 This particular portion of the program is probably more aligned with the summer of love as we're going to be looking at how the counterculture has affected the gender revolution over the last 50 years and I have to tell you when I was doing my own research I read a book called the Daughters of Aquarius which really opened my eyes to What the counterculture did for us with regard to our gender stereotypes I was surprised pleasantly surprised because I've always been a hippie wannabe anyway and This just kind of reaffirmed that for me and in reading that book. I felt I felt that yeah We really owe so much to people who they're determined to put their values in into action and and now it's mainstream counterculture values, so Gretchen's Lemke Santangelo is a professor at St. Mary's College and It is her book Daughters of Aquarius that I read and she's always been very generous with me Answering all my questions while I was writing my thesis etc And now she's here this evening to moderate this portion of the event. So please help me welcome Gretchen, Lemke, Santangelo Thank you, and I was asked to provide a little bit of historical context before we start our panel conversation and I don't like to read things, but I'm going to read this just to make it go more quickly So we can have more time for the actual panel discussion So prior to the radical feminist revolution of the 1960s thousands of young people Rejected their parents version of the American dream and saw Really without any role models or clearly mapped alternatives to live in a way that was cooperative Non-materialistic emotionally and physically expressive and respectful of nature Above all they prioritized the individual quest for creative fulfillment spiritual transcendence and intimate community Young women though had additional gender related reasons for joining this utopian project Escape from the nuclear family based Domesticity that had circumscribed the lives of their mothers and the so-called shit jobs that offered less pay autonomy and creative fulfillment than those available to men Now the alternative culture that they created did indeed provide women with unprecedented physical creative and spiritual freedom The kind of unfettered no holds barred freedom Traditionally reserved for men Within its spaces women pushed back against the sexual double standard and develop more positive relationships with their bodies and their sexuality in Search of enlightenment they pursued a dizzying array of spiritual alternatives experimented with consciousness altering Substances and traveled often unaccompanied across country and to far-flung regions of the globe In their search for right livelihoods, they channeled their creativity into new directions Experimental theater psychedelic music crafts production graphic arts Clothing design and into building alternative institutions Including free schools food and clothing distribution programs and clinics food co-ops Runaway shelters arts and crafts cooperatives recycling programs and alternative childbirth centers and They embraced communal living Now within communal households the gender division of labor was strikingly conventional With women providing a disproportionate share of the domestic labor needed to sustain their Alternative families or what they often called tribes However, I must say that women's actual tasks the non privatized setting in which they were performed and the sense of larger purpose That informed their work made it all appear rather novel challenging and exhilarating Many particularly those on rural communes in very rustic environments Mastered a whole new repertoire of skills such as organic farming Composting animal husbandry canning brewing cheese making quilting midwifery and holistic healing and The rigors of communal life, especially rural community life often demanded a high degree of Flexibility when it came to gender roles. So as one woman noted I can mix cement blow dynamite bank of fire use a chainsaw Split wood ride bear back hunt mushrooms start fires frame roofs cure bacon and punch cows Now the counterculture wasn't however a gender paradise Communal living did offer richer interpersonal rewards, but coupled with liberal attitudes towards sexuality It also generated tension and conflict within Relationships to the extent that even the most committed of couples had difficulty holding it together and Some men added fuel to this emotional stew by using the rhetoric of sexual liberation to avoid commitment Push for open relationships and pressure women into having sex and when women refused to comply They risked being labeled as hung up or repressed and at the same time the counterculture accommodated an Unrestrained masculinity imitative of the more macho beats bikers racialized bad cats and Western outlaws and The bravado hyper individualism Irresponsibility and aggression that this construct sanctioned undermine communal stability and trivialized women's contributions and Women particularly in male dominated arenas of and I'm looking over at Denise Male dominated arenas of music broadcasting recording Underground comics the underground press were subject to high levels of misogyny and Predictably this led to a feminist uprising by the early 1970s women were kicking out the cowboys and Claiming complete ownership of