|
|
 |
|
The Documentary Record
Fortunately for me, I came out during the post-Stonewall "heroic age" of gay liberation, when groups like the Gay Activists Alliance were showing us new ways to be gay. Books like The Gay Crusaders,the 1972 classic by Kay Tobin Lahusen and Randy Wicker, profiled some of this "greatest generation" of gay people: Troy Perry, Jim Owles, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin, Frank Kameny, Marty Robinson, Barbara Gittings, Lige Clarke and Jack Nichols, among others. They built the scaffold and blazed the trail that my generation and subsequent generations of GLBT people would later stand on and walk upon. Inadvertently left out of The Gay Crusaders was Harry Hay (born 1912), who founded the original Mattachine Society in 1950. Hay, a former Communist, broke with the Mattachine Society when conservative gays took over that organization, and he spent much of the 1950's and 1960's in relative obscurity.
Controversy was also a fact of life for Joan Nestle (born 1940), one of our community's leading writers, archivists, educators and activists. Nestle is best known as the author and editor of numerous books - including the award-winning A Restricted Country (1987) - and as the founder, with Deborah Edel, of the Lesbian Herstory Archives (1973). Nestle's 1981 article, "Butch-Fem Relationships: Sexual Courage in the 1950s," celebrated the butch-fem bar scene that gave her a community when she first came out. This and her lesbian erotic writings made Nestle an unwilling combatant in the Lesbian Sex Wars of the 1980's. "All I have are my words and my body," she once wrote, "and I will use them to say and picture the truths I know." Most of us could learn a lesson from Joan Nestle.
Though Slade does not ignore "The Duchess's" faults - one Mattachine veteran called him a "benevolent dictator" - he rightly stresses Hay's positive contributions to our community. Writing for RFD in 1975, Hay once posed three questions about our people: "Who Are We? Where Do We Come From? What Are We For?" By living his life, Hay has given us an answer. Nestle also gets the documentary treatment in Hand on the Pulse, a movie directed by Joyce Warshow. There are no dramatic re-enactments in this film, nor do we need them. Instead, we have Nestle herself, taking us to her girlhood home in The Bronx, to her old high school, and to the site of the lesbian bar where she once came out. We are with Nestle when she visits the Lesbian Herstory Archives, reads her erotica at a local bookstore - famously dressed in her negligée - and rides an open car with Katz at the New York Pride Parade. And we listen as Nestle talks about her mother's struggle with poverty and sexual abuse, her own life as a working-class, large Jewish lesbian, and her current fight with cancer. All in all, Hand on the Pulse is the profile of a hero.
Founders of New York's Gay Activists Alliance
march in the 1970 Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade
commemorating the Stonewall rebellion.
Photo Courtesy: The GAA Reunion, Newsletter #6 Phranc as a Tupperware lady? Such is the premise of Lifetime Guarantee: Phranc's Adventures in Plastic a documentary directed by Lisa Udelson. As an out folk-singer, the crew-cut Phranc was a hero to her many fans, though her musical career has taken a downturn in recent years. Not one to let adversity get her down, Phranc has since redefined herself as the enthusiastic purveyor of plastic containers, and the unflappable host of countless Tupperware parties - she even wrote songs to help her sell her goods. Lifetime Guarantee follows Phranc's "adventures in plastic", from suburban homes to the Tupperware Jubilee and even the Donny and Marie Osmond show. Oy vey!
|
Lesbian activists Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen. Lahusen co-authored The Gay Crusaders in 1972, one of the first histories of gay pioneers 
Jesse Monteagudo is a Cuban-born freelance writer who has lived in South Florida since 1964. His book reviews, news stories, essays and fictions have appeared in over thirty gay or mainstream publications and over two dozen anthologies. When not writing (or working at his day job), Monteagudo spends his time with his life partner of over 16 years or doing volunteer work for one of several South Florida organizations. He was awarded a Stonewall Award in 1994 and a Stars of the Rainbow Award in 1997 for his contributions to South Florida LGBT organizations, media and journalism. Monteagudo is also working on a book. He can be reached at jessemonteagudo@aol.com