HIGH GEAR/APRIL 1977
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WAGES DUE LESBIANS Bakers
Wages for Housework will sponsor a visit by the Toronto members of Wages for Lesbians on May 10 at 7:30 p.m. at 2728 Lancashire. Interested women are urged to attend. Further information may be obtained by calling (216) 651-8987 evenings.
The following is a policy statement by the Wages for Lesbian organization:
Wages Due did not send an official delegation to the Kingston Conference weekend. The following paper outlines their reasons for that decision and the need for lesbian Autonomy within the gay
movement.
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From the time we are children our personalities and therefore our sexuality, are molded to fit the unwaged work that capitalist society forces on women. We are trained to service others men, children, the sick, the old by denying our own needs and performing a free service of love." This servitude is organized through the nuclear family and enforced on us by men. Because they have higher wages men have the power to command our work, including our sexuality.
Our sexuality, therefore, is anything but a "free zone" that we can determine at will. Any control we have over any area of our lives we gain only through struggle. And we struggle constantly. Our struggle to be lesbian defies that discipline that would tie us to heterosexual relationships. Women's fight against dependence on men, against isolation from each other, against being able to have children only within the confines of the nuclear
Lockers $2
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or
family, and against our poverty, are all struggles against the position of powerlessness that unwaged housework puts us in. At the heart of our fight against unwaged housework is our rebellion against the heterosexual control of our sexuality that affects all of us whether we are lesbian straight female or male. As long as our sexuality is deformed by unwaged servitude in the home and low paid servitude outside, the enslavement of those who enforce our work men is also guaranteed. The price men pay for their power over us is their own daily exploitation as wage slaves. Our dependence on them ensures their dependence on capital and guarantees capital's control over us all.
To the degree to which women don't have sexual choices, men's choices are unlimited. One reason why gay men are so vilified is because the female identity is so bound up with dependence and weakness with wagelessness that gay men, in taking on female attributes, take on powerlessness and subject themselves to some of the scorn usually reserved for women. Sexual liberation begins with women's refusal of housework, with our increased exclamation of our time, our energy, our bodies, our sexuality.
Lesbian women, therefore, are fighting for control over all our lives, in order to have sexual choices. We are not fighting for: 1) Civil liberties only e.g., equality with men or straight women, because what they have isn't good enough and they themselves are fighting for more.
Saturday 8 a.m. 4 p.m.
2)A little world of our own(the lesbian ghetto) where we are isolated not only from men and straight women but also from the mass of lesbian women who are trapped in relationships with men by the same powerlessness that traps others of us in slums, female job ghettoes and childlessness.
And we are refusing to wait for the Left to construct its new world before we put ourselves and our own needs on the agenda. A society not based on our interests is based on someone else's interest in exploiting us.
We are part of an autonomous movement of women (the International Wages for Housework Campaign) whose fight for the recognition of all our capitalist work is the fight for the power to refuse the discipline of that work especially the discipline of heterosexuality. This struggle to build our power always means lesbian autonomy from those who have more power than us, including straight women, but above all from men, even gay
men.
We have heard from the Left, as well as the gay movement, about making common cause with the men, for "human liberation." But the obstacle to human liberation is precisely the power that the men have over us. The common cause of homosexuality, like the left's call to the Black movement, "Black and white unite and fight", ignores the divisions between us and is an obstacle to overcoming those divisions..
Sunday 8 a.m.
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Midnight
Mon. & Wed., Youth Nights (25 & Under): Locker $2, Room $4 Weekdays 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.: Locker $2 Room $4 Regular Rate: Lockers $4. Rooms $6
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