Audio Interview, Karen Hagberg, April 17, 2012

EVELYN BAILEY: Call him?

KAREN HAGBERG: I don't have his phone number.

Really, I don't know what it is.

EVELYN BAILEY: I might.

You want me to see if I do?

KAREN HAGBERG: Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: I can't believe you

don't have his phone number.

Let's see if I, I don't know why I would, actually,

but you never know.

Kevin Dorian.

I have Kevin Dorian's phone number.

No I don't.

Well, he'll listen to this anyway.

KAREN HAGBERG: OK.

EVELYN BAILEY: I mean that's If he's not here and I audio tape,

then I copy it and give it to him

and he listens to it anyway.

KAREN HAGBERG: OK.

EVELYN BAILEY: But we need to go back.

Karen, were you born in Rochester?

KAREN HAGBERG: I was born in Memphis, Tennessee.

EVELYN BAILEY: Memphis, Tennessee.

KAREN HAGBERG: During the war when my father was

stationed down there.

EVELYN BAILEY: And how did you come to Rochester?

KAREN HAGBERG: I grew up near Boston.

I went to Syracuse University as an undergraduate

and came to Rochester as a graduate student

for the Eastman School.

EVELYN BAILEY: So you were a musician?

KAREN HAGBERG: After I started school at Syracuse

I turned into a musician.

I didn't go there to be a musician

but actually it was my first lover who was a musician

and exposed me to the music program,

and made me realize that I could major in music if I wanted to.

Which no one had ever suggested to me before,

what really appealed to me.

I went there as a physics major.

I was a confused teenager.

And then when we graduated looking toward graduation,

we were a couple by then, totally,

totally, totally closeted.

She wanted to go to the Eastman School of Music.

I thought to myself, there's no way

I'll get into the Eastman School of Music,

but I thought that would apply because I

had to have some way to come to Rochester that I could explain

to the world.

And I applied to Eastman and got in.

EVELYN BAILEY: And what year are we talking?

KAREN HAGBERG: 1964.

EVELYN BAILEY: And so

KAREN HAGBERG: That's when I applied.

We came here in '65.

EVELYN BAILEY: But you were a couple in Syracuse,

but you were closeted?

KAREN HAGBERG: Totally.

EVELYN BAILEY: What was that like for you and her?

I mean

KAREN HAGBERG: It was heaven and hell at the same time.

EVELYN BAILEY: Was that the case when

you came to Rochester as well?

KAREN HAGBERG: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: Then how did you get involved with how did you

meet the Gay Liberation Front?

KAREN HAGBERG: Oh.

EVELYN BAILEY: Bob Osborn or

KAREN HAGBERG: OK.

What happened was that we were here about a year

when she determined that she just

could not live as a gay person.

And she met a man here and they decided to get married,

and that was a real low point in my life.

Because it was so closety, I had nobody

to even tell that I was in a relationship

and that it was breaking up for some reason of social forces

and, you know, it was horrible.

It was just horrible.

And so I was after she married him and left Rochester,

because they had let's see, what happened?

She got a master's that didn't take very long

and he was finishing a doctorate but went

to get a job before he finished, so they left Rochester

very soon after they got married,

Maybe at the same time, I think at the same time,

and went to North Carolina where he got a job.

And so that left knee here as a student still,

a graduate student.

I didn't know what else to do but apply

for the PhD program let's remain a student at that time.

My ambition in my high school yearbook was to get a PhD,

and I think part of it was I knew I was gay

and I needed some kind of validation.

If you have a PhD, you can do whatever the hell you want.

I don't know, it was some kid idea I had, so

EVELYN BAILEY: Well it's true.

KAREN HAGBERG: In a way.

I mean, in a way, there's some truth in it,

but now I think it's ridiculous.

But, you know, when you're eighteen years old,

you know, seventeen years old, you

might think something like that.

So I stayed in school.

I got a nice fellowship that supported me

because my parents stopped supporting me

after my first year of graduate school.

