 I used to chase the boys around to see who I would like, but now I chase the girls around. I'm a dyke. It feels good to say that. For once in your life to say who you are. I have to be secretive, so to speak, because there's a kind of an overwhelming fear about homosexuality that I grew up with who wants to be queer, you know, it's a fate worse than death. I thought that lesbians were kind of seedy women who were dark tights and whose fathers or husbands beat them. Men all men say well, it's because you haven't been with a good man, you know, you haven't let one do it to you. Lesbians are invisible because they're, first of all because they're women. And women are more invisible than men because women do not have the power in this society that men do. Lesbians first aroused attention 2,600 years ago through the poet Safo who lived on the Greek island of Lesbos. Her lyrical writings expressed essential love for women and today women continue to express this love for one another, although their lives and stories have been shrouded by prejudice and a male dominated society so that the majority of lesbians have remained invisible. Today more and more lesbians are stepping out from the background and assuming prominent roles in business and government emerging as a political force to be reckoned with. An estimated 55,000 lesbians live in the San Francisco Bay area plus thousands remain uncounted. Tonight we'll meet five women from this invisible minority. I used to chase the boys around to see who I would like, but now I chase the girls around. I'm on time. Oh, do you know how good it feels to say that? I have been waiting 30 years to say that. Pat Bond, an actress, comedian and writer whose talents have earned her national recognition in film and television. Herman Locke offers unique lesbian humor. At stake number 1,000, I joined the Women's Army Corps. Well, my mother took me down to the recruiting place at the Black Hawk Hotel. She could hardly wait to get rid of me. Who needs a queer kid in Davenport, Iowa in the 40s? No, I was charging up roses on your account to send to someone on. No, no. So I joined and I walked into Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia with my suitcases and my little dress my mother had stuck me in and I heard a voice from one of the barracks windows saying, Good God, Elizabeth, here comes another one. And I walked into the mess hall and there were 350 women sitting around in fatigues with little avner boots with their feet up on the table saying, Hey, I'm right past the salt. I was in heaven. It was the right place. And I met my best friend, Bunny, in the Army. Bunny was about six feet two and she walked like this. But she smoked cigars and she talked really low and she shaved every morning. But Bunny did not know she was a dyke. Pat's performance also includes her not so humorous experiences in the Army. She describes a lesbian witch hunt comparing it to the recent U.S. Navy discharges of alleged lesbians and she gives this advice to other women. It was a terrible time. And I'd like to ask any women in the audience who are considering going into the military, don't. They don't want you. They hate you. They will drag you into the dirt. They will help ruin your life. Any minority group, I think, has an in kind of humor that keeps you going. It's somehow, if you can't beat them, laugh at it. Every minority group I know has this kind of humor going. And I think without my humor, I wouldn't have survived it. The painful things with me that stand out, one of them was with my mother. I'm an only child and I didn't see my mother for 25 years. And that was terrible. It meant that I don't know my mother. She doesn't know me. And now she's 81. It's too late. She never will know me. I can never go home again. And that happened to a lot of gays my age. Now more and more young people are telling their parents so that they can stay close. But that wasn't possible in my hair. And then I worked for California Blue Shield and the boss called me one day and he said, you know, you're so unattractive that when you walk into a room people are appalled by your presence. And he said, there's also something here in your record, in my personnel folder, that you are probably a lesbian and I don't even want to talk about that. And I said, well, why have you got it in there? He wouldn't even let me see it. And I really, that still sticks out in my mind. If I ever see that man again, I should have at the time shown a chair at him. It was just being verbally raped. And because I somehow wanted that job so badly to pay the rent I couldn't say anything. And I've regretted it ever since. And I just hope he's seen a few of the things I've done. Right if you're out there. San Francisco's Valencia Street has taken on a new look. That of a women's community for both straight and gay females. Women stake their claim to this low-rent neighborhood three years ago and now businesses have sprouted along a six-block area between 17th and 23rd streets. A bar disco, bookstore, bath house. The women's building is the nucleus of the community, housing a variety of non-profit organizations and serving as a referral center for all women. Several blocks away is the Artemis Society, the first and only women's cafe in the Bay Area. Owner