All language subtitles for nitrate_kisses_1992

If you begin your work and your career
and your path

hiding essential things, even later on,
it's

almost impossible for them to be seen
clearly.

Here are these pictures of Willa in
suits and ties and men's hats. And I'm

thinking, whoa, what is this, you know?

And then I talked to the women there
about what was Willa like and all this.

of course, they hadn't known her
personally, but they knew her

And that's what she did. She dressed
like a man, a boy.

And everybody's like, well, that's
Willa. She dresses like a boy.

And I don't know what happened to her in
college. I think it was second year in

college. All of a sudden, she turned it
around, started dressing like a girl.

But there are these photographs in that.

Brooke, I'll let you know.

And she's in amateur theatricals, and
she's always playing the man with the

beard and the mustache and the whole
thing.

She called herself Will.

Yes, she was Will.

My visit to Red Cloud. Because, you
know, there's the memorial.

Okay, there's a big memorial there for
Willa.

Scholars come from all over the world.

There's no mention ever of her
lesbianism.

This is the Willa Cather childhood home
in which Willa herself moved here when

she was a young girl from her home state
of Virginia.

Willa Cather had always wanted to be
known strictly for the work she

not for the manner in which she lived
her life. That's why.

And two women living together in so
intimate a relationship had reason to

their privacy closely against public
attitude.

So they developed a habit of extreme
discretion.

And before her death, they burned all of
the letters.

Let us pray for a lesbian granddaughter
in the Cather family.

Lesbians disappear, first of all,
because of being women.

I mean, women disappear. Just look at
how many biographies there are of women

opposed to men.

They disappear because they're deviant,
because it's still shameful.

They disappear because, for whatever
reason, lesbians are writing not very

biographies of our own. When I was a
kid, and I invented this game where

is sick, and you take them out to the
ambulance, and I always had my arms.

around them, and they liked the game
very much. This goes back to the Dark

There was a scandal about one of the
Vanderbilt women, and she had a lesbian

affair, and I heard my mother talking to
another woman, and my mother said to

me, I was a little kid, she said, don't
go near strangers, near women.

I start looking for that strange woman.
I feel I was born that way.

You know, and having those feelings, it
was always my preference.

Sex is a continuum.

You can like anybody, but the real
preference is for another woman.

How old are you?

Seventy -seven, in the shade.

I was six years old and I was doing
things under the stairs with little

and little boys.

I was a very sexy child.

You know, we were playing doctors and
nurses, school, the teachers. I would

crushes on teachers. Oh, unbelievable.

In the assembly room, I would, you know,
pick out one little girl and, you know,

follow her around. It was terrible.

Up until this generation, basically, if
you didn't have that concept of yourself

as important enough to write stuff down
about, or if you just weren't a writer.

And I was very, very shy.

What else are you going to work from
after somebody's died?

Because of my romancing around and
wanting to kiss women, I would start

class, but I would never finish.

Because this was more important to be
around the girls and the women.

Biography of lesbians, biography by
lesbians.

I was born in 1929, the year of the
crash.

I was born in Brooklyn.

But I've always known I was a lesbian. I
always knew from the word go. I always

knew that I was different from everybody
else around me.

One of my mother's friends.

I loved her and I was afraid of her at
the same time.

I always looked forward to her coming.
When she came, I had a very peculiar

feeling.

One of fear, too. Don't ask me why.

But I left her and I feared her at the
same time.

I don't know. I'm 62 years old. I was
very young.

But she told me this woman lived in the
village.

And I always wanted to see what the
village looked like.

I think there's some real interesting
questions, especially like the history

consciousness. How do ideas percolate?

I had this peculiar fantasy that the
village was a village with white picket

fences, you know, and trees and grass,
really.

I also know that there were lesbians in
this wonderful, beautiful little

village. But that was my fantasy, so I
went to see her.

Minta was going to set me straight,
quote -unquote.

But instead, guess what? She seduced me.

And we became lovers.

Always felt that I was a lesbian. I
always had crushes. There were women,

teachers, friends, neighbors.

Always had crushes. In my fantasies,
always.

But I never acted upon it, okay?

And I could never be as I wanted to be.
I never came out and said I'm a lesbian.