Not for any reason of being gay or anything,

they didn't know I was gay at that point, had no idea.

I think just because they were sending my brother to school

and had given me enough money thank you very much

and that was fine.

So I stayed and applied for the PhD program.

And, you know, socially, I was just

in no woman's no man's land.

I dated a couple of guys to try to see if possibly I

could go straight.

That didn't work very well (laughs) for me.

You know, I was trying really hard to not be gay I guess.

Try and experiment with being straight,

see if it would work that way.

And that just wasn't going to work.

And there were some people at Eastman.

There were probably always at Eastman

some flamboyantly obviously gay men, especially

in the Organ Department, some of the singers,

people going into choral conducting,

and, you know, there were just a little coterie

of sort of femmy men.

And you know, men that you had seen

on TV your whole childhood, you know,

they'd be in the comedy shows and stuff, you know?

EVELYN BAILEY: Mm-hm.

KAREN HAGBERG: And they were funny and they were fun

and they had parties.

And one of them, who I became friendly with, I think

pegged me as a lesbian.

I mean, he decided that I was gay, I guess.

And I remember just thinking

EVELYN BAILEY: Who was that?

KAREN HAGBERG: His name was oh god, I'm forgetting his name.

He has died of AIDS unfortunately.

Ugh, I'm having a senior moment.

I can't remember.

I can't remember his name.

He was never involved in Gay Liberation at all.

He was just he was so gay.

He was from Buffalo.

Anyway, I remember distinctly this

was when I first became began to become

able to kind of come out.

I was standing at the mailboxes at Eastman,

which is a big wall of mailboxes,

and he came up behind me and he just kind of came up

behind my ear and he'd just sing, how do you solve

a problem like perversion?

(laughs) You know?

And I realized, you know, he was coming out to me

and inviting me to come out to him

and one thing kind of led to another.

I went to a couple of parties where, you know,

everything was a little skitzy in those days,

so at the parties, some people would

act a lot more gay than other people,

but probably everybody who was there was gay.

Probably.

It was very, very, very schizophrenic,

it was very scary, very exciting.

I don't know I had found my people, that's for sure.

And then there was there was Carol DeSimone, who

was the first woman at the Eastman School

who wore pants to school in those days

and looked extremely butch, and, you know,

was obviously a different gendered person, you know?

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

KAREN HAGBERG: And I'm trying to remember.

I think his name was Bob, my friend,

I can't think of his last name right now.

It was through Bob that I met her

you know, that I sort of came out to her,

that I started going to exclusively lesbian parodies,

which were in those days were so closeted because most

of these women were schoolteachers.

They were so closeted that for years

afterwards, especially after I'd gotten

involved in Gay Liberation, I can think of two of these women

in particular who if I would see them on the street,

they would look the other way.

They would never speak to me in public.

Once I became a public lesbian, they

wouldn't even they couldn't even talk to me in public.

That's how closeted they were.

EVELYN BAILEY: Wow.

And And they have only become uncloseted since

they retired from teaching.

And I have become friendly with quite friendly with one of them

only in recent years.

So it was very, very closeted, very, very skitzy.

EVELYN BAILEY: Was there any information written?

KAREN HAGBERG: No.

Well, OK, I think I think early on I

saw some Daughters of Bilitis literature among these women.

Not much, little pamphlets, not much.

Of course, in my own case, let me think I mean,

there were interest in things like the Kinsey Report.

The stuff that might be available

was all really bad information, there

was bad information in psychology books.

I began to look up stuff about it, it was still an illness.

It was a pathology.

Oh, and also what happened around that time,

I met a woman who I was a little bit interested in.

She was not at Eastman.

I forget how I met her.

I have no idea how I met this woman, I can't remember.

But I found her attractive and I started hanging out with her.

It turned out that she had quite a severe mental illness

and she was really unbalanced in many ways.

And I don't think she was gay, really.

But at one point, I think I came out to her

and she immediately told me I had

to see a psychiatrist because I was sick.

And I actually did that at her suggestion.

