This week, I present to you some highlights from a 1979 publication called The Lesbian Community. It was written by Deborah Goleman Wolf, who, as it happens, is Naomi Wolf's mom.
I admit that I'm cherry-picking from this book, which is essentially a repurposing of Wolf's Ph.D. thesis in anthropology, describing the Bay Area lesbian community between 1972 and 1975. Much of it consists of very earnest and basic explanations of feminism and lesbian culture, written from the perspective of a heterosexual feminist. But there is enough unintentional hilarity in some passages to justify my typing them out.
Take, for instance, this helpful description on how lesbians dress:
Feminist and lesbian-feminist clothing is virtually indistinguishable except for subtle indications in dress or accoutrements. The dress for both groups begins with a body that is clean, healthy, unshaven, unbleached, and without makeup. Feminists may wear no underclothing at all, except possibly panties. Most women, unless they have uncomfortably large breasts, do not wear bras, which they say artificially distort and enhance the natural shape of the breast. The women who cultivate such a natural appearance are refusing to conform to the "degrading artifice" which the male-oriented culture dictates as appropriate, but which these women feel makes them into unwilling sex objects.
The outer garments that the women wear tend to become almost a uniform of utilitarian clothing. The women feel that in their choice of clothing, they are striking a blow against the consumerism of a capitalist society as well as leveling class distinctions that might exist in the community. Their clothing mostly comes from "free boxes," in which people discard their still usable clothing to be recycled by anyone who wants it; from secondhand and army surplus stores, and from flea markets. Typical clothing consists of levis or other sturdy pants, T-shirts, workshirts, and as a top layer in cooler weather, heavy wool shirts or utilitarian jackets. Heavy hiking boots or tennis shoes are the usual footgear, and a rather endearing trait is the use of inexpensive boy's socks, often mismatched. Many women wear sunglasses or tinted prescription glasses, earrings, rings, and bracelets. Hair is worn long or short, but it is not artificially treated.
In the afterword to the second edition, which was published just one year after the first, Wolf wrote that she'd gotten a lot of grief from lesbians about the way she had portrayed their dress styles and living arrangements. She admitted that "I overemphasized the use of secondhand stores and 'free boxes' as the major source of clothing."
No kidding! BUT ... the free box she had in mind really did play a significant role in Bay Area lesbian history.
The reason I bought the book in the first place is that one of the projects Wolf wrote about was the Full Moon Coffeehouse and Bookstore, which she disguised as "Demeter's Daughters." Full Moon did indeed have a giveaway receptacle near its entrance, where women could share clothing and other items with others who needed them. In 1975, 10 women who split from Full Moon called their breakaway group "Free Box."
There had been two groups involved in running Full Moon: the Large Collective, basically the volunteers who kept the place running, and the Small Collective, women who, broadly speaking, had an ownership stake and made financial and other major decisions. You will be shocked to hear that some members of the Large Collective chafed at this and pushed for more influence on the way the place was run.
According to "That Women Could Matter," a 2016 Ph.D. dissertation by Chelsea Del Rio:
The more the Large Collective integrated political analysis into their participation the more they came into conflict with the owners. Volunteers wanted to have a say in making the coffeehouse run better. But they also wanted it to be politically grounded and in keeping with the egalitarian ethos of the movement. Just months after opening, individuals from the Large Collective approached the owners to discuss changing the decision making process. Others began to reach out and offer to take on more responsibility with book buying or programming. They also began collecting the concerns of patrons “about the quality of the food, the quality and amount of entertainment, aesthetics and maintenance of the place, disorganization of the bookstore, and lack of political consciousness.” At the end of Full Moon’s first year a handful of Large Collective members decided that they could no longer work without a “structure” and a “philosophy.” They called a meeting with all bookstore workers in February 1975 to discuss priority concerns, including sharing the power of decision making and determining a structure by which “personal and political differences were not ignored but confronted.” To their mind, the lack of structure prevented Full Moon from running well given that those who made the major decisions had the least contact with patrons
In this environment, even deciding the type of sandwiches they would sell seemed a hard fought for opportunity. Rather than see their work as “donating energy to the women’s community directly” they worried that they were free labor for a private business. This concern was exacerbated when they discovered that members of the small collective received wages while continuing to rely upon volunteer labor and requesting donations from the community in order to stay open.
The Free Box women picketed Full Moon and distributed a leaflet explaining their demands. There's something heartbreaking about what they were fighting for: They were freely volunteering their time, usually at least one shift a week (and some had an hourlong commute from San Francisco to do so), but they were also complaining about being taken advantage of. Or, as Del Rio put it:
The women ... expressed their beliefs that an institution serving and being supported by the women’s movement ought to be run per the principles of that community. ... Why should the women contributing the majority of the labor be excluded from being anything more than drudges? Free Box women saw it as a clear class issue, providing a source of free labor. [Janja] Lalich explains that “it wasn't like we wanted pay or things like that –we just wanted to have more say.”
The Free Box Ten never returned to Full Moon, but according to Plexus, the Small Collective did change their ways somewhat, adding weekly discussion meetings to which all women—Large and Small—were invited. Full Moon Coffeehouse and Bookstore eventually closed in 1978.
RECOMMENDATIONS: I'm really enjoying listening to Sybille Bedford: A Life, Selina Hastings' biography of a writer whose work I've never actually read. Bedford somehow managed to be part of most of the major upheavals of the 20th century. She apparently felt bad about her failure to focus on her writing, at least in the early part of her life, but given how much she had going on, I'm surprised she had time to do so much as sharpen a pencil.
LISTEN TO ME: On Working, I talked with Oliver Burkeman about the ideas in his great new book Four Thousand Hours: Time Management for Mortals. (Or as we put it on the Slate home page, "How to Use Your Time Wisely, Given the Inevitability of Death.")
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