1 00:00:42,540 --> 00:00:47,340 If you begin your work and your career and your path 2 00:00:47,340 --> 00:00:53,940 hiding essential things, even later on, it's 3 00:00:53,940 --> 00:00:57,520 almost impossible for them to be seen clearly. 4 00:00:59,080 --> 00:01:03,900 Here are these pictures of Willa in suits and ties and men's hats. And I'm 5 00:01:03,900 --> 00:01:06,300 thinking, whoa, what is this, you know? 6 00:01:09,870 --> 00:01:15,590 And then I talked to the women there about what was Willa like and all this. 7 00:01:15,590 --> 00:01:19,890 of course, they hadn't known her personally, but they knew her 8 00:01:19,950 --> 00:01:23,790 And that's what she did. She dressed like a man, a boy. 9 00:01:24,490 --> 00:01:28,190 And everybody's like, well, that's Willa. She dresses like a boy. 10 00:01:28,430 --> 00:01:31,530 And I don't know what happened to her in college. I think it was second year in 11 00:01:31,530 --> 00:01:35,570 college. All of a sudden, she turned it around, started dressing like a girl. 12 00:01:36,070 --> 00:01:37,830 But there are these photographs in that. 13 00:01:38,160 --> 00:01:39,160 Brooke, I'll let you know. 14 00:01:39,740 --> 00:01:44,600 And she's in amateur theatricals, and she's always playing the man with the 15 00:01:44,600 --> 00:01:46,540 beard and the mustache and the whole thing. 16 00:01:46,780 --> 00:01:47,779 She called herself Will. 17 00:01:47,780 --> 00:01:49,160 Yes, she was Will. 18 00:01:49,440 --> 00:01:52,440 My visit to Red Cloud. Because, you know, there's the memorial. 19 00:01:52,780 --> 00:01:55,280 Okay, there's a big memorial there for Willa. 20 00:01:55,580 --> 00:01:57,760 Scholars come from all over the world. 21 00:01:59,600 --> 00:02:02,960 There's no mention ever of her lesbianism. 22 00:02:03,240 --> 00:02:08,340 This is the Willa Cather childhood home in which Willa herself moved here when 23 00:02:08,340 --> 00:02:11,920 she was a young girl from her home state of Virginia. 24 00:02:24,200 --> 00:02:28,280 Willa Cather had always wanted to be known strictly for the work she 25 00:02:28,480 --> 00:02:31,620 not for the manner in which she lived her life. That's why. 26 00:02:33,360 --> 00:02:38,360 And two women living together in so intimate a relationship had reason to 27 00:02:38,360 --> 00:02:40,920 their privacy closely against public attitude. 28 00:02:43,380 --> 00:02:46,800 So they developed a habit of extreme discretion. 29 00:02:47,120 --> 00:02:50,780 And before her death, they burned all of the letters. 30 00:02:51,280 --> 00:02:55,500 Let us pray for a lesbian granddaughter in the Cather family. 31 00:02:56,840 --> 00:03:00,800 Lesbians disappear, first of all, because of being women. 32 00:03:02,220 --> 00:03:05,840 I mean, women disappear. Just look at how many biographies there are of women 33 00:03:05,840 --> 00:03:06,840 opposed to men. 34 00:03:07,640 --> 00:03:11,820 They disappear because they're deviant, because it's still shameful. 35 00:03:12,420 --> 00:03:17,140 They disappear because, for whatever reason, lesbians are writing not very 36 00:03:17,140 --> 00:03:23,440 biographies of our own. When I was a kid, and I invented this game where 37 00:03:23,440 --> 00:03:28,360 is sick, and you take them out to the ambulance, and I always had my arms. 38 00:03:29,550 --> 00:03:35,330 around them, and they liked the game very much. This goes back to the Dark 39 00:03:35,650 --> 00:03:41,970 There was a scandal about one of the Vanderbilt women, and she had a lesbian 40 00:03:41,970 --> 00:03:48,070 affair, and I heard my mother talking to another woman, and my mother said to 41 00:03:48,070 --> 00:03:53,910 me, I was a little kid, she said, don't go near strangers, near women. 42 00:03:54,560 --> 00:04:00,560 I start looking for that strange woman. I feel I was born that way. 43 00:04:01,100 --> 00:04:06,080 You know, and having those feelings, it was always my preference. 44 00:04:08,820 --> 00:04:10,760 Sex is a continuum. 45 00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:17,300 You can like anybody, but the real preference is for another woman. 46 00:04:18,360 --> 00:04:19,779 How old are you? 47 00:04:20,100 --> 00:04:22,500 Seventy -seven, in the shade. 48 00:04:26,890 --> 00:04:32,870 I was six years old and I was doing things under the stairs with little 49 00:04:32,870 --> 00:04:33,870 and little boys. 50 00:04:34,890 --> 00:04:36,610 I was a very sexy child. 51 00:04:36,970 --> 00:04:41,350 You know, we were playing doctors and nurses, school, the teachers. I would 52 00:04:41,350 --> 00:04:44,390 crushes on teachers. Oh, unbelievable. 53 00:04:44,870 --> 00:04:50,330 In the assembly room, I would, you know, pick out one little girl and, you know, 54 00:04:50,330 --> 00:04:52,510 follow her around. It was terrible. 55 00:04:53,390 --> 00:04:58,150 Up until this generation, basically, if you didn't have that concept of yourself 56 00:04:58,150 --> 00:05:01,810 as important enough to write stuff down about, or if you just weren't a writer. 57 00:05:02,330 --> 00:05:04,550 And I was very, very shy. 58 00:05:05,130 --> 00:05:08,490 What else are you going to work from after somebody's died? 59 00:05:08,970 --> 00:05:14,270 Because of my romancing around and wanting to kiss women, I would start 60 00:05:14,270 --> 00:05:17,450 class, but I would never finish. 61 00:05:18,190 --> 00:05:22,270 Because this was more important to be around the girls and the women. 62 00:05:22,790 --> 00:05:26,090 Biography of lesbians, biography by lesbians. 63 00:05:27,950 --> 00:05:31,210 I was born in 1929, the year of the crash. 64 00:05:31,870 --> 00:05:33,170 I was born in Brooklyn. 65 00:05:33,810 --> 00:05:38,230 But I've always known I was a lesbian. I always knew from the word go. I always 66 00:05:38,230 --> 00:05:41,450 knew that I was different from everybody else around me. 67 00:05:41,910 --> 00:05:43,290 One of my mother's friends. 68 00:05:43,530 --> 00:05:46,230 I loved her and I was afraid of her at the same time. 69 00:05:46,910 --> 00:05:50,430 I always looked forward to her coming. When she came, I had a very peculiar 70 00:05:50,430 --> 00:05:51,430 feeling. 71 00:05:51,690 --> 00:05:53,870 One of fear, too. Don't ask me why. 72 00:05:54,130 --> 00:05:56,770 But I left her and I feared her at the same time. 73 00:05:57,590 --> 00:06:01,790 I don't know. I'm 62 years old. I was very young. 74 00:06:02,190 --> 00:06:04,390 But she told me this woman lived in the village. 75 00:06:04,710 --> 00:06:08,190 And I always wanted to see what the village looked like. 76 00:06:08,430 --> 00:06:11,730 I think there's some real interesting questions, especially like the history 77 00:06:11,730 --> 00:06:14,530 consciousness. How do ideas percolate? 78 00:06:14,940 --> 00:06:19,440 I had this peculiar fantasy that the village was a village with white picket 79 00:06:19,440 --> 00:06:21,640 fences, you know, and trees and grass, really. 