Because I was still, you know, I didn't

know if that's what I needed or, you know?

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

KAREN HAGBERG: I didn't know.

I saw the greatest psychiatrist.

I wish I could remember this man's name.

He was at the U of R I'm going to cry telling you

this story he was at the U of R and I went to him

and then I told them I was gay.

I couldn't even say that word that wasn't that word then.

I said I liked women too much, something like that.

And he was like, OK, well, and and well,

and I had this wonderful lover but she left me

because she couldn't love this gay person,

or it's like, you know, one of those queer people or whatever.

And like, well, he's waiting to hear what my problem is.

I was saying, well, you know, I think, you know,

something's wrong with me.

And he just said, well, do you do

you want to find another woman and have

a relationship like that?

You know, a woman who could deal with being like this?

Is that, you know, would that be something

that you wanted to look for?

And I said, yeah.

And he said, well then what's the problem?

You just need to find somebody like that.

And he wouldn't he didn't even make a second appointment.

EVELYN BAILEY: Wow.

KAREN HAGBERG: He sent me on my way.

And that was in the early '60s.

Or maybe no, it was in the, by then

EVELYN BAILEY: Late '60s.

KAREN HAGBERG: Late '60s.

EVELYN BAILEY: Because you

KAREN HAGBERG: He was a psychologist

at the U of R, that's why I got to go to him,

because I was a student.

EVELYN BAILEY: You came to the U of R in '64?

KAREN HAGBERG: '65.

EVELYN BAILEY: '65.

KAREN HAGBERG: Yeah.

Mm-hm.

EVELYN BAILEY: And

KAREN HAGBERG: So it would have been in the late '60s.

EVELYN BAILEY: '68 maybe?

KAREN HAGBERG: Yes, somewhere in there.

Maybe we could look him up and find out I mean,

I must have a medical history through the U or R, right?

I could find out who this wonderful guy was,

I'd like to think him.

Because, you know, in those days,

he wasn't supposed to like not treat me as a well person,

you know?

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

KAREN HAGBERG: So, you know, where did they find this guy?

EVELYN BAILEY: Although we interviewed Bill Reamy, who's

a psychiatrist who came to the U of R in 1973

from North Carolina of all places.

And

KAREN HAGBERG: 1973, mm-hm.

EVELYN BAILEY: When he came, he told the head of psychiatry

that he was gay and the head of psychiatry said, that's OK,

just don't tell anybody.

KAREN HAGBERG: Oh.

Don't tell anybody, wow.

EVELYN BAILEY: So apparently, the

KAREN HAGBERG: I need a Kleenex.

EVELYN BAILEY: psychiatric

KAREN HAGBERG: I didn't bring my

EVELYN BAILEY: department

KAREN HAGBERG: with me.

Wait, maybe I did.

You know, I

EVELYN BAILEY: I don't know if there's any.

We've got some toilet paper.

You want some toilet paper?

KAREN HAGBERG: I'll just use my sleeve, it's all right.

Sit down, it's OK. (both laugh)

EVELYN BAILEY: I should I should've brought my hankies!

KAREN HAGBERG: Thank you.

EVELYN BAILEY: Oh, you're welcome.

KAREN HAGBERG: (pause) Yeah, so anyway, that happened and

EVELYN BAILEY: I went out to find toilet paper for Karen.

Coming back

KAREN HAGBERG: I was just I was just

overcome with the I'm fresh out of the closet.

You know, by this time, I had some gay friends.

I had this very divided schizophrenic life

with gay life over here and straight life over here

and you could only say certain things over here and be careful

who you talk to and dah da dah da dah da dah,

and what do you say here and how do you

pretend not to be gay when you are and the situation just

seemed so difficult and so wrong to me that something

had to be done.

And it was when I don't know what year this

was, RJ could tell you but when RJ came to Eastman

and my second partner, who came from Arizona you know, RJ was

from Texas and she was from Arizona

here are these-- a couple of these Midwest-type people

are you know, Southwest-type people?

And also, you know, I was just at the edge

to be too old for hippiedom.

