(Once a Month, photo by Margaret Kalms)
The first writing in the world was numbers, not letters: Hatch marks and eventually cuneiform to keep track of the cycles of objects in the heavens, calendars, and from there to counting grain and other life essentials. Once these literal marks became symbolic, it was inevitable that we would make the quantum leap to symbols for sounds as well. We are the only species on the planet to have created written language, some time around 6000 years ago.
As humans, we had spoken language for many tens of thousands of years before that, and oral communication before clear language emerged. But it is with language which can be rendered into symbols that we see the emergence of what we can recognize as human culture: Agriculture and domestications of animals, the ability to live in one spot instead of traveling in bands, larger population centers, permanent care for disabled and elderly, organized community education of children. Each technological advance has provided the foundation for another atop it, until we arrive, more or less logically, to modern day.
The unanswered question is how did we cross the divide from primate consciousness into human consciousness: Who first made hatchmarks, and why?
Modern studies of how the brain works have revealed that all human learning involves metaphor. On a rudimentary level, when we encounter something new which needs interpretation, we do the equivalent of the Sesame Street singing game which goes "Which of these things is not like the other?" We compare and contrast, using metaphor. This occurs in at least three of the main languages used by humans -- verbal, mathematical, and musical. When we find a similarity, we link the new thing to the old, a synapse is formed, and we have the basis for retaining memory of the new thing so we may continue learning about it.
We actually cannot take in information and render it as a retained abstract in any other way.
Thus, to understand how the first humans took such a strikingly different path from all other life on earth, we need to imagine what they were experiencing, seeing, contending with to make that first leap -- and it needs to be common to every culture, every region, because this did not happen on one place only. Many different groups of humans were counting in prehistory.
One counting object does reliably appear in numerous early human cultures: Sticks, bones and stones marked with lines which add up to 29.5 days.
(Incised limestone ‘calendar’ from Wadi Jilat 7)
What does that number suggest to you? Yes, it's the lunar cycle. But it is also the average menstrual cycle of an adult woman.
(Menstruation, by Judy Clark, 1973)
In Judy Grahn's book, Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created The World, the foreword by Charlene Spretnak states:
'Grahn focuses on the meanings of separation in cross-cultural responses to menstruation. She first considers the origin myths of many cultures and notes that a high proportion of them begin with an undifferentiated space/time, an era of chaos and indeterminate form, from which creation occurs via separation: the separation of land from water, of earth from sky, of rivers from oceans, of mountains from plains. Grahn speculates that the foundation of so many origin stories -- a time of undifferentiation -- may be an extremely resilient reference to early humans' "crossing of the great abyss" from primate consciousness to the eventual development of conceptualizing, abstracting human consciousness. For this to occur, consciousness had to become externalized, that is, linked with events outside the human in ways that led to apprehension of patterns and concepts. Grahn believes that this pivotal development must have occurred in relation to females' dawning awareness that their 29.5-day menstrual cycle of bleeding was in rhythm with -- and hence related to -- an external object, the white moon in the sky. The resultant consciousness, which she calls "the menstrual mind," became externalized and displayed, particularly because of the necessity for females to teach their discovery to members of the group who did not menstruate. Males learned the metaforms, Grahn's term for various expressions of menstrual logic, such as principles of separation, synchronic relationship, and cyclical time. Eventually the males extended the meta forms, rearranged them, and mirrored them back to the females, creating what Grahn sees as "an ongoing dance of mind between the genders."'
(Venus of Laussel Wall Relief, prehistoric lunar goddess circa 22,000 BC)
In other words, our ability to symbolize the world and all human development which has followed from that ability began with our linking the cycles of women to the cycles of the moon. "How is this thing like another?" The primal, and ultimate, metaphor.
In her first chapter, Judy writes:
'One word recurs again and again in stories of menstrual ritual: taboo. The word comes from Polynesian tapua, meaning both "sacred" and "menstruation," in the sense, as some traditions say, of "the woman's friend. " Besides sacred, taboo also means forbidden, valuable, wonderful, magic, terrible, frightening, and immutable law. Taboo is the emphatic use of imperatives, yes or no, you must or you must not. Taboo draws attention, strong attention, and is in and of itself a language for ideas and customs.