80 00:06:22,680 --> 00:06:26,620 I also know that there were lesbians in this wonderful, beautiful little 81 00:06:26,620 --> 00:06:31,200 village. But that was my fantasy, so I went to see her. 82 00:06:32,440 --> 00:06:35,880 Minta was going to set me straight, quote -unquote. 83 00:06:36,520 --> 00:06:38,940 But instead, guess what? She seduced me. 84 00:06:40,080 --> 00:06:41,740 And we became lovers. 85 00:06:44,490 --> 00:06:48,870 Always felt that I was a lesbian. I always had crushes. There were women, 86 00:06:49,090 --> 00:06:50,990 teachers, friends, neighbors. 87 00:06:51,850 --> 00:06:54,890 Always had crushes. In my fantasies, always. 88 00:06:55,490 --> 00:06:58,570 But I never acted upon it, okay? 89 00:06:58,890 --> 00:07:04,470 And I could never be as I wanted to be. I never came out and said I'm a lesbian. 90 00:07:14,800 --> 00:07:16,420 I was born in 1904. 91 00:07:16,780 --> 00:07:20,720 I guess I looked gay. It didn't bother to really ask me whether I was or not. 92 00:07:21,280 --> 00:07:24,160 Okay, so you get to be queer, but then you don't get to be female. 93 00:07:24,620 --> 00:07:26,640 You get to be female, but you don't get to be queer. 94 00:07:29,240 --> 00:07:30,440 Hey, what else is new? 95 00:07:33,100 --> 00:07:34,320 Yes, I did wear skirts. 96 00:07:34,620 --> 00:07:37,900 I wore skirts when I went to work after I graduated from high school. 97 00:07:38,100 --> 00:07:44,500 I even stopped wearing bras, and I used to wear those bandages. I had much more 98 00:07:44,500 --> 00:07:48,800 breast fat, but too large still because I didn't want them at all, and I would 99 00:07:48,800 --> 00:07:51,540 tie them up. I would tie them up so I looked slack -chested. 100 00:07:51,820 --> 00:07:56,600 Another factor is how the culture values people's documents and whether people 101 00:07:56,600 --> 00:08:00,580 themselves have a sense that they should save their documents. 102 00:08:01,360 --> 00:08:06,120 So if you don't, there's not much a biographer can work with. 103 00:08:34,220 --> 00:08:35,659 I didn't want to pass as a man. 104 00:08:36,039 --> 00:08:42,940 I was disturbed by my feelings, too, of course, because I'm like the only 105 00:08:42,940 --> 00:08:46,400 one. I don't know, maybe I wanted to pass for a male. 106 00:08:46,840 --> 00:08:48,900 I certainly felt like one. 107 00:08:50,320 --> 00:08:54,000 When I left home, I changed my name to Sandy Kern. 108 00:08:54,240 --> 00:08:57,840 That was kind of, it could be either male or female. 109 00:08:58,880 --> 00:09:01,420 One big piece of it is how... 110 00:09:01,720 --> 00:09:05,620 how things get saved and who gets attracted to it. And that's true not 111 00:09:05,620 --> 00:09:09,240 lesbians. It's true for women. It's true for blacks. It's true for, you know, 112 00:09:09,240 --> 00:09:10,560 Latinos and Latinas. 113 00:09:12,700 --> 00:09:17,520 I was always afraid of getting discharged from the WAC because of being 114 00:09:17,740 --> 00:09:23,300 And if I got thrown out for doing something, it would be shattering. It 115 00:09:23,300 --> 00:09:26,400 horrible. Yeah, it had to be the 30s. 116 00:09:27,020 --> 00:09:30,940 Not a lot of biographies of lesbians by lesbians. 117 00:09:31,630 --> 00:09:33,290 Rosemell first denominated. 118 00:09:33,670 --> 00:09:36,050 Let him disappear that way. 119 00:09:36,950 --> 00:09:42,990 Because I was working, my first job was artificial flower house, and we were 120 00:09:42,990 --> 00:09:48,750 making the rose with the velvet belt as his campaign 121 00:09:48,750 --> 00:09:53,630 thing. But you do have to know, and that gets into coding, you do have to know 122 00:09:53,630 --> 00:09:55,010 what things mean. 123 00:09:55,590 --> 00:09:59,710 You need to do some background work and try to see if you can find out what some 124 00:09:59,710 --> 00:10:00,770 of those icons are. 125 00:10:01,240 --> 00:10:07,900 Jerry was one of the first women to take a man's place in a factory, and I've 126 00:10:07,900 --> 00:10:08,940 forgotten what she did. 127 00:10:09,260 --> 00:10:16,140 I operated a lathe, drill press, but the standard lathe, the 128 00:10:16,140 --> 00:10:17,820 big one, was what I did mostly. 129 00:10:18,510 --> 00:10:20,530 I worked for Ford Instrument. 130 00:10:20,770 --> 00:10:24,550 Then I went out to California and I worked on the boat as an electrician. 131 00:10:24,890 --> 00:10:29,230 I mean, Rosie the Riveter thing. I gave an interview for that. They didn't take 132 00:10:29,230 --> 00:10:34,330 me because they were taking women who had husbands or sons, if you noticed the 133 00:10:34,330 --> 00:10:38,250 movie. They weren't going to take someone who was single and a lesbian. 134 00:10:38,990 --> 00:10:41,150 But they had my whole story down there. 135 00:10:42,110 --> 00:10:45,170 You know, how I had to fight the men and fought. 136 00:10:45,610 --> 00:10:49,470 the union to be able to get the other women to get their amount of money that 137 00:10:49,470 --> 00:10:53,190 they were supposed to get, because they tried to hold me back, you know. 138 00:10:53,830 --> 00:10:59,090 Oh yes, I fought like crazy, and that was the first time. And Fatten did 139 00:10:59,090 --> 00:11:01,270 for months until they would hear my story. 140 00:11:01,810 --> 00:11:05,010 I used to go to Harlem. I used to go to Smalls. 141 00:11:23,590 --> 00:11:28,870 I'm gay myself, and my best friends are gay guys. 142 00:11:29,850 --> 00:11:32,130 I lost about 10 or 12 of them. 143 00:11:32,790 --> 00:11:33,790 Hasn't everybody? 144 00:11:34,370 --> 00:11:35,370 It's terrible. 145 00:11:36,310 --> 00:11:39,710 I see people, I'm with them, and all of a sudden they're dead. 146 00:11:43,530 --> 00:11:48,710 The first person who had AIDS was a dear friend of mine, a boy of 30. 147 00:11:49,630 --> 00:11:53,090 I'd known him since he'd been about, you know, 12, 15 years old. 148 00:11:53,570 --> 00:11:55,790 I knew him and his mother. 149 00:11:56,330 --> 00:12:00,630 And I took him to his first opera. 150 00:12:01,170 --> 00:12:03,370 He was only 30 years old. 151 00:12:04,090 --> 00:12:06,070 He's one of the first people to die of AIDS. 152 00:12:06,430 --> 00:12:11,130 At Christopher Street, there were both men and women, gay men and women. 153 00:12:11,630 --> 00:12:15,390 In case they were raided, which they were at times, we would just switch 154 00:12:15,390 --> 00:12:17,030 partners and dance with the male. 155 00:12:52,970 --> 00:12:58,290 I was in one bar, one bar on Barrow Street that was raided, really raided. 156 00:12:58,550 --> 00:13:02,410 And I was really frightened. And here I am, like, in my 50s, I think. 157 00:13:02,690 --> 00:13:09,610 And I was more protective of the young boys who were 158 00:13:09,610 --> 00:13:10,610 in drag. 159 00:13:10,750 --> 00:13:14,450 Also, there was some underage. Our group stood up for them. 160 00:13:14,750 --> 00:13:16,950 We went down to the police station with them. 161 00:13:17,660 --> 00:13:20,880 when you start looking at people who were social change agents, writing 162 00:13:20,880 --> 00:13:25,700 biographies of them from that perspective, then you start to have 163 00:13:25,700 --> 00:13:27,100 voices for the outgroup. 