ME AND MICHIGAN

(Maggie in August 1977, at second Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, wearing the labyris made by Julie Springwater that I'd just bought)

The summer of 1977 began as one of the worst of my life.  On May 1, my lover of five years, "Astrid", dumped me without warning in a particularly brutal manner.  That winter and spring, we had each joined a separate women's consciousness-raising group.  For the first time in my life, I hesitantly began sharing my innermost thoughts and fears with someone besides a lover.  I started the process of unlearning my socialization as a girl, and redefining my self, with the support of other girls-in-recovery.

I assumed Astrid was doing the same in her CR group.  But I was wrong.  She felt extremely threatened by the personal growth offered by this kind of feminism.  She want to be "normal", to have male approval, to be middle-class and nice and closeted.

Unbeknownst to me, one of the women in my CR group had her sights on Astrid.  In the guise of "concerned sisterhood", she began taking various things I'd said to Astrid, telling her in confidence as a form of bonding between them.  Eventually, the weekend Astrid left me, this other woman persuaded her into bed.

Both CR groups imploded when this betrayal emerged, and I had almost nowhere to take my devastating grief.  I was daily suicidal, and only a couple of close friends plus my mother kept me going.  Astrid immediately moved in with her new lover, taking all our belongings and the daughter I'd been helping to raise for five years.  I was 21 years old and had no recourse to whatever Astrid aimed my way.

I turned to feminism in full force, and found answers, empathy, the kindness of strangers.  I wrote anguished letters to Ginny Berson of Olivia Records and Alix Dobkin, and got back personal letters full of encouragement.  Alix wrote me several times.  I read everything I could, I listened to wimmin's music daily, I traveled to more urban gatherings where I could find dyke feminists, and I began exploring the idea of joining a women's land collective.  Eventually, I narrowed my choices down to either a group in Durango, Colorado or the Red Bird Collective in Burlington, Vermont, both of whom extended invitations to check them out personally.

One of the few items Astrid left in our gutted apartment was a poster on the wall of our bedroom showing an amazon riding a horse, a poster for a wimmin's music festival.  In August my best friend Jean told me she'd gotten a dream job in Cincinnati, and offered for me to move with her.  I didn't know what to do:  I didn't want to be a burden she took with her.  Instinctively, I felt I needed to broaden my community, somehow, somewhere.  In the end, we compromised on me traveling with her as far as Michigan to attend the second year of the already famous Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, saying I would decide after it was over in the path I would take.

We caravaned to Michigan in separate small cars, each with a helping-with-the-gas female passenger we'd picked up from Lesbian Connection or some such network.  Mine was a 17-year-old singer/songwriter named Dawna Price.  Somewhere in Missouri we picked up an Israeli hitchhiker named Mikki Gvilli who was not a lesbian but still amazingly powerful.

The minute I set foot on the land, I knew This Was Different.  A space energetically distinct from anywhere I had ever been -- me, who had already traveled around the world.  The variety of wimmin was staggering.  Turns out, the way a woman could look covered the entire range of human expression.

Every single structure and process on this large tract of land had been assembled by someone who had survived girlhood.  All the work was done By Us For Us.  There was nothing we could not do.  Cooperation was instant and brilliantly effective.  Kindness and generosity flowed without limit, and we knew every interaction was with another who had been presented with the lies of what female can be in our culture yet had found her own way through it.

(Maggie about to get her first buzzcut next to the main stage at the second 

Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, August 1977)

The third day, I cut my hair off and shed my clothes.  By the fourth day, I'd decided to go to Durango, to pursue separatism and alternate spirituality and vegetarianism, to continue this route of uncovering and clearing out the damage done by the patriarchy.  I have not deviated from that latter choice for one second since.

And I tell you:  If I had had to deal with male socialization there on that land, I would not have found the freedom to become who I am now.  It simply would not have been possible.  When you grow up behind bars, progressing to light leg irons is not going to free you from the experience of confinement.

Michigan is the product of thousands of grown-up girls deciding to do all the work necessary to create a week-long town where the values left to us by the patriarchy are redefined and blossom into powerful, complete functionality.  Who on earth, besides us, is going to do this job?

I have been to other music festivals where the womyn-born definition is not part of selecting who attends.  They've been fun, enriching, with good entertainment:  But they do not give me a year's worth of survival energy.  They do not offer a solid glimpse behind the heavy smothering curtain of male-defined world view.

