r63

[quote] I remember a number of such episodes in the early days of the Gay Liberation Front, in the fall of 1969. Women we had never seen before would come in and deliver tirades against the GLF men; they would say that not only were gay men more sexist or more male chauvinist than straight men, but men in GLF were among the worst of all. These charges were unfair and untrue, for GLF had always been in solidarity with women's liberation, and women had played leading roles in GLF from the beginning — but such charges had a certain demoralizing effect. Some of the men felt that rather than acting against our oppressors — for example, picketing the Village Voice — or publishing the first gay liberation paper, Come Out! — instead we should turn our attention inward to confront the enemy which was: Ourselves!

[quote] At the first gay conference at Rutgers in 1970, the major panel on the last day was disrupted by a group of women who demanded that all proceedings come to a halt. They charged that the panel was “elitist” and “sexist” (although half of the panelists were women); their main ostensible grievance was that on a table in the hall, provided for leaflets and free literature, were copies of Gay newspaper, in which they had found a reproduction of a beautiful, lush, reclining female nude, painted in the style of classic romanticism. This, they charged, was designed to titillate men, and was degrading to women. Overlooked was the fact that the picture illustrated an article written by a lesbian, and that it was unlikely the editors of Gay had intended to convert their male readers to heterosexuality.

[quote] The conference organizers were cruelly attacked, apparently for the sin of not having policed and censored the free literature table. It was a senseless, abusive, and thuggish disruption; the main organizer of the conference was reduced to tears, and the women as well as the men on the panel were moved to call the disrupters “fascists”, an epithet that was not unjustified. For the most specious of reasons, a beautiful and mellow gay conference — one of the very first — had been turned into a nightmare.

[quote] One could go on and on. I imagine most of the people in this room have witnessed or read accounts of similar disruptions. There was the first international gay liberation conference in Edinburgh, where women discovered evidence of “sexism” and demanded that the conference change its focus from legislative reform to “confronting sexism”. Laws, they argued, only affected men, and therefore it was sexist to concentrate upon things like repealing sodomy statutes. A majority of the men went along with this demand, and that was the end of an internationally coordinated campaign to change the laws. It's amazing it should be considered trivial that after two millennia, homosexual men are still criminals.

[quote] A certain pattern emerges. The people in power do not like movements for social change.

[quote] When such movements are in their infancy, they will try to destroy or divert them.

[quote] When movements have grown large and viable, then they will try to render them innocuous through co-optation.