Just a couple of years, a few years too old to be a hippie.

I missed it.

EVELYN BAILEY: Did you wear pigtails then?

KAREN HAGBERG: RJ wore pigtails. (laughs)

I didn't wear pigtails.

I don't no, I never wore pigtails.

EVELYN BAILEY: That have been who Patti Evans saw

at that first meeting that she walked by,

because she saw this she said this woman in pigtails

and dresses and

KAREN HAGBERG: Well I wore a

EVELYN BAILEY: flamboyant men and

KAREN HAGBERG: I think I wore a dress at the first meet.

I wore dresses all the time and you couldn't wear pants then.

Only Carol DeSimone wore pants.

Anyway, I just thought it was so wrong and so difficult

and I couldn't live like that.

I wasn't going to live like that,

I knew I had to burst out of the closet somehow.

I had to.

All right, so Pat came along, she was my second partner.

She was our flute manager.

And RJ came along and I became friends with them right away.

It wasn't RJ can tell you this, I'm not sure of the timeline,

but when Bob Osborn and Larry Fine had their idea

to start GLF, I think they knew that there

were a bunch of gay people at Eastman, of course,

and they put out feelers.

And RJ I think heard before I did.

I think that put feelers out through the male community.

And the minute I heard about it, I thought, OK, I'm in.

We've got to do something.

EVELYN BAILEY: Mm-hm.

KAREN HAGBERG: And, you know, after all these decades

of my life, I have discovered that I am that I was brought up

Swedish, which means that, you know,

we find it very difficult to share our emotions with people.

And we're estoic and sort of even-tempered

and da dah da dah da dah.

I always had a difficult time sitting across a table,

like, and coming out to somebody, for example.

In fact, I don't think I ever, ever

did that, face-to-face came out to anybody.

Ever.

EVELYN BAILEY: Why?

Because Because I find it so difficult.

EVELYN BAILEY: Hm.

KAREN HAGBERG: The only way I could come out

was on television, or in front of a classroom,

or in front of a meeting, or something.

Publicly was the only way I could come out.

This followed me through my life.

When I was forty-five years old, and went to Japan to study,

right?

EVELYN BAILEY: Mm-hm.

KAREN HAGBERG: There was a gay man, a pretty out gay man

at the school in Japan, and there

were these were all Americans there

were some fundamentalist-type people who came there

and who started really trashing him

because he was gay in front of me.

And I had to say to a friend of mine well, in one of my trips

back to the States I had to tell her,

please tell them all that I'm a lesbian while I'm gone,

so when I come back they all know it.

So I won't hear this anymore.

But I could not do it myself.

This is when I'm in my 40s, after I'm

totally out everywhere.

It shocked me in the first place that they didn't realize

I was out, but I was in Japan by myself,

I didn't have any partner, I didn't I was with somebody

back here sort of, and I wasn't looking

for anybody, you know, so I wasn't acting a gay life

or anything, I was on my own.

I sort of thought people would know I was gay,

but nobody had that idea.

So I had to I had to have them I had to have this friend of mine

come out for me.

And then my sister came to visit and there was one more person

who I guess hadn't heard or been told at this other time I had

to have my sister tell them.

EVELYN BAILEY: That is amazing to me.

Because I don't experience you as reticent

or as unable to verbalize and articulate.

KAREN HAGBERG: For some reason, you

know, I ask myself, what is it about me, you know?

I'm trying to, like, know myself more.

I mean, as you get older, you try

to you can look back and see all these patterns and everything.

I'm a people pleaser.

I don't like telling anybody something

that they don't want to hear face-to-face.

I want them to know.

I certainly want to come out.

I want to be able to everybody.

I want everybody to know and I want everybody

to go off and deal with it in their own way

but not face-to-face in front of me,

I want to see the expression on your face.

I don't want to be I don't want to be interrogated.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

KAREN HAGBERG: I don't want to I don't

want to have to justify myself.

EVELYN BAILEY: What was different about doing

that in public?

