'The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle' Book Talk, "Part One: 1950s", Lillian Faderman, 2015/10/18R
[caption: Lillian Faderman, Historian and Author of, The Gay Revolution 1950s]
Faderman: Thank you for that lovely introduction, Angela, and Larry Mantle would’ve been damn lucky to have you, too, so–
[laughter]
My new book is about how lesbians as well as gay men and people who are today called transgender and queer–incidentally, I should say a word about the terminology that I use in the book, and I begin with what I call a brief history of changing terminology. We all used to be called homosexual, whether we were lesbian or gay male or transgender or bisexual or queer, and in the underground we were all called gay. That was the only term that I knew when I came out as a lesbian in 1956. We were gay girls at the bar that I hung out on 8th and Vermont, the Open Door. Yeah. 8th and Vermont, it was. Right across the street was the If Club, which was really a fabulous legendary place.
Anyway, my new book focuses on the phenomenal changes that have taken place in America over the last, almost 70 years. At the midcentury, we were all considered criminals and crazies and subversives and sinners. And now if the polls can be believed, anyway, most of America really thinks that we are first-class American citizens, or should be first-class American citizens and that we deserve equal rights. How that came about is a huge story. It came about over at least seven decades, and I tried to trace that as a collective history. There have been other attempts to tell the collective history, but I think the way in which my book differs is that I was really determined to look at the lesbian story at least as much as I look at the other stories.
[applause]
So to write the book I did archival research. I gathered material from twenty different archives, including the wonderful June Mazer Lesbian collection, to which I will be forever grateful, for all of the books that I’ve written, and archives around the world–around the country, rather. And I also did 150 interviews with lesbians and gay men and transgender people, and people who could call themselves queer these days. So what I would like to do is read several sections of my book, in which I focus on the lesbian story. I want to start with the story of one woman that I interviewed who had been in the military in the 1950s. Her name was Lee, or Carlita Durand. So what I try to do in the book generally, I establish the history, I present the facts and figures, and then I zoom in on a particular person whose story, I think, really shows that history from a very personal perspective. So, this is a section on the military in the 1950s that I call “Clearing Out The Lesbians.”
[Reads from text]
Women made up only 2 percent of the postwar military, but the percentage of lesbians among the women who did serve was huge, for obvious reasons. The social climate of the 1950s indoctrinated females to strive for 3.4 children and a house with a white picket fence. Few straight women were willing to serve their country instead. And women who were already married or had children under the age of 18 weren’t allowed to enlist. Most lesbians–
Thank you. Most lesbians had none of those disqualifications. Also, they knew they'd never have a man to support them. The military offered training that could be used to make a living in civilian life. It offered the GI Bill for advanced education, too. Common sense suggests that the WAC, the WAVES, which were the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, the WAF, the Women in the Air Force, and the Marine Corps Women's Reserve, were full of lesbians, despite the resolute decree of the Department of Defense, that quote, “Homosexual personnel, irrespective of sex, should not be permitted to serve in any branch of the armed forces.” From the very beginning, Carlita Durand liked everything about the WAF–learning to carry out orders, no questions asked; the disciplined neatness, skirts and blouses starched so well that they stood up by themselves, nylons perfectly rolled, bras folded and put in the drawer in a specified way; the high moral standards–you weren’t even supposed to go to a bar in uniform. She liked especially being a team member. It was the best possible training anyone could have, she thought, and she was honored to be part of it all. She was made a squad leader and was allowed to carry the flag. She was 20 years old, and her ambition soared. There’s something in me that would make a good officer, she thought. Shortly before she joined the Women’s Air Force, Durand had a brief relationship with another girl, Winn. It was right after her father died. One night, she and Winn and a few friends had gotten a little high on Budweiser, and they sentimentally snipped locks of one another’s hair for mementos. Durand kept Winn’s. She put it in the glove compartment of her car, together with a smiling picture of her. But Durand wasn’t sure she was a lesbian, she thought she might be straight. She didn’t know what she was. Wiry and athletic, she sometimes liked to wear jeans and boys’ shirts, and sometimes a dress and high heels. At her enlistment physical, the doctor asked her point blank, “Do you like women?” “No,” she said. “Do you date?” “Yes,” she said. When a young man in the medical corps showed interest in her, Durand started going out with him. When a bunch of other WAFs invited