Parrish, Margaret - interviewed by Rose Norman
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Transcript
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- | This is Rose Norman, | 0:00 |
I'm here with Margaret Parrish | 0:03 | |
in her home in Gainesville, Florida on November 12th, 2012. | 0:06 | |
And we're here, I'm interviewing her | 0:11 | |
for the Southern Lesbian Feminist Herstory Project | 0:13 | |
and she'll be talking | 0:20 | |
about her feminist activism in Gainesville | 0:20 | |
starting off with, the original question was | 0:26 | |
why was Gainesville such a hub | 0:30 | |
and then I want you to get to that feminist mafia. | 0:32 | |
- | Okay. | 0:36 |
I believe what the impact of the civil rights movement had | 0:39 | |
was very important and we were, | 0:44 | |
we were very progressed | 0:49 | |
in the civil rights movement here in Gainesville. | 0:50 | |
Bev Jones, by the way, was one of the founders | 0:55 | |
of Gainesville Women for Equal Rights. | 0:59 | |
At the same time there was a student group for equal rights | 1:02 | |
and they were associated groups, | 1:05 | |
and what was novel about | 1:07 | |
the Gainesville Women for Equal Rights is, | 1:10 | |
that they were not only integrated black and white, | 1:13 | |
but they were also integrated town and gown. | 1:16 | |
And it was a very effective group. | 1:20 | |
And I think out of those movement activities | 1:25 | |
you had to come to yourself sooner or later. | 1:33 | |
And I think that's, you know, | 1:37 | |
that's basically where our jump, | 1:39 | |
we definitely stand on the shoulders | 1:41 | |
of the civil rights movement. | 1:43 | |
(coughing) | 1:48 | |
We had, in Gainesville, we were connected to New York | 1:50 | |
with Carol Geordana and Judith Brown | 1:55 | |
and day to red stockings. | 1:58 | |
(cat meowing) | 2:02 | |
The children's mental health unit, | 2:03 | |
the division of child psychiatry | 2:05 | |
at the University of Shands | 2:07 | |
was a very enlightened group of people. | 2:10 | |
And we were exposed to some of the finest minds | 2:15 | |
in the country, discussion was, | 2:20 | |
acted discussion and lively discussion | 2:25 | |
was had long and often. | 2:28 | |
Judy Levy, who was the child psychologist, | 2:33 | |
Billy Avery, who is a special education teacher | 2:37 | |
and myself, the head of the business office, | 2:39 | |
became known and child psychiatrist the feminist mafia. | 2:43 | |
Because we challenged male notions and patriarchal notions | 2:49 | |
within the context of psychiatry. | 2:57 | |
In their grand rounds, in their seminars | 3:02 | |
both adult and child. | 3:05 | |
And | 3:09 | |
we became interested and our connection | 3:12 | |
to the national front was health, women's health, | 3:15 | |
feminist women's health. | 3:19 | |
Out of that we put in | 3:21 | |
the 12th free standing abortion clinic | 3:24 | |
in the United States outside of New York | 3:28 | |
and the seventh free standing birth center | 3:31 | |
in the Unites States. | 3:35 | |
The one in 1975, the abortion clinic in 1975 | 3:37 | |
and the birth center in 1978. | 3:40 | |
We were connected to the national front | 3:46 | |
because of women's health, | 3:49 | |
we were connected to Carol Downer in California, | 3:51 | |
who had been arrested for practicing medicine | 3:54 | |
without a license. | 3:58 | |
(cat meowing) | 3:59 | |
And she was the mother of self help | 4:01 | |
and teaching women about their bodies | 4:05 | |
And-- | 4:08 | |
- | Spell her name. | |
- | Carol Downer, it's just like it sounds. | 4:11 |
- | Just like a downer. | 4:13 |
- | Yeah, just like a downer. | 4:14 |
Judy and I went to New York | 4:21 | |
to see the abortion clinics up there, | 4:23 | |
not only for our own interest, | 4:28 | |