'But it is not only in the nineteenth century accounts of tribal peoples that we find menstruation hedged with rules. The word "regulation" is linked to menstruation in European languages in the same way "taboo" is in Polynesian (though without also meaning "sacred"). In German, menstruation is Regel, in French regle, and in Spanish las reglas. All these words mean "measure" or "rule" as well as "menstruation" and are cognate with the terms regulate, regal, regalia, and rex (king). In Latin, regula means "rule." These terms thus connect menstruation to orderliness, ceremony, law, leadership, royalty, and measurement.
'Ritual, from Sanskrit r'tu, is any act of magic toward a purpose. Rita, means a proper course. Ri, meaning birth, is the root of red, pronounced "reed" in Old English and still in some modern English accents (New Zealand). R'tu means menstrual, suggesting that ritual began as menstrual acts. The root of r'tu is in "arithmetic" and "rhythm"; I hear it also in "art,” “'theater," and perhaps in "root" as well. The Sanskrit term is still alive in India, where goddess worship continues to keep r'tu alive in its menstrual senses; r'tu also refers to special acts of heterosexual intercourse immediately following menstruation, and also to specific times of year.
'While in Latin menses, meaning "month," means the menstrual flow, in Scottish mense meant "propriety, grace." The family of words that revolves around the English word "menstruation" includes mental, memory, meditation, mensurate, commensurate, meter, mother, mana, magnetic, mead, maniac, man, and menstruation's twin, moon.'
(Placenta burial jar, 1150-1200, Korean Koryo period; stoneware with celadon glaze)
I was reminded of all this cultural connection when I read an article at The Raw Story last week which declared "Japanese researchers say menstrual blood can be used to repair heart damage. Scientists obtained menstrual blood from nine women and cultivated it for about a month, focusing on a kind of cell that can act like stem cells. Some 20 percent of the cells began beating spontaneously about three days after being put together in vitro with cells from the hearts of rats. The cells from menstrual blood eventually formed sheet-like heart-muscle tissue. The success rate is 100 times higher than the 0.2-0.3 percent for stem cells taken from human bone marrow, according to Shunichiro Miyoshi, a cardiologist at Keio University's school of medicine, who is involved in the research."
Why am I not the least bit surprised?
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Judy Grahn's book is available to read online at Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created The World.
In response to Judy's book, a number of people are exploring what she calls "metaformic theory" and have a multi-genre, multi-disciplinary online journal studying it at Metaformia. Their introduction states:
"We think the world needs fresh new approaches to questions of the origins of culture, why humans differ from animals, why we are the marvelous, amazing, terrible, peculiar, cruel, kind, dangerous, and occasionally constructive beings that we are. So in this Journal we introduce Metaformic Theory because it is a new approach, one of several in the arena of menstruation and culture, but the one calling for the broadest changes in the way we think of human origins and processes through which we, and our ancestors, have attained the culture that surrounds us.
"We want to engage in a dialogue with and about theorists of consciousness."
They state that "Metaformic Theory is important because:
1. Metaformic Theory returns women to a crucial place in cultural origin stories, in our histories, in our rituals, in our religions, and in the ordinary and extraordinary everyday things that billions of women do all over the planet—so women can again identify themselves as being part of culture creation in major, leading, and centralizing ways.
2. Men are not displaced from a crucial role in cultural origin stories by this theory, nor are they demonized. The cultural contributions of men, as with women, are put into the perspective of ritual, and so both sexes have a better chance of understanding each other.
3. Evolution is postulated as a different shape than the vertical line of “progress” that so inevitably de-humanizes various groups while privileging others. Grahn’s theory holds that evolution is constantly braiding; beginning in the shape of horizontal strands consisting of the “parallel” rituals of each gender, which are categorically different from the rituals of the other gender. That is to say, women and men bleed differently, much of the time. As the strands of ritual elaborate into cultural forms, the sexes lose track of what each other is doing. One begins, historically, to become more elaborate than the other, with a consequent imbalance that affects everything. As part of this dialectical tension, “crossover groups” of various kinds, and in particular transgendered peoples, help to effect the bringing together of the ritual strands, into what can be imaged as a “braided” form, that allows a more balanced flow of evolution.
4. Menstrual theories teach that synchrony is a primary basis for evolution, women’s solidarity and intelligence, rather than our isolation, weakness or sinfulness, are emphasized. Women can help each other lose the shame and confusion of not knowing where we fit in as culture movers and shakers, and become engaged, active participants. This encourages and enables women to, for example, intelligently struggle to gain a full measure of control within institutions that affect them related to health and our bodies, motherhood, sexuality, the economy, marriage, education and children’s welfare, religion, government, science, the military, the welfare of the planet, and so on."
