BEYOND EITHER/OR

An Interview with Charlotte Bunch

The following excerpted interview was printed originally on November 11, 1978 in Gay Community News, a weekly paper published in Boston, Massachusetts.

We chose to share her ideas and theories not only for their freshness or because they are challenging, but because Charlotte began her organizing and her involvement with the women's movement in Cleveland. Many women in this city remember that and feel a connection to Charlotte.

Charlotte Bunch, a current editor of the feminist quarterly magazine Quest, journeyed here last weekend from her home in Washington, D.C. to speak at a No On Proposition 6 brunch-benefit. This long-time lesbian feminist activist shared with us her analysis of gay people's present political position and proposed a strategy for keeping gay rights movements alive and effective.

The day after the benefit, Bunch was still in town and agreed to be interviewed by the Gay Community News.

CB: I went to college in the early sixties in North Carolina where I became immediately involved in the civil rights movement. That led me, like so many other people, into participation in the anti-war movement. In 1968, there was an event called the Jeanette Rankin Brigade, which was a women's peace march. It was primarily traditional women's groups-like Women's Strike for Peace and Church Women United. Women's Strike for Peace had for years been providing this kind of all-women context in which to fight the war, but this was an event that a lot of radical women came to as well. A few women from different cities had already started to meet as radical women's discussion groups, and we all talked for hours and hours and hours there and were enormously excited about this idea.

GCN: Was the composition of this nascent women's liberation group similar to that of our movement today-young, middle-class and college educated?

CB: Well, I disagree with the assumption that that is what the movement is now. I don't think the women's movement has ever been mostly middleclass. I bring this up because I think that, particularly coming from the Left, there has been a critique of the women's movement as "bourgeois". I think that this is partially accurate, but it is also used as another way to discredit the women's movement. In my experience, the women's movement is much more diverse in terms of class and age than the New Left has ever been, so coming from the Left this criticism is particularly ironic.

The group that I was in was composed of women, none of whom were still students though we were all under forty, and most of whom were white. We then started other groups, and that was my entree into feminism.

Eventually I became involved in the Furies, which

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women's movement. We realized that at that time, the only way to make other women see that we were an important part of the women's movement was to organize separately, building our own strength. GCN: In the ten issues of The Furies that the collective published between 1971 and 1973, much space was devoted to discussion of whether lesbians should work with straight women or organize separately, and, of course, to venting anger over the

Carol Clement

homophobic ideology of the women's movement. How would you compare that situation with the lesbian/straight split that exists in our movement today?

CB: I feel that this problem has lessened a lot. We have evolved into a new historical period, and I don't think this same split still exists between lesbians and straight women in the feminist movement; there are still issues to be resolved, but those issues are all centered on being clear about the politics of lesbianism and what it means for all feminists and not as much around denial of lesbianism.

GCN: Also in many articles which appeared in The Furies, you and other collective members indicated your support for lesbian-separatists in their choice of lifestyle. However, I'm still wondering whether you regard separatism as viable from a revolutionary point of view, whether you consider it to be an effective strategy to bring about radical social change? CB: First of all, I think the term "separatism" for any group means organizing itself separately, but what its strategy is may be any number of things. The Furies was never a culturally separatist collective because it was primarily a group working for societywide political change.

Everyone must decide what action is appropriate to her own political time and situation. My sense right now in 1978 is that we are facing a right-wing backlash, we are facing a period of conservatism in this country. We have established certain principles

...we have to move out into the culture broadly...bring our strength, our music, our larger number of people...'

was a lesbian-feminist collective started in 1971. The Furies was a response to the whole issue of lesbianism in the women's movement. Most of the people who started the Furies had some history of involvement in the women's movement but had eventually begun to feel that we couldn't go on talking about lesbianism in the face of the resistance that we got from the

Page 8/What She Wants/February, 1979

much much more politics to a

as lesbians, and those we must stick by, but at this time we have to move out into the culture much more broadly. We have to bring our strength, our music, our politics to a larger number of people rather than to a smaller number of people. Therefore, no, it's not, to me right now, appropriate to be separatist in the sense of isolating ourselves from other people..

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There may be moments when a separatist strategy may be necessary, but I think as an overall approach that it isn't the most effective one for lesbians to adopt.

In fact, it seems that the primary strategy for lesbians now is to take over leadership strongly in the feminist movement and the arena of establishment politics. One of the bad results of lesbian separatism as a sub-culture is that we have been ghettoized. Also, because we have placed strong emphasis on lesbian community resistance to our being leaders there, we have been ghettoized. And so we get into a situation-and our conversation now is a case in point-where the primary subject that we are expected to address is lesbianism. That's important to me, but it's also important to talk about what's happening to the whole feminist movement.

Within the gay movement, I'd like to see the resistance broken down. There's a tendency to think of lesbians as leaders of a section of the gay movement, but somehow men are still the leaders of the gay movement as a whole.

GCN: In the speech that you gave at yesterday's "No On Proposition 6” benefit, you insisted that we must show the people of this country that the right wing does not hold the "key to their hearts and minds."' But doesn't it? Given the fact that most U.S. citizens do, in fact, fervently believe in the sanctity of the god-fearing nuclear family and the glories of capitalism, why did you say that we-gays-are the keepers of this visionary "key"? Shouldn't we instead expect to have to undo a lot of destructive socialization first?

CB: Well, no one really knows what is the "key" to the hearts of the American public. But I do believe that the majority of the people in this country would like things to be better and don't want particularly to be oppressive. And I think that if you are a person working for political change, that you have to believe this. On the other hand, the American public doesn't know how to make these improvements.

Before I continue, I should clarify something: I make a distinction between the extreme "right wing", which I think represents a very manipulative faction in our society, and genuine "conservative" politics, which I have some respect for although I disagree with it considerably. I feel a lot of people in this country are feeling conservative; even people in the movement are feeling conservative in the sense that they want to conserve something of who they are in a fluctuating world. This mood has nothing to do with right-wing politics. And I think that it is this mood, grown up in the last few years of upheaval, that the right wing is manipulating.

GCN: Why do you see the right wing as the manipulator rather than a leader of the so-called conservatives in this country?

CB: I think the human rights ordinances offer a good example. Most of the people that I have sat and talked to who are hesitant about homosexuality are not ready for the witch hunt. We have a problem in that they don't want to be disturbed any more, they don't want activism. But they don't really want to have to go after people, and I think that if Proposition 6 fails, it will be because people have perceived that it's not just a matter of keeping homosexuality in check-it's actually going out after people. Conservatives in this country want to be left alone. GCN: Yes, but how can we comply with this request-short of remaining in our closets? As you clarified yesterday, we're seeking acceptance, not mere tolerance.

CB: In my mind, the right wing is manipulating this lack of desire on the part of conservatives to deal

(continued on page 14)