but to have some place to refer people. | 4:30 | |
I had been a part of the Clergy Consultation Services | 4:34 | |
from 1966 | 4:39 | |
out of New York, who were underground abortion referral. | 4:44 | |
And I was doing pregnancy tests in my office | 4:50 | |
and referring women. | 4:52 | |
And when it was illegal in the state of Florida. | 4:55 | |
(cat meowing) | 5:02 | |
And then Billy became the representative, | 5:04 | |
our representative to the feminist women's health network, | 5:08 | |
which plugged us into the national scene. | 5:14 | |
And we were also, Judy and Billy both were associated | 5:19 | |
with the Boston Women's Health Collective, | 5:25 | |
which also plugged us into the national scene. | 5:27 | |
There wasn't much going on, | 5:33 | |
that we didn't find about immediately | 5:34 | |
and there wasn't much, that happened here, | 5:38 | |
that we didn't have a say so about, | 5:42 | |
I mean, we didn't care who we went to or what we said, | 5:45 | |
if a women was hurt or... | 5:51 | |
(laughing) | 5:53 | |
Yeah, we sort of marched right in, | 5:56 | |
well, they weren't prepared for us, | 5:58 | |
so out of shock they did whatever we said. | 6:00 | |
The doctors took us on because of the abortion clinic | 6:06 | |
and the birth center, but not that hard. | 6:09 | |
I mean, they didn't, you know, they didn't like it, | 6:13 | |
but they didn't really come after us | 6:16 | |
like they went after the clinic in Tallahassee | 6:19 | |
and other places, we didn't have that. | 6:22 | |
And really, when we opened up there was very little, | 6:27 | |
there was very little antiabortion activity, | 6:32 | |
that didn't come until the Moral Majority | 6:35 | |
erupted in the early 70s. | 6:37 | |
And that didn't come really until a few years | 6:43 | |
after it really erupted, we really didn't get it until like, | 6:46 | |
we didn't start really getting a lot of pickets every week | 6:50 | |
until probably the mid 70s, | 6:54 | |
mid to late 70s. | 6:58 | |
So we didn't have any idea, you know, | 7:02 | |
we weren't living with what these people | 7:04 | |
are living with now. | 7:06 | |
But we had a guy, | 7:13 | |
Charlie Mayhan who was the physician, | 7:18 | |
who was head of the maternal and infant care at Shands | 7:21 | |
and then he was later the state of Florida | 7:28 | |
public health director. | 7:31 | |
Charlie went to an international convention | 7:34 | |
in New York city in 1978 | 7:37 | |
and he came back and we wanted, you know, | 7:42 | |
of course to know everything he knew, | 7:44 | |
and he came back and he said, | 7:47 | |
"There's nobody offering the range of services | 7:49 | |
"for women that we are offering here". | 7:52 | |
'Cause we had midwives during home birth, | 7:57 | |
we had the birth center, birth, | 8:00 | |
we had the abortion clinic, we had Well Woman's, | 8:02 | |
we were teaching women about their bodies, | 8:06 | |
we were, I mean, | 8:08 | |
it was unbelievably, | 8:12 | |
it was unbelievably advanced | 8:19 | |
in terms of where we had been 10 years before that. | 8:21 | |
But it looks like to me we were back at it. | 8:27 | |
You know, people are still making medical decisions | 8:32 | |
with less information than they would buy a car with. | 8:35 | |
Which is disappointing. | 8:40 | |
(laughing) | 8:42 | |
- | Yeah, to say the least. | 8:44 |
- | And there was, you know, | 8:47 |
I think the first, | 8:55 | |
I'm trying to remember, | 9:02 | |
but I think the first lesbian health group, | 9:03 | |
that we did was in | 9:08 | |
1976. | 9:12 | |
- | That would've been a CR group associated with the clinic? | 9:19 |
- | No, one of the CR group, it was education, | 9:22 |
it was education, it was medical education | 9:25 | |
and I think that was the first one. | 9:29 | |
A lot happened in 1976, the first incest group, | 9:34 | |
