Big Sex Little Death_ A Memoir Part 18

Most of our readers didn't know that professional photography, particularly at that time, was an overwhelming male occupation - as macho as any steel mill, but without the affirmative action program.

The handful of women who worked as photojournalists were overwhelming lesbian - and closeted. Think how long Annie Leibowitz, the famed celebrity photographer, has been quiet about her life. When her lover Susan Sontag died, their relations.h.i.+p was not even mentioned in the Times obit. That is how mainstream lesbian photographers live, even to this day.

When we began our magazine, female fas.h.i.+on and portrait models - all of them - were shot the same way kittens and puppies are photographed for holiday calendars: in fetching poses, with no intentions of their own.

"Does this please you?" is the cachet of the entire pre-On Our Backs era of cheesecake and feminine glamour. Maybe the model is a "Betty," or maybe she's a "Veronica," but the subject has no s.e.xual motive of her own. Contrast a photograph of a Marlboro Man ... he's thinking as he smokes; his mind is ticking. Now consider Betty Grable looking over her shoulder at you ... Am I cute? era of cheesecake and feminine glamour. Maybe the model is a "Betty," or maybe she's a "Veronica," but the subject has no s.e.xual motive of her own. Contrast a photograph of a Marlboro Man ... he's thinking as he smokes; his mind is ticking. Now consider Betty Grable looking over her shoulder at you ... Am I cute?

That's what the male centerfolds of female models were about: Am I pretty? Am I darling? What do you think? Do you want me? Could you want me? Rate me! Put me on a leash and walk me around the park!

The great relief of d.y.k.e p.o.r.n was that all that went out the window. We had an objective on our minds; we didn't need to be rea.s.sured that we were "hot." We had a s.e.xual story to tell. We asked each partic.i.p.ant, "What's yours?"

The first story was Honey Lee Cottrell's. She and I met because she was the "heartbreak kid" who'd left Good Vibrations. I had inherited her job.

When she came back, we fell in love. I couldn't wait to show her what On Our Backs On Our Backs proposed to do. Honey and her previous lover, Tee Corinne, had literally invented the erotic lesbian photographic scene of the seventies, entirely underground. At every turn, their photos had been censored by the small lesbian publications they approached. It wasn't Honey's or Tee's idea to shoot pomegranates and succulents as metaphors - they were simply thwarted with their nudes, left and right. proposed to do. Honey and her previous lover, Tee Corinne, had literally invented the erotic lesbian photographic scene of the seventies, entirely underground. At every turn, their photos had been censored by the small lesbian publications they approached. It wasn't Honey's or Tee's idea to shoot pomegranates and succulents as metaphors - they were simply thwarted with their nudes, left and right.

Honey Lee made an elaborate self-portrait for the first issue of On Our Backs On Our Backs, in the manner of a Playboy Playboy centerfold. It was called the Bulldagger of the Month. centerfold. It was called the Bulldagger of the Month.

In her portrait, Honey stands like a gunslinger in front of a window, a ghetto apartment, light pouring in. A white s.h.i.+rt is covering her b.r.e.a.s.t.s; her belly is rudely pus.h.i.+ng over her the elastic of underwear. Her short hair stands straight up, like a brush; her eyes are like a racc.o.o.n's, burning into the focal point. She's got a Sherman burning in one hand. She looks like she could eat you with one bite.

On the Bulldagger Data Sheet across from her photo, we reproduced the iconic Playboy Playboy silly-girl questions about "Turn-ons" and "Turn-offs," along with Honey's accurate measurements and weight - numbers never whispered in a fas.h.i.+on magazine before. silly-girl questions about "Turn-ons" and "Turn-offs," along with Honey's accurate measurements and weight - numbers never whispered in a fas.h.i.+on magazine before.