164 00:13:27,860 --> 00:13:31,820 So, like anything, it's a tool in a political context. 165 00:13:43,660 --> 00:13:47,620 You think white lesbians have a problem? Try being a lesbian of color. As 166 00:13:47,620 --> 00:13:53,260 different layers kind of manifest themselves, the subject almost can 167 00:13:53,360 --> 00:13:59,520 On the one hand, I'm saying, like, you need, if you're honest, to try to leave 168 00:13:59,520 --> 00:14:01,340 the subject her own space. 169 00:14:02,980 --> 00:14:08,020 But in another way, she's nothing but a kind of bare canvas on which people are 170 00:14:08,020 --> 00:14:09,460 inscribing all these issues. 171 00:14:11,920 --> 00:14:17,020 And words are very important to me, and those titles really threw me for a loop. 172 00:14:17,380 --> 00:14:18,980 I was not playing a role. 173 00:14:19,240 --> 00:14:24,740 I was who I was, and I happened to be, I was perceived as being Butch. 174 00:14:25,240 --> 00:14:27,660 And this is who I was, and this is who I am. 175 00:14:28,060 --> 00:14:34,600 Pulp novels from the 40s and 50s, and any books 176 00:14:34,600 --> 00:14:37,520 that had lesbian content, whatever they were. 177 00:14:37,980 --> 00:14:39,600 Things began to change. 178 00:14:40,400 --> 00:14:47,160 I was looked down upon by other lesbians. I felt like an outcast because 179 00:14:47,160 --> 00:14:49,500 of the way I looked and the way I dressed. 180 00:14:49,740 --> 00:14:54,640 And I saw that lesbians were beginning to look more like women. I saw couples, 181 00:14:54,820 --> 00:14:56,940 to me, they both looked quite feminine. 182 00:14:57,320 --> 00:15:00,040 I thought, I don't know what's going on here. 183 00:15:25,620 --> 00:15:32,160 They were swinging between butch and femme and then they were swinging 184 00:15:32,160 --> 00:15:35,400 being a lesbian and being straight. 185 00:15:37,530 --> 00:15:41,010 I couldn't accept my body. I couldn't accept sex. 186 00:15:44,350 --> 00:15:49,430 The girl who I was very attracted to, in fact, she was the first one who taught 187 00:15:49,430 --> 00:15:53,810 me clitoris. You know, I had no idea. I couldn't understand what, you know, as I 188 00:15:53,810 --> 00:15:58,510 say, mine was necking and petting, and here we are in bed. Her folks are away 189 00:15:58,510 --> 00:15:59,510 for the summer. 190 00:15:59,530 --> 00:16:04,170 We're in bed, you know, and it's the first time I'm really naked with a 191 00:16:05,210 --> 00:16:08,910 And then all of a sudden I feel my shoulder, her arms on my shoulder, and 192 00:16:08,910 --> 00:16:09,950 pushing me down. 193 00:16:10,750 --> 00:16:16,690 I took to it like a fish takes the water. I mean, it was unbelievable. I 194 00:16:16,690 --> 00:16:22,790 never understand how it happened. And women have taught me how to make love, 195 00:16:22,790 --> 00:16:27,130 know, for I see what they want, and I picked up on it. 196 00:16:27,770 --> 00:16:31,470 Yeah, I do it, and nobody caught me. 197 00:16:35,120 --> 00:16:41,420 So as I got a little older, we would go down to Grand Central or Port Authority, 198 00:16:41,820 --> 00:16:47,380 take train rides, because women together and even hugging and kissing in the 199 00:16:47,380 --> 00:16:49,120 street was not a no -no. 200 00:16:49,960 --> 00:16:54,440 Even though I looked the way I looked, I used to get away with it. I mean, we'd 201 00:16:54,440 --> 00:16:58,200 pretend that we were leaving one another and we'd be able to kiss goodbye. 202 00:16:58,520 --> 00:17:03,200 You know, I had this going quite a bit. 203 00:17:04,579 --> 00:17:09,359 I was drinking very heavily, you see. A lot of people drank, many alcoholics. 204 00:17:09,500 --> 00:17:11,260 And the liquor was very strong. 205 00:17:12,780 --> 00:17:16,780 1934. The bars were still run by mafia. 206 00:17:17,460 --> 00:17:19,960 They used to raid the places at least once a week. 207 00:17:20,240 --> 00:17:23,560 Before the raid, they'd say, girls, take your neckties off. You're going to be 208 00:17:23,560 --> 00:17:27,520 raided. They would flash on the lights on and off, on and off. That would be a 209 00:17:27,520 --> 00:17:30,780 signal to us that, hey, there's going to be a raid. Get out. 210 00:17:31,350 --> 00:17:36,470 If you wore three pieces of feminine underwear, they didn't book you. If you 211 00:17:36,470 --> 00:17:39,650 wore male underwear, you were booked in a raid. 212 00:17:39,870 --> 00:17:42,290 Well, I was never frightened because I was drinking. 213 00:17:42,570 --> 00:17:46,450 Certain things that probably happened to me, people probably didn't insult me, 214 00:17:46,470 --> 00:17:48,310 I'm sure of it. It didn't register. 215 00:18:13,910 --> 00:18:17,510 The boys on the corner would yell out, Les and Dyke. 216 00:18:17,730 --> 00:18:18,730 It was tough. 217 00:18:18,750 --> 00:18:20,830 People shouted at me. 218 00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:26,740 Hey, dirty lesbian, dirty lesbian. They used to throw things at me. The kids, 219 00:18:26,800 --> 00:18:32,280 terrible. I was with my lover in Prospect Park one night. It was early 220 00:18:32,300 --> 00:18:33,179 It was still night. 221 00:18:33,180 --> 00:18:36,160 And these kids jumped us. It was terrible. 222 00:18:36,880 --> 00:18:38,320 It's much easier today. 223 00:18:38,800 --> 00:18:39,800 Much easier. 224 00:18:40,020 --> 00:18:42,480 These categories are so deeply embedded. 225 00:18:42,740 --> 00:18:48,560 They're so dichotomous. Start thinking about orders of analysis more complex 226 00:18:48,560 --> 00:18:52,320 than... binary oppositions, which seems to be really hard. 227 00:18:53,080 --> 00:18:56,560 There's a lot of ageism in the lesbian community. 228 00:18:56,800 --> 00:19:03,660 Woof! Boy, it's a lot of it. And often I feel absolutely invisible. 229 00:19:04,860 --> 00:19:05,860 Invisible. 230 00:19:38,090 --> 00:19:42,130 Now did you ever hear the story about that boy in a boat? 231 00:19:43,530 --> 00:19:46,690 Don't wear no shoes or no overcoat. 