I was born in 1904.

I guess I looked gay. It didn't bother
to really ask me whether I was or not.

Okay, so you get to be queer, but then
you don't get to be female.

You get to be female, but you don't get
to be queer.

Hey, what else is new?

Yes, I did wear skirts.

I wore skirts when I went to work after
I graduated from high school.

I even stopped wearing bras, and I used
to wear those bandages. I had much more

breast fat, but too large still because
I didn't want them at all, and I would

tie them up. I would tie them up so I
looked slack -chested.

Another factor is how the culture values
people's documents and whether people

themselves have a sense that they should
save their documents.

So if you don't, there's not much a
biographer can work with.

I didn't want to pass as a man.

I was disturbed by my feelings, too, of
course, because I'm like the only

one. I don't know, maybe I wanted to
pass for a male.

I certainly felt like one.

When I left home, I changed my name to
Sandy Kern.

That was kind of, it could be either
male or female.

One big piece of it is how...

how things get saved and who gets
attracted to it. And that's true not

lesbians. It's true for women. It's true
for blacks. It's true for, you know,

Latinos and Latinas.

I was always afraid of getting
discharged from the WAC because of being

And if I got thrown out for doing
something, it would be shattering. It

horrible. Yeah, it had to be the 30s.

Not a lot of biographies of lesbians by
lesbians.

Rosemell first denominated.

Let him disappear that way.

Because I was working, my first job was
artificial flower house, and we were

making the rose with the velvet belt as
his campaign

thing. But you do have to know, and that
gets into coding, you do have to know

what things mean.

You need to do some background work and
try to see if you can find out what some

of those icons are.

Jerry was one of the first women to take
a man's place in a factory, and I've

forgotten what she did.

I operated a lathe, drill press, but the
standard lathe, the

big one, was what I did mostly.

I worked for Ford Instrument.

Then I went out to California and I
worked on the boat as an electrician.

I mean, Rosie the Riveter thing. I gave
an interview for that. They didn't take

me because they were taking women who
had husbands or sons, if you noticed the

movie. They weren't going to take
someone who was single and a lesbian.

But they had my whole story down there.

You know, how I had to fight the men and
fought.

the union to be able to get the other
women to get their amount of money that

they were supposed to get, because they
tried to hold me back, you know.

Oh yes, I fought like crazy, and that
was the first time. And Fatten did

for months until they would hear my
story.

I used to go to Harlem. I used to go to
Smalls.

I'm gay myself, and my best friends are
gay guys.

I lost about 10 or 12 of them.

Hasn't everybody?

It's terrible.

I see people, I'm with them, and all of
a sudden they're dead.

The first person who had AIDS was a dear
friend of mine, a boy of 30.

I'd known him since he'd been about, you
know, 12, 15 years old.

I knew him and his mother.

And I took him to his first opera.

He was only 30 years old.

He's one of the first people to die of
AIDS.

At Christopher Street, there were both
men and women, gay men and women.

In case they were raided, which they
were at times, we would just switch

partners and dance with the male.

I was in one bar, one bar on Barrow
Street that was raided, really raided.

And I was really frightened. And here I
am, like, in my 50s, I think.

And I was more protective of the young
boys who were

in drag.

Also, there was some underage. Our group
stood up for them.

We went down to the police station with
them.

when you start looking at people who
were social change agents, writing

biographies of them from that
perspective, then you start to have

voices for the outgroup.

So, like anything, it's a tool in a
political context.

You think white lesbians have a problem?
Try being a lesbian of color. As

different layers kind of manifest
themselves, the subject almost can

On the one hand, I'm saying, like, you
need, if you're honest, to try to leave

the subject her own space.

But in another way, she's nothing but a
kind of bare canvas on which people are

inscribing all these issues.

And words are very important to me, and
those titles really threw me for a loop.

I was not playing a role.

I was who I was, and I happened to be, I
was perceived as being Butch.

And this is who I was, and this is who I
am.

Pulp novels from the 40s and 50s, and
any books

that had lesbian content, whatever they
were.

Things began to change.

I was looked down upon by other
lesbians. I felt like an outcast because

of the way I looked and the way I
dressed.

