The Rainbow History Project
Preserving Our Community's Memories

SOURCES

From DC's Womens Liberation Movement to

Lesbianism to Lesbian Separatism

WOMEN'S LIBERATION MOVEMENT IN DC: The Second Wave in Washington

In 1967 feminists in Washington, DC organized in northwest Washington a group that became known as Washington Women's Liberation and that used 1840 Biltmore St. NW, Apt.10, as its headquarters. The Biltmore center lasted until the autumn of 1971.

DC feminists quickly linked to sister groups across the country. By 1968, DC Washington Women's Liberation reported three groups in the city, two in northwest and one in southeast, at a National Women's Liberation Conference held in Lake Villa, IL. Among projects then underway, they listed preparation of a bilbiography on women (prepared from sources in the Library of Congress), a public information project, and preparations for opening a storefront birth alternatives center. Many women's liberationists saw their struggle in the context of worldwide liberation movements and sought to build ties to and relationships with other liberation groups.

Washington, DC also had, of course, a chapter of the National Organization of Women (NOW). NOW's organizing conference had been held in DC in October 1966. The National Capital Area chapter formed soon after the national organization. By 1970, the local women's liberation movement was teaching feminist theory and history at the Washington Area Free University (in the Community Building, 1724 20th St NW), participating in a national feminist survey of the birth control pill, organizing women's festivals (at L'Enfant Square), organizing local activities for the August 26th national stribe by women, and participating in and planning for the Black Panther's Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention meetings in Philadelphia (September 1970) and Washington, DC (November 1970). A delegation of the city's women's liberation members attended the New Haven, CT rallies and demonstrations in support of the Panthers jailed in that city.Washington Women's Liberation eventually closed down but its message of self-reliance and many of its organizing tactics carried over into successor organizations and into lesbian organizing. Among the most prominent off shoots of the women's liberation movement in DC were the formation of the national feminist newspaper off our backs, which chronicled much of the city's andthe nation's feminist and lesbian history.

DOCUMENTS FROM AND ABOUT WOMEN'S LIBERATION IN DC AND ELSEWHERE:

LESBIANS IN DC AND THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT

A number of women who had worked in the women's movement in Washington DC found it uncomfortable to be lesbians in a straight-dominated women's liberation movement. Among prominent Washington lesbians in the womens movement at the beginning of the 1970s were Eva Freund, earlier a member of the Mattachine Society of Washington, Joan E Biren, Charlotte Bunch-Weeks (who soon dropped the "-Weeks" from her name), Sharon Deevey, Natasha Peterson, and Ginny Berson.

SEPARATISM

By 1971, some local lesbians had focused on living, loving, and working separately from the straight women's movement and from the gay male liberationist movement. Lesbian feminist separatists formulated their own ideology as they organized their own groups.

 

THE FURIES COLLECTIVE

Women who had already worked together in the women's liberation movement, participated in the Daughters of Lillith feminist group funded by the Institute for Policy Studies, and functioned first as the Those Women collective became central figures in the Furies, the nationally known and influential lesbian feminist separatist collective. Funds from the Lillith group were channelled into the subsequent collectives.

The Furies Collective, whose main sites were 1861 California NW, 217 12th St SE and 221 11th St SE, was, along with the Gay Liberation House and the Skyline Collective, among Washington, DC's best known communal living groups in the early Seventies.  The collective of twelve women was first known as Those Women. The name "Furies" was chosen after researching the meaning and usage of the term. Their meetings on 11th Street SE constituted an important experiment in lesbians of diverse social and economic backgrounds living together and working to make their political and social beliefs a day-to-day reality.  A five page outline for a collective 'cell' meeting in January 1972 sets objectives, processes, and strategies for the collective, including a five-year plan focusing on ideology, party-building, and cell issues. From January 1972 until mid-1973, the collective published its ideologically groundbreaking newspaper, the Furies, and distributed it nationally.  Many of the articles from the newspaper were reprinted by Baltimore's Diana Press in Women Remembered, Class and Feminism, and Lesbianism and the Women's Movement.  (The last two books are in the collection of the Rainbow History Project).  When the collective disbanded in late spring 1972, "the core of the newspaper staff decided to continue the paper as a project separate from the collective". (See The Furies page for more information. Click on above link.)

 

Motive, the Lesbian issue The Furies Collective undertook the compilation, editing, layout, printing and distribution of the last issue of the United Methodist's magazine Motive, dedicated to portraying lesbian theory and practice as of 1972. Motive also brought out a twin issue dedicated to the gay male perspective and compiled, edited, laid out, printed and distributed by Gay Liberation Front's Skyline Faggots Collective.

 

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