"What Kind of Lesbians Are We Now? or, Sometimes We Feel Like We 're Wearing

by Caitlin Fisber and a directory, perhaps sofiball team) and my feminist peace GatbarineJones listinp in the yellow pages collective's porn=rape=warcampaign lradingtosomeonewho couldshow w surround the bed where you'll find mactb where Astray was me curled up with Vita's love letters Les auteures parhnt dc kz plriodc oir to Virginia. The year might have eUcs sont sorties du pkard et dc kz ended quite differently. As part of a consciousn~raising exercise on homophobia we used to *** ask new Women's Centre volunteers Women's studies changed my life. Ifl want to be a real& It's 1984. The to share with the group their first I didn't go there intending to declare woman beside me memories of the word lesbian. One a major. I was just hoping to maybe good lesbian, 1should in bed, beau- woman spoke up without shyness or get a date. But I found feminism, the do the homework. tihl, the only out hesitation, unaware, maybe, of the books, the Lefi. I read de Beauvoir feminist, out les- effect her words might have. Her and Mm, Feminh: the Ersmtial bian in my high mum was a psychiatric nurse, she Historical Writings,This B4eGkd school stares deeply said. At the hospital where her mother My Back, the SCUM Manifesto. And into my eyes, takes worked, just west of Ottawa, there yes, the issues seemed to be my issues. my hand and tells me that she'd like was a special, locked ward where par- And no, second-wave feminists didn't to spend more time .. . researching ents brought their daughters to be seem to me to be out of touch-just lesbian herstory. Herstory. I look at cured of their lesbianism. This was out of my reach. I thought the whole her oddly. Another feminist project 1987. thing was amazing, hot ... even to distract us from fucking. A lan- This story shook me deeply, then Shularnith Firestone. Even the Na- guage game. But I make a note: there as well as now. tional Action Committee on the Sta- is something like a lesbian past. If I My coming out story, as I used to tus ofwomen. Yes, even the statistics want to be a really good lesbian, I tell it, involved a direct and relatively collected on women's double work- should do the homework. I intend to uncomplicated journey from the iso- load. I was blinded by passion. be an A student. But I wasn't so sure lation and silence of my high school Alone in my bedroom, I read Off about the feminism part. years, to my discovery of, and accept- Our Back., flipped over, read On Our I discovered Lesbian Connection ance into, a community of "womyn Backs, and didn't feel alone at all. magazine-free for lesbians. I gave loving womynn in university. Besides, as a bonus I knew that if I the woman at the counter some Missing from my story was six hung around the women's bookstore money. Uh-huh. And in the back of months of weekly sessions with a long enough the lesbianswould come the Lesbian Connection magazine was particularly odious psychiatrist. This to get me. a listing ofwomen, first name only- man kept small packages of drugs on I knew women had been to these Deb, Gail, Pam-in cities all over the his desk, samples that drug compa- places before .. . had given me the u.s. who promised to connect me to nies had dropped OK Each week his gifts of these classrooms, these meet- an unproblematicallyidentifiable "les- fit little fingers would push apackage ing places, this canon of books. Of bian nation." I was inspired to get all across the desk. "What about these? course the canon came under scm- three lesbian books held by my local Do you want to try them?" Each tiny later, but then, as now, I felt a library by looking under homosexual: week I'd laugh at him and say "No. deep appreciation for the women who Radcliffe Hall's The Well of Loneli- No thanks." had done all this work. Of course, I ness, Judy Grahn's Another Mother This was the same year I took my expected all of these resources to be Tongue, Jane Rule's This is Not For first women's studies class and what I there. I grew up feeling entitled. You. was learning there, and in the books I was particularly grateful women I found in the Women's Centre li- had set up bars, even if I didn't know Never mind what your mother told brary gave me the strength to resist. exactly where they were. Later I find YOU The year ends: Meg Christian is out that in Ottawa the bar is located it? dficult to find the type ofgirl playing softly on the tape deck and in the parking garage of a major mall. the world thinks best to keep away posters for International Women's You enter through an unmarked door. fiom. Day, the fundraising dance for You really do have to go underground. ifonly it could be so easy Sappho's Slugger's (Ottawa's lesbian And when I finally find the bar, it's

46 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME Flannel Shirts With Our Come-Fuck- Me Pumps"

