By Nic Humberstone
In 1973 my girlfriend and I were off to Warwick University on grants, where we would spend the next three years. Me aged 25 and considered a ‘mature’ student. Having left school at 15 (thrown out) and considered a failure, this was a triumph. The first in my family to go to university but a disappointment in choosing Sociology. Not a ‘real’ subject according to Mary Humberstone (mother) who had fixed ideas about what counted. She was a very angry woman and had adopted a posh accent having been born in a workhouse and undergone much abuse. This did not make her likeable, however. That’s another story.
I had escaped the horror of Bedford suburbia after a series of mind numbingly boring jobs by writing to an author of a book which highlighted bisexual women, and she had invited me to stay in a commune. I had gone and entered a world of academic hippies who spoke in terms I didn’t understand and who were all heterosexual. But it was an escape and led to college and explosion of learning.
My girlfriend and I arrived in Warwick from Norwich Tech where the beginnings of feminism were springing up. A group of women had come to talk to our class there and the fact that one rolled her own fags was enough to electrify us. Were they lesbians? We wondered and hoped.
What had attracted us to Warwick was Germaine Greer teaching there. Academics may dismiss Greer, but it has to be said that her impact on us working class women not at university was huge and just the book cover of The Female Eunuch in Smiths was enough to make visible something unspoken and impactful. But she had gone by the time we arrived and there was little evidence of a feminist trail. We found a lesbian group and became an angry force.
Sociology was studies about men and some insertion of working class men’s experiences in sport. There was a Women’s Studies class which focused on a book called The Housewife which albeit important was not enough. Heteronormativity ruled. Most courses were taught by Marxists which was fantastic in some ways, but women’s lives were not considered important. Sociology of Literature was taught by Terry Lovell and was the most radical class. It focused on the dynamics of capitalism, with some in-depth looks at Hollywood films and representations of women. These came in add-on optional seminars. They were fantastic but very niche.
All was focused in the past and where were the lesbians? We were outraged. We had badges made – enormous and with LESBIANS IGNITE in capitals. We burst into seminars demanding women be made visible and our lives paramount. We shouted ‘Heterosexuality is Rape’ which I believed to be true in the construction of passivity in certain working class settings. As Victoria Wood said, I didn’t realise we could move. We picketed a Hot Chocolate band performance as they had surrounded their act with semi-naked women.
The effect was a triumph because we did make staff and students think about the lack of women in curriculums and were at least visible ourselves. There were not many of us, but we were loud. Gay Liberation Front was supportive but also there was a lack of feminist thought. One gay man said, ‘I just want to be an object of the male gaze’, which was heart sinking for me. We fought together and separately.
Looking back, I appreciate the Marxist analyses because now it’s all Business Studies and post-feminist narratives. But it was not enough. Living communally and trying to dismantle monogamy at the same time as breaking into Sociology with feminist rage was earth shattering and heart breaking too. It was a time of great excitement and anger and jealousy and radical thought. I’m glad to have been part of it.