KAREN HAGBERG: Oh, because in public then,

you know, everybody just sort of,

everybody in general just sort of then knew.

It was so freeing for me to be gay in public.

It was like, well, now I'm announcing it to the world,

it's not like just to one individual.

Actually, there was one individual in my life

that I came out to, and that was my boss at the Sibley Library

at the Eastman School of Music the day

before I went on television.

And I just went into her office to tell her because I said,

I just don't want you to hear this from anybody else.

EVELYN BAILEY: Now what brought you to television?

KAREN HAGBERG: Well by the time we

started having the gay meetings, see,

because I have this impulse, I said,

we have to start a Speakers Bureau.

We have to make ourselves available to the public

because they all want to know about us.

And so we have to be available to them.

And we have to tell them, well, you

know, we got signed up for all kinds of stuff right away,

because of course, everybody wanted to see us.

Everybody wanted to find out gay people who'd

actually talk about it, right?

Because everybody had these questions,

everybody had these issues.

A lot of people were gay themselves,

they wanted to talk to other gay people.

The TV shows were, yeah, we'll have you because, you know,

made them really popular to have gay people on,

everybody wanted to watch it.

It was like, we were like the hottest thing going.

EVELYN BAILEY: So in your early let's go back

in the very beginning when you met RJ and this other person,

then you started going to GLF meetings.

Do you remember the first meeting you went to?

KAREN HAGBERG: I don't.

I don't remember the details of it.

EVELYN BAILEY: Where it was?

KAREN HAGBERG: I was at the U of R.

I don't know the buildings at the U of R well enough

and that was so long ago now.

I think it was where in the same building with the post office,

is that possible?

Is that where it is?

EVELYN BAILEY: Todd Union.

KAREN HAGBERG: Todd Union.

Yeah, it was in Todd Union.

Yep.

OK, it was in a room in Todd Union.

EVELYN BAILEY: And how many do you remember how many people?

KAREN HAGBERG: A handful.

Just a handful.

Mostly men.

Was Patti Evans there?

Maybe.

I don't remember.

EVELYN BAILEY: But she was there later?

KAREN HAGBERG: I think so, yeah.

It was sooner or later, yeah.

I don't you know, I don't remember.

When people ask me, like, who were the people first

in the room and then who came and then, I

remember actually OK.

Within the year I think I was with them the first year

a bunch of us went to New York to march in the gay parade.

And I can remember some people who went.

RJ and I went together.

Patti G. went.

Rosanne Leipzig went and her partner Leanne.

EVELYN BAILEY: Leanne?

KAREN HAGBERG: Leanne.

Can't remember her last name right now.

I think Marlene Gordon went.

I'm not sure about that.

I know Rosanne went.

EVELYN BAILEY: Marshall Goldman?

Probably Probably.

I don't remember.

EVELYN BAILEY: What was it like?

KAREN HAGBERG: The gay parade?

Oh, it was amazing.

Oh, it was amazing, because there were so many gay people

together.

And another thing that was amazing this

was one of the more amazing evenings of my life

there was a women's dance in New York,

in some building on the upper floor with a big open space.

We went in there, I can't remember who I went with

or if I went by myself.

Isn't that funny?

I can't remember.

I may have gone by myself.

Anyway, there are all these dykes in there

and at least half of them were topless.

EVELYN BAILEY: Topless?

KAREN HAGBERG: Everybody was taking off their shirts.

And dancing.

You know, dancing hard sweating and dancing,

and the music was really loud, it was probably Janis Joplin,

you know?

It was such a scene.

It was such a scene, I'll never forget it.

EVELYN BAILEY: What did you think?

KAREN HAGBERG: I thought it was outrageous.

You know, it was a little further past

my comfort zone, but I didn't dislike being there. (laughs)

You know?

I mean, I thought it was just a little crazy, but I thought,

you see, I told you I was a little old to be a hippie.

These were hippie people.

These were the hippie people.

So was RJ, so was my partner to come along we weren't partners

yet actually, I'm trying to think.