like I'm stepping into a paperback lesbians. Halfway through the writ- son he has ever met. I tell him he novel, down those stairs, into that ing, the lesbian nation dissolves in would be surprised. What I don't dim light, dartboards, pool tables .. . front of my eyes. There are no lesbi- tell him is that by the time I reach right into the middle of lesbian ans really, no women really, and my what I always thought as lesbian herstory. stupid thesis is full of capital letters in Mecca, I have deconstructed my little quotation marks, impossiblecute identity to such a point that within *** pomo slashes. The only lesbians re- hours of arriving I embark on a very I met Jay at a maining in the text are deeply ironic hot &air with a straight boy from Toronto lesbian lesbians-but to tell you the truth London. bar. I had trav- they don't do much for me. And it On the second day I pull the boy elled from Ifilt my lesbianism goes without saying that since there is out of bed. "We have to go to the to be both politically tawa for a Joanne no essential lesbian I can't be one. Castr-I came all this way." We and morally blessed. LOulan Thing is, much as I loved jettisoning take the train down, I point out gay shop-some- The Essential Lesbian, much as I symbols and we hang out together thing on lesbian loved the poststructuralist literature, cruising leather daddies well into the passion, healing, much as I "get" the debate .. . I still evening. being a survivor. sleep with lesbians. I think. And as At this point I waslivingacharmed slippery as that term is, and as slip- life, relatively speaking. Maybe I was pery as these women are, I haven't Mid 1990s. I'm nostalgic for some- reading too much Adrienne Rich, been seriously wrong yet. thing that feels like the sisterhood but I felt my lesbianism to be both I've read about in books. Do you politically and morally blessed. In ever get that feeling? I don't want to other words, I was having no sex. 1995. The pilgrimage to San Fran- reclaim the concept, but maybe, just My sexuality had been shaped by cisco. maybe, it means I'm ready for reading about the experiences of a I am in the kitchen of the youth potlucks again. gen-eration of feminists for whom hostel, sharing tea with a retired New There was a time for many years sexual liberation had held such great Zealander. For over forty years he has where I'd sworn off ever participating promise, and yet seemingly left them run a pub in one of the southern in another potluck. Way too many with so many disappointments-sex- provinces. He's been married and bean salads, collectives from hell, fin- ism on the Left, side effects of birth divorced and raised two sons. gers tasting like wallpaper paste from control, men's use of pornography, "What brings you here?" he asks. the posters we put up, always, it seems, and violence within and outside of "Well, ever since I came out.. ." families. He looks puzzled. I had no vocabulary around sex, "You know, came out as gay," I lin nostalgic fir other than the vocabulary ofvictimi- continue, "I've wanted to come here. zation, the politics of penetration, San Francisco is a mythical homeland something thatfieh sex being what men have done to us. to all sorts of gay folk." like the sisterhood I've Jay changed all that. I tell him of one friend who has read about in books. But neitherJay nor feminism could consulted an atlas and a compass and give me the words to discuss where I sleeps with her bed pointing to S.F. found myself six months later, Only in San Francisco, I tell him, crouched at the bottom of a staircase, would 5000 angry queers storm city in the rain. It was all too bound up grabbing my books and clothes and hall after the jury acquitted Harvey with exhaustion, disappointments, stuffing them into plastic bags as Jay Milk's assassin on the infamous political failures, personal failures, threw them down on me. And Jay "twinkie defense." Only in San Fran- older woman not understanding or leaning over me, moments later, whis- cisco do hundreds of dykes on bikes showing up, women younger than pering, smiling, "Be thankful that's lead the annual gay and lesbian pride me not caring, refusing to read that not you." parade. Only in San Francisco do you article I had so graciously photocop- run the chance ofbumping into Suzy ied for them, only coming to the Sexpert at Wegjman's. dances and never to the demo. Ya, I Later I do a Master's thesis about He tells me I'm the only gay per- was jealous.

VOLUME 16, NUMBER 2 1996. Where do I stand today? My lover brings me a book of les- LOIS FINE bian lists and all I can do is laugh. "You can't call Catherine the Great a Nine Years lesbian," I say, "that's just bad his- tory." I work part-time as a reference Recently we've taken to costume librarian in a small town north of and polaroid pictures to savour the moment Toronto. I work mainly with high school students. And when they ap- your body alive in red and satin charges your skin with lost proach the desk1 don't want to disap- electric impulse point them by saying that sexuality is I feel you like the first time I swung in behind you at a picnic really just a social construct, you bench outside the Chez Moi nine years ago when I kissed know. That we all deploy identities your neck and we both felt it like a thousand volts and later strategically. "Here," I want to say, we talked about that moment for weeks and months and "have you read Vita's love letters to years still talk about it try to bring it back and then you put Virginia?" on that red thing with satin and clips and I am back there at *** the Chez

Caitlin Fisher is a PhD. sdnt in only now the volts are grounded through nine years of us Social and Political Thought at York University. nine years of groceries and toilet paper and my underwear lying beside yours in a pile on the floor Cathm'neJones is a refirmce librarian nine years of staying up too late trying to know every inch of and activist. what you think about every inch of what you think nine years of finding a word for you a way to introduce you PFLAG to my great aunt Toby a name that would mean I love you and not sound like some business partner still searching for Parents, Families and the word Friends of wife doesn't do it either keep going back to lover because the Lesbians and Gays word is ours we've always claimed it we as community Metro Toronto Group nine years of childen other women's and ours and creating 264-401 Richmond St. W. family refusing to be dysfunctional to yell at children more than at each other to order children to fetch for us to fetch Toronto, ON M5V 3A8 our love to judge our fights refusing to claim their child- 416-351-1384 hood from them instead loving them only loving them Come out andjoin us knowing in the end with kids everyone just does their best for support and sharing. even our parents trying to have a few laughs in it all nine years of finding not touching not allowing not getting it Meetings on the jirst just right not getting it at all Wedheshy of every month at 7:30 pm. nine years of hands searching out bodies searching out places inside each other not hiding not running staying there Glenview Presbyterian looking in your eyes bodies inside each other show me who Church, lower lounge. you are I won't go anywhere I'm right here touch me right I Glenview Avenue, Toronto. here touch me On the third FriW of every Lately we've taken to slow costume month at 7:30 pm. revealing ourselves These meetings also ready now to see each other nine years later involve a speaker. St. Clements Anglican Lois Fine makes her home in Toronto but still prefers Montreal bagels. She Church, Reception Room. is a hopeless romantic, a mother, a worrier, and a writer. She is proud to be 59 Briar Hill. Toronto. in an almost nine year relationship with her lover Rachel Epstein.

CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME