Inside and Out: complexities and contradictions in the WLM

By Paddy Tanton

I was born in Hull in 1946.  In that place at that time, the word ‘lesbian’ was never spoken.  Growing up I had no concepts to understand who I was in relation to the rest of the narrow post-war world around me which seemed, emotionally at least, a complete mystery.  Despite the lack of information, it somehow became clear that whoever I was was totally unacceptable.  Somehow, I knew to keep it quiet and keep my head down.  I left home as soon as I could and spent a few happy years at Art College despite the behaviour of many of the tutors in the fine art department whose abusive misogyny was my introduction to the appalling treatment of women at the hands of men.  I was on the union committee and saw firsthand the damage done to these young women whom I tried to help despite my ignorance and naivety.  The tutors openly showed their hostility and told me to mind my own business. I was involved in 1968 student protests in the art colleges and from then on began questioning everything – one of the freedoms of being an ‘outsider’.

It wasn’t until my early 20s that I first realised that who I was had a name, an identity – ‘lesbian’ – a word which has never slipped easily off my tongue.  I had never (knowingly) met anyone else ‘like me’ and I thought that I was the only one, or at least one of a very small number. I was introduced to radical feminism in the early 1970s by two amazing sisters in Newcastle.  What they taught me unfettered my brain.  Except the bit which still saw my sexuality as something perverted, to be ashamed of, and which was the hidden practice of only a few.  Imagine my surprise then when I arrived as a visitor to the women’s squatting community in Hackney.  I had come from the wilds of the Scottish borders where I wrongly imagined I would be invisible.  My experiences in that rural community had been difficult. I lived up an isolated track and occasionally drunken young men would drive round my house after closing time, knocking on my windows and shouting abuse.  I also had threatening or sometimes silent phone calls.  I lay on the floor in the dark until they left. I was glad to leave.

In London, I found my community and was amazed at how many lesbian women populated it! The women of this community provided me with a safe haven, taught me a great deal and even loved me which was something of a new experience. My nascent radical feminism was given form and content by some amazing women there. They provided me with a much deeper understanding of the masculinist establishment; the rules of patriarchal ideology; the social construction of gender and race and the depth and breadth of violence against women in its many forms. I began to understand that true radicalism is a freeing of the mind from all previous conceptions and misconceptions, a process of questioning and debating.

During this time books were streaming off the shelves and I read avidly – Kate Millett, Adrienne Rich, Angela Davis, Kathleen Barry, Audre Lorde, Susan Brownmiller. Later came the challenge to white and/or western writing with books by Maria Mies, Chandra Mohanty, Anne Russo, Lourdes Torres, Anita Basu, Rayna Reiter, Deniz Kandiyoti, and many others addressing the issues of colonialism and racism. There were also yearly conferences, a flowering of women’s music, weekly discos and women’s bands proliferated.  Women’s Centres and refuges were established.  Magazines like Spare Rib and Trouble and Strife appeared. There were protests, marches and activist groups everywhere including the Women in Manual Trades group who inspired me to train as a car mechanic.  I had also learnt silversmithing and made Labryses and women’s symbols which I sold at Sisterwrite bookshop and conferences. It was a thrilling time to be alive. Serious divisions however arose.  In the early days the public face of the women’s movement was white and middle class.  Working class and women of colour felt excluded and lesbians were sometimes referred to as ‘The Lavender Menace’. Some of these issues were never resolved and are still ongoing.

From the books and papers I read, Kandiyoti’s article on ‘Deconstructing Patriarchy’ was massively influential in my understanding of structures of power and how they operate.  She argues that women have to make ‘patriarchal bargains’ in order to survive the strict rules of gendered behaviour imposed upon them to avoid risking violent responses. I came across her writing in the mid-80s when I had accumulated, through the women I met, sufficient confidence to attend university. I studied at UEA and Essex. I wanted to learn more about the experiences of women in other parts of the world and wrote an MA thesis on migrant domestic workers (for anyone interested, I interviewed Sister Margaret Healey of the Kalayaan organisation in London which rescued and helped migrant domestic workers. It is published in issue 35 of Trouble and Strife). * 

Subsequently I completed a doctorate on ‘mail-order-brides’ focussing on women from the Philippines who married British men.  In Manila and the provinces, there are myriad activist women’s groups whose radical politics link colonialism, militarism and make the connections between western industrial capitalism and local elites in the exploitation of Asian women.  I worked with a number of these women and the whole experience was life changing.  It taught me a great deal, not least about the on-the-ground effects of colonialism and gender ideologies on women, not just in the Philippines, but globally.  It also taught me about the breadth and depth of my own white western relative comfort and privilege.

Back home, in the 90s, I became a Diversity trainer for Social Services using the knowledge I had accrued as new equality and civil partnership legislation arrived.  I trained Registrars who were nervous of officiating at Civil Partnerships, encouraging them to see it as an exciting new opportunity.  It was an amazing development – same-sex couples able to show their love publicly was a definite encroachment on the sanctity of patriarchal marriage. Then came marriage equality itself which I never thought could happen in my lifetime.  (After a few years the council moved diversity training to on-line tick-box questionnaires).

Being a part of the WLM taught me that we have to challenge and undermine the patriarchal concept of biological determinism and its attendant gender and race ideology. I also learnt that we must incorporate the complexity of human existence without compromising our radicalism. This is a difficult process.  I had already noted that established political movements on the left, mostly, if not all, male-led, had slipped into a narrow doctrinaire agenda.  Vanguard-ism is important in any politically charged movement – it rings bells loudly and helps set agendas but surely it must only be a beginning not the final established form.  I took on, in the early days, the identity of ’lesbian-separatist’ but this soon began to seem too simplistic, and a particular event confirmed for me the potential violence and intolerance implicit in rigid, cultish ideas.

Women’s Monthly Events took place at the Waterloo Action Centre, in London and at one of these events two women who ran a pub were running the bar.  One of them was assaulted by a group who accused her of not being a ‘true’ woman (and of being a man), grabbed her, held her down and stripped her of her trousers in order to determine her sex. This appalling violence was my introduction to the reality that self-defined feminist women could behave with an aggressive intolerance which was more fascistic than radical.

My second experience of violent intolerance came in the early 80s and was aimed at me.  My partner at the time was a shoemaker and we decided to start a women’s shoemaking co-op in Wales.  This story involved ongoing disputes between individuals and groups of women in and around the village we lived and worked in. There were two particular women, who identified as radical feminists; white, middle class, eloquent and charismatic, they formed a powerful triumvirate with a working class woman with many grievances about the emerging disputes. I wasn’t particularly interested or involved with any of these disputes and never really understood the issues involved.

Eventually, for totally incomprehensible reasons, the three of them chose me as their scapegoat.  I didn’t understand then and still don’t understand now why I became the focus of their anger and blame and of their punishing behaviour.  I later thought it might be that I didn’t join their ‘gang’, didn’t toe some unspoken line.  I was followed in the street and verbally attacked.  Windows were broken, my washing line cut, and my car tyres were let down.  I constantly felt afraid and under attack.  One of the women appeared at my house screaming incomprehensible rage.  I was surrounded by anger and hate and was afraid even for my life as these women were totally out of control. In the end, because of the violence and intimidation, I left Wales and the day I packed up and drove away, they were outside my house taunting me.

I’ve rarely talked about this experience, partly because not knowing what caused it makes it difficult to describe and partly because it’s a bit like washing your dirty linen in public. I had a minor nervous breakdown afterwards and the experience haunted me for years.  Forty-odd years later it still returns occasionally, and I strive to find explanations.  To me, feminism was new and exciting – full of possibility – but what happened in that small community devastated the (possibly naive) hope embedded in the idea of sisterhood. Perhaps it’s a positive thing to be relieved of naivety because I believe radicalism requires a more complex view of the world.  Schisms have always appeared in the women’s movement, primarily in relation to the experiences of women of colour but also those of working class and disabled women. The current major split around gender identity is rather troubling and brings up issues which remind me of these earlier experiences.

Radical feminism fundamentally changed my life for the better. The activism of the WLM and Gay Liberation Front has achieved a huge amount during the last fifty odd years.  In challenging the rigidities of biological determinism and the social construction of gender within patriarchal culture, both movements fundamentally challenged these oppressive structures and opened a door so that other related social movements could appear, around the issues of gender fluidity, non-binary and transgender identities – Gay Liberation became LGBTQ+.

Out of these new movements complexities and contradictions arise – e.g. non-binary identities challenge the gendered base of patriarchal power but at the same time, any challenge to violence against women by men requires these binary categories to remain politically intact. These are the sort of complexities radicalism has to confront – through dialogue and debate not through vitriol and hate.

*Trouble & Strife:  http://www.troubleandstrife.org/articles/issue-35/secret-slavery/).