if you choose that way of life.
Also, take Sally Miller Gearhart, whose life and work was completely erased in the Hollywood movie Milk (2008). This woman was the first out lesbian to obtain a tenure track faculty position at San Francisco State University. This woman helped create one of the first women and gender studies programmes in the United Sates. This woman made headlines in 1978 when she helped stop Californian politician John Briggs from removing homosexual male and female school employees from their jobs.
Sally, along with her friend Harvey Milk (the first openly gay male politician in the US), challenged Briggs to a televised debate, which Briggs accepted because he was confident that he could outsmart two highly intelligent queer people on matters that did not concern him. Ah, the self-assurance of a straight white man.
Briggs said, ‘We cannot prevent child molestation, so let’s cut our odds down and take out the homosexual group [of teachers] and keep in the heterosexual group.’
Sally said, ‘Why take out the homosexual group when it is more than overwhelmingly true that it is the heterosexual men, I might add, that are the child molesters?’
Briggs said, ‘Well, I believe that’s a myth.’
Sally said, ‘Ah, senator, the FBI, the National Council on Family Relations, the Santa Clara County Child Abuse and Sexual Treatment Center, and on and on and on [report this].’
When the debate was recreated for the movie, Sally failed to exist. Despite actual videotaped evidence that Sally was a human lesbian who uttered actual words in public, her lines were cut from the movie and shamelessly given to Harvey. Even actual video footage isn’t enough to verify our contribution.