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.