And I saw that lesbians were beginning
to look more like women. I saw couples,

to me, they both looked quite feminine.

I thought, I don't know what's going on
here.

They were swinging between butch and
femme and then they were swinging

being a lesbian and being straight.

I couldn't accept my body. I couldn't
accept sex.

The girl who I was very attracted to, in
fact, she was the first one who taught

me clitoris. You know, I had no idea. I
couldn't understand what, you know, as I

say, mine was necking and petting, and
here we are in bed. Her folks are away

for the summer.

We're in bed, you know, and it's the
first time I'm really naked with a

And then all of a sudden I feel my
shoulder, her arms on my shoulder, and

pushing me down.

I took to it like a fish takes the
water. I mean, it was unbelievable. I

never understand how it happened. And
women have taught me how to make love,

know, for I see what they want, and I
picked up on it.

Yeah, I do it, and nobody caught me.

So as I got a little older, we would go
down to Grand Central or Port Authority,

take train rides, because women together
and even hugging and kissing in the

street was not a no -no.

Even though I looked the way I looked, I
used to get away with it. I mean, we'd

pretend that we were leaving one another
and we'd be able to kiss goodbye.

You know, I had this going quite a bit.

I was drinking very heavily, you see. A
lot of people drank, many alcoholics.

And the liquor was very strong.

1934. The bars were still run by mafia.

They used to raid the places at least
once a week.

Before the raid, they'd say, girls, take
your neckties off. You're going to be

raided. They would flash on the lights
on and off, on and off. That would be a

signal to us that, hey, there's going to
be a raid. Get out.

If you wore three pieces of feminine
underwear, they didn't book you. If you

wore male underwear, you were booked in
a raid.

Well, I was never frightened because I
was drinking.

Certain things that probably happened to
me, people probably didn't insult me,

I'm sure of it. It didn't register.

The boys on the corner would yell out,
Les and Dyke.

It was tough.

People shouted at me.

Hey, dirty lesbian, dirty lesbian. They
used to throw things at me. The kids,

terrible. I was with my lover in
Prospect Park one night. It was early

It was still night.

And these kids jumped us. It was
terrible.

It's much easier today.

Much easier.

These categories are so deeply embedded.

They're so dichotomous. Start thinking
about orders of analysis more complex

than... binary oppositions, which seems
to be really hard.

There's a lot of ageism in the lesbian
community.

Woof! Boy, it's a lot of it. And often I
feel absolutely invisible.

Invisible.

Now did you ever hear the story about
that boy in a boat?

Don't wear no shoes or no overcoat.

Rod told me that it happened like this.

Fragments not only is what's left us
historically oftentimes, but that's

the reality, I think. And I think, in
fact, I think that's one of the reasons

that people get uncomfortable a lot of
times with...

with film that is more experimental or
that is not narrative because it makes

uncomfortable. It makes us, it's a
little bit more like life, like all

things that are just kind of flying past
that we don't have a whole lot of

control over.

He loved to dive and also to fish.

He went roaming in that shallow boat
with his head hardly rising and his

eyes hot to go.

Face is all wrinkled and his breath
smells like soap.

Talking about that boy in a boat.

And the variety and diversity of
experience that there were for men with

homosexuality in the 30s is vast.

It came out when I was 15. I'm 64 now,
and so that was in 1943.

i went back in for a good period of time
when i was married but not totally

the third position then hetero or homo
you've got a bi position but even that's

very simplistic and does not accurately
represent the complexity of how people

really live their lives it

was great after going to

black cat or something to cruise down
lower market street There would be

and marines walking slowly, and if there
was a single sailor, that was great.

Just go around the block and pull up
ahead of him and let him come abreast

show that you were interested.

That's when the port was bustling, and
there was lots of Navy in San Francisco.

When you look at history, if you bring
with you this binary framework, or even

the third part of bisexual,

It's so limiting. You just can't get
what's there. It blinds you to seeing

what's there.

Especially when the world is not split
into a world of gay people and a world

straight people, that there is much
interaction.

Not gay people living in a straight
world, not that framework, but where

people's sexualities are very complex
and are coming up with a variety of

strategies for making those complex
sexualities work from day to day.