(Woman Words, poster by Margaret Kalms)
Hat tip to Doc Wendel for sending me The Raw Story article, which he thought might be significant to me because he remembered Myra singing "The Bloods" in Ginny Bates: 'Learn about your cervix and what's in it / There's a new day dawning when you got the bloods again' (from The Berkeley Women's Music Collective).
(Quenched, photo by Jill Posener)
In her introductory essay to the anthology True to Life Adventure Stories, Judy Grahn wrote the often-quoted:
"I have given a good deal of thought to the origins of folk English, to women and English, to the King's English, and to the phrase, 'murdering the King's English'. Murdering the King's English can be a crime only if you identify with the King."
Grahn's emphasis on reclaiming, valuing, publishing, and emulating the speech of common women, poor women, working women, women who use other than white "standard" English, permanently altered the landscape of American writing, not only feminist writing. Riding the same wave are/were Nora Zeale Hurston, Agnes Smedley, Alice Walker, Tillie Olson, Sharon Isabell, Irene Klepfisz, Dorothy Allison, Cherrie Moraga, Meridel LeSueur, Alta, Pat Parker, and other women who understood that "refusing to identify with the King" was an essential step in broadcasting the thoughts and lives of women in a patriarchy.
The first book published by Grahn was Edward the Dyke and Other Poems, a title which is itself ironic and rebellious. The main work within in, "The Psychoanalysis of Edward the Dyke" is not actually a poem. Written in 1964, it is a staggeringly early and taunting rejection of what, fourteen years later, Adrienne Rich would name as "compulsory heterosexuality".
In 1985, Grahn published Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition. According to Martha Nell Smith in her article on Lesbian Poetry:
'Dedicating her study "To All Lovers" (not exclusively lesbian lovers), Grahn clearly states her objective: "The story I am telling is of the re-emergence of the public Lesbian voice."
'Claiming that poetry is especially important to women, Grahn makes the even more controversial claim that it is a vital "tool for survival" for lesbians and says that "more than one Lesbian has been kept from floundering on the rocks of alienation from her own culture, her own center, by having access, at least, to Lesbian poetry."
'Immediately she remarks the indisputable fact that "We owe a great deal to poetry; two of our most important names, for instance: Lesbian and Sapphic," effectively arguing the case for a study focused on lesbian poetry.'
....
'Of Grahn's "A Woman Is Talking To Death," [Elly] Bulkin wrote:
"That's a fact," Grahn keeps observing as she builds image after image of women ignored, derided, abused. The central 'fact' of the poem is finally the poet's own lesbianism. In a society that perceives lesbians as committing 'indecent acts' and that leers at women who kiss each other, who call each other 'lovers,' who admit to "wanting" another woman, Grahn forces a rethinking of both language and the assumptions behind it.
'Remarking that the "rhetorical drive" of Grahn's poetry draws on biblical and protesting oral traditions, Bulkin concludes that "this oral quality" underscores the "sense that the poem should be heard with others, not read by oneself." This is not a poetry for private pleasure only but a poetry of motivation meant to act as a force to change the world.'
Bulkin goes on to state in her 1978 essay ''Kissing/Against the Light': A Look at Lesbian Poetry":
'Uncovering a poetic tradition representative of lesbians of color and poor and working-class lesbians of all races involves, as Barbara Noda has written, reexamining "the words 'lesbian,' 'historical,' and even 'poet.'" A beginning problem is definitional, as Paula Gunn Allen makes clear in her exploration of her own American Indian culture:
It is not known if those
who warred and hunted on the plains
chanted and hexed in the hills
divined and healed in the mountains
gazed and walked beneath the seas
were Lesbians
It is never known
if any woman was a lesbian'
(It is worth noting here that Paula Gunn Allen and Judy Grahn were partners for many years.)
From my own experience, I recall having a copy of Edward the Dyke by 1975. That summer, there was no lesbian and gay pride event within several hours' drive of the small North Texas city where I lived with my lover and our five-year-old daughter. However, we heard that on Saturday, gay men and perhaps some lesbians would be gathering at Queen's Point, a beach on nearby Lake Dallas notorious as a locale for cruising and clandestine same-sex partying.