The centerfold was Honey Lee's secret valentine to me, because under "Turn-ons" she listed: "Tall, smart, talkative, pretty." That was me, her blus.h.i.+ng, chatty bride. Under "Turn-offs," which made me howl, she listed, "Andrea Dworkin's hair, oral s.e.x, the refrigerator with rotten food in it." So rude! Honey wanted to make a point that not all lesbians were c.u.n.n.i.l.i.n.g.u.s fans. She said, "Everyone acts like it's going to be like chocolate syrup, and it isn't." We argued, but I had to love her honesty. The slag on Andrea was bratty, but it was such a relief to be flip. We were so sick of the Queens of Saintly Feminism. They put their pants on one leg at a time- just like us, and they probably f.u.c.ked just like us, too. The difference was a closet.

Similar to the Playboy Playboy design, we laid out three childhood photos of Honey Lee under the Bulldagger Questionnaire. I picked those out. They are still so poignant to me. The first one is of Honey Lee propped up on the kitchen table in her dungarees, reading Little Lulu comix from the Sunday paper and determinedly ignoring the fact that her mother is curling her hair. The way her little mouth is set - This is not happening to me. This is not happening to me - brings tears to my eyes. In the next photo, we see her with the curled hair, radiant on her bicycle, standing on a tree-lined street in Jackson, Michigan. Her parents ran a boardinghouse there; her father was an over-the-road driver. She's in a new dress, but I know the reason she's thrilled is because of her s.h.i.+ny bike. design, we laid out three childhood photos of Honey Lee under the Bulldagger Questionnaire. I picked those out. They are still so poignant to me. The first one is of Honey Lee propped up on the kitchen table in her dungarees, reading Little Lulu comix from the Sunday paper and determinedly ignoring the fact that her mother is curling her hair. The way her little mouth is set - This is not happening to me. This is not happening to me - brings tears to my eyes. In the next photo, we see her with the curled hair, radiant on her bicycle, standing on a tree-lined street in Jackson, Michigan. Her parents ran a boardinghouse there; her father was an over-the-road driver. She's in a new dress, but I know the reason she's thrilled is because of her s.h.i.+ny bike.

The last childhood photo was from many years later, when Honey Lee arrived, a baby d.y.k.e, in San Francisco in 1969. She looks like Janis Joplin, another lesbian, who, according to Honey, used to cruise at Maud's lesbian bar on Cole Street.

Bulldagger of the Month was our first centerfold and maybe our best. I remember the time I marched into Playboy Playboy's famous offices in Chicago and brought a copy to the reception desk of the Photography Department. "We're from On Our Backs On Our Backs," I said, "and we've caused a bit of sensation satirizing your centerfold - we thought you'd like to see it yourself." The secretary turned red. She called security. A queen with a purple ascot came running in like the White Rabbit and scrutinized Honey's figure: "Oh my!"

Our lesbian readers said more than "Oh my!" There were three distinct reactions.

One was exemplified by a raunchy fan letter addressed directly to Honey Lee. A woman in Port Arthur, Texas (where Janis was from!), sent Honey a photo of herself masturbating with an enormous d.i.l.d.o while she held Honey's photo in her free hand.

"You f.u.c.king nailed it!" I said. My eyes were agog at this piece of flotsam. "This is the first doc.u.mentation of a lesbian getting off to lesbian-made p.o.r.n, ever. This should be in the Smithsonian."

Outspoken fans like our Texan were the minority. The other two camps were furious.

Perhaps the biggest camp didn't grok the satire or the s.e.x. "Are you insane?" they wrote. "Pick up a copy of Penthouse Penthouse magazine if you want to see what a good-looking woman looks like! No lesbian in her right mind wants to be portrayed as an ugly butch." magazine if you want to see what a good-looking woman looks like! No lesbian in her right mind wants to be portrayed as an ugly butch."

It reminded me of a popular phrase in lesbian personal ads at the time: "No butches, No bi's. No fluffs." Geez, that kind of cleared the dating pool out, didn't it?

