A Rhetorical History of Gay Liberation and Socialist Feminism in the New American Movement Between 1970 and 1980
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Syracuse University SURFACE Theses - ALL May 2019 “A growing excitement that ‘something was happening’”: A Rhetorical History of Gay Liberation and Socialist Feminism in the New American Movement between 1970 and 1980 Chris DiCesare Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/thesis Part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation DiCesare, Chris, "“A growing excitement that ‘something was happening’”: A Rhetorical History of Gay Liberation and Socialist Feminism in the New American Movement between 1970 and 1980" (2019). Theses - ALL. 319. https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/319 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses - ALL by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract This project charts a rhetorical history of the New American Movement’s (NAM) organizational debates on gay liberation and socialist feminism between 1970 and 1980. NAM was a socialist feminist organization active across the 1970s in the United States that sought to create a mass movement through a conception of a particularly “American Socialism.” Through a periodization of NAM’s archival history, I highlight how NAM members were able to work in coalition with a wide range of individuals and groups both within and outside of the organization to build a socialist feminist conception of gay liberation. Drawing on original archival research performed at four archives in the United States in collections of speeches, internal memos, personal and organizational correspondence, newsletters, and discussion notes, I argue that NAM’s adoption of a socialist feminist approach to gay liberation augments “siloed” rhetorical approaches to social movements in the 1970s in as much as NAM members, as well as their theories and practice, worked out of, within, and with autonomous liberation movements. This project also intervenes in histories of gay liberation, feminism, and socialism in the 1970s by centering NAM’s, largely unaddressed in scholarship, work which challenges the seemingly stable lines between each movement. “A growing excitement that ‘something was happening’”: A Rhetorical History of Gay Liberation and Socialist Feminism in the New American Movement between 1970 and 1980 by Chris DiCesare B.A. Macalester College, 2015 Thesis Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Communication & Rhetorical Studies Syracuse University May 2019 Copyright © Chris DiCesare, 2019 All Rights Reserved Acknowledgements First, I thank Charles E. Morris III for his thoughtful, persistent, and generous advice on each aspect of this project from its inception through to this, now solidified, iteration. I also thank Rachel Hall for supervising an independent study during which I clarified the goals of this project. Thank you to Erin J. Rand whose courses helped me form a sense of queer rhetorical scholarship. Thanks to Kathleen E. Feyh, an excellent graduate educator, for more than I could list here. Thank you to Margaret Himley for agreeing to serve on my committee and thank you to Dana Cloud whose course gave me an opportunity to connect second wave feminist work to contemporary feminist approaches. Thank you to Corie Hammers, Zornitsa Keremidchieva Anastasia Kayiatos, and Ryan Murphy whose employment at Macalester overlapped with my time there as a student and without whom I would never have begun this project. Thanks to my fellow graduate students in CRS over the past two years for all of your insightful perspectives. And, I must thank all the socialist feminists of NAM, most of whom I have not met and some of whom I will never meet, whose engaging work forms not only the basis of this project, but whose archived material has offered me an opportunity to understand my work anew. Finally, I thank my family without whom I never would have arrived in graduate school. I thank the former residents of 1730 Grand and 2178 Edgewood, human, canine, and feline who have been with me since my first moments of jubilation and rambling about the archival materials contained here. I cannot say enough about the support, love, and care that Jessie E. Shields and Valerie Lightner have offered me. Further, I thank the queer and trans people I have had the privilege to know but whose lives remind me that our ancestors are not necessarily older than us. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. iv 1. The New American Movement, Queer Anti-Capitalism, and Rhetorical History ............. 1 Approaching NAM Today .................................................................................................................... 8 1970s Socialism, Gay Liberation & Feminism ..................................................................................... 15 Chapter Layout ................................................................................................................................. 23 2. Leaders and Liberation: NAM between 1971 and 1972 .................................................... 28 “A Way to Overcome the Mistakes of the Past” ................................................................................. 29 NAM’s Thanksgiving Conference: “A growing excitement that ‘something was happening’” ............. 36 Responses to Davenport: “A New Beginning”? .................................................................................. 42 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 51 3. Developing a (Lesbian) Socialist Feminism in NAM: 1972-1975 ...................................... 52 Between Davenport and Minneapolis: A Perspective Taking Shape ................................................... 55 Linking Socialism & Feminism? .......................................................................................................... 61 Under Construction: NAM’s Socialist Feminism in Minneapolis ......................................................... 66 Thanksgiving 1972 ............................................................................................................................. 73 From the Personal is Political to the Political is Personal: Lesbianism & Socialist Feminism ................ 75 After the Conference......................................................................................................................... 82 Laying the ground for a 1975 National Socialist Feminist Conference ................................................ 84 1975 National Socialist/Feminist Conference .................................................................................... 87 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 92 4. Gay Liberation in NAM: 1975-1980 ................................................................................... 94 Drawing Lines: NAM, Marxist-Leninism, and Democratic Socialism .................................................... 95 NAM’s 4th Annual Convention, Oberlin, OH, 1975 .............................................................................. 97 NAM’s Women’s Caucus ................................................................................................................... 99 NAM’s Androgyny Caucus ............................................................................................................... 102 NAM’s Gay Men’s Caucus ................................................................................................................ 103 Convention Aftermath .................................................................................................................... 108 Let’s Kill Ozzie and Harriet ............................................................................................................... 113 NAM’s 5th Annual Convention, Cedar Rapids, IA, 1976 ..................................................................... 118 NAM’s 6th Annual Convention, Cedar Rapids, IA, 1977 ..................................................................... 123 Blazing Star ..................................................................................................................................... 126 v NAM’s 7th Annual Convention, Milwaukee, WI, 1978 ....................................................................... 129 NAM’s 8th & 9th Annual Conventions, 1979-1980 ............................................................................. 134 NAM’s New Working Papers, 1978-1979 ......................................................................................... 139 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 147 5. Epilogue ............................................................................................................................. 149 Summary ........................................................................................................................................ 150 Possibilities ..................................................................................................................................... 151 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................