It was still very dangerous to go to known gay places in public, especially in daylight. You could be arrested simply for being there. My lover was a schoolteacher already under custody fears from her fundamentalist parents. Nevertheless, we resolved to go. We were that hungry for community.
We decided to take things one step further: We would contribute to the day's festivities. We memorized "The Psychoanalysis of Edward the Dyke", assigning the characters to my lover (narrator), Dr. Knox (our gay friend Billie Bledsoe), and Edward the Dyke (me). We performed this on the beach, before a crowd of drag queens, college fags, and cruisers from Dallas looking for pick-ups. We were the only women there.
I can recall clearly my voice waxing lyrical on the lines "Oh Bach, oh Brahms, oh Buxtehude", and Billie shouting at me "Admit you have a smegmatic personality". I can also recall that we got not a single laugh. It went completely over their heads, a crushing failure to connect.
Yet when we later reprised it for an entirely straight, mostly married crowd of women from NOW, we killed. After that, I put all my energy in women's and lesbian community efforts, not gay or queer. I wanted to begin with a common language.
After the fold is the text of "The Psychoanalysis of Edward the Dyke". Below is a bibliography of Judy Grahn's work. Also immediately below is the first paragraph of an extraordinary essay by Judy Grahn (now Ph.D.) at her website Metaformia, entitled Are Wars Metaformic?. This is intended to whet your appetite and send you to the link so you can keep reading the ongoing work of this major leader/thinker/writer.
"Mass warfare is not sustainable, is not noble, and is not between warriors. Civilian deaths far outnumber those of soldiers; terrified and furious soldiers go mad in war and murder civilians, and many ex-soldiers never recover from the traumas—physical, psychological, and social—of modern warfare. War is addictive and attractive because it appears to be about meaning, but it is actually about sensation and loyalty, grotesquely out of balance emotions of the people who endure it, and grotesquely out of balance power urges of the men who decree it to happen. Yet, the bloodshed of war is glorified above all other bloodshed."
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF JUDY GRAHN
—Edward The Dyke and Other Poems. Oakland, CA: The Women’s Press Collective, 1971.
—A Woman is Talking to Death. Oakland, CA: The Women’s Press Collective, 1974.
—She Who: a graphic book of poems with 54 images of women. Oakland, CA: Diana Press, 1977.
—The Works of a Common Woman. Oakland, CA: The Women’s Press Collective, 1978.
—The Queen of Wands. Ithaca, NY: The Crossing Press, 1982.
—Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984.
—Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition. Spinsters Ink, 1985.
—The Queen of Swords. Boston: Beacon Press, 1987.
—Really Reading Gertrude Stein: A Selected Anthology with Essays by Judy Grahn. Ithaca, NY: Crossing Press, 1990.
-Mundane's World, A Novel, Ithaca, NY: The Crossing Press, 1988
—Blood, Bread and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.
THE PSYCHOANALYSIS OF EDWARD THE DYKE
© by Judy Grahn (published in Edward the Dyke and Other Poems, 1971, Women's Press Collective)
Behind the brown door which bore the gilt letters of Dr. Merlin Knox's name, Edward the Dyke was lying on the doctor's couch which was so luxurious and long that her feet did not even hang over the edge.
"Dr. Knox," Edward began, "my problem this week is chiefly concerning restrooms."
"Aahh," the good doctor sighed. Gravely he drew a quick sketch of a restroom in his notebook.
"Naturally I can't go into men's restrooms without feeling like an interloper, but on the other hand every time I try to use the ladies room I get into trouble."
"Umm," said Dr. Knox, drawing a quick sketch of a door marked 'Ladies'.
"Four days ago I went into the powder room of a department store and three middle-aged housewives came in and thought I was a man. As soon as I explained to them that I was really only a harmless dyke, the trouble began..."
"You compulsively attacked them."
"Oh heavens no, indeed not. One of them turned on the water faucet and tried to drown me with wet paper towels, but the other two began screaming something about how well did I know Gertrude Stein and what sort of underwear did I have on, and they took my new cuff links and socks for souvenirs. They had my head in the trash can and were cutting pieces off my shirttail when luckily a policeman heard my calls for help and rushed in. He was able to divert their attention by shooting at me, thus giving me a chance to escape through the window."