the Southeast Women's Health Center health conference | 9:38 | |
had the first incest group, | 9:45 | |
where people actually talked, | 9:48 | |
woman actually talked about their incest. | 9:49 | |
In 76 we help start the battered women's house, | 10:00 | |
which grew out of the rape crisis | 10:06 | |
and the rape crisis phone line was in our clinic. | 10:10 | |
And then later we did second staging, | 10:23 | |
I did second staging, which was having women | 10:26 | |
be able to live somewhere for a period of two years so, | 10:29 | |
that they could get education on whatever | 10:34 | |
and stay out of the battering situation. | 10:36 | |
So that, you know, it's a long enough period of time, | 10:40 | |
where their children and they themselves were protected so, | 10:43 | |
that they could get education | 10:46 | |
and provide financially for themselves. | 10:47 | |
It was six to eight weeks, you're not providing for yourself | 10:50 | |
and you're not providing for your kids, | 10:54 | |
and you end up going back. | 10:55 | |
- | Is that what you usually-- | 10:59 |
- | Because of financial. | 10:59 |
- | Is six to eight weeks the usual for a shelter? | 11:01 |
- | Mm-hmm, still is, still is. | 11:04 |
We had the first child abuse conference. | 11:14 | |
- | That was in 76? | 11:17 |
- | Mm-hmm. | 11:18 |
And Donna, | 11:21 | |
Donna and Alice from UF NOW | 11:29 | |
were part of the task force, that presented that. | 11:36 | |
And it was interesting, | 11:54 | |
'cause it was University of Florida chapter of NOW, | 11:55 | |
which is campus now, | 11:59 | |
and they got together with the junior league. | 12:04 | |
- | Whoa! | 12:07 |
(laughing) | 12:08 | |
- | With Carol Zagel and the junior league. | 12:11 |
And they presented and there were two other groups | 12:16 | |
and I can't remember who they were. | 12:20 | |
And they presented the first child abuse forum, | 12:24 | |
conference in the state of Florida. | 12:30 | |
We came out, we came out of the university | 12:42 | |
and Judy and Billy were the face of what we were doing | 12:45 | |
and they were educators, | 12:49 | |
so our emphasis heavily became education. | 12:50 | |
And Judy and Billy spoke in different places | 13:00 | |
across the country and Judy-- | 13:02 | |
- | I know-- | 13:07 |
- | Spoke in New York quite a bit. | 13:08 |
- | What were there affiliations? | 13:12 |
- | Hmm? | 13:16 |
- | What were their, were they affiliated with the university, | 13:17 |
were they teaching there or what? | 13:20 | |
- | Yeah, Judy was an assistant professor | 13:21 |
and Billy was an instructor. | 13:23 | |
- | What did Judy teach? | 13:27 |
- | She was a clinical psychologist, | 13:29 |
so she had doctorate students. | 13:32 | |
- | This is Judy Levy? | 13:35 |
- | Levy. | |
- | Okay. | 13:37 |
And Billy was an instructor. | 13:41 | |
- | Yeah. | 13:44 |
- | In the same department. | 13:46 |
- | Mm-hmm. | |
- | Is it psychology or psychiatry? | 13:48 |
- | We were the division of child psychiatry | 13:51 |
and we were in the department of psychiatry, | 13:53 | |
but we were the division of child psychiatry. | 13:55 | |
We were separate. | 13:59 | |
- | Division of child psychiatry. | 14:02 |
- | Yeah, although we were still under them. | 14:03 |
- | Okay. | 14:12 |
So they spoke at conferences around the nation, okay. | 14:15 | |
- | Judy spoke at a matriarchal conference in New York | 14:21 |
in 77, I think, we went up there. | 14:26 | |
It was interesting, because the speakers were interesting, | 14:35 | |
one of them was Gloria Steinem, | 14:40 | |
one of them was whom the Red Stockings loved to hate, | 14:43 | |
and one of them was | 14:48 | |
Midge Costanza, who was the press secretary or something | 14:55 | |
for Clinton, | 15:00 | |
I mean for Carter. | 15:01 | |
