She's Beautiful When She's Angry Page #5

rally in San Francisco,

and it was a sea of white women...

very few women of color.

And someone grabbed a bullhorn

and asked for the African-American

women who were there

to gather under a tree.

WOMAN (on loudspeaker): A society

that cares about all people.

BURNHAM:
And we decided that we would

form a group called Black Sisters United.

I was very glad that, you know,

somebody called African-American

women together and said,

"You know, maybe we have

something to talk about

that might be a tiny bit different

from what's coming from the stage."

And indeed we did.

BEAL:
I was invited up to Harlem

to speak at an event around abortion.

Remember, in the black liberation movement,

the big debate is, abortion is genocide.

Women should have babies

for the revolution.

And I remember going up those stairs

and my knees were literally knocking.

'Cause this was a bunch of

nationalists, and I was really scared.

I concentrated a lot

about the death of black women

as a result of illegal abortion

and how we should be able to choose

when we want to have children.

So I managed to survive

some of the attacks.

And on my way out... twice it happened...

one woman said to me...

whispered to me,

"Thank God you speak up.

Thank God you're speaking up."

And another, as I was

approaching the door, said,

"Right on. Right on."

"Dear Brothers,

Poor black women decide for themselves

whether to have a baby or not have a baby.

Black women are being asked

by militant black brothers

not to practice birth control

because it's a form of whiteys

committing genocide on black people.

Well, true enough.

But black women in the United States

have to fight back out of our

own experience of oppression.

And having too many babies stops

us from teaching them the truth,

from supporting our children,

and from stopping the

'brainwashing, ' as you say,

and fighting black men who still

want to use and exploit us."

It was very difficult for

middle-class white women

to have any conception about what

was going on in communities of color.

And those differences could have been

in conversation with each other,

but if there isn't even an

acknowledgement that there's differences

in experience and perspective

and the voice of one is used as the

voice of all, then you have a problem.

That was during a period when black women

did not particularly identify

with the women's movement.

Mrs. Norton, why are you, a black

woman, involved in women's liberation?

I'm involved in the

struggle for women's rights

because I believe women

are disadvantaged...

black women no less than white women.

Indeed, black women far

more than white women.

Women who have spent their lives

working in other women's kitchens

have a different kind of handicap

than women who have been

oppressed for their sex

in other ways.

BEAL:
We were grappling with that idea

of how do you integrate

race, class and gender.

That's the reason why we had some

reservations about the term "feminism."

Because "feminism" just

seemed to be dealing

with the female aspect of your being.

NORTON:
It's important to keep in

mind that black women are organized

in their own organizations,

in their own version of

black women's liberation.

BURNHAM:
Black Sisters United

was essentially a

consciousness-raising group

and it was in that group the very

first conversations I'd ever had

about differences in sexual orientation.

It was the first group I was in

in which there were lesbian women.

And so it was

just a deep learning experience.

MAN:
There may be some here today

that will be homosexual in the future.

There are a lot of kids here,

and maybe some girls that'll turn lesbian.

We don't know.

They can be anywhere.

They can be judges, lawyers.

We ought to know. We've

arrested all of them.

I told no one I went to college

with that I was a lesbian.

I never told anyone.

When I got to Barnard,

one of the first stories I heard

was that there were two women in

the dorm room who were making out

and a guy at Columbia with binoculars

saw them and they were expelled.

The message of that story was certainly

that one could not be

an open lesbian at Barnard.

What the '60s were like for many of us...

We grew up in silence

and isolation and shame,

and that's why consciousness-raising

was so appealing,

because so much of our

lives we could not speak of.

The women's movement had coined the motto,

"The Personal is Political."

But when you were a lesbian and you

wanted to talk about lesbian relationships

as opposed to heterosexual relationships,

they didn't want to hear about it.

And here I have to give a lot

of credit to Rita Mae Brown.

One thing you were not going

to tell Rita was to shut up.

I knew that I was as good as they were,

and I knew I am not who I sleep with.

I was in NOW.

And as NOW went on

I called them on the carpet

about class, about race,

and then I called them on

the carpet about lesbianism.

I said, you are treating women the way men

treat you, and those women are lesbians.

Well, my God, you would have thought I

unleashed an elephant in the middle of the room.

CEBALLOS:
A lot of women were gay,

but they didn't talk about being gay.

They used to say that the NOW meetings

was the best cruising place in town.

So Betty Friedan was freaking out.

She was saying you can't bring

this up now. This is divisive.

This is what men call us anyway.

Any woman that stands up

for herself is called a dyke.

And she said this is like the

lavender menace. We can't have it.

The fact that we were beginning to be

recognized and treated decently was something.

And all of a sudden, the gay issue?

Betty was really, really concerned

that it was going to destroy it.

But Betty wasn't the only one

concerned. A lot of us were concerned.

I was concerned too.

It's too soon. That's

what we thought. Too soon.

They couldn't bustle me out of

that organization fast enough.

I was thrown out.

I thought, you know, we really need to

talk about what is happening to lesbians.

Why are we reviled by what

should be our own people?

So it was a group of

lesbians from Redstockings

and lesbians from the Gay Liberation Front

who started meeting together.

And out of that we decided to write

a lesbian feminist position paper,

which was the first of its kind.

BROWN:
We each tried to

write a piece of this thing.

We put it all together and it became

The Woman-Identified Woman.

In essence, give your

energies to other women.

SHUMSKY:
I don't even know who came

up with such a wonderful opening line.

"A lesbian is the rage of all women

condensed to the point of explosion."

Towards May 1970, there was

the 2nd Congress to Unite Women.

But there was not going

to be a single panel

that dealt with homophobia or lesbianism.

And we decided we were

going to do an action.

We had been labeled the Lavender Menace.

So on the day of the congress we came in

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