232 00:19:48,050 --> 00:19:50,990 Rod told me that it happened like this. 233 00:19:51,630 --> 00:19:57,170 Fragments not only is what's left us historically oftentimes, but that's 234 00:19:57,170 --> 00:20:00,590 the reality, I think. And I think, in fact, I think that's one of the reasons 235 00:20:00,590 --> 00:20:04,010 that people get uncomfortable a lot of times with... 236 00:20:04,240 --> 00:20:09,660 with film that is more experimental or that is not narrative because it makes 237 00:20:09,660 --> 00:20:13,620 uncomfortable. It makes us, it's a little bit more like life, like all 238 00:20:13,620 --> 00:20:16,940 things that are just kind of flying past that we don't have a whole lot of 239 00:20:16,940 --> 00:20:17,940 control over. 240 00:20:18,400 --> 00:20:22,120 He loved to dive and also to fish. 241 00:20:22,980 --> 00:20:29,960 He went roaming in that shallow boat with his head hardly rising and his 242 00:20:29,960 --> 00:20:31,260 eyes hot to go. 243 00:20:31,880 --> 00:20:35,720 Face is all wrinkled and his breath smells like soap. 244 00:20:36,820 --> 00:20:40,160 Talking about that boy in a boat. 245 00:20:40,940 --> 00:20:46,180 And the variety and diversity of experience that there were for men with 246 00:20:46,180 --> 00:20:48,820 homosexuality in the 30s is vast. 247 00:20:54,440 --> 00:21:00,280 It came out when I was 15. I'm 64 now, and so that was in 1943. 248 00:21:01,340 --> 00:21:06,240 i went back in for a good period of time when i was married but not totally 249 00:21:31,760 --> 00:21:36,120 the third position then hetero or homo you've got a bi position but even that's 250 00:21:36,120 --> 00:21:42,360 very simplistic and does not accurately represent the complexity of how people 251 00:21:42,360 --> 00:21:46,800 really live their lives it 252 00:21:46,800 --> 00:21:53,640 was great after going to 253 00:21:53,640 --> 00:21:59,000 black cat or something to cruise down lower market street There would be 254 00:21:59,000 --> 00:22:05,840 and marines walking slowly, and if there was a single sailor, that was great. 255 00:22:05,900 --> 00:22:10,000 Just go around the block and pull up ahead of him and let him come abreast 256 00:22:10,000 --> 00:22:11,220 show that you were interested. 257 00:22:11,560 --> 00:22:17,360 That's when the port was bustling, and there was lots of Navy in San Francisco. 258 00:22:20,360 --> 00:22:24,940 When you look at history, if you bring with you this binary framework, or even 259 00:22:24,940 --> 00:22:26,680 the third part of bisexual, 260 00:22:27,640 --> 00:22:33,160 It's so limiting. You just can't get what's there. It blinds you to seeing 261 00:22:33,160 --> 00:22:34,160 what's there. 262 00:22:35,380 --> 00:22:39,260 Especially when the world is not split into a world of gay people and a world 263 00:22:39,260 --> 00:22:42,140 straight people, that there is much interaction. 264 00:22:42,780 --> 00:22:46,940 Not gay people living in a straight world, not that framework, but where 265 00:22:46,940 --> 00:22:52,340 people's sexualities are very complex and are coming up with a variety of 266 00:22:52,340 --> 00:22:56,440 strategies for making those complex sexualities work from day to day. 267 00:22:56,960 --> 00:23:00,560 His face is still wrinkled and his breath smells like soap. 268 00:23:01,220 --> 00:23:04,900 Still talking about that boy in a boat. 269 00:23:06,220 --> 00:23:12,620 The Bible, especially the saints in ancient Greece, have become over the 270 00:23:12,620 --> 00:23:19,160 centuries ways that men have been able to portray and look at other men 271 00:23:19,160 --> 00:23:23,960 or present themselves in a sensuous, physical way without clothes on. 272 00:23:24,640 --> 00:23:25,800 But that's... 273 00:23:26,380 --> 00:23:30,300 Legitimate because it has to do with the Bible or ancient Greece so you can see 274 00:23:30,300 --> 00:23:30,940 some of that tension 275 00:23:30,940 --> 00:23:43,220 The 276 00:23:43,220 --> 00:23:49,600 dominant interest of the biblical story about Sodom is not about Sensuality at 277 00:23:49,600 --> 00:23:53,500 all. It's about the status of strangers 278 00:23:54,960 --> 00:23:59,300 and about rape and about violence. 279 00:23:59,980 --> 00:24:05,520 Biblical scholars have begun to say that the story itself is not about 280 00:24:05,520 --> 00:24:07,120 homosexuality as such. 281 00:24:31,310 --> 00:24:38,050 When you have young, athletic, dancer -type men using the exaggerated 282 00:24:38,050 --> 00:24:43,170 makeup and gestures of silent films in the company of each other without women 283 00:24:43,170 --> 00:24:49,170 around, it becomes very feminized, very aesthetic. 284 00:24:49,650 --> 00:24:56,250 It's not certainly the makeup that gay men, that fairies or sissies would have 285 00:24:56,250 --> 00:24:58,410 worn on the street because it's theatrical makeup. 286 00:25:06,090 --> 00:25:12,810 But it does suggest a kind of an artifice, an exaggeration, going too 287 00:25:14,430 --> 00:25:16,690 That has a lot to do with camp. 288 00:25:17,050 --> 00:25:19,530 It's sort of a mirror that's held up to gender. 289 00:25:19,830 --> 00:25:24,150 Self -awareness, self -consciousness, and the exaggeration of gestures, the 290 00:25:24,150 --> 00:25:25,310 theatricality of it. 291 00:25:25,680 --> 00:25:30,680 One of the things at camp is all the awareness of the levels of 292 00:25:30,680 --> 00:25:35,360 and performances that are necessary to get through everyday life as a 293 00:25:35,360 --> 00:25:36,360 homosexual. 294 00:28:07,050 --> 00:28:12,410 There was a gay culture which was quite supportive, furtive, but supportive, and 295 00:28:12,410 --> 00:28:18,530 it had to do with two institutions to which I owe almost everything, the U .S. 296 00:28:18,530 --> 00:28:21,090 Navy and the Boy Scouts of America. 297 00:28:26,670 --> 00:28:31,810 Motion picture production code, it was administered by the Hays office, and 298 00:28:31,810 --> 00:28:34,790 really it's run by Joseph Green. The code was... 299 00:28:35,040 --> 00:28:37,700 drawn up by the Hollywood studios with self enforcement. 300 00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:44,420 95 % of the theaters in America in 1933 and 34 were agreeing that they would 301 00:28:44,420 --> 00:28:46,540 only show pictures that had been approved by the code. 302 00:29:06,440 --> 00:29:10,760 When you talk about the code, it's this blatant mind control, miscegenation, 303 00:29:10,820 --> 00:29:14,780 mixing of the races. This is a social control device. 304 00:29:15,220 --> 00:29:18,380 We do not want the races mixed, therefore we will not show that it could 305 00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:30,280 The World Code has been gone for 25 or so years now, but whole arguments and 306 00:29:30,280 --> 00:29:34,820 discussions and discourse were all taken out of the main mass media. It's no 307 00:29:34,820 --> 00:29:35,920 coincidence that... 308 00:29:36,190 --> 00:29:39,930 In the 1990s, we're still having a debate about homosexuals. 309 00:29:42,790 --> 00:29:49,070 From 34 to 61, gays were wiped off. In 61, there's this new rule that says it's 310 00:29:49,070 --> 00:29:50,830 okay with care, discretion, and restraint. 311 00:29:51,210 --> 00:29:54,190 Yes, you can show them, but care, discretion, and restraint means you kill 312 00:29:54,190 --> 00:29:57,890 off at the end, or that they're punished one way or the other. 313 00:30:00,630 --> 00:30:02,450 In African -American communities, 314 00:30:03,850 --> 00:30:06,850 There were many, many, many different African American communities. 