His face is still wrinkled and his
breath smells like soap.

Still talking about that boy in a boat.

The Bible, especially the saints in
ancient Greece, have become over the

centuries ways that men have been able
to portray and look at other men

or present themselves in a sensuous,
physical way without clothes on.

But that's...

Legitimate because it has to do with the
Bible or ancient Greece so you can see

some of that tension

The

dominant interest of the biblical story
about Sodom is not about Sensuality at

all. It's about the status of strangers

and about rape and about violence.

Biblical scholars have begun to say that
the story itself is not about

homosexuality as such.

When you have young, athletic, dancer
-type men using the exaggerated

makeup and gestures of silent films in
the company of each other without women

around, it becomes very feminized, very
aesthetic.

It's not certainly the makeup that gay
men, that fairies or sissies would have

worn on the street because it's
theatrical makeup.

But it does suggest a kind of an
artifice, an exaggeration, going too

That has a lot to do with camp.

It's sort of a mirror that's held up to
gender.

Self -awareness, self -consciousness,
and the exaggeration of gestures, the

theatricality of it.

One of the things at camp is all the
awareness of the levels of

and performances that are necessary to
get through everyday life as a

homosexual.

There was a gay culture which was quite
supportive, furtive, but supportive, and

it had to do with two institutions to
which I owe almost everything, the U .S.

Navy and the Boy Scouts of America.

Motion picture production code, it was
administered by the Hays office, and

really it's run by Joseph Green. The
code was...

drawn up by the Hollywood studios with
self enforcement.

95 % of the theaters in America in 1933
and 34 were agreeing that they would

only show pictures that had been
approved by the code.

When you talk about the code, it's this
blatant mind control, miscegenation,

mixing of the races. This is a social
control device.

We do not want the races mixed,
therefore we will not show that it could

The World Code has been gone for 25 or
so years now, but whole arguments and

discussions and discourse were all taken
out of the main mass media. It's no

coincidence that...

In the 1990s, we're still having a
debate about homosexuals.

From 34 to 61, gays were wiped off. In
61, there's this new rule that says it's

okay with care, discretion, and
restraint.

Yes, you can show them, but care,
discretion, and restraint means you kill

off at the end, or that they're punished
one way or the other.

In African -American communities,

There were many, many, many different
African American communities.

In some of them, homosexuality was
integrated into the fabric of everyday

so that people knew who was with who.

And you can see this in the blues, where
you have a man in the late

20s, early 30s, singing about his sissy
man being taken away from him by another

man. And in our language, You might say,
our language meaning, you know,

1970s, 1980s, 1990s, that there's a
heterosexual man who has a lover who is

gay man who is being taken away by
another straight man, but that's not

going on.

In the blues, there is an awareness that
fairies and sissies are part of the

fabric of everyday relationship.

In the 30s, it's often martyred saints,
Jesus on the cross,

St. Sebastian, Greek athletes during the
Olympics, or men interested in looking

at other men's bodies in a sensual way.
Those are the forms that have come down

through the centuries and remain alive.

All that language...

doesn't often translate into the 30s. My
girlfriend sat on my right, I sat in

the middle, and he sat on my left.

And I soon became aware of wonderful
calf touching my calf and then a

wonderful thigh touching my thigh.

He was gorgeous. Dark curly hair,
wonderful skin, tanned.

I woke up this morning with my business
in my hands.

If you can, bring me a woman.

Bring me a sissy man.

Homosexual gaze has... Well, there's sex
in the eyes.

There's desire.

There's flirtation.

It was simply obvious from the fact that
someone stared at you.

ways that men have been able to portray
and look at other men or present

themselves in a sensuous, physical way.

But that's legitimate because it has to
do with the Bible or ancient Greece.

None of the men in Sodom have shirts on
or pants.

They have loincloths or posing straps or

nothing.

Turnabout and turnabout and just...

wonderful, wonderful screwing. It was
the beginning of absolute bliss.

This is

Scoutmaster, who was tall and hunky and
gorgeous and sexy and

also loved to screw. That's what What
got me through my senior year was the

assistant scoutmaster.

All

the

heroes turn out to be real schmucks like
everyone else.