The sliver of insight to their complaint was that it proved my theory that lesbians had been grazing on male p.o.r.n leftovers for a long time.

The last reaction OOB OOB got was the most bizarre - but it was the feminist currency of the time. We got dozens of reviews and letters that said, "I'm supposed to be aroused by your efforts. But I'm not. I should be aroused by women-made erotica. But I'm cold. I worry that this model is a bad person. What if she has done something bad in her life? And even if she is good, what if I am not attracted to her physically? Does that make me shallow? If I secretly wish the model was more feminine, thinner, less hairy, does that make me a bad feminist?" got was the most bizarre - but it was the feminist currency of the time. We got dozens of reviews and letters that said, "I'm supposed to be aroused by your efforts. But I'm not. I should be aroused by women-made erotica. But I'm cold. I worry that this model is a bad person. What if she has done something bad in her life? And even if she is good, what if I am not attracted to her physically? Does that make me shallow? If I secretly wish the model was more feminine, thinner, less hairy, does that make me a bad feminist?"

No, it makes you oblivious and ashamed of your own s.e.xual desires. Welcome to the feminine dilemma. What are the fantasies that wake you up at night?

On and on it went. The hand-wringers never confessed whether they ever had simple responses to portraiture, to beauty. Surely, they had seen a photograph in their lives that had made them swoon - a portrait of sensuality, nostalgia, or l.u.s.t, one that shot its arrow clean through their c.u.n.ts. But no one admitted that. It was as if they had never looked at a woman before.

And in a sense, they hadn't. Up until that point, lesbians had not published self-identified portraits of themselves. Period. Gertrude Stein was the exception; that's how far you had to look. Putting one's face in the paper was considered suicide. The police might arrest you; your family might have you inst.i.tutionalized. So here we were, in the eighties: Gay men already published their own image everywhere, and yet lesbian invisibility was Caspar-like, epidemic. OOB's...o...b..s photographs caused as much mirror-smas.h.i.+ng as saber-rattling. photographs caused as much mirror-smas.h.i.+ng as saber-rattling.

It was natural, I suppose, for lesbians to greet our first issue of the magazine looking not so much for arousal as for recognition: Am I in here? What page am I on?

Our staff didn't suffer these anxieties because we were in all the pictures. We put every creative fantasy we ever had on film. I had a half-dozen different wigs because we always needed a photo, and we didn't always have the model ready to ill.u.s.trate a story. Every day was like d.y.k.e improv theater for us.

We heard complaints from lesbian bank tellers and real estate agents and other carefully closeted professionals. A couple of them were sincere: I appreciate your magazine, but can't you get more models who look like NORMAL women? Everyone in your zine is punk rock or butch/femme and not like anyone who could walk down the streets of ... Sacramento.

I remember the Sacramento one because I wrote that woman back. "We would love to have lesbian bank tellers in our magazine," I told her. "But the problem is, the punk rock strippers want to show THEIR lives ... they don't want to put on panty hose. And the white-collar gay ladies don't want their faces anywhere ... until someone gets the nerve. Is that you? We would love to do a photo shoot of you in your best pantsuit or sweater set ... You call me, and I'll send a photographer!"

Miss Sacramento did that. I swear, she had more b.a.l.l.s than 90 percent of our readers, and she didn't even take anything off. She was simply willing to have her Sacramento face, and a knowing look, in a lesbian s.e.x magazine.

There had not been a woman-made erotic magazine before On Our Backs On Our Backs. Not for straight women, not for any kind of woman. In the seventies, Bob Guccione, of Penthouse Penthouse, started Viva, a magazine that was supposed to be for women, but the photographers and writers were overwhelming male. It was still that s.e.xist tripe: Will he like me? Am I good enough? Is this cute?

