The GLF Dance, the Angels of Light, and LGBTQ Conflicts
On November 5, 1971, gender conflicts erupted at SF State in the context of an Antiwar and Gay Solidarity Dance sponsored by GLF. As discussed in previous sections, there were earlier tensions between SF State lesbians and gay men in 1970 and 1971. Then, after a summer 1971 gay rights rally in San Jose where half of the participants were Chicanos, gay journalist Jim Kepner praised Charles Thorpe for his speech, but mentioned a conflict that occurred “when some Women’s Lib participants objected to his reference to Janis Joplin as a ‘brother.’”[1] A few months later, SF State’s GLF sponsored the dance at Gallery Lounge. The event took place on the eve of, and in support of, a major San Francisco antiwar demonstration sponsored by the National Peace Action Coalition. At this point, according to one student leader, GLF had approximately 250 members, 25% of whom were women. The Phoenix’s report on the dance noted that the first two hours were peaceful and happy, but stated that the mood changed when the Angels of Light, “a satirical musical group similar to the Cockettes,” refused to leave the stage after they were criticized for being vulgar, boring, and sexist. Founded earlier that year by Hibicus, who earlier had founded the Cockettes, the Angels of Light were a countercultural performance group that challenged gender and sexual norms. According to the Phoenix, as conflicts began to escalate at the dance, some audience members attempted to lighten the mood by chanting, “2-4-6-8, everybody masturbate.” According to Sisters, after the Angels finally left the stage to make way for a lesbian folk singer, someone turned off the microphones.[2]
Sharon Crase, president of San Francisco’s Daughters of Bilitis, provided further details in a letter published in the Advocate. She was particularly upset about what had occurred because she had believed, based on prior encounters with some of the gay men present, that they “wanted to work with and for us—especially against sexism.” Instead she had confronted “a beautiful example of where our gay brothers are at concerning their gay sisters—NOWHERE.” According to Crase, several entertainers had been invited to perform, but “no one was aware” that the Angels of Light were “extremely sexist.” The Angels “refused to stop when their time was up” and “continued to perform for a time long enough to arouse boredom and anger in the audience.” Crase estimated that this went on for an hour and a quarter. When Crase and two GLF coordinators “tried to reason with the troupe,” they “taunted us and accused us of being ‘rude and ungrateful.’” The Angels then disrupted the next performance, which was a song by a San Jose woman “about and for lesbians.” Adding insult to injury, according to Crase, “one man (?) walked around all evening with his glorious member hanging out for all to view and worship” while screaming about hitting, punching, kicking, and fighting [question mark in the original]. After a lesbian appealed from the stage for unity and urged her “sisters and brothers” to “get rid of these bad vibes and get it together,” a GLF man “angrily ripped the microphone” from her hands, leading her to call him “a chauvinist pig.” Crase wrote that several gay men later expressed “sorrow and embarrassment” about what had occurred, but she pointedly asked where “the brothers” had been during the earlier conflicts. “Not one brother opened his mouth against his brothers, in defense of his sisters,” she declared with intense “anger” and “sorrow.” As a result, she concluded, “the dance was a disaster.”[3]
Shortly thereafter, Rainbow, one of the Angels, responded to Crase (misidentifying her as Chase and referring to her as Miss Chase) in the Advocate. In general, Rainbow asserted, the Angels avoided taking positions on social or political issues, including gay liberation, because “we feel not the repressions and hostilities you say you or your male counterparts feel in dealing with the culture, subculture, and countercultures of…straight society.” “I am,” Rainbow declared, “and that in itself is sufficient. I make no demands, and consequently none are (or rarely) made on me.” This formulation seemed to reflect a type of libertarian individualism sometimes associated with the counterculture. Rainbow then claimed that the SF State event organizer had assured the Angels that “these were not Gay Lib happenings,” and thus “we were misled and duped.” Rainbow continued, “This is not to say that we don’t love our gay sisters and brothers, for they are our livelihood, but we were given the impression that we would be performing in order to entertain whoever was there, regardless of their color, political standing, or sexual leaning.” Rainbow then said that “if, in the process, we failed to entertain and did offend some…, we are deeply sorry.” Insisting that they were “unaware of any time limits,” Rainbow added that the Angels had not been the first to “provoke hostilities,” since “a group of gay sisters and brothers” had begun throwing popcorn on stage. “There was much catcalling and cursing,” Rainbow noted, “and the lesbian faction…was anxious to get their thing on.” After “a group of girls saw to it that the mikes were turned off,” they “physically drove us from the stage.” Rainbow then pointed out that the Angels had been accused of being “derogatory to women” by wearing “feminine attire,” when the women were in “masculine attire.” “Why the discrepancies over so trite a thing as clothing?” Rainbow asked. “There should be no categories or definitions allowing for the grouping of male or female items.” Rainbow then noted that the troubles experienced by the Angels did not end there: “We were later informed that should we appear at the Moratorium [the antiwar demonstration scheduled for the next day], vigilante committees would be formed to show us off the grounds. As Gays, or what have you, we were denied the opportunity to march against the war with the people of San Francisco, let alone the Gays thereof.” Rainbow concluded by directly requesting an “opportunity to discuss policies and ideals” with Crase, noting that “we love you as a human being first and as a lesbian second.”[4]
Perhaps the most surprising media coverage of this episode came from the Wall Street Journal, a New York-based newspaper known more for its coverage of business and economics than its reporting on LGBTQ dances at colleges and universities. In December 1971, the Journal published “Student Homosexual Movement Gains, but Groups Fragmented by Dissension.” The article, which focused on the formation of gay groups at 150 colleges and universities, began with a hot and heavy description of the scene: “Lights in the San Francisco State College gymnasium are turned low. Entwined in each other’s arms, couples kiss passionately in the dimmer corner…. Others stare as scantily clad performers parade about the stage, singing off-color ballads. Offended by the lyrics, many of the women guests storm out.” The article then explained: “The couples necking in the corner are men. The entertainers…are a transvestite troupe. And the women who walk out are lesbians, insulted because the troupe has been singing, ‘We hate lesbians. They hate us.’” For reporter Joann Lublin, the dance demonstrated “how freely collegiate gays are flaunting their homosexuality,” but also “how dissension between the sexes fragments” them. The article concluded with comments about other types of conflict. Asserting (in what likely was a gross generalization) that “black students dislike and distrust the college gays,” she quoted a Black Students Union member who told her, “We fully object to being classified along with faggots as third-worlders.” The student also indicated that he was “insulted” by the notion that the predominantly white GLF members would regard themselves as a “socially oppressed minority.” Lublin reserved her final inflammatory words for a toenail-polish-wearing gay respondent, who declared that just as African Amercans did not like being called the n-word (and the real word was used in the article), “We don’t like being called fags.”[5] The dance thus exposed and exacerbated not only gender and sexual conflicts within LGBTQ communities but also racial conflicts that extended beyond LGBTQ communities.