Sarah Lewenstein is one of the pioneers in this community opening her doors to customers three and a half years ago. The reason that I had started the Artemis was for women having an alternative space to go to rather than just going to the bars. We're a women's community. It doesn't matter whether you're gay or whether you're straight. This is a women's community. And there needs to be alternative spaces where you can feel free enough to come in and not be hassled by men, not to have a glass of wine and not be picked up. And believe me, I've been in that scene a long time and I know it happens. I think women are struggling. There's a long way to go. There always will be as long as women are trying to have business. I see it as a long struggle. Women don't have the money and the backing that men do. There is such a difference. You go to Castro Street and you see all these gay men's places. Every place you go to it's a gay man's bar on a weekend. It's so packed you can't get in. You don't have the same thing. You don't see so many women's bars. Sarah is living with Lindy, her lover of three and a half years. Lindy's a marriage counselor who recently returned to school to get a degree in women's athletics. Sarah and Lindy are content in their relationship and are frustrated by people's prejudices. What's hard for me is to feel that Sarah and I have such a nice relationship. I mean, we both live very busy lives and yet, you know, we spend enough. We have a great amount of intimacy in our relationship, a great deal of support and love. And we fight, of course we fight and we argue, but we get through it. So to feel that I have such a healthy relationship and then to feel that that's not recognized or accepted by so many people that so many people still feel that this is something dirty, that this is something awful. I feel oppressed when I'm in public because I'm a very affectionate person and there's lots of times, you know, and I just want to take Sarah and just put my arm around her or hold hands, walking down the street. And I feel, I don't feel free to do that. The traditional butch femme, masculine feminine roles do not exist for Sarah and Lindy and are becoming less common in most lesbian relationships. Sarah and Lindy share overlapping roles. In the course of the relationship, certain things have happened and, you know, we've evolved roles. Like, we were sort of joking around the other day. Some seems it's, we were up in the snow. For some reason, I have been given the role of getting out and changing the chains. And, you know, I get out and it's freezing cold and I'm putting on these chains and Sarah's with the car going, hi honey! You know, she's all warm and... But on the other hand, you know, up at our cabin, you know, Sarah'll do a lot of the plumbing stuff because I started out doing it and I just didn't like doing it. She just sort of took over doing it. And that's one of the things that I really like. I like that give and take. When I was in relationships with men, I just had a lot of trouble with the roles. Being the mate home for a knot of approval created mixed reactions from Sarah and Lindy's parents. My family loves me. And they'll, they love, I've been gay for about ten years and so to see that I've been with Lindy for three and a half years it's longer than any of them have been with their wives or husbands. They're all divorced. My family doesn't like it at all. It's about the one thing in my life that they have not been able to accept. And I used to think they would accept it and at this point I don't know if they ever will. I'm real close with my family and that's been probably the biggest pain in my life about being gay is their inability to accept me and to accept Sarah. Since family is important to Sarah and Lindy, they plan to co-parent a child by artificial insemination, adoption or having a male friend father the baby. They are concerned about a male role model. It's true that the Middle America or a lot of America is used to the nuclear family and that is how you bring up your children with a mother and a father. And we're seeing now a huge trend away from that. We don't know how this is going to affect the kids. We won't know for at least another generation. We both feel it's important to have men in our child's life if it's a girl or if it's a boy, you know. That is important to us. That's one of the reasons we want our male friends to help us raise the children. We also feel good about the men in our lives. We feel that they are good role models. Whether or not there's a man around the house, Sarah and Lindy intend to provide a loving home for that child. Co-founder of Ms. Magazine, Margaret Sloan, juggles several roles, feminist, author and mother. She realized her lesbianism during her marriage. The man I met who later became my husband was a pretty decent person. I think that he, like so many other men at that time and still now, wanted somebody to not be an equal and was very threatened during the time of my growth and my coming into my own self. You know, I was a typical wife. I mean, he worked. I had the meals waiting for him at home. He was clean. I think that my understanding of my sexuality was just a logical progression after I started feeling good about myself as a woman. My first