Full Text: My Boyfriend Dropped Me Off At The Lesbian Coffeehouse
An essay printed in the Summer 1978 issue of the women's newspaper, 'Hera.'
This essay by Judy Mendelsohn is from the Summer 1978 issue of the women’s newspaper, ‘Hera,’ available in the John J. Wilcox, Jr., Archives at the William Way LGBT Center.
My Boyfriend Dropped Me Off At The Lesbian Coffeehouse
‘They swing both ways — they’re not really one of us.’
‘Bisexual women are dangerous to the women’s movement — they’re not to be trusted.’
In the past few months these insults to bisexual women have been thrown about by lesbian and heterosexual feminists as if they were truths. A ‘more revolutionary than thou’ attitude has begun to manifest itself, replacing the former brutal rejection of lesbians by the Women’s Movement. Not so long ago, lesbians were accused of taking advantage of women, as men do, by ‘lusting after other women’s bodies.’ Today women are still being judged by their sexual preferences rather than by their commitment to feminism.
Today in feminist literature women are informed that ‘…any women relating to a man cannot be a feminist… They’ll join their boyfriends trying to do us in.’ (Barbara Solomon, Taking the Bullshit by the Horns, page 46 in Lesbianism and the Women’s Movement, Diana Press).
After years of being condemned for their lesbianism, bisexual women are now condemned for their heterosexuality! And this is the movement which accepted their hard work, promising the overthrow of hierarchy and freedom of sexual expression — for all women.
To objective ears, ‘Making love to only women will make you a real feminist’ sounds too much like ‘Making love to me will make you a real woman,’ coming from a man. Supremacist attitudes exhibited by sisters are no more palatable than those perpetrated by men. Women have been dictated to, told what to be, how to think and how to react sexually, for thousands of years. Now, in lieu of having my sexuality determined by men’s fancies, must I submit to my sisters’ political commands? When will I be able to determine my own sexuality without being told that I am betraying feminism?
To clear up the questions raised recently about bisexual feminists’ priorities, let me suggest the term ‘woman-identified-woman’ be applied to all sisters who are committed, to women, regardless of their sexual orientation. A woman’s life, when opened to political analysis for consciousness-raising purposes, is not the political property of the women’s movement. [1] Guilt-tripping bisexual women is a tactic not so much for informing as for controlling. [2] The pressures to ‘prove your love’ for women (with their implied consequences if you don’t) rival the sexual threats of insecure males and are reminiscent of woman-hating.
While lesbianism resolves the problem of intimate relationships for many women, it is not the answer for all women. Many hostilities that lesbians feel toward heterosexual women are totally justified and must be vindicated, but not at the price of the freedoms for which we are all fighting.
Our matriarchal past gives us many clues to the true nature of woman’s sexuality.
In pre-history, human groups were matrilinear, i.e. inheritance was passed down through the female family members. Men hunted while women built villages, farmed and cared for children. Women collectively controlled the communities — land, language and culture. Men eventually conquered women with tools developed for hunting much later in human history.
Because of their powerful positions, our ancestresses had control of their own bodies. They used birth control and abortion methods since lost to us. They also enjoyed a variety of love-making methods. These ancient women were bisexual; no man could dictate their sexuality. They made love with each other as they chose, but they also had sex with men, as evidenced by our existence as their descendants. Their heterosexuality did not make them slaves of men.
Heterosexuality, in and of itself, does not produce male supremacy. It is male control of the economic aspects of women’s lives today that gives them power over our sexuality and every other part of our lives. We must seize that power ourselves and establish ourselves as independent women financially to begin to break through male supremacy.
If we interpret heterosexuality as ‘men first’ [4] we are accepting men’s definition of the female-male sexual relationship. Thus we abandon a part of our own sexuality by allowing men to determine what form it should take. We must throw out their definition and create our own. IT IS TIME TO RECLAIM OUR BODIES AND THE SEXUALITY OUR ANCESTRESSES ENJOYED IN ALL ITS INFINITE ASPECTS!
A bisexual woman has the same feminist goals as other committed women. Her primary energies are devoted to women. Although she may spend some time with men, she realizes that ‘every woman is one man away from welfare,’ in other words, the ‘privileges’ of heterosexuality are so temporal that they are not to be considered serious alternatives. Since they can be snatched away at will by men, there is no point in accepting them in the first place. Feminist women have no time to play cat-and-mouse with men or women.
The woman’s movement needs every sister who is woman-identified, regardless of her sexual orientation. Instead of mimicing [sic] patriarchy, we must renew our attack of that system which oppresses us all.
—by Judy Mendelsohn
Lesbiansm [sic] and Feminism, by Anne Koedt, from Notes from the Third Year: Women’s Liberation, N. Y., 1972, pp. 88, 89.
Ibid.
Lesbians in Revolt, by Charlotte Bunch, from Lesbianism and Woman’s Movement, page 32, Diana Press, Baltimore, Md., 1975.
Not for Lesbians Only, by Charlotte Bunch, from Quest: Theories of Revolution, Fall, 1975, Washington, D.C., page 52.