Males and their terrified appeasers stand outside Michigan and demand admittance, assuming their presence can only improve what we are doing every full moon in August.  That assumption is, in itself, woman-hating.  If you want to experience a mixed-sex music festival, there are dozens of options available, go infiltrate those.  But no, it has to be Michigan, because it clearly thrives without male-socialized input and therefore must be STOPPED.  Make no mistake, change its definition, its intent, and it will cease to be.  And make no mistake, those who are obsessed with crashing its gates will be thrilled to see it cease to be.

If you don't need it, fine.  Leave us alone.  Stop the judgment, BOYcotting, death and rape threats, and ignorant proclamations about that which you have never experienced.  Admit there may be mysteries you do not comprehend, and refocus elsewhere.  End the relentless targeting of girls and girlhood.  And stop allowing those who do target us to play at being victims.

Copyright August 2014 Maggie Jochild

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AND NOW WE ARE...59!!!

My birth announcement, filled out in my father's distinctive handwriting.

I never expected to reach this age. But I surely do want to go on.

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SOME QUESTIONS TO SORT THROUGH THE DELIBERATELY OBFUSCATING RHETORIC

Where are the national LGBT groups condemning this violent, woman-hating image?

Some questions for those who say they "don't get" why lesbians and feminists keep insisting on certain rights despite the ongoing media war and death threats coming from (a minority) of misogynstic MtT activists.

(1) Do you agree that oppressed groups have an inherent right to define themselves?
(2) Do you agree that oppressed groups, for the purpose of support and well-being, sometimes need to meet just among themselves without the presence of those raised to be their oppressors?
(3) Do you believe upbringing and conditioning shapes a human being to a major degree by the time they are ten years old?
(4) Do you believe the upbringing and conditioning a girl receives is substantially and critically distinct from that which a boy receives? Or do you believe the difference between adult gender as it is expressed in this country is primarily a result of "boy" and "girl" brains?
(5) If you believe in gendered brains, how do you explain all the cultures around the world and historically where what we now, here, call "male" and "female" behavior was exactly the opposite for them? Are they / were they not actual human beings?
(6) Do you believe someone raised Christian has the right to attend Jews-only small sharing gatherings simply because they "feel" Jewish?
(7) Do you believe someone raised white American has the right to attend blacks-only small sharing gatherings because they get a dark tan, listen to rap, and rename themselves Shaniqua or Tyrone? Or would you call that racist stereotyping?
(8) Do you recognize that someone wearing long hair and make-up, dresses and heels is engaging in feminine drag, no matter who they are? Do you understand that drag is sexist stereotyping and has no actual relevance to identity?
(9) Do you believe that female biology amounts to having breasts and a hole, wherever they come from?
(10) Do you agree that someone born and raised male can now claim to have menstrual periods, menopause, and demand cervical exams at clinics funded (underfunded) to assist in female biology? If you don't agree, are you ready to be called transphobic?
(11) Are you actually fine with people raised 35 years as a male and having prior convictions as a sex offender being allowed free access to locker rooms and bathrooms used by girls under 18? If you don't agree, are you ready to be called transphobic?
(12) Do you actually believe there is privilege in being raised female as that is defined in our culture? If it is not a privilege, how is it oppressive to refuse to allow those raised with ACTUAL privilege to steal what few protections we have?
(13) Do you think lesbians are being oppressive when they decline sex with someone who has a penis?
(14) Do you agree that at least 95% of the violence and oppression aimed at trans folk in our culture comes from males and male-controlled institutions? If you do agree, don't you wonder why the majority of public transwomen protest is focused on feminist lesbians instead of those who are actually, you know, doing the raping, killing, incarcerating, etc?
(15) Do you understand that females are raised to never say no to male desires, to feel guilty when they do so, to blame other females who say no? Do you believe it is possible that those who are raised male and not worked through their socialization might consistently display outrage and scream oppression when they encounter "No" from a female?
(16) Do you see anything wrong with the term non-trans? Why are females being told we have to assume someone else's binary as part of our definition?
(17) Do you understand that TERF actually means male-excluding radical feminists? Transmen are common in womyn's gatherings. That's because we believe socialization determines your values and attitudes, not whether or not you have a hole.
(18) Do you know that MRAs are jumping on the anti-feminist bandwagon with violence-espousing transwomen activists, because they agree no woman has the right to actually say no to anyone born male?
(19) Do you know that ISNA and other intersex groups have pointedly and repeatedly demanded that intersex not be lumped in with trans identity? They find this offensive and manipulative, for good reason. If you hear the argument that trans folk should be equated with intersex, it won't be coming from those fighting for intersex rights. Or from feminists.
(20) Do you know that 2/3 of children who express so-called gender dysphoria (which is, at its basis, a rational rejection of the sex roles embraced by our larger culture) will as adults come out as gay or lesbian? For this majority, gender reassignment will be pointless and destructive. If you know this reality and speak it, are you ready to be called transphobic?
(21) Do you know that radical feminists are not asking transfolk to be denied any human rights -- we do not boycott or no platform trans gatherings, we do not invade or try to shut down trans-only events, we don't take over trans marches and parade with giant blow-up vulvas. We simply ask to be allowed our own self-definition, as transfolk demand for themselves; we ask you to stop hurling the overflowing chamberpot term "transphobic" at anybody who dares to have a non-essentialist definition of gender; and we want you to stop targeting the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. (And I do mean target: No more cutting the water lines to the disabled women's bathrooms there, no painting penises on the food tent wall, no more blasting loud rape lyrics at those unfortunate enough to be trying to sleep within earshot of Camp Trans.)