- | Secretary for Carter, yeah. | |
- | For Carter, she was another one, we met her. | 15:03 |
Kate Molat, Robin Morgan, | 15:07 | |
the only one, who I really wanted to talk to wasn't there | 15:15 | |
and I'll never get to talk to now, | 15:18 | |
'cause she just died, it was Shulamith Firestone. | 15:19 | |
She wasn't there, but | 15:22 | |
in Off Our Backs this woman wrote an article, | 15:27 | |
that Judy was the only one who had anything to say | 15:30 | |
and what Judy said, of course, was, | 15:33 | |
"Without abortion women can't have equal rights" | 15:36 | |
and that's just the bottom line, | 15:42 | |
and it's still the bottom line. | 15:44 | |
Without the right, | 15:47 | |
you know, people don't remember, | 15:51 | |
that when Roe V. Wade came down | 15:53 | |
we weren't rejoicing, we were furious. | 15:55 | |
- | Yeah. | 16:01 |
- | You know, the very idea, that we were still having | 16:02 |
to go to a goddamn doctor, like some parent. | 16:04 | |
- | Yeah. | 16:13 |
- | We were furious. | |
(scratching) | 16:16 | |
- | So real teaching. | 16:17 |
- | So we were, basically, we were connected in pretty solidly | 16:20 |
so that anything happen anywhere in the country | 16:24 | |
it was gonna happen here. | 16:27 | |
In 74 we organized a boycott at Florida Blue Key, | 16:34 | |
and Florida Blue Key at the time | 16:41 | |
had this big dinner, | 16:45 | |
where all the politics and alumni gathered. | 16:48 | |
And they were basically the stepping stone | 16:52 | |
for political power in the state of Florida. | 16:56 | |
And they had this big, you know, what they called a smoker | 17:01 | |
before the home coming game every year, okay? | 17:05 | |
Muskie was supposed to speak at this event, | 17:09 | |
because he was running for president. | 17:12 | |
Well, | 17:17 | |
this is the way it always happened, the dynamics, | 17:21 | |
Judy came into my office, | 17:26 | |
we had our offices next to each other, | 17:28 | |
Judy comes into my office and she's absolutely livid, | 17:29 | |
just livid, because in her hand was an invitation | 17:33 | |
from Florida Blue Key | 17:38 | |
to have her husband come to Florida Blue Key. | 17:40 | |
I said, "Well, you know, let's call up Muskie's campaign | 17:54 | |
and tell him they can't come". | 17:57 | |
'Cause he had just made this big statement | 18:00 | |
and then we get, oh, so we did, | 18:05 | |
we called up the Muskie campaign in Washington | 18:08 | |
and it was just, you know, it was just the two of us. | 18:12 | |
And pretty soon the Muskie campaign is down here | 18:15 | |
asking us how many of us there are. | 18:21 | |
And we're like. | 18:25 | |
(cringing) | 18:28 | |
It's just us. | 18:29 | |
(laughing) | 18:30 | |
No, really, how many of (laughs), it's just us. | 18:32 | |
Well, | 18:37 | |
then the counterpart to that | 18:41 | |
were the wives were supposed to go, they had Betty Friedan. | 18:43 | |
So we called up Betty Friedan and said, | 18:49 | |
"Look, this is what's happening, | 18:52 | |
"you are keeping the ladies out of the patriarchal | 18:54 | |
"political power base, that's what you're doing, | 18:58 | |
"are you sure you wanna do that? | 19:03 | |
"Or would you like to lead a march into Blue Key". | 19:06 | |
Well, she was already to lead the march into Blue Key. | 19:12 | |
The next thing we did was we | 19:26 | |
put this little item | 19:31 | |
in the University of Florida student newspaper, | 19:33 | |
the Alligator, saying, "If you're unhappy | 19:36 | |
"about Florida Blue Key being solely male | 19:41 | |
"and keeping females and minorities out, | 19:44 | |
"come to this meeting". | 19:48 | |
We got there and there were like a 100 people there. | 19:53 | |
And Judy's like, "Well, what do we do now? | 19:58 | |
(laughing) | 20:01 | |
"Look how many people showed up, oh my God". | 20:03 | |