The kind of models...o...b..OOB attracted were women with little to lose. They'd already offended their family. They'd left the rules of school and proper employment. In the case of the strippers and wh.o.r.es, they combined their financial independence with a sense that there was no need to lie about their s.e.xual preference any longer. Their johns didn't care. If anything, d.y.k.es could charge extra for their bravado. attracted were women with little to lose. They'd already offended their family. They'd left the rules of school and proper employment. In the case of the strippers and wh.o.r.es, they combined their financial independence with a sense that there was no need to lie about their s.e.xual preference any longer. Their johns didn't care. If anything, d.y.k.es could charge extra for their bravado.

None of our d.y.k.e wh.o.r.es would have been let into a lesbian-feminist meeting of any mainstream persuasion. But the influence of On Our Backs On Our Backs created a guild of s.e.x workers who embraced gay liberation on their own terms as fierce as any Stonewall trannie of 1969. created a guild of s.e.x workers who embraced gay liberation on their own terms as fierce as any Stonewall trannie of 1969.

There were models who were oddb.a.l.l.s and con artists, naturally. It's not fair that we remember the crazies, but those are the ones Honey Lee and I laugh about now.

By far the most memorable nut job was Frances. One name only. She surprised us by writing a letter to our magazine's post office box and saying, in her flowery script, that she wanted to model. No one knew her. She sent a Polaroid of herself, and it was breathtaking. She had long red curls, a face like a Sloane Ranger, and a delicate figure. Not a bank teller, but definitely someone's Elizabethan fantasy.

When she showed up at Honey's studio apartment, she brought an enormous can of Parisian talc and a powder puff the size of Milton Berle's TV prop. "You'll need to powder me, everywhere," she said, handing me her makeup tools as if I were in a maid uniform.

George Was.h.i.+ngton's wig never took as much powder as Miss Frances demanded. My G.o.d, we vacuumed up after that girl for weeks.

The shoot itself was conventional; I was disappointed. This was a young woman who wanted to be gazed upon like a porcelain figurine. In theory, it should have appeased the critics who demanded we show "pretty" girls in conventional portrait settings. But they never wrote us with their approval. We never got a postcard that said, "Oh thanks, that latest pictorial was just what I was looking for. You've redeemed yourselves. Now I believe in your sincerity."

Too late, I realized the women who "hated" us were fixated on images that offended them. They played this slideshow of atrocities over and over in their minds until you had to ask: What is your obsession? They beat off to our pictures in private and bullied us in public. It was like Dr. Seuss's Sneetches ... we weren't allowed to their frankfurter parties, and we never would be.

Frances's powder fest didn't end at her debut in print. We never heard from her again, not once, but we got a phone call from some low-voiced butch lawyer who claimed to represent her. She warned us that Frances was running for Miss California in a national beauty pageant and that we had to burn all the copies of the issue we'd just printed so that we did not soil her reputation. Or pay her thousands in reparations. Or both.

What happened? That kind of thing set me in panic. "You lied to us? You're in a straight beauty pageant? Where are your ethics?"

Honey Lee and Debi were more on the same page. Honey Lee wanted to size up the butch lawyer in person - thank G.o.d that didn't happen. Debi asked to see Frances's model release so she could find her address and "go slap her face." She said Frances was a wh.o.r.e who thought she was going to rip off the other wh.o.r.es and turn OOB OOB into an "opportunity." into an "opportunity."

"I'm sorry," I said. "Whatever happened to sisterhood, to d.y.k.es-in-arms?"

