“I’ve got tickets to the Ms. party tomorrow night, but I’m not going,” Phyllis told me. “They’re yours if you want them.” I did. It was July 1973, and the first anniversary of Ms. Magazine. They’d rented a Circle Line boat for the celebration. Phyllis Chesler was a big name in the feminist literary world—Women […]
My Brief Radio Career
Early in 1972 Nanette Rainone, program director at WBAI-FM, asked me if I’d be interested in doing a lesbian show. Would I ever! I knew nothing about radio production but jumped at the chance. She told me to come in for training. WBAI—for those who’ve never lived in NYC—is a member of the Pacifica network […]
Sitting In, Getting Busted – III
1970 was drawing to a close when I got the call. A woman who I knew as a member of a radical feminist group summoned me to a meeting at their office. We were to gather on New Years Eve, wearing warm clothes and bringing sleeping bags if we had them. She wouldn’t say what […]
Sitting In, Getting Busted – II
On September 20, 1970, a pleasant Sunday evening, we were holding our regular Gay Liberation Front (GLF) meeting at the Church of the Holy Apostles when Ellen Broidy burst into the room and asked for help. Broidy was president of the Student Homophile League (SHL) at New York University. She had run the two miles […]
Sitting In, Getting Busted – Part I
1970 was a busy year for me. In addition to working on Come Out!, the Gay Liberation Front newspaper, and on RAT newspaper after we women took it over, I participated in numerous actions, including three building occupations. The first of these was on April 13, 1970, when I and eight other women barricaded ourselves […]
RAT newspaper—and some real rats
In February 1970, I joined the small band of women who took over RAT Subterranean News, an “underground” paper.1 Meanwhile I continued to write for, typeset, and hawk Come Out!, our Gay Liberation Front newspaper. But before discussing my experiences with RAT, I should tell you what I discovered in the ladies’ room at the […]
Fighting on All Fronts
The Gay Liberation Front broke with its forebears in two ways. First, we didn’t give a rat’s rear end about being respectable. We didn’t want to move up in a system of hierarchical cruelties, we wanted to overturn it. Second, we made common cause with others fighting the corrupt and oppressive system. Like many members […]
The Womb that Birthed the Gay Liberation Front
As I’ve written in a previous post, traditional pre-Stonewall homophile organizations worked hard to present gays as respectable citizens and plead, politely, for acceptance into mainstream America. Tactics included writing letters, dialoguing with clergy and politicians, and the annual July 4th picket at Independence Hall, where women were ordered to wear skirts and men jackets […]
What comes after despair
Election night, 2016 We’re strolling in San Francisco awaiting the election returns not wanting to wait for the bus gawking at modern forty-niners silicon miners so young so white so tall flush with hi-tech bucks and desperation. To stay in the game, to be seen as taller, better looking, young forever, they spend: here’s a […]
WE are the Gay Liberation Front!
Around the same time when that first gay protest march took place, shortly after the Stonewall riots, we radical members of the traditional homophile organizations and gay members of leftist organizations began to meet at Alternate U., a free school on 14th Street. I brought the name “Gay Liberation Front” to the second meeting and […]