(laughing) | 20:06 | |
(coughing) | 20:09 | |
What that basically told us was, that it definitely touched | 20:17 | |
a nerve with a lot of women and some men, | 20:20 | |
but a lot of women. | 20:25 | |
We hadn't decided, we got everybody's names and addresses | 20:31 | |
and their phone numbers so we could contact them, | 20:35 | |
because we didn't really know what we were gonna do | 20:38 | |
or how we were gonna do it. | 20:40 | |
(laughing) | 20:44 | |
We get tickets to the savant banquet, | 20:50 | |
where Betty Friedan is gonna be | 20:53 | |
and then they tried to hold us | 20:55 | |
by having Joe Muskie speak after Betty Friedan, | 20:58 | |
which didn't happen. | 21:04 | |
We also forced savant to open the speaker part, | 21:05 | |
they didn't have to open their banquet part, | 21:10 | |
because a lot of students couldn't afford the tickets, | 21:14 | |
but they had to open up the speaker portion, | 21:17 | |
'cause Bettie Friedan was important, | 21:20 | |
we didn't know Joe Muskie was speaking at the time. | 21:23 | |
But Betty Friedan was an important speaker | 21:25 | |
and I'm telling you, all these women filed in | 21:29 | |
to the back of the banquet hall, | 21:32 | |
which was across the street | 21:36 | |
from where they were having Blue Key, | 21:38 | |
which was at that time the gym. | 21:41 | |
So far as we knew when we got up and asked everybody | 21:47 | |
to leave and go with us to break up Florida Blue Key | 21:50 | |
it was the eight of us sitting at our table, | 21:54 | |
six women and my ex husband, and Judy's husband (laughs), | 21:56 | |
and that was it. | 22:00 | |
And the graduate student got up after Betty Friedan stopped | 22:02 | |
and Betty Friedan wasn't gonna go with us, | 22:05 | |
Judy and I had to drag her, we had to drag her out. | 22:07 | |
We made national headlines, it was hysterical. | 22:17 | |
There must've been 200 women there and our two husbands. | 22:21 | |
And we went in and Betty Friedan jumped up | 22:29 | |
and gave the most wonderful in passion speech, | 22:35 | |
grabbed the microphone out of the hand of Malory Horn, | 22:39 | |
who was speaker of the house for the Florida legislator, | 22:44 | |
grabbed the microphone out of her hand, | 22:49 | |
stood up on table, where people were eating in front of, | 22:51 | |
I mean, it was great, she was phenomenal. | 22:57 | |
For all her hard to deal with, she was great. | 23:01 | |
And then we all filed back out. | 23:06 | |
And we tried to get, they had conceded, | 23:11 | |
that women faculty could come and we said, "Yeah, so what". | 23:14 | |
And they had one table and there were six women there, | 23:19 | |
and we were like, "You, guys, need to get up and go with us" | 23:23 | |
and they wouldn't do it. | 23:26 | |
And one of em was one of the women, | 23:29 | |
who takes credit for having broken Blue Key barrier | 23:31 | |
at the university. | 23:36 | |
(laughing) | 23:37 | |
And she wouldn't get up and come out with us. | 23:38 | |
But we were fine with acting out for everybody else, | 23:42 | |
that was just fine. | 23:45 | |
I'm waiting for it to happen again. | 23:47 | |
It may never happen. | 23:52 | |
- | They quit having it | |
or did they? | 23:53 | |
- | No, they opened it up to women | 23:54 |
and minorities the following year. | 23:56 | |
It was almost immediate. | 24:00 | |
That happened like in late October | 24:05 | |
and in the January session | 24:09 | |
they admitted women and minorities. | 24:10 | |
- | You mean there weren't any minorities in it before? | 24:15 |
- | Oh, hell no. | 24:17 |
No. | 24:22 | |
We'd only had, I mean, we'd only had minorities | 24:25 | |
at the university, the first minorities, | 24:28 | |
that came to the university were | 24:31 | |
in my sophomore years and that's 62, 63. | 24:34 | |