communal experiments at the very least. They were demanding greater respect within their own families and communities Still others used their newfound power to claim leadership positions in new age peace anti-nuke and environmental movements Basically extending the counter cultural agenda well beyond the 1960s and in the process they left us with the usable past Renewable energy alternatives voluntary simplicity green building practices organic gardening composting community-supported agriculture farmers markets by a regionalism eco-feminism and preventative and holistic medicine as well as earth-reverent spirituality all have their roots in the counterculture and All hold out hope for a more sustainable future And hopefully we'll get into all of this in more detail in our panel discussion So Denise Kaufman a veteran of the free speech movement former member of the Mary pranksters and Co-organizer of the trips festival went on to make music with the ace of cups and all girls Psychedelic rock band that expressed her generation's utopian vision She like so many others helped move counterculture value values and practices into the mainstream She established a free school She served in local government as her first her community's first woman county council person Teaching yoga and continuing to perform as a musician Alexandra Hart Renowned fiber artist and chronicler of countercultural folk art was an early pioneer of Bay Area experimental theater or happenings a Co-organizer of the trips festival and a co-founder of the Morning Star Ranch commune Which I believe was one of California's first open-door communes She too has remained faithful to countercultural values through her ongoing engagement with the arts and Most recently in her work with our communities elders Roland Jacopetti Alexandra's former partner in marriage and in producing happenings organizing the trips festival and Founding the Morning Star Ranch was also a much-beloved radio personality at Kampi X and K-san And I'm going to quote him here Having worked through quote oppressively masculine behavior patterns unquote He has plenty of good advice for quote men young and old unquote who want to be part of the gender revolution So say that Thank you Okay, so the first question has to do with growing up in the post war period and Whether you felt constrained and confined by a conventional gender roles and expectations So do you want to start Denise sure um I grew up in San Francisco and I Definitely felt constrained and confined by the gender expectations. I think Girls like me were kind of labeled tomboy's Because I wanted to do what I wanted to do. Luckily my parents were pretty great. They supported me, but the Larger culture didn't so the classes I wanted to take in Junior high school were woodshop and metal shop, but we girls weren't allowed to take that I wanted to play sports with You know, they were they were like girl sports and boy sports and girl sports had all these very restrictive rules Like girls basketball you had to dribble three times and then shoot you couldn't pass it you couldn't run down the court I mean, there were all these stupid rules and so I Revealed against all of those and played basketball after school with the boys and Rode horses and took the bus down to It's a Golden Gate Park with my bow and arrow and shot Archery down at like in the avenues. There was an archery Place there you could shoot and I took my fishing pole down to aquatic part and fished and I just kind of did what what I wanted to do in the context of the city and And those are just early days, you know, I just felt like These rules are stupid and I'm not going to listen and but you know when you were talking about the communes I think when some of the roles happen kind of Continued the old roles continued in the communes It's because girls weren't allowed to take metal shop and wood shop We could have been a lot more help in the communes if we had more carpenter skills, but we didn't we weren't allowed to get them So unless you had a dad or a mom that could taught you, you know, so it was definitely a time of shift Yeah well unlike my Friends on both sides who grew up in San Francisco. I grew up in southern Idaho. This is Mormon country folks. I Come from a Mormon family That is to say my grandparents were pulling us on both sides And my parents rebelled So my parents raised me in their own pretty small what they could they considered themselves Bohemians And so they were actually counter-culturists and I was I Benefited greatly from having that At home because when I went into school it was very different and it was religious prejudice there so I was Always looking for a way a place to fit in I didn't think I'd find a man because Where I was they were all Mormons, and it wasn't something that I could do you know fit into But fortunately I found my way to San Francisco I had a friend who had been traveling and and I met him in Salt Lake City at the time and He said you belong in North Beach So at 19 years old with a baby in arms and having left one fellow behind I arrived in North Beach and shortly after met Rowland who was been at that time and It I found we kind of settled into a An artist's thing, so He was an actor looking at little theater and friends in the meme troop You know where of course we did