315 00:30:07,190 --> 00:30:13,890 In some of them, homosexuality was integrated into the fabric of everyday 316 00:30:13,890 --> 00:30:16,150 so that people knew who was with who. 317 00:30:16,490 --> 00:30:23,390 And you can see this in the blues, where you have a man in the late 318 00:30:23,390 --> 00:30:29,870 20s, early 30s, singing about his sissy man being taken away from him by another 319 00:30:29,870 --> 00:30:36,450 man. And in our language, You might say, our language meaning, you know, 320 00:30:36,450 --> 00:30:42,910 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, that there's a heterosexual man who has a lover who is 321 00:30:42,910 --> 00:30:47,670 gay man who is being taken away by another straight man, but that's not 322 00:30:47,670 --> 00:30:48,670 going on. 323 00:30:48,830 --> 00:30:55,050 In the blues, there is an awareness that fairies and sissies are part of the 324 00:30:55,050 --> 00:30:56,310 fabric of everyday relationship. 325 00:31:06,780 --> 00:31:11,620 In the 30s, it's often martyred saints, Jesus on the cross, 326 00:31:12,560 --> 00:31:17,900 St. Sebastian, Greek athletes during the Olympics, or men interested in looking 327 00:31:17,900 --> 00:31:21,660 at other men's bodies in a sensual way. Those are the forms that have come down 328 00:31:21,660 --> 00:31:23,720 through the centuries and remain alive. 329 00:31:29,160 --> 00:31:30,540 All that language... 330 00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:36,740 doesn't often translate into the 30s. My girlfriend sat on my right, I sat in 331 00:31:36,740 --> 00:31:38,460 the middle, and he sat on my left. 332 00:31:38,700 --> 00:31:44,920 And I soon became aware of wonderful calf touching my calf and then a 333 00:31:44,920 --> 00:31:47,960 wonderful thigh touching my thigh. 334 00:31:48,220 --> 00:31:52,740 He was gorgeous. Dark curly hair, wonderful skin, tanned. 335 00:31:59,340 --> 00:32:03,780 I woke up this morning with my business in my hands. 336 00:32:05,880 --> 00:32:08,180 If you can, bring me a woman. 337 00:32:08,740 --> 00:32:11,080 Bring me a sissy man. 338 00:32:37,100 --> 00:32:43,860 Homosexual gaze has... Well, there's sex in the eyes. 339 00:32:43,920 --> 00:32:45,480 There's desire. 340 00:32:46,160 --> 00:32:47,800 There's flirtation. 341 00:32:59,700 --> 00:33:04,940 It was simply obvious from the fact that someone stared at you. 342 00:33:05,530 --> 00:33:10,990 ways that men have been able to portray and look at other men or present 343 00:33:10,990 --> 00:33:13,830 themselves in a sensuous, physical way. 344 00:33:14,310 --> 00:33:18,790 But that's legitimate because it has to do with the Bible or ancient Greece. 345 00:33:19,130 --> 00:33:22,290 None of the men in Sodom have shirts on or pants. 346 00:33:22,490 --> 00:33:27,830 They have loincloths or posing straps or 347 00:33:27,830 --> 00:33:29,790 nothing. 348 00:33:31,790 --> 00:33:34,190 Turnabout and turnabout and just... 349 00:33:34,460 --> 00:33:41,100 wonderful, wonderful screwing. It was the beginning of absolute bliss. 350 00:33:46,360 --> 00:33:53,300 This is 351 00:33:53,300 --> 00:33:59,880 Scoutmaster, who was tall and hunky and gorgeous and sexy and 352 00:33:59,880 --> 00:34:05,830 also loved to screw. That's what What got me through my senior year was the 353 00:34:05,830 --> 00:34:07,430 assistant scoutmaster. 354 00:34:12,250 --> 00:34:12,810 All 355 00:34:12,810 --> 00:34:26,350 the 356 00:34:26,350 --> 00:34:28,570 heroes turn out to be real schmucks like everyone else. 357 00:34:29,480 --> 00:34:32,639 We want to know what the next page is going to be before we turn it. 358 00:34:33,580 --> 00:34:36,560 It's okay to have surprises if it's building up and they're warning us. 359 00:34:36,860 --> 00:34:41,000 Surprises are coming here, but when the hero dies halfway in... 360 00:35:17,850 --> 00:35:23,490 Throughout history, those stories have been also excuses for being able to 361 00:35:23,490 --> 00:35:26,310 portray male sensuousness with other men. 362 00:35:28,370 --> 00:35:34,670 In the context of the moral tale, where you're supposed to learn the lesson of 363 00:35:34,670 --> 00:35:39,830 the tale, but in the telling of the lesson, it becomes very seductive. 364 00:35:41,350 --> 00:35:43,030 Wonderfully erotic and playful. 365 00:35:44,760 --> 00:35:46,560 Because it works against the story. 366 00:35:47,460 --> 00:35:50,660 Because, in fact, they don't seem like they're doing anybody any harm. 367 00:35:52,740 --> 00:35:56,840 And these characters are seductive. They're looking at each other, these 368 00:35:57,100 --> 00:36:00,200 And they're being incredibly seductive to the camera. 369 00:36:01,180 --> 00:36:02,920 Wanting to be looked at. 370 00:36:03,440 --> 00:36:05,100 Willingly being looked at. 371 00:36:05,840 --> 00:36:08,320 Positioning themselves so that they are being looked at. 372 00:36:08,600 --> 00:36:13,240 I would see these men as men who are 373 00:36:18,220 --> 00:36:24,960 Being presented to us in a world where there is male sensuality and feminacy 374 00:36:24,960 --> 00:36:31,880 the boundaries are fluid around this, that is coded clearly to 375 00:36:31,880 --> 00:36:34,080 me as effeminate homosexual. 376 00:36:36,260 --> 00:36:41,200 And it's a completely different issue whether those men are homosexual because 377 00:36:41,200 --> 00:36:45,740 that language, those codes are circulating through the culture in the 378 00:36:46,110 --> 00:36:51,350 so that it may be a young man impersonating these gestures, 379 00:36:51,650 --> 00:36:53,730 impersonating a fairy. 380 00:37:14,480 --> 00:37:17,800 When that hand came out and started to shake her, it was like you will do as I 381 00:37:17,800 --> 00:37:19,780 say, and not as you are. 382 00:37:21,300 --> 00:37:24,700 You will grow as I direct, and not as you would. 383 00:37:32,200 --> 00:37:39,120 Pressure to marry was strong. I liked women very much 384 00:37:39,120 --> 00:37:42,800 as friends, and I fell in love with... 385 00:37:43,080 --> 00:37:48,560 While I was living with him, I fell in love with a colleague, a woman. 386 00:37:49,600 --> 00:37:55,240 She fell in love with me, and we were married in 1952. 387 00:37:55,940 --> 00:38:02,760 Many gay men, as I did in the early 1950s, married, but 388 00:38:02,760 --> 00:38:07,140 stayed married, often unhappily. 389 00:38:07,580 --> 00:38:13,360 The very people who could contribute Information on the gay lifestyle in the 390 00:38:13,360 --> 00:38:19,620 1920s and 30s and 40s are not utterly willing to do so. This group of people 391 00:38:19,620 --> 00:38:23,800 getting on, these things should be recorded. I see that as a problem. 392 00:38:24,120 --> 00:38:26,940 There's still a lot of men who aren't out. 393 00:38:27,690 --> 00:38:32,350 men my age and a little older, with wonderful stories to tell, wonderful, 394 00:38:32,490 --> 00:38:37,470 wonderful yarns that they still like to spin when we get together, but unwilling 395 00:38:37,470 --> 00:38:40,890 to even go to the Gay Freedom Parade. 