We want to know what the next page is
going to be before we turn it.

It's okay to have surprises if it's
building up and they're warning us.

Surprises are coming here, but when the
hero dies halfway in...

Throughout history, those stories have
been also excuses for being able to

portray male sensuousness with other
men.

In the context of the moral tale, where
you're supposed to learn the lesson of

the tale, but in the telling of the
lesson, it becomes very seductive.

Wonderfully erotic and playful.

Because it works against the story.

Because, in fact, they don't seem like
they're doing anybody any harm.

And these characters are seductive.
They're looking at each other, these

And they're being incredibly seductive
to the camera.

Wanting to be looked at.

Willingly being looked at.

Positioning themselves so that they are
being looked at.

I would see these men as men who are

Being presented to us in a world where
there is male sensuality and feminacy

the boundaries are fluid around this,
that is coded clearly to

me as effeminate homosexual.

And it's a completely different issue
whether those men are homosexual because

that language, those codes are
circulating through the culture in the

so that it may be a young man
impersonating these gestures,

impersonating a fairy.

When that hand came out and started to
shake her, it was like you will do as I

say, and not as you are.

You will grow as I direct, and not as
you would.

Pressure to marry was strong. I liked
women very much

as friends, and I fell in love with...

While I was living with him, I fell in
love with a colleague, a woman.

She fell in love with me, and we were
married in 1952.

Many gay men, as I did in the early
1950s, married, but

stayed married, often unhappily.

The very people who could contribute
Information on the gay lifestyle in the

1920s and 30s and 40s are not utterly
willing to do so. This group of people

getting on, these things should be
recorded. I see that as a problem.

There's still a lot of men who aren't
out.

men my age and a little older, with
wonderful stories to tell, wonderful,

wonderful yarns that they still like to
spin when we get together, but unwilling

to even go to the Gay Freedom Parade.

There were too many, too fast, too
young. I had many young friends die.

Many. At one point, my partner and I
had...

14, not in one year we lost 14, not just
acquaintances, but

friends. It was relentless.

It was appalling. I would guess that the
World War II experience and that loss

didn't do anything to prepare me for
this.

It's just too grim.

The story is one of change and
adaptation.

And there are always unexpected things
that come up in people's lives relating

to homosexuality that have to be
renegotiated and reinterpreted.

There is this tendency, which I think
has been heightened by the rise of

and the fact that we're all immersed in
mass media. We have a real tendency to

want to have a narrative to everything
and want to see a...

a beginning and a resolution and a
conclusion to everything in the world

it can all be understood and put in
context and we've mastered the world

we understand it. And the reality is
that's not true.

Life doesn't work that way. Life comes
in fragments and we may understand

something and we may not and who knows
if the meaning we apply to anything

really, you know, it's whatever it is.

Biographies. Most of those

women were heterosexuals.

Yeah, and this is another part of the
story, of the sad story.

Even after the Third Reich,

It wasn't very nice to be a prostitute
or a criminal or

to be asocial.

So the lesbians

didn't raise up their voices.

The other women, the heterosexuals,
Jewish women,

women who had been in the concentration
camps for political reasons, they could

raise up their voices.

Their social status was better.

And it's still.

The only hints we have is from those
heterosexual women.

Now, the way they interpret lesbian life
is very different from the way we would

interpret, because I found that by
reading biographies written by a

woman. I can tell.

But it is not written by a lesbian.

Yes, of course. It sounds terrible how
they describe them in a very, very,

very negative sense.

They all put them into the schedule of
butchers and of asocial

human beings.

Even those women who had been in the
concentration camps.

Some of them are more positive.

But the interesting thing is that those
heterosexual women who say,

yeah, there were lesbians and who didn't
sacrifice them, that they

divide them into two parts.

I tell you we must die. I tell you we
must die.

I tell you, I tell you, I tell you we
must die.

They said there were...

Lesbians were the butch type of women
and

they found them amongst the criminals
and amongst the prostitutes

and amongst the asocial.

And on the other side, there were
lesbians

amongst the Jewish and the politicals.

And the important point is that they

say that Jewish women or those political

women would live another love together,

more idealistic love.