eventually meet Bill Graham and the Trips festival and all of that history and I was more interested in the arts and I had Grandmothers who were very fine needle women and so fiber art was kind of a natural thing for me to just evolve develop develop I mean on my own and Because an artist's scene is pretty loose with the Cultural elements we were I was able to find that I fit in better there than I ever had before and So I never joined the counterculture. I felt like the counterculture joined me So I guess I guess the background My father My father did me a favor because he was such an oppressive husband That there was no way I ever wanted to grow up to be like him in that respect There were things I liked about my father. He was sort of a classic San Francisco first-generation American his parents were from Italy My mother however was very much like Alexandra She was from from Utah and Part of her family was warm and but not all of it but I grew up not wanting to be the kind of Oppressive husband that my father was so I went off to school and I I went to St. Mississippi ball school in San Francisco for eight years and St. Ignatius high school run by the Jesuits for four years I went to school with Jerry Brown who was two years behind me and various other San Francisco luminaries By the time I got out of 12 years of Catholic school, I didn't want to see another Catholic Church ever I hated it all and But I had many friends that were Italian kids from North Beach and I spent a lot of time in North Beach and we decided oh Come on. Let's let's go to midnight mass on Sunday. Let's go to midnight mass on Christmas Eve and and We should really do it and we went to midnight mass and listen to a sermon about how People weren't giving enough money to the parish That was it I was absolutely it As soon as I got out of high school I Was just waiting to be able to do theater and so I did theater of various kinds and did the truth festival and things like that and almost by accident Got into radio into KSAN the great San Francisco radio station. That was my first radio job unbelievable enough and One of the things that I remember from radio Wasn't a case and it was at a Sonoma County radio station We had a client who was a Japanese it was a Japanese restaurant in Santa Rosa He didn't speak much English But he liked he seemed to like everything that I did and so I tried pushing the envelope as much as I possibly could so I I Evolved a spot at Radio ad In which a couple was going to this Japanese restaurant But the roles are reversed The man was sort of shy and awkward and Said things like I don't know very much about wine. Why don't you order for me? and I had the woman who was playing the traditional man's part The the the man said what you better you better order that for me too I don't know much about things like that and the woman said well. I'm a great teacher This is this is kind of a lead-in to the new question or the second question some of which Some of you've already Touched on and that is let me just one more line of that The thing that I remember most about making that spot was the guy that I worked with was recording it and He's he was saying to the woman. No, no, no be more of an asshole That's my back So I was interested in hearing whether the Counterculture Gave you the freedom to experiment with and carve out new gender roles and identities You know in other words, how did it extend the realm of possibilities for you and for other young men and women Who are part of that? You know that's sure The counterculture for me had more to do with the freedom of all sorts Everywhere, there was someone who or some class of people who were being oppressed that was where I wanted to see something change and movement and so It seems like the counterculture itself in case but in different places like the The black community as the hidden figure women earlier were talking about it was The eventually the gay community and as that's been sliding into gender fluidity in these days, but Women's rights and we started talking about women started talking about wait a minute, you know, there's we're not We're not being treated equally so any place where there wasn't a equanimity between and among people was where It felt like the attention needed to go So well and in my own field of artistry Yes, I used Fiber arts, but I was part of that Movement that made That expanded the definition of fine art and made things like Things that were sewn with a needle be actually an art which is now kind of established But for a long time it was only craft and only seen that way and not If you couldn't charge the same kinds of prices the canvas Painters who painted on canvas could and so That that's a lot of where my energy has gone so How did the counterculture like give the space for this kind of exploration and freedom? That would be a way to come to say what what you're asking Gretchen. Yeah, or did it? Did it give you the freedom to experiment? I mean, I think I think it new identities totally did because first of all There was a sense of community So it's always kind of some power in numbers and so when you know from that place of feeling maybe alone and in The way you were describing and certainly the way I was when you know just starting to meet other people who also were breaking out of those