396 00:38:44,810 --> 00:38:50,270 There were too many, too fast, too young. I had many young friends die. 397 00:38:51,290 --> 00:38:55,070 Many. At one point, my partner and I had... 398 00:38:57,500 --> 00:39:04,300 14, not in one year we lost 14, not just acquaintances, but 399 00:39:04,300 --> 00:39:06,760 friends. It was relentless. 400 00:39:08,080 --> 00:39:14,420 It was appalling. I would guess that the World War II experience and that loss 401 00:39:14,420 --> 00:39:19,280 didn't do anything to prepare me for this. 402 00:39:20,340 --> 00:39:21,740 It's just too grim. 403 00:39:30,570 --> 00:39:32,610 The story is one of change and adaptation. 404 00:39:33,530 --> 00:39:38,090 And there are always unexpected things that come up in people's lives relating 405 00:39:38,090 --> 00:39:42,330 to homosexuality that have to be renegotiated and reinterpreted. 406 00:39:42,990 --> 00:39:48,970 There is this tendency, which I think has been heightened by the rise of 407 00:39:48,970 --> 00:39:54,330 and the fact that we're all immersed in mass media. We have a real tendency to 408 00:39:54,330 --> 00:39:56,970 want to have a narrative to everything and want to see a... 409 00:39:57,320 --> 00:40:01,580 a beginning and a resolution and a conclusion to everything in the world 410 00:40:01,580 --> 00:40:05,260 it can all be understood and put in context and we've mastered the world 411 00:40:05,260 --> 00:40:08,680 we understand it. And the reality is that's not true. 412 00:40:08,880 --> 00:40:12,080 Life doesn't work that way. Life comes in fragments and we may understand 413 00:40:12,080 --> 00:40:15,240 something and we may not and who knows if the meaning we apply to anything 414 00:40:15,240 --> 00:40:18,680 really, you know, it's whatever it is. 415 00:42:08,149 --> 00:42:14,710 Biographies. Most of those 416 00:42:14,710 --> 00:42:17,870 women were heterosexuals. 417 00:42:18,990 --> 00:42:23,810 Yeah, and this is another part of the story, of the sad story. 418 00:42:27,810 --> 00:42:31,050 Even after the Third Reich, 419 00:42:31,950 --> 00:42:38,670 It wasn't very nice to be a prostitute or a criminal or 420 00:42:38,670 --> 00:42:40,230 to be asocial. 421 00:42:46,330 --> 00:42:52,730 So the lesbians 422 00:42:52,730 --> 00:42:54,650 didn't raise up their voices. 423 00:42:55,950 --> 00:43:00,310 The other women, the heterosexuals, Jewish women, 424 00:43:01,630 --> 00:43:06,490 women who had been in the concentration camps for political reasons, they could 425 00:43:06,490 --> 00:43:07,530 raise up their voices. 426 00:43:07,750 --> 00:43:10,070 Their social status was better. 427 00:43:11,190 --> 00:43:12,270 And it's still. 428 00:43:12,790 --> 00:43:16,890 The only hints we have is from those heterosexual women. 429 00:43:18,050 --> 00:43:24,570 Now, the way they interpret lesbian life is very different from the way we would 430 00:43:24,570 --> 00:43:29,790 interpret, because I found that by reading biographies written by a 431 00:43:29,790 --> 00:43:30,790 woman. I can tell. 432 00:43:31,160 --> 00:43:32,860 But it is not written by a lesbian. 433 00:43:33,160 --> 00:43:40,080 Yes, of course. It sounds terrible how they describe them in a very, very, 434 00:43:40,100 --> 00:43:41,220 very negative sense. 435 00:43:42,100 --> 00:43:49,000 They all put them into the schedule of butchers and of asocial 436 00:43:49,000 --> 00:43:50,700 human beings. 437 00:43:52,040 --> 00:43:55,540 Even those women who had been in the concentration camps. 438 00:43:57,480 --> 00:43:59,420 Some of them are more positive. 439 00:44:01,580 --> 00:44:07,600 But the interesting thing is that those heterosexual women who say, 440 00:44:07,880 --> 00:44:14,500 yeah, there were lesbians and who didn't sacrifice them, that they 441 00:44:14,500 --> 00:44:17,160 divide them into two parts. 442 00:44:17,660 --> 00:44:22,380 I tell you we must die. I tell you we must die. 443 00:44:22,660 --> 00:44:27,020 I tell you, I tell you, I tell you we must die. 444 00:44:27,620 --> 00:44:29,800 They said there were... 445 00:44:31,050 --> 00:44:37,370 Lesbians were the butch type of women and 446 00:44:37,370 --> 00:44:44,270 they found them amongst the criminals and amongst the prostitutes 447 00:44:44,270 --> 00:44:46,230 and amongst the asocial. 448 00:44:47,010 --> 00:44:52,610 And on the other side, there were lesbians 449 00:44:52,610 --> 00:44:58,250 amongst the Jewish and the politicals. 450 00:45:01,290 --> 00:45:07,070 And the important point is that they 451 00:45:07,070 --> 00:45:13,970 say that Jewish women or those political 452 00:45:13,970 --> 00:45:20,710 women would live another love together, 453 00:45:20,950 --> 00:45:24,190 more idealistic love. 454 00:45:25,990 --> 00:45:30,690 Physical lesbians were amongst the... 455 00:45:31,020 --> 00:45:33,880 Criminals, prostitutes and asocials. 456 00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:36,580 And platonic love. 457 00:45:37,860 --> 00:45:44,660 And platonic love were amongst the women who were Jewish or political. 458 00:45:45,180 --> 00:45:51,540 The first one is from Krystyna Zywusk. She was a Polish woman 459 00:45:51,540 --> 00:45:55,000 and she was in Auschwitz. 460 00:45:55,520 --> 00:46:00,080 So she said, or she writes, I look into the toilets. 461 00:46:01,480 --> 00:46:02,640 A lot of women there. 462 00:46:05,140 --> 00:46:11,120 On one toilet there was a German woman, a very male type of woman. 463 00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:16,540 On her knees sat a very, very female, long -haired girl. 464 00:46:17,600 --> 00:46:22,360 They looked in each other's eyes and then suddenly they started to kiss. 465 00:46:22,740 --> 00:46:24,960 This kiss was eternal. 466 00:46:26,840 --> 00:46:29,680 One can't imagine something more... 467 00:46:30,270 --> 00:46:31,270 Disgusting? 468 00:46:32,730 --> 00:46:33,730 Yes. 469 00:46:40,230 --> 00:46:42,370 Oh, don't ask why. 470 00:46:42,810 --> 00:46:44,670 Oh, don't ask why. 471 00:46:44,970 --> 00:46:47,310 I tell you, we must die. 472 00:46:47,710 --> 00:46:49,690 I tell you, we must die. 473 00:46:49,910 --> 00:46:54,370 I tell you, I tell you, I tell you, we must die. 474 00:46:55,230 --> 00:46:58,730 The next woman is Isa Vermeeren. 475 00:46:59,720 --> 00:47:02,880 And she was captured in Ravensbrück. 476 00:47:03,100 --> 00:47:04,100 This is important. 477 00:47:04,520 --> 00:47:10,780 A lot of hymns come from Ravensbrück, women's concentration camps. 478 00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:15,640 And she divides into orderly and disorderly love. 479 00:47:15,900 --> 00:47:22,760 The orderly love is this mental love between the Jewish and the Christian and 480 00:47:22,760 --> 00:47:23,760 the political women. 