sexual experience with a woman was in 1968 and she was a nun. And I was not ready for that. I thought it was a special friendship and she was leaving the convent and had been in for many years. I don't think I was ready for that at all. I thought that lesbians were kind of seedy women who were dark tights and whose fathers or husbands beat them. They were miserable people living in the twilight of the world. And I had no idea what lesbians were. I had all the stereotypes that we all have, unfortunately. I think I'd come to the realization before actually having the sexual experience. Things started clicking for me and coming together. And I just knew that changes were going on in me. Margaret's politics have led her across the country with feminist Gloria Steinem. The women's movement and the neglected issues of third world lesbians influenced her coming out. As a black lesbian feminist, I know the importance of seeing that the Equal Rights Amendment is ratified. I guess I almost felt that it was my responsibility to verbalize, to talk about, to come out because of the attitudes that surround lesbianism and the homophobia that exists and people's myths and misconceptions. And a lot of ignorance is just a white woman's thing. When you experience racism and sexism and homophobia, it's very painful. If there was only one, it would be enough for a lifetime. Margaret's life is infused with politics and a 13-year-old daughter, Kathy. An estimated one-third of lesbians are mothers who must often battle the issue of child custody. Margaret has been fortunate in not having to fight the courts and in having an understanding daughter who has known of her sexuality since age three. One of her friends asked her, why a lot? Why is your mother a lesbian? And Kathy responded, why is your mother straight? Kathy doesn't tell all her friends of her mother's lesbianism because some of them may not understand. She decided not to appear on this program because she feared reprisal from her schoolmates. Kathy stresses that her mother doesn't tie her up and lock her in the kitchen cabinet, as some people may think. She says the fact that her mother is a lesbian doesn't imply that she will be gay. I'm raising Kathy many ways in terms of her sexuality. I'm raising her to be open to all possibilities. Straight people assume I'm raising her to... or hoping I'm not raising her to be a dyke and lesbians are hoping I'm raising her to be a dyke, some of them. I'm trying to raise Kathy to feel good about what choices she makes but also to be aware of those choices. I was never aware of them. My sexuality doesn't have anything to do with whether there's food on the table, whether I can put a roof over their heads or whether I can just give them the love that I've always been giving them. I think the most important thing in raising a child is for that child to feel acceptance and love and support. Sally Gearhart punctuates her work as an author and speech professor at San Francisco State University with the same verve she has for her Barbershaw Quartet. I'm gonna make me cry. I'm gonna lay me down. Lazy time. And if she don't come back I think I'm gonna lose my mind. If she ever comes back to stay there's gonna be another brand new day walking with my baby down by the San Francisco Bay. My mother's first response when I told her that I was a lesbian although I think she had known all of her life that was true. I found me at the age of 40 got up the nerve to say to her the word lesbian. Her first response was to say why don't you get an operation. She was suffering under the very same stereotypes or myths that I think most of Middle America suffers about lesbian and gay men lesbian and gay men and that is that one of them is that there might be something physiologically different about being homosexual. There isn't. It's a matter of erotic and intellectual and emotional attachment to persons of the same sex. I did not have any heterosexual sexual relationships until I was 38 and so I had a couple of relationships with some very good men who were good friends of mine as well and found that although I had a lot of friendship feelings for them there was nothing like either the erotic or the intellectual or the emotional feelings that I had felt toward women. It was empty. I don't know when I first began to acknowledge any kind of feelings for other women. I know that all the time that I was growing up I went through the standard business of feeling a great deal of admiration from my women teachers, you know went through a period of time of crying and sexual because that's the thing that you're supposed to do. I had been in a real deep dark closet down in Texas for 20 years and when I came to San Francisco it was possible because of the women's movement and the gay movement that was just starting at that time for me to say out loud that I was a lesbian. I got so excited about being a lesbian that I would even accost people on the street and say to them how do you do? My name is Sally Gerhard and I'm a lesbian. I got my tenure at San Francisco State as an open lesbian and that was a change from my 20 years of being a lesbian hiding in the closet and attempting not to let people know, you know a whole different atmosphere. All right, Maurice. Okay. Lypa, put your