Or not subscribing to the assigned roles that it was really powerful to find other people That were also kind of playing in these new fields I Think I guess for me psychedelics has it had a big You know role in that I'm so glad you brought that up. Oh good because yeah, I was just thinking this is I Just I wanted to ask but didn't know whether we'd have time did psychedelics like really break up that kind of gender binary Like that like any really go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I think The psychedelic experience Dissolves for at least for me and I think for a lot of other people, you know all the notions of reality that we had been given and And thought we were supposed to subscribe to I mean when we actually feel that we are one vibrating flowing energy field together and that all of these apparent differences are just kind of like colors of a rainbow But they don't You know, they don't have all the baggage You know that we are one entity one energy that when you feel that in your well in your own molecules then What there is to do is to honor that and to work toward an expression of that in the world So in your art in you know your music in your poetry and whatever you're up to that it serves that Fundamental knowing that we're all in this Together and we're if we want to work toward a world that reflects that that's all there is to do That's all there is to do however we can do it and then apply whatever gifts or talents we have Towards serving that Yeah, I'd like to add to that that the that psychedelics made it very clear how to separate that cultural download and Push that out and find out what's real and what's coming from What who you are what What's what's true and meaningful and it just it was really easy to just kick out that that The kind of paint of the that painting over the truth that they A Cultural download could do now that there's that there are aspects of the cultural download that have been important But it's you know, you can separate it Roland did Sorry, I did the counterculture provide men with the opportunity to Kind of deconstruct masculinity Yes, a lot of men didn't do that and Agree with with what they were saying about the importance of the drug experience Remember this is a culture that that Determinately called women chicks and I even remember feeling a kind of like a Mosquito stinging me when I when I heard that But it was very hard to maintain that My chick attitude when you and that chick are both extremely shown on a psychedelic drug Seeing each other in an entirely different light so I'm very glad that that was part of it Oh things would have been so different had we not had psychedelics. Yeah, I mean pot went a long way, but acid That went the rest So so Roland already touched on this but were there aspects of the counterculture that were sexist misogynistic and homophobic I know you can speak to that Denise well, I think because these these were like Endemic cultural attitudes and you don't just take an Acetrip or something like that they come up, you know, there's that game bop it You know and you kind of hit it there and it comes up there, you know And it's you know You get into yoga, but then the guru and yoga is trying to like get get it on with all the young women Or you know, whatever it is, you know, it's like you think you're in a new form, but then the old patterns emerge and it takes a while for those patterns to really be Diminished and cleansed out of the culture and I think that's you know, our job is to keep Recognizing it and it's like the panel that was before us, you know, what what Judy and to Rita We're talking about, you know, I mean, I mean there are these patterns that that all of us Carry that we just need to on going we bring our awareness to and be trying to You know take a look and and then dismantle or deconstruct, you know So yeah, do you and kind of an allied question and and then you can respond everyone else can respond to both Do you remember a moment like a feminist awakening? Or was it a series of events that led you to conclude that I think it was a series for me I don't know that was real me and really a continued on it continues on but Yeah, it was Because there were things that I would catch myself having accepted and then I'd wake up and go You know long after I was out of the ace of cups. I was living in Kauai I was the first woman EMT on Kauai and I you know I got told I couldn't practice on Kauai because some of the firemen's wives didn't want me to be in the same room Overnight in case we got a call with them and it wasn't like a personal thing wasn't like me personally They didn't want their husbands to be on duty with the woman overnight And so I got I was the one who had to like go to a different island to work So it was like afterwards the woman after me then and there was no woman on the on the force for a while a few years later a woman Took over I mean big took took that job and she sued the company and won You know, but and then I was like what why did I take it? You know, I wasn't I what what was I thinking? You know that I didn't just say no not gonna do that But so I think for me it's been an ongoing Awakening and But I think as as far as in music with the ace of cups um There were times where We ran into just a wall of Like no like no one could