her to go to Corpus Christi, Texas, to loaf on the beach and swim in the bay, she did that, too. She finished her six-month medical training–setting IVs, drawing blood, cleaning tracheostomy tubes, lugging medical equipment while crawling under barbed-wire fences. Then she was assigned to work in the squadron orderly room until an appropriate spot opened for her. “Airman Durand has been an outstanding airman in all respects and can be relied upon to do all tasks assigned to her promptly and efficiently to the best of her ability. Her appearance and barracks are always commendable,” her commander, Captain Barbara Pratt, wrote in an evaluation. One day at work in the orderly room Durant was summoned to report to the reception area of the barracks. Two men dressed in plain clothes were waiting for her. The badges they flashed said they were agents from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. “We’re here to investigate you,” one told her without preliminaries. “What for?” she asked. “Homosexuality,” the other said. “Let’s go up to your room.” They were emotionless, tall, giants in Durand’s head. She thought they’d come to put her in jail or court martial her. This is what it means to be scared out of your mind, she thought. People were walking by. She was humiliated. In her room they went through everything as she stood there. They turned all her pockets of her skirts and pants and jackets inside out; they opened her locker and all her drawers. Everything she’d neatly rolled according to regulations they’d unrolled, even her nylons and bras. They found her address book. They looked at every page, demanded she tell them about her relationships with every female listed. Then they confiscated it. “Take us to your car,” they told her. They left her clothes and everything else strewn about the bed and floor. They looked under the seats of the car. They took off the inside door panels. She had to stand there while they did it. People walking by turned their heads to watch. They took every piece of paper out of her glove compartment and examined it minutely. Then they found the lock of hair and Winn’s picture. “Here’s your girlfriend,” they said. “We need to contact this person.” “No, we’re just friends,” Durand protested. They told her they knew she’d gone to a lesbian party in Corpus Christi. “Nobody told me it was a lesbian party,” she said. “Nothing went on there.” She racked her brain to think of why this was happening. She remembered that one of the women with whom she’d gone to Corpus Christi was later investigated on charges of homosexuality and was kicked out of the Air Force. She must have named Durand when they made her name names. They came back every few days to ask the same question again and again: How many lesbian relationships? What did she do in them? Who were the other lesbians on base? Who were the lesbians she’d known before she enlisted? They ordered that she be sent for a psychiatric examination. The chief of the Lackland Air Force Base Medical Center Psychiatry Service reported that, quote, “At this time she is found to be free of mental defect, disease or derangement, and is not suffering from any condition which would warrant separation from the Air Force.” But she was not allowed to go to her duty post. She was confined to the barracks and assigned to a cleaning detail, scrubbing floors, picking up garbage outside the buildings. She was kept on base while the OSI men finished building their case against her. She knew she’d be discharged. Captain Pratt, who was not unsympathetic, told her, “Lee, this is not going to go away.” But the captain promised she’d recommend an honorable discharge. Durand feared that if she fought they’d dredge up real evidence; she could be court-martialed. She was stunned and frightened, and after three weeks of harassing investigations, didn’t feel strong enough to fight. Finally, the staff sergeant, whom Durand knew to be “one of the girls” but who’d never got investigated, came to her to say, “Put all the Air Force property in your duffle bag. We have to go check them off.” Again she was led across the base. Again humiliated. She was being discharged under the Department of Defense directive that said, “Known homosexual individuals are military liabilities and security risks who must be eliminated.” The honorable discharge Captain Pratt had promised was denied. She was given a general discharge, which meant that the world would know she’d been booted out of the military as unsuitable.
[Ends reading from text]
Well, when I interviewed Lee, I asked how long she’d been in the military, and she told me, nine months and 50 years. And what she meant by that was that for 50 years she was so haunted by that terrible experience. She became an alcoholic, she says, as a result of it. She went to AA finally and stopped drinking and put all of her energy into sports, and she became number four among swimmers in the Senior Olympics. And finally, just a few years ago she hired a lawyer and she had the general discharge overturned, and she now has an honorable discharge. And she’s really a changed person.
[applause]
It’s lovely to see.
[END OF VIDEO]
Interviewee: Lillian Faderman
Interviewer: Audience member
Transcriber: Alex A.
Transcriber: Mikhail Z.
Formatter: Serena R.
Recording Date: October 18, 2015
Release Date: October 25, 2015
Location: City Council Chambers in West Hollywood, California
Interview Length: 00:13:12