head down this end, okay? My being a lesbian has nothing to do with my teaching. I don't make any secret of the fact that I am a lesbian in any of my classes but I certainly don't bring that to the fore in an effort to make an issue of that. That's a misconception that this society I think has put upon women because there's no way that you can breathe properly when you're in a girdle. Sally feels that lesbians have been overshadowed by gay men and falsely portrayed by the same stereotypes when there are major differences between them in culture, lifestyle and politics. I do not as a woman want to be misrepresented as what are the stereotypes of the gay male culture that there's a lot of casual sex which I do not think is true of most lesbians although certainly I'm not speaking for all here there is a lot of hyped up consumerism there is a lot of emphasis on youth and beauty things that women have been trying to escape from for years because we don't want to be defined as young and beautiful, those are fleeting things and we have far more to us than that and to see our gay brothers latching onto that is painful and a higher incidence of venereal disease which in the lesbian community lesbians have the lowest rate of venereal disease in any social group in the United States so that although I am in favor of supporting my gay brothers as they deal with these things I do not want to be associated with those things because they are not my life they are like a heterosexual woman in both the way that I live and in the political battles that I fight then I am like my gay brothers who are really more like straight men in many of those regards I've had a number of painful experiences as a lesbian most of them having to do with being hidden and closeted I grew up a Methodist and converted later on to the Lutheran church I got very much into the religious aspects of things all the time of course hiding the fact that I was a lesbian all the time never realizing how heavy the church's oppression is on women and I see myself now with my eternally looking for that great religious experience that was going to affirm my life and so I had my Augsburg Confessions under one arm and my Bible under the other and there I was on the plains of Texas with my knees eternally flexed for the leap of faith when feminism entered my life I began to sound like a gerital commercial or something but when that entered my life my life changed and I found myself having the kind of religious conversion that I had looked for all of these years in the church and it had never ever been there you're trying to be honest and what you end up doing is living a lie because you don't want to be found out it's bad it's really bad being closeted and I would wish for all the gay people and lesbians who are presently in the closet that they could find the strength somehow in the kind of support to be able to come out and to affirm themselves but if they can't there's nobody that understands better than I do why it is that they can't despite the increasing voice of the lesbian community the majority remain silhouettes in life leading double lives fearful of losing their jobs an empty bank account is more intimidating for women who are still at an economic disadvantage earning only 59 cents to the dollar that men earn an extensive network of closeted professionals has evolved spanning Marin, San Francisco and the East Bay few of these lesbians would consent to an interview but this woman wanted to offer her story it's uncomfortable to be secretive to have one foot in the closet so to speak I have to have two sets of friends those who know and those who don't and the reason I don't tell some of them as far as I'm concerned doesn't say a lot for them so maybe they're not really one of my best friends I think that lesbians are an invisible minority because there's more pressure on men really surrounding sex and not a whole lot of attention has been paid I think to what women think about sex we're involved in other battles in women's rights and those sort of things so I think sometimes gay rights takes a kind of a back seat to that even though it's just as important it's too bad that I had to wait until I was 28 years old to really allow myself to have a sexual relationship with someone I felt in love with and I think that's a lot of wasted time a lot of people have to go through that when did I first realize this about myself well, when did you realize you were straight I think it's the same thing that's what a lot of people don't understand 13 14 puberty it's from the beginning it doesn't go away or change it's just a coincidental difference I remember when I was a teenager listening to music 10 and all the songs are about love and romance and breaking your heart and all that sort of thing I knew those feelings I understood those feelings I identified with the songs it worried me at the time that I felt those things were the wrong sex I think an awful lot of people are still closeted because there's this very contagious fear about it and we're afraid too if I were going to give a message to the straight world I would say please relax and give us a chance to relax because it's homosexuality isn't a disease that's catching it's the fear that's dangerous come by the San Francisco Bay