481 00:47:24,120 --> 00:47:27,420 But she says, amongst the... 482 00:47:27,870 --> 00:47:34,650 criminals, prostitutes, and asocial women, there would be 483 00:47:34,650 --> 00:47:40,810 this real lesbian love with all its disgusting effects. 484 00:47:41,290 --> 00:47:42,690 That's what she says. 485 00:47:43,110 --> 00:47:48,190 And then she describes this butch type and... 486 00:47:48,190 --> 00:47:54,870 What is she 487 00:47:54,870 --> 00:48:01,410 saying when she describes... Yeah, the word... male in their behavior and they 488 00:48:01,410 --> 00:48:07,930 were aggressive they were tall and they were short -haired and 489 00:48:07,930 --> 00:48:14,890 nearly none of those lesbians she saw would have carried a pink 490 00:48:14,890 --> 00:48:21,310 triangle yeah they were in prison because they were asocial and to be 491 00:48:21,310 --> 00:48:26,210 one can say yeah asocial is a woman 492 00:48:40,250 --> 00:48:46,190 If we go back to Unter der Linden, in that street, and the women putting their 493 00:48:46,190 --> 00:48:50,810 description of themselves on a piece of paper on the wall. 494 00:48:51,110 --> 00:48:57,030 And they made something, signs, for example, you have to wear a rose and 495 00:48:57,720 --> 00:48:59,220 on your jacket when you come. 496 00:48:59,420 --> 00:49:00,760 But it's oral history. 497 00:49:01,020 --> 00:49:02,260 I don't know the details. 498 00:49:02,580 --> 00:49:07,320 It was told by an old writer, a lesbian writer, I know her. 499 00:49:07,680 --> 00:49:14,020 And she was young in this time, but she had an older lover. So it's the second 500 00:49:14,020 --> 00:49:20,420 oral generation to know about it. We have not very much details. 501 00:49:21,400 --> 00:49:23,180 I don't have this detail. 502 00:49:23,420 --> 00:49:28,240 Some women here in West Berlin try to get this history, but it's very hard to 503 00:49:28,240 --> 00:49:29,360 find something out. 504 00:49:29,840 --> 00:49:36,320 Because the Nazi side was a very, very hard time for the lesbians. And 505 00:49:36,320 --> 00:49:41,920 because after the war, the lesbian and gay people were 506 00:49:41,920 --> 00:49:48,820 like the people we call Sinti and Roma, gypsies. 507 00:49:49,690 --> 00:49:54,990 We had the same problems like the gypsies or the lesbian and gays who were 508 00:49:54,990 --> 00:50:00,730 cassette, for example. We had to hide our history and to work with the hurting 509 00:50:00,730 --> 00:50:01,730 inside. 510 00:50:10,330 --> 00:50:16,050 The lesbian and gay people here in Germany and the gypsies, they don't have 511 00:50:16,050 --> 00:50:18,810 anybody who listens to their stories. 512 00:50:20,650 --> 00:50:26,890 When they get work and the one who gave them works asks them, 513 00:50:26,990 --> 00:50:32,610 where were you in the time from 30 to, for example, 42? 514 00:50:33,210 --> 00:50:37,110 They say, nowhere. I was in another country or something. 515 00:50:37,350 --> 00:50:39,970 They cannot say I was in a concentration camp. 516 00:50:40,570 --> 00:50:42,970 So they had to hide this story. 517 00:50:43,250 --> 00:50:48,850 And it is very hard to ask them what happened because they had... 518 00:50:49,480 --> 00:50:53,780 They had no words for it. For so many years nobody asked. 519 00:50:54,140 --> 00:50:58,640 And after 40 years there comes a man and asks, what happened? 520 00:50:59,080 --> 00:51:00,820 They have no answer anymore. 521 00:51:01,440 --> 00:51:07,780 They are very much hurt inside because of the silence which came after the 522 00:51:07,780 --> 00:51:08,820 concentration camp. 523 00:51:09,120 --> 00:51:15,980 It is hard to ask them of this time because the silence inside of them 524 00:51:15,980 --> 00:51:16,980 is so deep. 525 00:51:17,400 --> 00:51:20,560 So it is very hard to find out what happened in this time. 526 00:51:22,000 --> 00:51:25,520 What else can you tell me about Mühlerstrasse? 527 00:51:25,920 --> 00:51:27,540 Mühlerstrasse is very famous. 528 00:51:27,960 --> 00:51:32,920 It's a very famous bar, and everybody in Berlin can tell you that the singer 529 00:51:32,920 --> 00:51:34,460 Clara Waldorf was there. 530 00:51:34,860 --> 00:51:41,620 Clara Waldorf was an open lesbian. She was married with another woman in her 531 00:51:41,620 --> 00:51:45,440 house, and she made big parties for lesbians and gays. 532 00:51:46,840 --> 00:51:53,380 She was the most famous singer in Berlin. She's like a symbol for 533 00:51:53,380 --> 00:51:59,040 most of Berlin people because she sang Berlin songs 534 00:51:59,040 --> 00:52:04,540 where there's the whole feeling of being a Berlin person. 535 00:52:04,980 --> 00:52:07,540 And nobody said she was a lesbian. 536 00:52:08,200 --> 00:52:14,340 But she was singing and smoking and she was always wearing 537 00:52:14,340 --> 00:52:15,660 men's clothes. 538 00:52:16,620 --> 00:52:21,340 She was talking like a man, walking like a man. If you listen to the records, 539 00:52:21,500 --> 00:52:26,100 you'll hear it, that she's a cofao. We call it cofao. But 540 00:52:26,100 --> 00:52:32,280 nobody knows that she's a lesbian. 541 00:52:32,700 --> 00:52:37,440 I think in the time when she was a singer, she had enough power to make it 542 00:52:37,560 --> 00:52:42,320 Everybody knew it in the 20s. 543 00:52:43,630 --> 00:52:48,330 Over her death, she's not able to use it for longer. 544 00:52:48,670 --> 00:52:50,950 That's another way our history is suppressed. 545 00:52:51,470 --> 00:52:53,870 Yes, I think that's the main thing. 546 00:52:54,390 --> 00:53:00,950 Because many women, I think many women, have the power to do it when they live, 547 00:53:01,090 --> 00:53:07,810 to show it and make it open. But when they die, the history is eating 548 00:53:07,810 --> 00:53:11,170 them. We have only our own history. 549 00:53:12,520 --> 00:53:18,260 The main thing is if you write it down and say something about you and make it 550 00:53:18,260 --> 00:53:25,060 book and put it everywhere, there's a little chance that someone knows it all, 551 00:53:25,180 --> 00:53:27,080 what you do, making films. 552 00:53:27,400 --> 00:53:29,020 They'll live longer than you. 553 00:53:42,840 --> 00:53:48,960 So you have to live and to say it every day, to be it. But when you are dead, 554 00:53:49,080 --> 00:53:50,580 they do what they want with you. 555 00:54:19,180 --> 00:54:24,800 We are just part of a very long, ongoing revolution, and it just takes different 556 00:54:24,800 --> 00:54:25,800 shapes and forms. 557 00:54:28,740 --> 00:54:34,320 I didn't really know what history was of gay culture until a lot later in life. 558 00:54:36,780 --> 00:54:39,040 I didn't have a problem with my sexuality. 559 00:54:42,280 --> 00:54:46,560 But when I started to realize certain things that I was attracted to, 560 00:54:50,250 --> 00:54:53,450 You know, like old books I would pick up or old photographs of women. 561 00:54:56,170 --> 00:55:03,170 I later realized what I was looking at. I was looking at a dyke in 562 00:55:03,170 --> 00:55:04,170 male drag. 563 00:55:09,810 --> 00:55:14,470 I think it's really important to know what gay culture and gay history is. 564 00:55:14,850 --> 00:55:17,510 Alice had to move out and leave that place of memory. 