relate certain people couldn't just relate to us as women musicians Can I say one more quick thing? Oh, yeah, so Just so just how this plays out Just recently I since our last panel I did a long interview with BBC they were doing a two-part series on the summer of love So they sent a whole film crew from England and I did like a four hour interview with them And they were asking questions was all men they were asking these questions You know all of what was it like to be a woman and did you feel you know all of this thing? When the thing came out when the TV show came out on the you know the when you first come on the screen There's like an identifying Label or name Right, so I was I think the only woman on this interviewed in this first hour All the men that were in bands were identified as musician. I Was identified as singer I wrote to them I said you know for somebody that this whole this was your whole subject and You blew it right that guy is a bass player and singer in his band I'm a bass player and singer in my band, but he's the musician and I'm the singer, right? Denise tell the story also of your recording Contract that you didn't get one one. Well, I think we just didn't I think We didn't get signed as a band in those days partly because the record companies were coming they were all from LA maybe a couple from New York but mostly LA and They were the music business at that time They were looking for who was going to be the American Beatles or who was gonna be you know the the answer to what was happening in England and So the Jefferson airplane got signed a lot of the bands that we played with got signed And I think one of the reasons we didn't is those guys especially from you know the LA guys They just looked at us. They couldn't figure us out at all. We were five hippie women. We all sang lead Our genres of music were wide. We didn't just have one sound We did all kinds of things and I think we were just way out of the box and luckily Now all these years later. We got signed by in our our owner of our label just walked in right there Hi, George. So George George from High Moon Records totally recognized the thing that you know about us that was unique and interesting and Other other than George on my move. No one would hear our music, but we've been recording Alec Palau absolutely Alec Palau first Resurrected us with old tapes that he found and he brought the first life project out But then now we're doing a studio project in that that we are so grateful for because I think some of the music that you'll hear if you Hear it We'll speak to these issues in a way that other voices from that time didn't So we're excited to share our music because of that Alexander do you remember sexism and yeah, I remember a couple of moments Mostly it's just has been a slow just evolution for me, but One was at Morningstar Ranch When I was the macrobiotic cook or the only cook and if I wanted to have a meal with the group or with the family would we had one son with this then he was eight I believe and if I wanted to have a meal then and I might as well do macrobiotics because it was mostly brown rice and Then I cooked and no one else ever cooked and I don't know that anyone else ever did dishes either and Roland was reminding me on the way when we drove down today that He had asked Well, do you think we're going to want to stay here and I was thinking well, you know, it seems like all of the The people who are coming and this was really early days and it is true that this was the first open commune in California probably period That Most of the people who were coming seemed like they'd never had to clean up the room and They certainly weren't going to start now In fact, one of the things that happened at Morningstar This was after we left There were people who were taking down one end of the house and feeding it into the fireplace So When my answer to Roland to that point was well, I don't think I want to be house mother forever So that was one moment another moment was actually It didn't come home to me at the time, but it was trips festival and at that point Women were in the counterculture. I think everywhere we're tending to Do a lot of the work that their men needed to have done for a particular project or Whatever they were doing a lot of the you know, we're helping and so on and the men always got the credit so This is like red This is like 2008 maybe when the movie the trips festival came out and there was a Premiere of it in Mill Valley and I heard about it from Roland because he'd been asked to be on a panel. I Didn't even get offered a ticket I was a non-person even What 45 years later or whatever that I can't bother to add and subtract there, but I Had to ask Roland to get me a ticket so I could go and It it was just pervasive that the the guys got all the credit and the women did a whole lot of the work That was another of those moments You mentioned the chick thing bothering you Were there other aspects of the counterculture that you felt were misogynistic and sexist? Well, it seemed to me that there were people that that thought that that being in this this Wonderful entity called the counterculture really gave you the right to Be even more unpleasant to women than you had been before that oh well get over it was I think a very Common answer to a