Mothers, Goddesses, and Hippies: Counterculture Women in The
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MOTHERS, GODDESSES, AND HIPPIES: COUNTERCULTURE WOMEN IN THE AMERICAN WEST (1967-1977) A University Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, East Bay In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of History (M.A.) By Ivana Kurak December, 2020 Copyright © 2020 by Ivana Kurak ii MOTHERS, GODDESSES, AND HIPPIES: COUNTERCULTURE WOMEN IN THE AMERICAN WEST (1967-1977) By Ivana Kurak Approved: Date: Electronic signatures available 12/11/2020 Dr. Linda Ivey Dr. Benjamin Klein iii Acknowledgments I would like to thank: the California University East Bay History department for providing the knowledge, support, and inspiration to pursue this project. Dr. Benjamin Klein for his invaluable insight and mentorship from the very beginning of this project. Dr. Linda Ivey for her kind words and continued encouragement in the most trying times. The California University East Bay Center for Student Research for funding my trip to New Mexico so I could visit real communes and meet the woman I was writing about and for and sponsoring my spot at the California State University Research Competition which allowed me to present my work to. I would also like to thank my father for encouraging me to go to college and for listening to all my ideas for this project at least three times. A very special thanks to A. Brooks Moyer for being my life coach and editor. This work is dedicated in memory of Jason McDaniel who took me on my first trip into the counterculture. iv Table of Content Acknowledgments iv Defining a Movement 1 Literature Review 5 Chapter One. Leaving Home: The Beginning of a Pilgrimage 12 San Francisco or Bust 16 Exodus to the Country 23 Crescit Eundo: The Growing Counterculture 26 Communities in Taos Hippies or Gunslingers? 28 Conclusion 30 Chapter Two. Cultural Revolutions on the Communes 31 The Pill, Censorship and American Values 32 No Shoes, No Shirt, No Worries 35 v Sex and the Social Order 38 Rejecting the Nuclear Family and Embracing Community 40 The Economics of Sisterhood 43 Voluntary Poverty and Gender Roles: Life in the Beginning 44 Women’s Work; Production and Consumption 47 Transfer of Wealth and Knowledge 51 Conclusion 53 Chapter Three. Motherhood and Family Dynamics 54 Divine Birth and the Power Shift 55 Homebirth 57 Out of the Hospital and into the Wild: Homebirth on the Communes 60 Rejecting the Nuclear Family and Embracing the Tribal Family 63 It’s Ten O’clock, Do You Know Where Your Counterculture Children Are? 68 Alternative Education 71 Conclusion 75 Finding Home: Change in America 76 Endnotes 79 Bibliography 100 vi 1 Defining a Movement It must have been a shocking moment for Aunt Rhue as she sat reading Time magazine’s July 7th, 1967 cover story in her New York apartment.[1] The article included several photographs, one of which taken in California showed three young people, two women and a man plus a dog sitting on a hillside. The group sat near a strange platform structure, talking amongst themselves. Of the three youth, one woman was completely naked in the sunshine, and next to her was the teapot that Aunt Rhue had given her 24- year-old niece Pamala (Pam) Jane Read on her wedding day. Later, when Pam would tell this story, she would note that a, "Funny addendum to this is that my parents couldn't brag about their daughter being in Time mag cuz it was such a scandal."[2] Pam was one of the thousands of young women who left their homes in the suburbs and cities of America to embrace the hippie communes of the 1960s and 70s. While there are many images of women from this period in the popular imagination: the earth goddesses, the sluts, the free spirits, the pagans, they are cliché facades that hide the reality of the lives of everyday women. My research follows women and their families in what I call the Western Hippie Migration. This journey was from their various hometowns to San Francisco, followed by an exodus to Northern California's communes, then eventually settling in New Mexico. Throughout this paper, I use colloquialisms that my subjects would have used during this era. Hippie itself is a loaded term. Some consider it an insult; some consider it a title of pride. For this paper, I define a hippie as a participant of the counterculture who rejected mainstream America by deciding to not participate in society as opposed to protesting or trying to change it 2 from within. The hippies I discuss left or "dropped out" of society. They sought an alternative culture. They came of age, had families, gained their “real-world” experiences living on the land communally with others. I reference the mainstream as well as straight culture, both represented American societal norms of the time. The hippie's criticism of the mainstream was scrutiny of capitalism, the military-industrial complex, the Vietnam War, a