Physical lesbians were amongst the...

Criminals, prostitutes and asocials.

And platonic love.

And platonic love were amongst the women
who were Jewish or political.

The first one is from Krystyna Zywusk.
She was a Polish woman

and she was in Auschwitz.

So she said, or she writes, I look into
the toilets.

A lot of women there.

On one toilet there was a German woman,
a very male type of woman.

On her knees sat a very, very female,
long -haired girl.

They looked in each other's eyes and
then suddenly they started to kiss.

This kiss was eternal.

One can't imagine something more...

Disgusting?

Yes.

Oh, don't ask why.

Oh, don't ask why.

I tell you, we must die.

I tell you, we must die.

I tell you, I tell you, I tell you, we
must die.

The next woman is Isa Vermeeren.

And she was captured in Ravensbrück.

This is important.

A lot of hymns come from Ravensbrück,
women's concentration camps.

And she divides into orderly and
disorderly love.

The orderly love is this mental love
between the Jewish and the Christian and

the political women.

But she says, amongst the...

criminals, prostitutes, and asocial
women, there would be

this real lesbian love with all its
disgusting effects.

That's what she says.

And then she describes this butch type
and...

What is she

saying when she describes... Yeah, the
word... male in their behavior and they

were aggressive they were tall and they
were short -haired and

nearly none of those lesbians she saw
would have carried a pink

triangle yeah they were in prison
because they were asocial and to be

one can say yeah asocial is a woman

If we go back to Unter der Linden, in
that street, and the women putting their

description of themselves on a piece of
paper on the wall.

And they made something, signs, for
example, you have to wear a rose and

on your jacket when you come.

But it's oral history.

I don't know the details.

It was told by an old writer, a lesbian
writer, I know her.

And she was young in this time, but she
had an older lover. So it's the second

oral generation to know about it. We
have not very much details.

I don't have this detail.

Some women here in West Berlin try to
get this history, but it's very hard to

find something out.

Because the Nazi side was a very, very
hard time for the lesbians. And

because after the war, the lesbian and
gay people were

like the people we call Sinti and Roma,
gypsies.

We had the same problems like the
gypsies or the lesbian and gays who were

cassette, for example. We had to hide
our history and to work with the hurting

inside.

The lesbian and gay people here in
Germany and the gypsies, they don't have

anybody who listens to their stories.

When they get work and the one who gave
them works asks them,

where were you in the time from 30 to,
for example, 42?

They say, nowhere. I was in another
country or something.

They cannot say I was in a concentration
camp.

So they had to hide this story.

And it is very hard to ask them what
happened because they had...

They had no words for it. For so many
years nobody asked.

And after 40 years there comes a man and
asks, what happened?

They have no answer anymore.

They are very much hurt inside because
of the silence which came after the

concentration camp.

It is hard to ask them of this time
because the silence inside of them

is so deep.

So it is very hard to find out what
happened in this time.

What else can you tell me about
Mühlerstrasse?

Mühlerstrasse is very famous.

It's a very famous bar, and everybody in
Berlin can tell you that the singer

Clara Waldorf was there.

Clara Waldorf was an open lesbian. She
was married with another woman in her

house, and she made big parties for
lesbians and gays.

She was the most famous singer in
Berlin. She's like a symbol for

most of Berlin people because she sang
Berlin songs

where there's the whole feeling of being
a Berlin person.

And nobody said she was a lesbian.

But she was singing and smoking and she
was always wearing

men's clothes.

She was talking like a man, walking like
a man. If you listen to the records,

you'll hear it, that she's a cofao. We
call it cofao. But

nobody knows that she's a lesbian.

I think in the time when she was a
singer, she had enough power to make it

Everybody knew it in the 20s.

Over her death, she's not able to use it
for longer.

That's another way our history is
suppressed.

Yes, I think that's the main thing.

Because many women, I think many women,
have the power to do it when they live,

to show it and make it open. But when
they die, the history is eating

them. We have only our own history.

The main thing is if you write it down
and say something about you and make it

book and put it everywhere, there's a
little chance that someone knows it all,

what you do, making films.

They'll live longer than you.

So you have to live and to say it every
day, to be it. But when you are dead,

they do what they want with you.