A year after Honey's Bulldagger centerfold debuted, she wrote in our summer 1985 issue: We all know a cute tomboy butch at 25 or even 35 is a little silly in the same outfit when she's 40 or 50. So what's an aging baby butch to do? It seems a natural profession to develop into a bulldagger. Right or wrong, I have it in my head that bulldaggers are old d.y.k.es, and I feel like I'm getting there fast. The image has such a fearsome negative meaning I hesitate to cross over the bridge. Like aging people everywhere, bulldaggers dress funny, have transcended their s.e.xual impulses, and tend to be either very sensible or eccentric. Bulldaggers embody my worst fears about aging within gay life. Like being bitter over the losses suffered in broken relations.h.i.+ps. The one fear that has been my constant loyal companion, "When will I ever be a mature adult woman?" A blatant gay ident.i.ty has always been considered childish. It's not the position I had hoped to find myself in. So preliminary investigations are under way. Who shall I be for my 40s? Bulldaggers embody my worst fears about aging within gay life. Like being bitter over the losses suffered in broken relations.h.i.+ps. The one fear that has been my constant loyal companion, "When will I ever be a mature adult woman?" A blatant gay ident.i.ty has always been considered childish. It's not the position I had hoped to find myself in. So preliminary investigations are under way. Who shall I be for my 40s? Those who see my picture first and meet me later say, "You don't look so tough in real life." Some sound disappointed. Those who see my picture first and meet me later say, "You don't look so tough in real life." Some sound disappointed. It's true I don't look so tough in real life. Maybe that makes me a fake bulldagger. Because if I really believe in it, I would pay the price no matter what the cost. It's true I don't look so tough in real life. Maybe that makes me a fake bulldagger. Because if I really believe in it, I would pay the price no matter what the cost.

I am still surprised Honey Lee doubted herself. If she, and every woman at OOB OOB, didn't pay the price of a very adult confrontation with the infantilists, the hypocrites, and the chauvinists - no one did. She had a vision, and like the best of OOB OOB, that vision changed the female picture forever.

Les Belles Dames Sans Merci

Debi handled money pressures differently than I did. I always wanted to toss in the towel, give up, throw myself at the mercy of the public.

If we could have hired an ordinary press to print OOB OOB, it would have cost us $5,000 in 1980. But because we were women, printing s.e.x, there was only one printer who would "take the risk" - they produced gay men's s.e.x magazines, too - and they charged $1 apiece for a forty-eight-page black-and-white magazine. That's before you even got them bundled up and loaded onto trucks. I would call printers, looking for a reasonable quote, and urge them to look at the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe in the New York Times ... to no avail. On Our Backs On Our Backs's taste in photos was more "avant-garde feminist art show" than "Times Square backroom" - (though hopefully we found the perfect synthesis) - but we were treated like pariahs of obscenity.

Joani Blank, my old boss at Good Vibrations, had warned me this would happen. She would put together serious s.e.x education books - like Jack Morin's a.n.a.l Pleasure & Health a.n.a.l Pleasure & Health - with no photos: the book tat could be used by med school students. Then she would be stopped in her tracks because she couldn't find a bindery to glue them together. "Some Christian at the bindery has objected to a.n.a.l s.e.x." - with no photos: the book tat could be used by med school students. Then she would be stopped in her tracks because she couldn't find a bindery to glue them together. "Some Christian at the bindery has objected to a.n.a.l s.e.x."

We were too obscene to glue together. All of us, the women in erotica and in s.e.x education, ended up paying what amounted to enormous bribes to be printed at all. And the printers' risk? Zero. The U.S. Attorney General's Office, to this very day, has the same att.i.tude toward women's s.e.xual potential as those held by the Victorians. They really don't believe lesbians have s.e.x.

My FBI file - available upon request thanks to the Freedom of Information Act! - is entirely concerned with my labor and anti-racism organizing - what the feds considered "the big boys." They weren't going to press charges against a publisher involved in something as ephemeral as "feminist p.o.r.nography" - they couldn't even imagine it.

But the "boys-only" blockade never ended.

We couldn't open up a business bank account or get a credit card to process customer orders because we were considered "a risky business." We couldn't get fire insurance - why? Do lesbian p.o.r.nographers burn down their cubbyholes often? Everywhere we went, men who bought wh.o.r.es every day turned us down because of "the nature of [our] business."

Debi was p.i.s.sed, too, but she considered these complications a "tax" for being in business at all - a potentially lucrative business. I never saw the lucre; rather, I feared being marched out of the office at gunpoint because we hadn't paid our rent in three months.