woman who objected to some aspects of being ordered around And it was it was a movement that was premised on on freedom So I can imagine that if a woman did Challenge what was going on? Well, you know you're free to leave kind of When we lived in communes with our band and were and with our extended families which we did By that time and that would be like 68 Because kind of I had earlier experiences on the bus with Keesey and that was a lot more free-flowing But by the time our band and our extended family lived together You know we'd have a schedule on the refrigerator of like who was going to the farmer's market and who was washing dishes And like then we pretty much adhere to it and that was very much divided fairly amongst us all and yeah with the last question I have I Don't think I should ask because I we only have ten minutes left And I'd like to leave room for for questions the question I was going to ask is is the work of the gender revolution complete What remains to be done and what advice would you give young people who are struggling to break free of present-day? Gender norms and expectations So if somebody from the audience wants to ask that That was a little bit later With Olivia records and you know like there were a lot of women that really started So I was already outside I'd moved to Hawaii and I was kind of in another little bardo by that time And but there's a really interesting movement now I've been sort of following it on online in Europe to have women's only big festivals Yeah, big giant big festivals and there's a sort of a movement to have that and then some of the men are like writing like that's terrible You know, you know, but it's and other men and then most recently what happened. It was it was all in Europe And I think it was in one of the either Britain or one of the Scandinavian countries There was a a guy on stage big guy tattooed, you know real kind of heavy heavy Not a heavy metal necessarily been but strong big masculine and they were Passing a woman across the You know across hands, you know like the way the way you do in festivals and this guy the lead singer saw some guy Grab a woman's breasts while she was Being passed he stopped the show had the light go on that guy and called him out So strong that everybody like he had to had to leave the concert I mean it was you know, and he was just a total champion and it was a powerful moment totally went viral So I personally as we're looking to what's next. I feel like there are so many men that they Themselves are looking deeply at these issues the guys so many men in my life are so amazing and really I'm championing women and championing in because it's always got to be those who have the power That are the ones that are you can't just take it they have you know like the if you are if you have the power you have to start to share it and Make sure that you bring others up and in and I think people are doing that You know not our president, but others. I think I think we have time for one one more question These guys created free schools Because Molly went to that school Well, I think I couldn't wind something else I wanted to say into that Yeah, I Wanted my kids to be free and one of the things that I Probably same tell more often than not about my child my kids childhood It was our daughter and Natalia tolly. She never goes by her full name tolly Was four or five and she was really a little thing and she said how come we don't have a regular Mom and a necktie dad She really is a mainstream person it has taken me most of my Growing since then becoming a grandmother To realize that I was trying to make her into my idea of what free is rather than her idea of what free is so there's It's an ongoing thing Just as the counterculture Was exploring different kinds of family different ways of living together Multiple relationships polyamory all of that sort of thing that Continues to be things that even the young people now are exploring. It's that there's not an a New norm has not yet been found that works for Everybody it may not Exist I think one of the things about parenting that I really Tried to embody was really listening to my child and When she was little she would come home from over nights at other people's houses Especially when we lived in kawaii and she she would say you know that person's Parents they don't listen to her You know they don't pay attention to her It's like she felt respected like her opinions were respected and that was something she had from when you know right from small And I think like just as you described, you know given the Tom boy that I was you know when she was about when we were living together Well, you know, I remember one of Tor's birthdays, maybe her 10th birthday and I got her a Punching bag and I got her I just got her let's I get her a couple of other Things that I really would have wanted and she was like I want a pink bed with the pink You know can it be bad and I want a doll and I was like Okay, you know I was I want her to be tough and not take it You know and so you know, it's just just what you said, you know, we have to just keep dancing with their souls and spirits and Not have an agenda other than to nourish that being right. I think our time is up Yes, it is but thank you so much and I'm feeling that spirit. That's wonderful