Copyright 2014 Maggie Jochild.

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JAMES FRANKLIN AND IDA BELLE REEVES TURNER, FAMILY LOSS AND SURVIVAL

(Ida Bell Reeves Turner, circa 1920s, Missouri)

Lots of interesting developments in the genealogical spelunking yesterday.

I've been fleshing out the descendancy of my great-great-grandparents Thomas Joseph Turner and Cerilda Ann Sandefer.  Tom Turner was born to Joseph Turner (who immigrated from England to Tennessee in the early 1800s) and Matilda Clementine Smith (born in Alabama to Jabez Smith).

Joseph and Matilda married in 1841 in Fayette County, Tennessee, which is on the border with Mississippi and one county east of Memphis.  It was at that time part of the Delta cotton belt. When I visited it on a research trip in the mid 1980s, I was forcibly struck by how it still retained a strong racist overtone and resistance to modernity.

Joseph died around 1849, leaving Matilda alone with two small sons including Tom who was only six.  However, she turned out to be resilient and smart.  She married twice more, outliving both husbands, migrating westward into new Arkansas territory, and accumulating both property and influence without owning slaves.  In 1879 she was listed as #3 on the roster of leading women in the Ash Flat (Arkansas) area in farming and businesses, heading a household and farm remarked for being one of the oats growers in the township.

Matilda only had four children with her three husbands, and I suspect that is part of why she was able to focus her interests elsewhere.  Whether her small family size was the result of some uncommon grasp of birth control on her part or perhaps relative infertility, I will never know.  She lived to be 66 and farmed her own place until her death.

(Headstone for Matilda Clementine Smith Turner Nance Spurlock,

Shiloh Cemetery, Sharp County, Arkansas)

Tom Turner, her only surviving son, joined the Confederacy in 1861 at age 17 and served until the end of the war.  He married Cerilda in 1867, and they began having the first of nine children in 22 years, including one set of twins who did not survive.  They joined a large cluster of Sharp County families who moved from Arkansas to North Texas in the 1880s, eventually settling in Montague County on the Oklahoma border, where Cerilda died (no doubt worn out) before she was 50.

(Thomas Joseph Turner, Ora Belle Turner, and Cerilda Ann Sandefer Turner.

early 1890s. near Stoneburg, Montague County, Texas)

It was while tracing the line of one of their older sons yesterday that I encountered some fascinating tidbits.  James Franklin Turner, called Frank, was born in Sharp County, Arkansas in 1874 but grew up primarily near Stoneburg, Montague County, Texas.  At age 22, he married Kate Wright, another Sharp County child who had migrated to Montague County.  They lived in the Stoneburg area in 1900, with two living children (Zola and Otto), where Frank was a farm laborer.  By 1910, they had moved to Lawton, Oklahoma, having purchased a home and launched Frank's career as a photographer.  Kate had borne seven children but only two were still living, Zola and Otto.

(James Franklin Turner)

Between 1910 and 1917, something cataclysmic happened to the family.  In 1917, Frank has remarried to Ida Belle Reeves, 16 years his junior.  He is working as both farmer and photographer, and they are living in Mammoth Springs, Arkansas.  Three years later on the 1920 census, I can find no trace of Kate Turner or the two children.  The possibilities include divorce (rare in those times) with Kate remarrying by 1920 and changing the children's names to that of their stepfather or the death/adoption out of Kate and the children.  I really wish I could find any clue about what happened to them:  Was it ordinary loss or did Frank abandon them?