Carefully Dr. Knox noted in his notebook: 'Apparent suicide attempt after accosting girls in restroom.' "My child," he murmured in feathery tones, "have no fear. You must trust us. We will cure you of this deadly affliction, and before you know it you'll be all fluffy and wonderful with dear babies and a bridge club of your very own." He drew a quick sketch of a bridge club. "Now let me see. I believe we estimated that after only four years of intensive therapy and two years of anti-intensive therapy, plus a few minor physical changes and you'll be exactly the little girl we've always wanted you to be." Rapidly Dr. Knox thumbed through an index on his desk. "Yes yes. This year the normal cup size is 56 inches. And waist 12 and 1/2. Nothing a few well-placed hormones can't accomplish in these advanced times. How tall did you tell me you were?"
"Six feet, four inches," replied Edward.
"Oh, tsk tsk." Dr. Knox did some figuring. "Yes, I'm afraid that will definitely entail extracting approximately 8 inches from each leg, including the knee-cap...standing a lot doesn't bother you, does it my dear?"
"Uh," said Edward, who couldn't decide.
"I assure you the surgeon I have in mind for you is remarkably successful." He leaned far back in his chair. "Now tell me, briefly, what the word 'homosexuality means to you, in your own words."
"Love flowers pearl, of delighted arms. Warm and water. Melting of vanilla wafer in the pants. Pink petal roses trembling overdew on the lips, soft and juicy fruit. No teeth. No nasty spit. Lips chewing oysters without grimy sand or whiskers. Pastry. Gingerbread. Warm, sweet bread. Cinnamon toast poetry. Justice equality higher wages. Independent angel song. It means I can do what I want."
"Now my dear," Dr. Knox said, "Your disease has gotten completely out of control. We scientists know of course that it's a highly pleasurable experience to take someone's penis or vagina into your mouth - it's pleasurable and enjoyable. Everyone knows that. But after you've taken a thousand pleasurable penises or vaginas into your mouth and had a thousand people take your pleasurable penis or vagina into their mouth, what have you accomplished? What have you got to show for it? Do you have a wife or children or a husband or a home or a trip to Europe? Do you have a bridge club to show for it? No! You have only a thousand pleasurable experiences to show for it. Do you see how you're missing the meaning of life? How sordid and depraved are these clandestine sexual escapades in parks and restrooms? I ask you."
"But sir but sir," said Edward, "I'm a woman. I don't have sexual escapades in parks or restrooms. I don't have a thousand lovers - I have one lover."
"Yes yes." Dr. Knox flicked the ashes from his cigar, onto the floor. "Stick to the subject, my dear."
"We were in college then," Edward said. "She came to me out of the silky midnight mist, her slips rustling like cow thieves, her hair blowing in the wind like Gabriel. Lying in my arms harps played soft in dry firelight, Oh Bach. Oh Brahms. Oh Buxtehude. How sweetly we got along how well we got the woods pregnant with canaries and parakeets, barefoot in the grass alas pigeons, but it only lasted ten years and she was gone, poof! like a puff of wheat."
"You see the folly of these brief, physical embraces. But tell me the results of our experiment we arranged for your last session."
"Oh yes. My real date. Well I bought a dress and a wig and a girdle and a squeezy bodice. I did unspeakable things to my armpits with a razor. I had my hair done and my face done and my nails done. My roast done. My bellybutton done."
"And then you felt truly feminine."
"I felt truly immobilized. I could no longer run, walk bend stoop move my arms or spread my feet apart."
"Good, good."
"Well, everything went pretty well during dinner, except my date was only 5'3" and oh yes. One of my eyelashes fell into the soup - that wasn't too bad. I hardly noticed it going down. But then my other eyelash fell on my escort's sleeve and he spent five minutes trying to kill it."
Edward sighed. "But the worst part came when we stood up to go. I rocked back on my heels as I pushed my chair back under the table and my shoes - you see they were three inchers, raising me to 6'7", and with all my weight on those teeny little heels..."
"Yes, yes."
"I drove the spikes all the way into the thick carpet and could no longer move. Oh, everyone was nice about it. My escort offered to get the check and to call in the morning to see how I had made out and the manager found a little saw and all. But, Dr. Knox, you must understand that my underwear was terribly binding and the room was hot..."
"Yes, yes."
"So I fainted. I didn't mean to, I just did. That's how I got my ankles broken."
Dr. Knox cleared his throat. "It's obvious to me, young lady, that you have failed to control your P.E."