culture they believed over consumed, and underappreciated humanity's value. The hippies also criticized the social norms that their parents seemed to accept, Judeo-Christian ethics, a society highly divided by race and gender, and American intervention on foreign soil. It is difficult to categorize and fit the communal movement into neat boxes easy to define. They prided themselves on being different. Each commune had its rules or lack of rules. Some communes operated in cities, some in tipis, members were often transient, and one could be a part of different communes at the same time. The definition of a commune for the terms of this paper involves members who live on open land, participate in some kind of group living, and share a goal of living in voluntary poverty. They were, and still are, philosophical societies closely connected by a shared ideology. My research began with these questions: How far away from social norms did the hippies go regarding gender roles? Were women ever freed from these expectations? What did family life on the communes look like? This research argues that counterculture women were practicing gender equality through social and economic means resulting from communal living. Mainstream society had regulated gender roles to the public sphere and the domestic sphere. Communes represented a third sphere, a new 3 experimental ground safe from mainstream criticisms and economic pressures. I explore everyday women's lives in the counterculture and the complex roles they created within these new societies. This form of inquiry will help fill the historiographical void that revolves around hippie women living on communes. In chapter one, Leaving Home: The Beginning of a Pilgrimage, I discuss the push and pull factors that led hippies out of their suburban homes to the city of San Francisco then into the communes of Northern California and New Mexico. This chapter highlights the conflict between American society and hippies from the federal to the local level. Chapter two, Cultural Revolutions on the Communes, examines the new identities women crafted for themselves once women were released from societal expectations. The Sexual Revolution in America became the Free Love moment on the communes. Communal life meant that women had a ready support network that encouraged sexual discussion and exploration. Sexuality had been so long stigmatized that women found psychological release from guilt and shame when able to explore their desires without judgment. Refusal to participate in the American economy meant hippies had to become as self-sustaining as possible. Being dedicated to voluntary poverty released them from an economic situation that made them reliant on men. In this, women took on the central responsibilities of work on the communes finding pride and purpose in their self-reliance. Chapter three, Motherhood and Family Dynamics looks at how motherhood and family life changed once taken out of the isolated nuclear families typical of the mainstream. Living on communes allowed women to have a hands-on role in their children's birth and emotional development. Many women, such as Pam Read, became 4 midwives since no hospital was available to go to; natural childbirth became popular with women and men alike. Women spent more time with their children, thus prompting them to consider alternative education that reflected counterculture values. 5 Literature Review The youth in the 1960s participated in a vast movement with so many facets that accurately describing them seemed impossible. Pop culture referred to them as hippies, yet this term seemed to lack the true essence of what they were. Not all of them dressed the same, nor did they all share similar political beliefs (many were apolitical), some lived in the cities, some packed up supplies and headed for farms, open spaces of land in order to live closer to nature. Categorizing all of these youth as merely a part of a singular movement with no name could not accurately describe who they were until 1969. The historian Theodore Roszak coined the term counterculture in his book The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and its Youthful Opposition.[3] Since 1969 scholars have begun to unravel the complexity and various divisions within the counterculture. Scholars are now investigating the counterculture not as a unified movement but as a multifaceted social movement with youth participating in various subcultures within the counterculture's main body. In 2013 Anthony Ashbolt wrote A Cultural History of the Radical Sixties in the San Francisco Bay Area.[4] He focused his study of the counterculture specifically on the San Francisco Bay Area. In this book, Ashbolt argued that political activism is directly linked to the concept of space. Activists took over the spatial landscape of San Francisco in a fight that mirrored the counterculture's attitude towards capitalist materialism.