Green Thursday, radio program, February 20, 1975, source recording

  • CONFERENCE ATTENDEE: Could you speak more
  • about women in the United States?
  • ELAINE NOBLE: What?
  • CONFERENCE ATTENDEE: Could you speak more about women?
  • ELAINE NOBLE: More about women in the United States?
  • Well, I think that one of the things that's
  • been most effective in the United States,
  • even as Frank was mentioning getting involved
  • in the gay movement in '62 and '63, one of the things
  • that I think we've had to take care of as lesbian feminists,
  • is to get our straight sisters, or sisters
  • who have other lifestyles, more involved
  • in the women's movement.
  • Many of us in '62 and '63 found it very difficult
  • to even work within the gay movement.
  • Many of us did not leave.
  • And I'm not saying I left, but it was very difficult
  • because, for instance, when I wanted
  • to I thought I would make a good chair of a gay taskforce,
  • a man said to me, "But that's a man's job."
  • Well, I said, "Well, maybe some of the women
  • should make input as to how the laws were
  • going to be used politically even though we're not
  • written into them."
  • The climate might change so that they
  • will use it politically against us,
  • as happened in my last election.
  • It became very political.
  • All of a sudden, I was a practicing criminal
  • and they wanted me out.
  • And a man said to me at that time, "Um, that's ridiculous.
  • The laws really don't concern you anyway."
  • And I'm just picking out examples,
  • and you must understand why women, after ten or twelve
  • years said, we must look for allies and friends.
  • And many of us got involved in the feminist perspective.
  • And it's through the women's movement
  • that we use the word sexism.
  • I don't want you to get nervous with this,
  • because I'm assuming that most of us
  • are mature people in this room.
  • We're having a mature relationship,
  • sending and receiving.
  • And what I'm trying to say is that, that very thing
  • that you'll hear being tossed around the room a lot
  • in the next few days, sexism, is an idea
  • of people looking at someone as an object
  • and not as a human being.
  • And a person who is sexist, and if we're
  • saying that let's say a male is sexist,
  • or a male person is sexist, they can also
  • be sexist to another male, too.
  • We're talking about a head set.
  • And that's really what the women's-- part
  • of the women's movement has been about.
  • And a lot of American males, I think,
  • have begun to view the same philosophy as we have.
  • So that it is not seen, and I again
  • think that you should think of it--
  • is not seen as a splitting.
  • Because that's a heterosexual viewpoint
  • of the world in general, an either or, a splitting,
  • or divisive.
  • It is not a splitting, but rather an addition.
  • It's another way of looking at the world.
  • It's another addition that can only enrich us
  • as interesting human beings.
  • One of my colleagues when I was teaching at Emerson College
  • said to me when I was drawing up the curriculum
  • for a program that I helped create,
  • and then I helped destroy, because people were saying
  • one very fine professor, who, in fact, I just lectured
  • in his class before I came here, said, "Well,
  • that's ridiculous."
  • Well, I said, "Why don't we talk about people
  • in the environment, rather than mankind in the environment.
  • Because this mankind, where do I fit into mankind?"
  • And he said, "That's ridiculous.
  • When I say man, everyone knows that I mean women."
  • And I said, "But it doesn't say that."
  • So what we're really talking about--
  • CONFERENCE ATTENDEE: (unintelligible)
  • the English language.
  • ELAINE NOBLE: Well, we're talking about interpretations,
  • I think.
  • I mean, that's-- it's how one interprets the English
  • language.
  • And I'm saying many people interpret the English language
  • as the absence of human missing.
  • And sometimes it's part of the race.
  • But anyway, that's what women are into in America.
  • We're in to try to change sort of ways of looking at things.
  • Not taking away, but rather, addition.