"My God," said Edward, glancing quickly at her crotch, "I took a bath just before I came."
"This oral eroticism of yours is definitely rooted in Penis Envy, which showed when you deliberately castrated your date by publicly embarrassing him."
Edward moaned. "But strawberries. But lemon cream pie."
"Narcissism," Dr. Knox droned, "Masochism, Sadism. Admit you want to kill your mother."
"Marshmallow bluebird," Edward groaned, eyes softly rolling. "Looking at the stars. April in May."
"Admit you want to possess your father. Mother substitute. Breast suckle."
"Graham cracker subway," Edward writhed, slobbering. "Pussy willow summer."
"Admit you have a smegmatic personality," Dr. Knox intoned.
Edward rolled to the floor. "I am vile! I am vile!"
Dr. Knox flipped a switch at his elbow and immediately a picture of a beautiful woman appeared on a screen over Edward's head. The doctor pressed another switch and electric shocks jolted through her spine. Edward screamed. He pressed another switch, stopping the flow of electricity. Another switch and a photo of a gigantic erect male organ flashed into view, coated in powdered sugar. Dr. Knox handed Edward a lollipop.
She sat up. "I'm saved," she said, tonguing the lollipop.
"Your time is up," Dr. Knox said. "Your check please. Come back next week."
"Yes sir yes sir,” Edward said as she went out the brown door. In his notebook, Dr. Knox made a quick sketch of his bank.
My novel-in-progress, Ginny Bates, is crammed to the gills with references to lesbian-feminism and other subcultures that will not be noticed or make sense to a reader who "wasn't there, then". We existed in a world within your world, which you knew about only dimly, if at all, but which was extraordinarily rich and interconnected to us (as well as to Myra, Ginny and friends). Below I offer explanations of such possible asides that occur in the second section of the novel that I posted, entitled January 1990.
In this excerpt appears the first concrete references to AA and Al Anon. These organizations and the concept of "recovery" occur frequently in Ginny Bates, as the idea of recovery occurring simultaneously with revolutionary liberation on a societal scale is a key theme of the book.
The Clean and Sober movement swept through the lesbian community during the 1980s, fueled by adaptation of traditional 12-step models (big on g*d and hierarchy) to more egalitarian models and, especially, the book published by Jean Swallow in 1983 (Spinsters Ink), Out From Under: Sober Dykes and Our Friends. Jean was a friend of mine. I saw her weekly while she was writing this book, and while she hoped it would have a large impact, I don't think she knew it would help launch a movement. Jean was a few years older than me, and like me had come out early, at a time when going to bars in rural areas or small towns was the only hope you had of meeting other lesbians, but we also knew that in larger cities there was a political movement we could plug into. That version of "political lesbianism" I think provided an alternative to bar life which helped make it possible for lesbian alcoholics to be able to go into recovery without losing their access to community.
Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth Century America, by Lillian Faderman (1991), quotes Jean Swallow as stating that, circa 1983, 38% of all lesbians were alcoholics and another 30% were problem drinkers. I was not an alcoholic, but I had substance abusers up close and personal in my dyke life -- enough so that I chose to quit drinking in 1983, when Jean's book came out. I just couldn't think of a logical reason to consume alcohol any more, and a hundred reasons not to; but it was also an act of solidarity. I've broken that promise to myself a couple of times since then, to have a beer with a meal or, once, to get drunk at my father's third or fourth wedding (depending on how you count his marriages). It's not been worth it.
Faderman's book states that "Boston alone had eighty weekly AA meetings for lesbians in the late 80's. San Francisco had ninety such weekly meetings. Living Sober conventions that targeted the lesbian and gay community attracted large, rapidly growing numbers. The Living Sober contingents were the biggest in the Gay Pride parades at the end of the decade." This was certainly my memory of how things were in San Francisco.
Faderman goes on to say "A whole culture of sobriety developed to replace the bar culture that had been so pivotal to the lives of so many lesbians in the past. Women who, outside of the lesbian community, might not have identified themselves as being in need of 'recovery' found support for such identification within the community, and 'clean and sober' became a social movement for lesbians."
