Califia Women: Feminist Education against Sexism, Classism, and Racism

Preface

preface “well, what are you looking for?” That abrupt question from archivist and Latina lesbian feminist activist Yolanda Retter Vargas, along with my answer, initiated this book. As someone interested in U.S. social movements for civil rights and liberation, I wanted to research in Los Angeles ’s two most promising archives for late-twentieth-century multi-issue feminist or queer groups. Retter Vargas immediately shot back, “That’s Califia Community. Do you want me to set up interviews?” In 2000, the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archive at the University of Southern California (USC) and the independently run June L. Mazer Lesbian Collection provided initial grounding for this study of a feminist community education experiment and its times. Only three published essays existed on Califia.1 Retter Vargas introduced me to former collective members and steady participants, who led me to others, including one-time attendees. Archives dedicated to social movements counter forces that downplay such movements as sources of new ideas and societal change. Heated debate erupted in the early 1980s when Congress formally honored the signi ficance of the African American civil rights movement by setting aside a national holiday named for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It took until the twenty-first century for all states to recognize the holiday. United States history courses I took in the 1970s through the mid-1990s rarely acknowledged the impact of social movements and often relegated women’s historical roles to sewing a flag, guiding explorers, and being the wives or mothers of prominent men. During graduate study in women’s studies and in women, gender, and sexuality history, I found it impressive to see committed volunteers like Jo Duffy running the June L. Mazer Lesbian Collection or USC staff archivists maintaining the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archive. Early in my research, I took to heart Nancy Whittier’s argument that “any study of radical feminism is . . . by necessity, a local case study.”2 The case study of Califia Community tests generalizations in national overviews about expressions of feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. This assessment of Califia Community’s development in the context of feminism at that time intervenes against dismissive stereotypes by those who came of age after the 1970s by showing that there is much to learn from 1970s–1980s community activism, dynamics of feminism and antiracism within social move- x califia women ments, and national politics. This book details how feminists educated themselves outside of university courses. Participants in Califia Community’s education experiment (1975–1987) organized more than a dozen week-long summer conference camps and over a dozen long-weekend sessions during summers and Thanksgivings, with about 100–250 women and their children at each camp. They tried to strengthen interpersonal relations and leadership skills to promote organizing for change. Attendance varied from year to year, so the total number of “Califia women,” as they called themselves, is difficult to determine exactly; I estimate well over 2,000 but under 5,000. Sampling through referrals worked well to find women who were part of sometimes hidden populations based on their political and social views. Relationships that had lasted fifteen to thirty years revealed part of the social networking among women that was crucial to the growth of feminism and typical of many social justice movements. Referrals and overlap in what women remembered as important helped me to identify which collective members and long-term teachers had made the greatest impacts. I have used interviews to show the development of the group in its times rather than to represent every woman ’s important contribution. Feminist oral history methods gave my research agenda the flexibility to incorporate topics that narrators considered important. Sherna Berger Gluck and Daphne Patai collected formative advice in Women’s Words 3 to look for subjective meaning and emotion. My first question was, “What do you think are the most important things to focus on if someone is going to assess Califia Community?” Narrators used the open-ended questions to raise issues that moved beyond my initial inquiries and exposed unexpected connections. For example, the context of feminists’ first speakouts about rape and domestic violence influenced the perceived need for safe space. Prioritizing a safe temporary separate space influenced debates over whom to include, together with an age cutoff for boys that still allowed mothers to be involved, as well as disagreements over how to convey anger, under what circumstances...