Debi liked to say, "What would Steve Jobs do?" Steve Jobs was her number one favorite man in the whole world. She had me fooled for a year that she knew him personally; she quoted him so extensively that I thought they had met in the Copenhagen Room at the O'Farrell Theater for a lap dance.

"We're not going to pay for typesetting anymore," Deb announced one day. "It's too expensive, and it's irrelevant. Steve Jobs has a computer for us that's going to change all that; we'll do it right here in the front room." She said this as she pointed at their living room, which had been transformed into our paste-up and layout den.

A computer? I imagined Hal in s.p.a.ce Odyssey. Impossible! I couldn't man a rocket; I knew only how to write, edit, wax down copy, use a proportion wheel.

Debi came home with an enormous beautiful white box that looked like it belonged on a Milan runway. In it was the 1984 Macintosh desktop computer and a keyboard.

I started sniveling. "I can't do it. You don't understand ... I barely pa.s.sed ninth-grade algebra."

She took a ca.s.sette tape out of the package and put it in her boom box. "Don't be ridiculous."

Flute music started up on the tape as if we were about to attend a New Age seminar. I felt as though someone had placed either an egg or a bomb over my head, but I couldn't tell which.

A woman's voice came over the speaker. She sounded beatific. "Take the monitor out of the box," she said. She patiently explained how to insert the plug on both ends. Debi rolled her eyes.

The disembodied Apple G.o.ddess said, "Press the Power b.u.t.ton on." It was like a priest declaring, "Body of Christ." A heavenly tone came out of the computer, as if something was being born. The screen flickered, and a smiling little "box face" appeared on screen. It twinkled at me. It said, "I don't care if you didn't understand ninth-grade algebra."

I blew my nose in my wet Kleenex one last time, and Debi said, "So how fast can you type?"

Debi wanted everything Steve Jobs had - like investors. Giant loans. People clamoring at our innovation. I felt she was ignoring political reality. "People don't think Steve Jobs is a pervert," I said. "No one's trying to take him away in leg irons for frightening the horses."

"He is frightening the horses," Debi said, cupping her face in her palm like she and Steve had just spent all last night in pillow talk. She was going to be Doris Day to his Rock Hudson.

On Our Backs was embraced, at first, by San Francisco's commie and anarchist bookstores. They loved us. That had to be good for about a hundred copies in sales. We were a big hit on the emerging Internet, too, circa "800-baud" modems. There was no World Wide Web. We picked up devoted Star Trek fans on Usenet. was embraced, at first, by San Francisco's commie and anarchist bookstores. They loved us. That had to be good for about a hundred copies in sales. We were a big hit on the emerging Internet, too, circa "800-baud" modems. There was no World Wide Web. We picked up devoted Star Trek fans on Usenet.

Finally, the gay men's bookstores opened their arms to us - they loved us, too. That meant a few thousand dollars - a glimmer of hope.

In every major city there were large women's bookstores - the heart of feminist publis.h.i.+ng - but each one took a different position on us. Mostly "against." Some, like the Toronto Women's Bookstore or A Room of One's Own in Madison, Wisconsin, issued press releases in which they accused us of being virulent racists and anti-Semites, of practicing female genocide, of endorsing white slavery, of being pimps masquerading as women. When I spoke on the topic of female o.r.g.a.s.m in western Ma.s.sachusetts, I got bomb threats at two different campuses.

There was one rumor that "Susie Bright" and s.e.x theorist "Pat Califia" were one and the same, and that this individual was not actually a woman at all but a pimp hired by an ent.i.ty composed of the Mitch.e.l.l Brothers and a j.a.panese p.o.r.n syndicate, which was selling women as s.e.x slaves overseas. Yeah, we got Letters to the Editor like that.