And there were only six. | 24:44 | |
- | I guess they were all men. | 24:54 |
- | Two men, four women. | 24:58 |
I mean, it was a huge standing | 25:11 | |
and under O'Connell in the late 70s, | 25:18 | |
wait a minute, mid 70s, that was still mid 70s, | 25:24 | |
mid 70s were really active, | 25:26 | |
'cause we had the Bombing of Cambodia riot | 25:28 | |
and had National Guard marching | 25:34 | |
on the streets of Gainesville, | 25:38 | |
that pissed me off so bad I couldn't stand it. | 25:40 | |
Standing out there, screaming at them, get off my street. | 25:43 | |
It was my street and not yours. | 25:48 | |
(laughing) | 25:50 | |
That happened and we were running blankets and stuff, | 25:58 | |
'cause the kids had taken over Tigert hall, | 26:02 | |
so we were running food to them. | 26:04 | |
Blue Key happened. | 26:16 | |
Oh, and Billy got denied housing, | 26:23 | |
because she didn't have a man to mow the lawn. | 26:26 | |
So we went eight of us and Bubsy, Judy's husband, | 26:31 | |
went to city hall | 26:36 | |
and to the human rights advisory council | 26:40 | |
and told them, "This was inexcusable", | 26:48 | |
that they had to include marital status | 26:50 | |
in their non discrimination code. | 26:52 | |
And they did, it was in within three weeks. | 26:54 | |
But I mean, yeah, they weren't ready for us, | 27:00 | |
so they just did it, you know? | 27:02 | |
- | This is some kind of housing code, what was it now? | 27:07 |
- | She got denied housing, her husband died | 27:10 |
and they were kicking her out of married student housing. | 27:17 | |
He died Thanksgiving | 27:21 | |
and they were kicking her out in January | 27:23 | |
at the end of the semester. | 27:27 | |
So she had to find housing for her and her two kids, | 27:30 | |
West and Xanya. | 27:34 | |
And she went to look at this house and she liked the house, | 27:36 | |
and she wanted the house, and the guy said no, | 27:42 | |
because she didn't have a man to keep the house up | 27:46 | |
and to mow the lawn. | 27:48 | |
And there was nothing she could do about it, | 27:52 | |
'cause there wasn't any municipal code against it. | 27:54 | |
- | Aha. | 27:56 |
So they were taking marital status out of something or they? | 27:59 | |
- | Putting it in. | 28:02 |
- | Putting it in to something you couldn't discriminate. | 28:03 |
- | Yeah. | 28:06 |
- | I guess. | |
- | And we had also, | 28:12 |
we had this great gay group | 28:17 | |
and I can't remember Julian's last name, | 28:19 | |
Julian was just wonderful. | 28:21 | |
He was a young, black man, who was incredibly articulate, | 28:24 | |
in fact we had him over for a child psychiatry seminar, | 28:31 | |
he was just delightful. | 28:33 | |
And he and Liz, and I can't remember Liz's last name either, | 28:35 | |
they got a clause against | 28:45 | |
nondiscrimination on sexual orientation. | 28:48 | |
And that was in 76 or 77, that was the law in there too. | 28:52 | |
- | Gay men? | 28:59 |
(scratching) | 29:00 | |
- | Well, they were men and women. | 29:02 |
Julian was head of it, | 29:07 | |
but Liz was very active in it too. | 29:10 | |
And between the two of em, they really organized everything. | 29:15 | |
And they got it into our municipal statute. | 29:19 | |
And somewhere along the line it got taken out | 29:23 | |
and we don't know when, it got taken out | 29:25 | |
and we had to put it back in in the 90s. | 29:28 | |
It must've gotten taken out sometime in the 80s, | 29:35 | |
when we weren't looking. | 29:38 | |
But it was in there in the 70s. | 29:41 | |
You know, at the time we had an incredibly large | 29:47 | |
feminist community, | 29:52 | |
I mean you would do a call-out for something | 29:53 | |
and a 100 women would show up no matter what it was. | 29:57 | |
(laughing) | 30:00 | |