Oh no, wait she was yeah, she was my second partner.

When did we get together?

I'm trying to think if I was with Pat.

No.

I was with Pat right before we got involved in Gay Liberation,

because there was somebody I got involved with through Gay

Liberation that made me break up with Pat, so Pat was never

involved in my experience in New York, no, not at all.

So I was on my own.

I was on my own and having this wild time with these slightly

younger, really radical dykes.

Radical dykes in New York having this wild dance

in some unknown it was still kind of closety in a way.

I mean, there was no sign on the door

or, you know, you had to make your way up

to this place who knows what place it was,

I don't know what it was.

I don't even know it was just something you knew about if you

were going to the parade.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

KAREN HAGBERG: I don't know.

And I remember meeting RJ on the subway

to go down to the village and he was wearing a kaftan.

And he had his hair in pigtails that night on the subway.

He loved looking completely theatrical and completely over

the edge, and I was always, you know, compared

to him quite conservative. (laughs)

And it was a little tricky for me

to be going around in New York with him,

but, you know, I thought, this is really so cool.

I really had a it was a very liberating weekend.

And interestingly enough, I only have one first cousin,

who is my age, and she was living in New York at the time.

She was a graduate student at NYU

and I was actually staying in her apartment

while I was attending all these things.

And I guess I came out I mean, I came out

to her person-to-person, I guess.

There was another person I did come out to person-to-person

because I told her I was coming down to the gay parade.

I don't even remember the actual coming out to her,

it was just it was no big deal to her.

She was she really identified with the hippie culture

and was like super sexual.

Not homosexual, but just was sleeping

with everybody in the world, and she thought being gay

was just fine, you know, it was no big deal to her.

So that was kind of a neat.

Staying with her and getting to know her.

EVELYN BAILEY: There was a dance, though,

here in Rochester?

KAREN HAGBERG: Yes, we had a dance on our first anniversary.

Right.

EVELYN BAILEY: Do you remember what year?

KAREN HAGBERG: You know, I've got a poster for that dance

and it doesn't have the year on it.

It's really too bad, but it was the one-year anniversary

of the founding of the it'll be in the closet.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

KAREN HAGBERG: Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: Oh yeah.

KAREN HAGBERG: I don't remember, you know, I don't remember

EVELYN BAILEY: Kevin will want to take

a picture of that poster.

KAREN HAGBERG: OK.

I can maybe get you a copy of the poster

because the people I got the poster for

said they had a bunch of them in their attic.

EVELYN BAILEY: Oh.

OK.

KAREN HAGBERG: John Grace and John and Nelson Baldo.

I don't know if you know them.

EVELYN BAILEY: No.

But I need to.

KAREN HAGBERG: Join Grace.

John's quite ill.

EVELYN BAILEY: Mm.

KAREN HAGBERG: And Nelson Baldo.

Where Where do they

KAREN HAGBERG: They live on (pause) ugh,

what's the name of the street?

You know the street that's kind of parallel to Harvard

but is nearer the highway?

Canterbury.

EVELYN BAILEY: Canterbury.

KAREN HAGBERG: Right around Canterbury?

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

KAREN HAGBERG: You know, a lot of my courage

came from drinking in those days.

I remember going to that first dance

with a could it have been a one gallon

canteen or half-a-gallon canteen slung over my shoulder filled

with red wine?

(laughs) Could it have been a gallon?

Like maybe half-a-gallon, I don't know.

But I remember just slugging down red wine

at that dance out of this canteen.

(laughs) I don't know.

EVELYN BAILEY: Do you remember the first speaking engagement?

KAREN HAGBERG: Yeah.

I think it was the one in Knowles' psych class, which

he held at his house.

Because he didn't feel comfortable having it

at school.

He didn't know how it would be taken.

I think he had it at his house because it

was no, I don't know.

Maybe I'm making this up.

I think it was an optional class and not

part of the required classes, so people

didn't have to come if they felt uncomfortable or whatever.