Three years later, Frank and Ida appear on the 1920 census in Independence County, Arkansas, renting a home while Frank continues work as a photographer.  Ida has had two sons, Alvie Guille and John Orman Turner.

Timothy Briant Reeves (Ida's father) and Ida Belle Reeves Turner, with

her sons John Orman and Alvie Guille Turner in front, mid 1920s

Alvie Guille Turner, born 1917 in Fulton County, Arkansas, must have been named for the man who married Frank's youngest sister Ora, one Alva Guille Cowgill (known as Bill) who was immensely popular among his cohort.  More than one child in the extended family was named after him.

John Orman Turner's unusual middle name, Orman, has no known family source.  However, there was a well-known Alabama State Superintendent of Education named John Orman Turner (1850-1910) who in the 1880s advocated land be set aside for the use of Tuskegee Institute.  He also expanded the role of women in governing Alabama schools and pushed for better education of girls.  He has no known relation to our Turner line.  If Frank and Ida named their son after the late John Orman Turner, it sheds a light on their values.

This second family of Frank Turner's also met difficulty with his death on 3 December 1929.  At this time, he was 55 and the family was living in Elkhead, Christian County, Missouri, where he still worked as a traveling photographer.  Frank's death certificate states he died of cerebral apoplexy contributed to by atherosclerosis.  One of his descendants, via Frank's son , reports the son always said Frank "died of complications/infection after having a tooth removed."

James Franklin Turner before his death in 1929

Ida and the two boys were left to manage on their own as the Depression took hold.  On the 1930 census, Ida is head of household in a home she owns in the Bruner Township of Christian County, Missouri.  She is listed as a photographer with her own studio.  They are living next door to Ida's elderly parents.

Ida Belle Reeves Turner, taken by her husband Frank

A year later, Ida died "after an extended stay in a hospital in Springfield, Missouri of a hemorrhage that could not be stemmed or stopped."  The boys moved in with an uncle (presumably one of Ida's brothers) but apparently his care of them was inadequate.  In 1932, a woman by the name of Rose Wilder Lane inquired after the circumstances of a 13-year-old boy who had come to her begging for food.  That boy was John Orman Turner.  She took him in, either adopting him or becoming his guardian, and when she found out Alvie was in similar straits, she gave him a home as well.

The Turner orphans were extraordinarily lucky.  Rose was well-off enough to give them excellent educations and a stable start on adulthood.

At age 19, Alvie Guille Turner was able to visit Paris.  After one year of college, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps for World War II, being promoted to the rank of Sergeant.  Post-war, he worked for 36 years as a field service engineer at McDonnell Douglas Corporation.

Alvie Guille Turner circa 1942

He married Goldean Branson in 1945 and they had three children together:  James A., John O., and Barbara J. Turner.  His obituary states he "was active in the Civil Air Patrol in Missouri, Arizona, Nevada and Florida.  He was a deacon emeritus at Ridgecrest Baptist Church in St. Charles, Missouri. He was also a Bible teacher. He was a volunteer with the Powell Terrace Benevolence Center and Meals on Wheels and a member of the Missouri Campers on Missions."  He died at age 79 in St. Charles after a long and useful life.

John Orman Turner also got to live in Paris at age 19.  He attended the New Mexico Military Academy, the Sorbonne, LeHigh University, and then obtained his degree from the University of Missouri.  In 1951 married Marjorie Laura Thompson, and in 1975 he married Betty Rule.  He lived in Seabrook, Harris County, Texas until his death in 2001 at the age of 82.

All of this is edifying enough.  What makes it more striking is that the woman who took in these teenaged orphans and rescued them during the Depression, Rose Wilder Lane, "(December 5, 1886 – October 30, 1968) was an American journalist, travel writer, novelist, and political theorist. She is noted – with Ayn Rand and Isabel Paterson – as one of the founding mothers of the American libertarian movement." [from Wikipedia]  She was the first child of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Almanzo Wilder (and their only child to survive into adulthood).  It is from her Facebook page that the story of her fostering was found, along with the annotated photo of Ida Reeves Turner at the head of this article.

copyright 2014 by Maggie Jochild

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