565 00:55:33,470 --> 00:55:36,430 You feel like you could be airbrushed out of history? 566 00:55:36,890 --> 00:55:42,170 There's definitely within the dyke community a part of it that they don't 567 00:55:42,170 --> 00:55:43,170 to show. 568 00:55:46,630 --> 00:55:51,350 What we value and how we want to place ourselves with what we do. 569 00:55:52,060 --> 00:55:57,580 isn't in the realm of what a lot of lesbians consider valuable. 570 00:56:13,200 --> 00:56:15,460 Visibility of lesbian sexuality. 571 00:56:21,900 --> 00:56:27,360 They can lay their jive just like a natural man. 572 00:56:29,340 --> 00:56:34,900 BD women, BD women, you know they so will grow. 573 00:56:35,160 --> 00:56:40,160 We really are talking about lesbians visibility on a very personal level. 574 00:56:54,510 --> 00:56:57,990 I hope this lesbian geography of one of the most beautiful neighborhoods you 575 00:56:57,990 --> 00:57:01,070 will also have made you want to reread those whose footsteps we crossed. 576 00:57:01,550 --> 00:57:05,590 And don't take me for a dreamer though I tell you that one day, at 20 street 577 00:57:05,590 --> 00:57:07,590 Jacob, will stand the fairest of museums. 578 00:58:35,760 --> 00:58:39,700 At the heart of the archives is a vision of intergenerational connection, which 579 00:58:39,700 --> 00:58:45,360 means dykes from the 90s understand witches from the 60s, and they 580 00:58:45,360 --> 00:58:49,520 bull daggers from the 30s, at least through the cultural artifacts that have 581 00:58:49,520 --> 00:58:50,158 been left. 582 00:58:50,160 --> 00:58:53,680 We're an international archive, and that's really important to us. Send us 583 00:58:53,680 --> 00:58:57,220 something in the language you make love in, and we have wonderful lesbian... 584 00:58:58,180 --> 00:59:02,800 materials, books, and articles, and periodicals, and I think now, I think 585 00:59:02,800 --> 00:59:08,160 to 15 different languages. And just yesterday, a woman from Yugoslavia came 586 00:59:08,160 --> 00:59:12,440 the first anything published lesbian that's ever appeared in Yugoslavia. And 587 00:59:12,440 --> 00:59:16,280 oftentimes, women come here on pilgrimages. The Italian women brought 588 00:59:16,280 --> 00:59:21,300 lesbian book by Italian lesbians. There are newspapers from, again, in print and 589 00:59:21,300 --> 00:59:23,260 out of print, from all over the country. 590 01:00:30,800 --> 01:00:34,180 The archive in a certain sense is almost a collection of New York lesbian 591 01:00:34,180 --> 01:00:35,180 history. 592 01:00:36,080 --> 01:00:39,920 And I want you never to stop thinking of yourselves as history, and that all 593 01:00:39,920 --> 01:00:41,700 your stories have a place in the archives. 594 01:00:42,000 --> 01:00:47,360 Her name's Susan, and her history in the book. And Susan was, and perhaps still 595 01:00:47,360 --> 01:00:50,800 is, an African -American lesbian woman, and she's still alive. 596 01:00:51,060 --> 01:00:56,440 And at this time, in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, it was the prevailing belief that 597 01:00:56,440 --> 01:01:01,160 were less than human because our bodies were not normal. 598 01:01:01,800 --> 01:01:05,950 And the doctors had a whole... scientific body of thought to prove 599 01:01:05,950 --> 01:01:11,850 of the ways they did was to measure our nipples, our clitorises, to show that 600 01:01:11,850 --> 01:01:15,370 they were larger than women's were supposed to be, or the nipples were 601 01:01:15,370 --> 01:01:16,730 than women's were supposed to be. 602 01:01:17,330 --> 01:01:21,530 And this was taken very seriously by the medical profession. I remember my 603 01:01:21,530 --> 01:01:26,910 mother bringing me to a doctor in 1956 because she suspected I was queer. 604 01:01:27,210 --> 01:01:32,310 And he had this book on his shelves, and he looked at me, and my mother told me, 605 01:01:32,360 --> 01:01:36,040 later he said, you know, I think your daughter has a hormonal imbalance. 606 01:01:36,320 --> 01:01:39,880 She might indeed be a member of the third sex because she has facial hair. 607 01:01:41,400 --> 01:01:45,780 Now, it was on the basis of things like this that women were put in mental 608 01:01:45,780 --> 01:01:52,300 hospitals, were put into prison, were put into marriages, and sometimes lost 609 01:01:52,300 --> 01:01:53,300 their lives. 610 01:01:53,420 --> 01:01:55,420 Whenever society wants to 611 01:01:56,520 --> 01:02:00,060 dehumanize a group, the first thing they do is to show biological difference. 612 01:02:00,220 --> 01:02:02,700 And you know that if you know, for instance, African -American history. 613 01:02:03,320 --> 01:02:07,980 When Africans were deemed the ones to be enslaved, it was a whole supporting 614 01:02:07,980 --> 01:02:12,480 biology of their difference from Caucasian biology. 615 01:02:13,060 --> 01:02:19,720 When the Nazis were intent on wiping out Jews, they established a whole body of 616 01:02:19,720 --> 01:02:21,860 material of Jewish physical difference. 617 01:02:22,560 --> 01:02:27,280 of the Nazi soldiers measuring the nostril thickness of Jews to prove they 618 01:02:27,280 --> 01:02:28,280 less than human. 619 01:02:28,300 --> 01:02:33,340 When women were fighting for their rights, it was biological truths that 620 01:02:33,340 --> 01:02:38,720 brains were smaller than men. So in this way, lesbians are from, share a long 621 01:02:38,720 --> 01:02:42,220 history of biology used to prove we are less than human. 622 01:02:44,460 --> 01:02:50,100 So the men who did this will never do it to us again. So Susan will not just be 623 01:02:50,100 --> 01:02:51,100 body parts. 624 01:02:51,420 --> 01:02:55,980 She'll be her body and her mind and her heart because we'll be the ones 625 01:02:55,980 --> 01:02:57,100 commemorating. 626 01:03:10,700 --> 01:03:17,360 These artists who have their minds in the gutter are free to do whatever they 627 01:03:17,360 --> 01:03:18,360 want to do. 628 01:03:18,560 --> 01:03:21,420 on their own time and with their own money. 629 01:03:21,660 --> 01:03:28,260 I have often said that people who want to scrawl dirty words on the men's room 630 01:03:28,260 --> 01:03:34,740 walls are free to do it, provided it is their own walls and their own crayons. 631 01:03:37,120 --> 01:03:43,440 I voiced concern then and I voice concern now about the assault 632 01:03:43,440 --> 01:03:47,760 on the nation's basic values by some of these. 633 01:03:48,090 --> 01:03:54,450 self -proclaimed artists who insist upon mocking the American people and 634 01:03:54,450 --> 01:03:59,990 shocking the sensibilities of the American people and who shield 635 01:03:59,990 --> 01:04:05,250 behind the sponsorship of the National Endowment for the Arts. 636 01:04:18,010 --> 01:04:19,010 Thank you.