[This was my first column, and my first work of any substance published in print. Very cool.]
The intent of this column is to highlight the diverse offerings available through the Diversity Center library. I love reading, I'm regularly devouring several books a month out of it, so why not share?
The Complete Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel
and
Rude Girls and Dangerous Women by Julie Camper
I love comics and graphic novels. Thus, one of my first selections from the Diversity Center Library was "The Complete Dykes to Watch Out For"... this is a wonderfully funny, touching and humane narrative of lesbian life in the 1990s that manages to incorporate characters from just about every sector of the lesbian community in a totally unselfconscious fashion. The narrative framework of the collections included covers quite a few years, so you get to see the author, and her characters, develop quite a bit. Absolutely required reading, in my opinion.
Julie Camper's book is a collection of satirical, biting commentary on lesbian life, both within the community, and in relation to the straight world. When straight men show up, they're inevitably being truly asinine or downright creepy. And they pay for it: a creep yells something crude as a couple walks by, they spend the rest of the strip beating the crap out of him and arguing about who is tougher. Some of it struck me as rather crude and angry, but then again, she has a right to be. As one of my friends once told me, "straight boys are fucked up". :)
Aurora: Beyond Equality, edited by Vonda N. McIntyre and Susan Janice Anderson, 1975
I love older books... they give you a sense of history, as it was perceived by those living through it, without the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. What struck me most about this pioneering collection of feminist science fiction stories was the introductory essay "Feminism and Science Fiction: Beyond Bems and Boobs" by Susan Anderson. The theme of the book was "envisioning what life would be life if men and women were truly equal", and they had a very difficult time finding material to fill the book - most of the authors at the time simply did not get the concept. Even those who did often had very dark visions of what it would take to get there. Among those who made the grade: Ursula K. LeGuin and James Tiptree Jr. (aka Alice Sheldon), who amusingly enough, also made it into this same anthology under another pseudonym, Racconna Sheldon - her first publication under an identifiably female name.
Lesbianism and the Women's Movement, ed. Myron, Nancy and Charlotte Bunch, 1975
Again, another old book that serves as a snapshot of history... various essays on lesbian separatist topics from a woman's newspaper published in the early 1970's. I picked this one up, because it had an essay in it entitled "Bisexuality", which turned out to be a classic exposition of lesbian separatist hostility towards bisexual women. I typed it up and sent it out to a few lists as what I thought would be a "historical curiosity"... turns out that 27 years later, bi women are still encountering "vitriol" (to quote one woman) of this sort. I guess I knew that, but this brought it home. There was another essay entitled the "Normative Status of Heterosexuality" which I thought was still very relevant today. In fact, in a sense, I think we as a community, are only beginning to address what this amazingly prescient essay addressed as a defining issue twenty five years ago - it is not enough merely to be queer, or straight, if you don’t challenge the normative status of heterosexuality in the world around you. Heterosexism is as big or bigger an issue than homophobia - it is the air we breathe. It says a lot that the challenge enunciated in this essay is only beginning to be addressed, twenty seven years later.