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Salient. Victoria University Students' Newspaper. Volume 39, Number 23. September 20, 1976

Coming Soon — Women in Gay Liberation

Coming Soon

Women in Gay Liberation

The Gay Liberation Movement is open to all gay women and men. The number of Lesbians belonging to Wellington Gay Liberation is, however, very small. The reason for this is partly historical: in previous Gay Liberation organisations throughout the world Lesbians have found themselves working in male-dominated groups with male-oriented aims. They have also discovered that gay men are often just as sexist as their straight conterparts. For these reasons, Lesbians have tended to withdraw from Gay Liberation to form wholly lesbian political groups or to work within the feminist movement.

In Wellington Gay Liberation we have always been very conscious of the above facts and the need to prevent a repetition of them in our own organisation. Because of this, much emphasis has been placed on women being "up-front" in the movement. Lesbians play a central role in the organisation (for example, the co-ordinating committee consists of equal numbers of women and men) and it is standard policy that women will be represented on all speaking engagements and, if only one speaker is required, it will be a woman.

The links between the feminist and gay liberations movements have been both discussed and acknowledged and gay liberation actively supports the struggle by women to free themselves of oppression. This had led us to officially support the right of a woman to control her own body ( a demand which has close ties with our demand for the right, as gays, to control our own lives) and Gay Liberation members have marched in this years rallies organised around repeal of the abortion laws under the banner "Free Our Sisters, Free Ourselves".

One of the clearest links between the feminist and Gay Liberation Movement is that both attack the stereotyped sex-roles which uphold the sexist power-structure. Both movements demands freedom for women and men to control their own lives and express their individuality without fear of repression.

The advantages to Gay Liberation, in its attempt to build a viable political organisation, of having a large, active Lesbian membership are obvious. For Lesbians, too, the success of Gay Liberation's aims will liberate us from our oppression on the basis of our sexual orientation. Gay Liberation recognises, however, that women face additional oppression. For this reason, every encouragement is given to women (and other groups facing additional oppression) to form special caucuses or sub-groups to present our case to the movement if we so desire.

It was with this in mind that it was decided that the first day of this year's National Gay Liberation Conference will be devoted to workshops, of which one will be a closed women's workshop. Here, we will be able to concentrate on issues of special importance to gay women. These might include such issues as the Lesbian in the workforce; the problems of Lesbian mothers; sex-roles and sex-stereotyping; the relevance of feminism to Lesbianism, relationships with men, and sexism, within the Gay Liberation movement. The discussion of these and other issues in a closed women's workshop will hopefully enable us to clarify them in our own minds so that we can draw up policy statements and demands to take to the conference as a whole.