Concomittant with the clean and sober movement was the recovery movement, addressing not only the issues of being close to someone who is/was a substance abuse, but expanding to apply principles of dismantling codependency to all our relationships within the lesbian community. Theory grew to link this kind of recovery with feminism, with overthrowing the patriarchy, eliminating racism and classism, and undoing the effects of child abuse (especially child sexual abuse). This was a subculture within the larger lesbian community that, at least among the women I knew, seemed to encompass almost half the community. There seemed to be a "recovery" group for almost every kind of behavior, and even those of us who were in these groups or using some version of the model were often self-conscious about our fervor and focus. In my circle, at least, we made fun of ourselves, even as we recognized that we were each saving our own life.
The subject of recovery, and dependence on "therapy", has created divisions with the lesbian-feminist community that are well-addressed in this review of a book attacking "psychology" as not lesbian-feminist by Foxx Silveira at Feminist Reprise. It is true that some women I've known withdrew from activism when they went "into recovery" of one form or another. It's equally true that recovery enabled women to become MORE politically active, more effective, and (most important to me) leave behind suicidal or self-destructive behavior. I don't see why you have to choose between self-help and activism; it's a false dichotomy, as far as I'm concerned. And the key to success in both is to disavow hopelessness. 
Also in this chapter Margie (as a toddler) quotes from the Judy Grahn poem "A Woman is Talking to Death". I have printed this poem in total on this blog here. The effect of this work on lesbian-feminism really cannot be overestimated.
(Judy Grahn 2007)
And -- for those of you who can get there, Judy Grahn will be reading (with Nickole Brown) in Santa Rosa, California as part of the Wordtemple Poetry Series on April 4, 2008. Never to be missed.
Judy Grahn
Amigas, I have other demands on me at the moment and have a "gap" to fill in on Ginny Bates before I can go on posting that, so, in lieu of giving you a self-generated post, here are the famous Common Woman poems by Judy Grahn. These inspired a poster, a bookstore, and the minds of a generation. Here's what Judy had to say about them in the preface to her 1969 book The Common Woman:
"The Common Woman Poems have more than fulfilled my idealistic expectations of art as a useful subject -- of art as a doer, rather than a passive object to be admired. All by themselves they went around the country. Spurred by the enthusiasm of women hungry for realistic pictures, they were reprinted hundreds of thousands of times, were put to music, danced, used to name various women's projects, quoted and then misquoted in a watered-down fashion for use on posters and T-shirts.
"Their origin was completely practical: I wanted, in 1969, to read something which described regular, everyday women without making us look either superhuman or pathetic. The closest I could come to finding such an image was a Leonard Cohen song about a whimsical woman named Suzanne, who takes you down to her place by the river. This was on an album of Nina Simone's, and I played that song numberless times during the night I wrote the seven portraits. Oddly, although the song is not a waltz, the poems are. (Try reading them while someone else hums a waltz.) I conceived of them as flexible, self-defining sonnets, seeing that each woman would let me know how many lines were needed to portray her in one long, informative thought.
"I paid particular attention to ways of linking them together, and of connecting the facts of their lives with images which called up various natural powers, hoping that these combinations would help break current stereotypes about women and the word we do. I wanted to accentuate the strengths of their persons without being false about the facts of their lives. To admire them for what they are, already. I still do."
I've already posted one of these poems, Number II, ELLA, IN A SQUARE APRON, ALONG HIGHWAY 80, at my post on 19 November 2007. For more information about Judy Grahn, check out her current website at Metaformia.
Poems are after the fold.
I. HELEN, AT 9 A.M., AT NOON, AT 5:15
Her ambition is to be more shiny
and metallic, black and purple as
a thief at midday; trying to make it
in a male form, she's become as
stiff as possible.
Wearing trim suits and spike heels,
she says "bust" instead of breast;
somewhere underneath she
misses love and trust, but she feels
that spite and malice are the
prices of success. She doesn't realize
yet, that she's missed success, also,
so her smile is sometimes still
genuine. After a while she'll be a real
killer, bitter and more wily, better at
pitting the men against each other
and getting the other women fired.
She constantly conspires.
Her grief expresses itself in fits of fury
over details, details take the place of meaning,
money takes the place of life.
She believes that people are lice
who eat her, so she bites first; her
thirst increases year by year and by the time
the sheen has disappeared from her black hair,
and tension makes her features unmistakably
ugly, she'll go mad. No one in particular
will care. As anyone who's had her for a boss
will know
the common woman is as common
as the common crow.