We are just part of a very long, ongoing
revolution, and it just takes different

shapes and forms.

I didn't really know what history was of
gay culture until a lot later in life.

I didn't have a problem with my
sexuality.

But when I started to realize certain
things that I was attracted to,

You know, like old books I would pick up
or old photographs of women.

I later realized what I was looking at.
I was looking at a dyke in

male drag.

I think it's really important to know
what gay culture and gay history is.

Alice had to move out and leave that
place of memory.

You feel like you could be airbrushed
out of history?

There's definitely within the dyke
community a part of it that they don't

to show.

What we value and how we want to place
ourselves with what we do.

isn't in the realm of what a lot of
lesbians consider valuable.

Visibility of lesbian sexuality.

They can lay their jive just like a
natural man.

BD women, BD women, you know they so
will grow.

We really are talking about lesbian
visibility on a very personal level.

J 'espère que cette géographie lesbienne
d 'un des plus beaux quartiers vous

aura aussi donné envie de relire celles
dont nous avons croisé les pas.

Et ne me prenez pas pour une rêveuse si
je vous dis qu 'un jour, au 20 rue

Jacob, se tiendra le plus beau des
musées.

At the heart of the archives is a vision
of intergenerational connection, which

means dykes from the 90s understand
witches from the 60s, and they

bull daggers from the 30s, at least
through the cultural artifacts that have

been left.

We're an international archive, and
that's really important to us. Send us

something in the language you make love
in, and we have wonderful lesbian...

materials, books, and articles, and
periodicals, and I think now, I think

to 15 different languages. And just
yesterday, a woman from Yugoslavia came

the first anything published lesbian
that's ever appeared in Yugoslavia. And

oftentimes, women come here on
pilgrimages. The Italian women brought

lesbian book by Italian lesbians. There
are newspapers from, again, in print and

out of print, from all over the country.

The archive in a certain sense is almost
a collection of New York lesbian

history.

And I want you never to stop thinking of
yourselves as history, and that all

your stories have a place in the
archives.

Her name's Susan, and her history in the
book. And Susan was, and perhaps still

is, an African -American lesbian woman,
and she's still alive.

And at this time, in the 30s, 40s, and
50s, it was the prevailing belief that

were less than human because our bodies
were not normal.

And the doctors had a whole...
scientific body of thought to prove

of the ways they did was to measure our
nipples, our clitorises, to show that

they were larger than women's were
supposed to be, or the nipples were

than women's were supposed to be.

And this was taken very seriously by the
medical profession. I remember my

mother bringing me to a doctor in 1956
because she suspected I was queer.

And he had this book on his shelves, and
he looked at me, and my mother told me,

later he said, you know, I think your
daughter has a hormonal imbalance.

She might indeed be a member of the
third sex because she has facial hair.

Now, it was on the basis of things like
this that women were put in mental

hospitals, were put into prison, were
put into marriages, and sometimes lost

their lives.

Whenever society wants to

dehumanize a group, the first thing they
do is to show biological difference.

And you know that if you know, for
instance, African -American history.

When Africans were deemed the ones to be
enslaved, it was a whole supporting

biology of their difference from
Caucasian biology.

When the Nazis were intent on wiping out
Jews, they established a whole body of

material of Jewish physical difference.

of the Nazi soldiers measuring the
nostril thickness of Jews to prove they

less than human.

When women were fighting for their
rights, it was biological truths that

brains were smaller than men. So in this
way, lesbians are from, share a long

history of biology used to prove we are
less than human.

So the men who did this will never do it
to us again. So Susan will not just be

body parts.

She'll be her body and her mind and her
heart because we'll be the ones

commemorating.

These artists who have their minds in
the gutter are free to do whatever they

want to do.

on their own time and with their own
money.

I have often said that people who want
to scrawl dirty words on the men's room

walls are free to do it, provided it is
their own walls and their own crayons.

I voiced concern then and I voice
concern now about the assault

on the nation's basic values by some of
these.

self -proclaimed artists who insist upon
mocking the American people and

shocking the sensibilities of the
American people and who shield

behind the sponsorship of the National
Endowment for the Arts.

Thank you.