Or maybe he felt uncomfortable having it on the campus,

I don't know, but it was at his house on Highland Avenue.

And there were, you know, a number of his students there.

EVELYN BAILEY: Who went?

KAREN HAGBERG: I'm pretty sure RJ was with me,

and I don't know who else, maybe Larry?

Maybe Bob?

I don't RJ might remember.

EVELYN BAILEY: And what did you I mean,

were the students you were speaking to afraid of you?

KAREN HAGBERG: I think some of the male students

were afraid of the men.

I don't I didn't feel anyone was afraid of me.

I think the paranoia really was more among the men (pause).

Yeah, I mean, it wasn't a bad experience in any way,

it was a very good experience.

Mostly people express their curiosities.

We didn't encounter real hostility

at that particular event.

EVELYN BAILEY: Were there events where you did?

KAREN HAGBERG: Yeah.

And there were events where we would answer questions that we

learned to answer differently.

I mean, we would answer for example, in the beginning,

any time we did speaking in front of groups that would have

parents in the group, all I wanted to know

was what happened in our childhood that

made us this way.

And what did our what could our parents have done differently.

And I was actually explaining away my gayness

by certain events in my childhood, which

I came to believe had nothing to do with my gayness. (laughs)

And that I began to learn to turn the question around

to ask people what made them heterosexual.

You know, we began our consciousness got

raised incrementally as we did these speaking measurements

and we began to, you know, answer in a different way.

But in the beginning, our answers

really were kind of pathetic for some of these questions.

Because we didn't know.

I mean, we were still trying to figure out ourselves.

We didn't know.

We just answered the best we could.

EVELYN BAILEY: So can you share with me

a speaking engagement that was not so positive that

had confrontation?

KAREN HAGBERG: I don't think personally I

had a speaking engagement that had unpleasant confrontation.

I heard of speaking engagements that did,

but I personally don't remember being involved.

I mean, there were obnoxious people.

EVELYN BAILEY: Mm-hm.

KAREN HAGBERG: There There were fundamentalists who, you know.

But, you know, the places where we would speak in general

had more of other types of people in them.

You know, we speak to NOW meetings

and we speak to psychology classes or law enforcement

classes or what else?

Church groups even started to want us to come.

Yeah, mostly you know, feminist studies had started.

Feminist studies people wanted us a lot.

EVELYN BAILEY: Were you one of the speakers

for Tim Mains' class in Greece?

KAREN HAGBERG: No.

No, I wasn't.

That came quite a bit later.

And I don't think I was doing it anymore.

I did it only at the beginning.

I mean, I took myself out of that into the women's movement

early, early on.

But so it was really in the very beginning

that I did all this public speaking.

EVELYN BAILEY: And for a short period of time or

KAREN HAGBERG: Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: A couple years?

KAREN HAGBERG: It was a couple of years at least, but not

too much longer than that.

EVELYN BAILEY: The television show that you have appeared on.

KAREN HAGBERG: I remember two.

One was on XXI and one was on one of the local morning

shows on one of the other networks,

I can't remember which network it

was oh, it must've been the one on Humboldt Street, I think.

NBC.

Yeah, NBC.

Oh wait did we I remember going out to Henrietta Road too.

But was that as a gay person or somebody else? (laughs)

I can't remember.

I can't remember.

And I've been on TV on HAC too, but that

was for something else.

So I think I do remember NBC for sure, and then XXI, those two.

EVELYN BAILEY: And at XXI, there was you and

KAREN HAGBERG: RJ.

EVELYN BAILEY: RJ.

KAREN HAGBERG: I think Bob?

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

And was it a morning show?

Was it a

KAREN HAGBERG: The XXI show was some kind of a talk show

that they had.

You know, a public interest talk show, it wasn't a morning show.

The commercial station was a morning show.

The Louise Show.

She was one of the first talk shows.

EVELYN BAILEY: Huh.

KAREN HAGBERG: Locally maybe the first talk show.

EVELYN BAILEY: Wow.

KAREN HAGBERG: And I always think this is so funny.