This swell of protest against "lesbian p.o.r.nographers" had two main charismatic leaders, both of whom were loath to mention our names in public. But we said theirs all the time: Catherine MacKinnon, a legal scholar, and Andrea Dworkin, a poet and writer.

I was fascinated by Dworkin because she was truly radical, a poet who took her manifesto into philosophical deep water. She wasn't content just to whine about p.o.r.n or "traitors" like On Our Backs On Our Backs. No, she questioned the very nature of p.e.n.i.s-v.a.g.i.n.a intercourse itself. It didn't make much physiological or psychological sense - her impression of intercourse was biblical rather than scientific. But she had ... flair. Like arguing with Freud but being happy he took you for a ride. When I read her novel Fire and Ice Fire and Ice I thought, "Look at this: She's re-created de Sade's I thought, "Look at this: She's re-created de Sade's Juliette Juliette." She was de Sade's most brilliant student. She could write s.a.d.i.s.tic s.e.x scenes and vicious critiques of the bourgeoisie like few of her peers. If I could have gotten Dworkin to sheath her sword, I would've loved to sit down for a conversation. Unfortunately, she didn't have time for most women's minds - not mine, not anyone's. She was a patriarchal opponent who preferred the company of the most cerebral male scholars.

MacKinnon, on the other hand was a square, a non-original. She had sterling judicial provenance from her family; her father was a judge and former congressman.

The same year I was editing my first issue of OOB OOB, MacKinnon and Dworkin went to work for the Minneapolis city government to draft an antip.o.r.nography civil rights ordinance that deemed "p.o.r.nography" to be a civil rights violation against women. It allowed women who claimed "harm from p.o.r.nography" to sue the producers and distributors for damages. It specified that "p.o.r.nography" and "harm" was whatever you said it was. After all, we all know it when we see it, don't we? They pursued the same strategy in Indianapolis. Most influential of all, Andrea and Catherine's activism completely revamped the Canadian Customs code for what kind of literature could enter the country.

Let me give you an example of how that worked out in practice: I would submit a story for a feminist erotic publication ... about two lovers who have a conflict but then make up and live happily ever after.

Snore? Not to the Canadian Customs Department! Our publication would be stopped and seized at the border because no woman can have an argument in an erotic publication - that is "violence against women." No one could have a.n.a.l s.e.x because that is "violence against women." No woman could m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e with a s.e.x toy because that is "violence against women."

Of course, this was enforced against only small presses. If I wrote or edited a story with the same elements for a major New York publisher, it sailed across the border.

Catherine and Andrea were not naive about the consequences imposed on lesbian, queer, and feminist presses. Their slippery slope was greasier than a leather-boy bathhouse. Both women's efforts in Minnesota and Indiana attracted the support of Christian conservatives, who joined them in their efforts to drive the legislation through. They didn't always win in the courts - but the link between Bible thumpers and p.o.r.n bashers was made perfect.

As traditional puritans like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Phyllis Schlafly adopted "feminist" rhetoric about "the degradation of women," any thought of eviscerating the patriarchy blew away like so much dust. Whatever MacKinnon's plans were for women's liberation, she ended up erecting a chast.i.ty belt around the First Amendment.

Of course, I took it personally. How could these leaders and their shock troops think they had more in common with crooked televangelists than they did with me, someone who drew pictures of c.l.i.ts on walls? I started to feel like the "crooked" part was what they had in common. Either that, or grudges so old we couldn't fathom their origin.

In 1997, I got an invitation to speak in Madison, Wisconsin, with a slide show of lesbian photography from On Our Backs On Our Backs. It was work featured in Nothing But the Girl, a book on which Jill Posener and I had collaborated.

Curiously, our picture show was sponsored by A Room of One's Own, one of the bookshops that had declared a jihad against OOB OOB when we debuted in 1984. When I got to meet the bookstore staff, I was curious about them - and they were so happy to see me. Hugs and kisses all around. when we debuted in 1984. When I got to meet the bookstore staff, I was curious about them - and they were so happy to see me. Hugs and kisses all around.