As for the antiwar march that took place one day after the dance, SF State GLF President Jerald Jacks (presumably an alternative spelling of the Gerald Jacks mentioned in a previous section) and Gay Mobilization Committee to End the War Coordinator Dorothy Dillon wrote to the Advocate to criticize its coverage. While the Advocate had minimized the extent of gay participation, Jacks and Dillon claimed that “the Gay Contingent was the largest,” with “approximately 1000 gay sisters and brothers” joining the larger demonstration. They attributed this to the support of many local LGBTQ individuals and groups, including SF State’s GLF, which had scheduled its dance to build interest and support for the march. According to Jacks and Dillon, “the large and visible Gay Pride Contingent not only added to the strength and breadth of the antiwar movement but also acted as an effective consciousness-raiser for the rest of the demonstrators and onlookers.” Many “were confronted with the issue of gay rights” for the first time, and “one of the most important aspects of the day was the presence and participation of a Gay Women’s Contingent,” whose members “carried a huge banner and led chants for gay women’s rights and an end to the war.” At the concluding rally, which took place on the Polo Fields, two speakers represented the gay contingent for the 50,000 people who were there: DOB Vice President Beth Elliott (a trans woman) and SF State GLF’s Jim Willeford. The letter by Jacks and Dillon concluded by noting that gay participation in the antiwar marches held around the country was “a giant step forward for both the gay and antiwar movements.”[6]
In the aftermath of the disastrous dance, there apparently were efforts to repair and reconcile. In the first few months of 1972, SF State’s GLF was invited to join the Gay Consortium, which was attempting to bring together members of at least nine local LGBTQ groups in order to “improve communication and cooperation.”[7] In May 1972, the Phoenix and Sisters publicized a gay dance that would be sponsored by SF State’s GLF; the dance was a fundraiser for the Daughters of Bilitis and would feature a performer named Lash LaRue.[8]
More than fifty years later, it is impossible to reconstruct exactly what happened at the dance or decide who was blameworthy for what. This episode nevertheless can be linked to a set of gendered conflicts, divisions, miscommunications, and misunderstandings that LGBTQ communities experienced in the early 1970s. Scholars have identified gay/lesbian, gay/trans, and lesbian/trans conflicts, along with class- and race-based conflicts within and across these communities. The conflicts were not inevitable; they were not the same in all places and times; and they were not transhistorical, extending directly from past to present and future. If studied more deeply, with attention to time and place, they might yield further insights about gender and sexual politics in the early 1970s, which in turn might have implications for later eras.[9]
Notes
[1] Jim Kepner, “Angles on the News: Tired But Proud,” Advocate, 4 Aug. 1971, 8.
[2] Chuck Hardy, “Gay Dance Turns Sour; New Actions Planned,” Phoenix, 4 Nov. 1971, 3; "Nov. Events," Sisters, November 1971, 10. See also “Gays to March,” Berkeley Barb, 29 Oct. 1971, 4; “Some Gays Going, Others Hang Tuff,” Berkeley Barb, 5 Nov. 1971, 2; "Dyke Power," Purple Rage, Mar. 1972, 14; T.O. Salisbury, “Emptying the AS Moneybasket,” Phoenix, 13 Apr. 1972, 7B.
[3] Sharon Crase, letter to the editor, Advocate, 19 January 1972, 24, 25.
[4] Rainbow, letter to the editor, The Advocate, 16 Feb. 1972, 26.
[5] Joann S. Lublin, “Student Homosexual Movement Gains, But Groups Fragmented by Dissension,” Wall Street Journal, 16 Dec. 1971, 22.
[6] Gerald Jacks and Dorothy Dillon, letter to the editor, Advocate, 5 Jan. 1972, 32. See also “S.F. Gay Activists Alliance Ousts ‘Trotskyites’ in Purge,” Advocate, 8 Dec. 1971, 19.
[7] “Bay Gays Move Toward Unity Along Two Fronts,” The Advocate, 15 Mar. 1972, 6.
[8] Calendar, Phoenix, 4 May 1972, 4; “May 1972 Events,” Sisters, May 1972. See also Don Jackson, “Gay Consortium Zaps United Crusade,” Bay Area Reporter, 15 Feb. 1972, 9, 10; “Political Committee Report,” The Insider: The Monthly Newsletter of the Society for Individual Rights, Mar. 1972.
[9] On these conflicts in the late 1960s and early 1970s, see Stein, Rethinking, 97-139.