Because our segment was between two other segments.

One was on how to sell an interfacing on a collar,

and the other segment was how to fold a fitted sheet.

And now we'll have the gay people. (Bailey laughs)

It was really the funniest thing I've heard

EVELYN BAILEY: We'll press a knot then

we'll put them in bed.

KAREN HAGBERG: Yeah! (laughs) But it was really

forward looking at her.

I mean, that just shows you what kind of a show it was.

I mean, for her to put us on that show was really pretty

Phil Donahue, I'll tell you. (laughs)

EVELYN BAILEY: What did she ask you?

KAREN HAGBERG: You know, I have no recollection of it.

I just remember it being too short, it was very short.

It was a little segments of a little talk show.

It was very short.

You know, all we could say was it sucks being in the closet

and we want to be outed, and it's not right

that we're in the closet and we're fighting for our rights

and thank you very much.

You know, that kind of thing, I think.

I don't remember it being very long.

EVELYN BAILEY: Was XXI the same thing?

KAREN HAGBERG: No, XXI was a much longer interview

they don't still have that in the archives there?

EVELYN BAILEY: They probably do.

KAREN HAGBERG: I wonder if they have it.

EVELYN BAILEY: They probably do.

KAREN HAGBERG: If that were there, I'd like to see it,

because that would be such a hoot.

(laughs) I'll be in my little blue dress.

Everybody joked about my little blue dress.

(Bailey laughs) It was like the only thing I wore for years,

I think, when I wanted to get dressed up like a girl.

(laughs)

EVELYN BAILEY: So in your little blue dress at XXI,

(Hagberg laughs) it was a longer interview.

KAREN HAGBERG: Mm-hm.

And I can't remember who interviewed us.

EVELYN BAILEY: Was it focused on Gay Liberation?

KAREN HAGBERG: I think so, yeah.

KAREN HAGBERG: And did you talk about the U of R?

Or did you talk about the Gay Alliance?

Or did you talk about

KAREN HAGBERG: At that time, there was no Gay Alliance,

we would have been talking about the Gay Liberation Front,

and we would have been talking about Stonewall and the marches

in New York and, you know, coming out.

What What was the primary goal that you

had as a Speakers Bureau?

For doing this?

What did you want to accomplish?

What did you want to have happen?

KAREN HAGBERG: Well I was struck with the fact

I mean, people make jokes about this,

but I was struck with the fact that I never

heard any words to describe myself when I was growing up.

I always knew I was gay.

I heard the word queer.

My father used the word queer not in a pejorative way.

He was always very sympathetic to gay people for some reason.

He might have been a little queer himself, I don't know.

I really don't know.

I don't think he was I don't know.

I just don't know.

He was not

I mean, if he had been a little queer,

he probably would've been hostile to queers,

you know what I mean?

He wasn't.

He was very he was very sympathetic to gay people.

And my mother has told me recently she

was from rural Connecticut and he was from Boston.

And she told me recently that he had

to tell her about gay people or queers, that's what

they called us in those days.

She didn't know anything about people like that

and he had to explain that to her

when they started dating as teenagers.

I mean, they did it when they were young, sixteen,

seventeen years old.

Or fifteen and seventeen, so fifteen,

sixteen, they were very young when they met.

So my mother was totally naive and my father

explained gay people to her.

Never heard of such a thing.

My mother was always a little bit more,

you know, taken aback by the whole issue of being gay

than my father was.

My father was easier to come out to than my mother.

Yeah.

But anyway, why were we talking about this?

EVELYN BAILEY: The goal.

KAREN HAGBERG: Oh, the goal.

EVELYN BAILEY: What'd you want to accomplish?

KAREN HAGBERG: Yeah, the goal.

Oh, OK.

So, you know, I was always struck with the thing

that there was I had no role models,

there were no words to describe.

I try to look up in the dictionary

and get these strange, you know, words

like perversion and sexual anomalies and I don't know.

It just there was just no way that there was no language

to describe any kind of normal life