"I don't get it," I said to them. "I don't mean to be rude, but you never carried On Our Backs On Our Backs before; you led the protest against us. It was like Andrea Dworkin's marching orders. Who died?" I was trying to keep it light. before; you led the protest against us. It was like Andrea Dworkin's marching orders. Who died?" I was trying to keep it light.

The five women who'd greeted me looked down at the floor, guilty. My host adjusted her paper-clip necklace and tried to keep her voice steady. "Um, one of our founders died, actually. She'd been fighting cancer for a long time, and ..."

That's what it was like.

Our dreamed-of investors - the feminist foremothers, with whom we thought we'd be best friends - had made up their minds they were going to die before they let us in the door.

And Main Street America? Well, we were just wh.o.r.es to them; they didn't talk to us during business hours. It didn't matter what the Const.i.tution said, how the Miller test determined non-obscene speech, what Henry Miller or D. H. Lawrence had accomplished in the courts. We didn't have lawyers and civil rights leaders pressing our case. Most of our audience, no matter how sympathetic, was made up of men and women who didn't admit their s.e.xual preferences in public. They only dreamed of being out of the closet. They weren't going to make a phone call.

One day, while we were laying out our second issue, Nan was on the office phone with Barbara Grier from Naiad Press. Grier published hundreds of lesbian romances - sapphic Harlequins - and made a handsome living selling to an audience the rest of the world didn't even know existed. Their top t.i.tle was about lesbian nuns.

Barbara didn't mince words. "I don't have a problem with you," she said. "We've known Honey Lee for years." Translation: "We are old-gay butch/femme - we could give a s.h.i.+t about the feminist s.e.x wars."

"But," Barbara continued, "everyone we know thinks y'all should be a.s.sa.s.sinated."

And whom did she know? Their little sisters included all the feminist bookstore owners, the "wimmin's" music-festival producers, the Tarot card printers, the separatist land communes, the moneymakers and key-holders of the lesbian womb-acracy. They were the economic and political capital of lesbian feminism. They'd made a dollar and set a tone.

Nan's eyes flitted over our d.i.l.d.os, latex lingerie, and lube still strewn across the floor from last night's photo shoot: "We don't fit in anymore."

We knew the feminist world; we created it. How could we be the enemy? How could there be a split?

Barbara's description of "a.s.sa.s.sinators" wasn't rhetorical; our adversaries never gave us a moment's peace. We got hate mail every day, largely unsigned. The anonymous furies reminded me of the students in Muriel Spark's novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the ones who'd follow their charismatic guru anywhere, even if it meant over a cliff. In Spark's story, a schoolteacher named Miss Brodie whips her little girls into going to fight for Mussolini, which is little more than an exercise in her narcissism. Tragedy and scandal result.

In our case, everything was present except for the swastikas and a railroad wreck. The anonymous anti-p.o.r.n warriors put everything they had on the line to stop us. While the "grown-ups" at Dworkin-MacKinnon headquarters barely acknowledged us by name, their acolytes, armed with knives, baseball bats, legal threats, and fake buckets of blood came at us in bars, on the street, and at literary conferences. They talked to one another in code. On Our Backs On Our Backs supporters were considered the gender equivalent of "race traitors." supporters were considered the gender equivalent of "race traitors."

The most eloquent among the feminist anticensors.h.i.+p crowd - Ellen Willis, Pat Califia, Gayle Rubin, Nan Hunter, Lisa Duggan, Dorothy Allison, Carole Vance - made the case for s.e.xual expression and women's demand to articulate their desire. It was lofty, it was deep - it changed the social sciences and humanities in academia forever. The 1992 book Caught Looking: Feminism, p.o.r.nography & Censors.h.i.+p was so eloquent and rational it would have made Rousseau swoon. But Rousseau was not active in most Women's Studies Departments.