III. NADINE, RESTING ON HER NEIGHBOR'S STOOP
She holds things together, collects bail,
makes the landlord patch the largest holes.
At the Sunday social she would spike
every drink, and offer you half of what she knows,
which is plenty. She pokes at the ruins of the city
like an armored tank; but she thinks
of herself as a ripsaw cutting through
knots in wood. Her sentences come out
like thick pine shanks
and her big hands fill the air like smoke.
She's a mud-chinked cabin in the slums,
sitting on the doorstep counting
rats and raising 15 children,
half of them her own. The neighborhood
would burn itself out without her;
one of these days she'll strike the spark herself.
She's made of grease
and metal, with a hard head
that makes the men around her seem frail.
The common woman is as common as
a nail.
(Three Graces, photo by Tee Corinne)
IV: CAROL, IN THE PARK, CHEWING ON STRAWS
She has taken a woman lover
whatever shall we do
she has taken a woman lover
how lucky it wasnt you
And all the day through she smiles and lies
and grits her teeth and pretends to be shy,
or weak, or busy. Then she goes home
and pounds her own nails, makes her own
bets, and fixes her own car, with her friend.
She goes as far
as women can go without protection
from men.
On weekends, she dreams of becoming a tree;
a tree that dreams it is ground up
and sent to the paper factory, where it
lies helpless in sheets, until it dreams
of becoming a paper airplane, and rises
on its own current; where it turns into a
bird, a great coasting bird that dreams of becoming
more free, even, than that -- a feather, finally, or
a piece of air with lightning in it.
she has taken a woman lover
whatever can we say
She walks around all day
quietly, but underneath it
she's electric;
angry energy inside a passive form.
The common woman is as common
as a thunderstorm.
V. DETROIT ANNIE, HITCHIKING
Her words pour out as if her throat were a broken
artery and her mind were cut-glass, carelessly handled.
You imagine her in a huge velvet hat with a great
dangling black feather,
but she shaves her head instead
and goes for three-day midnight walks.
Sometimes she goes down to the dock and dances
off the end of it, simply to prove her belief
that people who cannot walk on water
are phonies, or dead.
When she is cruel, she is very, very
cool and when she is kind she is lavish.
Fishermen think perhaps she's a fish, but they're all
fools. She figured out that the only way
to keep from being frozen was to
stay in motion, and long ago converted
most of her flesh into liquid. Now when she
smells danger, she spills herself all over,
like gasoline, and lights it.
She leaves the taste of salt and iron
under your tongue, but you dont mind
The common woman is as common
as the reddest wine.
VI. MARGARET, SEEN THROUGH A PICTURE WINDOW
After she finished her first abortion
she stood for hours and watched it spinning in the
toilet, like a pale stool.
Some distortion of the rubber
doctor with their simple tubes and
complicated prices
still makes her feel guilty.
White and yeasty.
All her broken bubbles push her down
into a shifting tide, where her own face
floats above her like the whle globe.
She lets her life go off and on
in a slow stroe.
At her last job she was fired for making
strikes, and talking out of turn;
now she stays home, a little blue around the edges.
Counting calories and staring at the empty
magazine pages, she hates her shape
and calls herself overweight.
Her husband calls her a big baboon.
Lusting for changes, she laughs through her
teeth, and wanders from room to room.
The common woman is as solemn as a monkey
or a new moon.
(Woman workers on B-17 bomber at Douglas Aircraft factory, Long Beach, California, October 1942, photo by Alfred T. Palmer)
VII. VERA, FROM MY CHILDHOOD
Solemnly swearing, to swear as an oath to you
who have somehow gotten to be a pale old woman;
swearing, as if an oath could be wrapped around
your shoulders
like a new coat:
For your 28 dollars a week and the bastard boss
you never let yourself hate;
and the work, all the work you did at home
where you never got paid;
For your mouth that got thinner and thinner
until it disappeared as if you had choked on it,
watching the hard liquor break your fine husband down
into a dead joke.
For the strange mole, like a third eye
right in the middle of your forehead;
for your religion which insisted that people
are beautiful golden birds and must be preserved;
for your persistent nerve
and plain white talk --
the common woman is as common
as good bread
as common as when you couldnt go on
but did.
For all the world we didnt know we held in common
all along
the common woman is as common as the best of bread
and will rise
and will become strong -- I swear it to you
I swear it to you on my own head
I swear it to you on my common
woman's
head
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