Now, you can't get that kind of response just anywhere. | 30:01 | |
And the fact, it may have been the fact, | 30:07 | |
that we had the women's bookstore, | 30:10 | |
we had a really community with businesses in it. | 30:14 | |
And that may have been why we were more effective | 30:18 | |
than a lot of communities. | 30:21 | |
And we had national contacts, | 30:26 | |
there wasn't anything going on in the nation, | 30:28 | |
that wasn't going on here. | 30:30 | |
And we had, you know, we had places | 30:34 | |
where women could go and focal points. | 30:38 | |
(scratching) | 30:50 | |
And Rita Mae Brown, she was one of the speakers | 30:55 | |
for the Southeastern Women's Health conference | 31:01 | |
and she talked about getting thrown out | 31:05 | |
of the University of Florida. | 31:06 | |
- | Afraid they're gonna knock that-- | 31:10 |
- | For being gay. | 31:12 |
- | I'm worried, that they're gonna knock this off the table. | 31:17 |
Okay. | 31:21 | |
- | And she was here when I was here | 31:22 |
and I don't remember it. | 31:26 | |
And she was in the same residence hall, that I was in. | 31:29 | |
But I think she was a year ahead of me. | 31:36 | |
So I think she really enjoyed coming back and speaking. | 31:45 | |
(laughing) | 31:48 | |
- | You mean she was at UF? | 31:51 |
- | She was at UF when she got thrown out | 31:52 |
of the University of Florida. | 31:54 | |
- | I don't remember that, for being gay, right? | 31:56 |
- | Mm-hmm. | 31:58 |
And the woman, that she talks about, | 32:02 | |
Myrna Brady and the other woman, I think it was Hutchins, | 32:06 | |
I was quite familiar with both of them. | 32:11 | |
I mean Dean Brady was dean of women | 32:14 | |
and Mrs. Hutchins was Ms. Hutchins, | 32:17 | |
I don't know if she was a miss or missis, | 32:21 | |
was our resident. | 32:24 | |
She was the head of the residence council, | 32:30 | |
I don't know, we had in loco parentis at the time, | 32:33 | |
I guess she was our in loco parentis representative | 32:36 | |
for Brauer Hall and Brauer Hall was huge, | 32:39 | |
there were four wings. | 32:42 | |
I was in the Northeast wing and I think Rita Mae | 32:47 | |
was in the Southeast wing. | 32:50 | |
And there were four floors in each wing. | 32:52 | |
(cat meowing) | 32:58 | |
And both of these women were gay, I'm sure | 33:01 | |
and they were both retired military. | 33:08 | |
(laughing) | 33:13 | |
And they were both doing what the man wanted them to do, | 33:15 | |
which was the only way they could make it. | 33:19 | |
- | Is that cat not bothering you? | 33:29 |
- | No, that cat won't play with him. | 33:30 |
He wants her to come play and she won't come play with him. | 33:34 | |
The other cats will come play with him. | 33:39 | |
All the other kitties will come down | 33:42 | |
and talk to him, not Dite, | 33:44 | |
Aphrodite's not gonna do it ever. | 33:48 | |
Might as well get over it. | 33:51 | |
- | Okay, we haven't gotten all the 70s, I don't think | 33:59 |
when I was living with Sally, we got to the 80s, | 34:01 | |
she just felt like it was a drag down. | 34:05 | |
She had trouble talking about the 80s. | 34:09 | |
- | In the 80s I was diverted into, | 34:15 |
in the 80s I was doing like guardian ad litem | 34:23 | |
for sexually abused kids and then later, | 34:29 | |
I did that for like 12 years. | 34:33 | |
The last two years I did custody for guardian ad litem, | 34:39 | |
which I really had a lot of fun doing that. | 34:45 | |
Taking money out of the lawyer's pocket | 34:48 | |
by resolving the issues. | 34:51 | |
And I was still involved, in the 80s was when I was involved | 34:59 | |
with doing the second stage battered women's housing | 35:04 | |
which was based on the British services. | 35:07 | |
Pumpkin, Max, you, guys, just cool it. | 35:15 | |
(scratching) | 35:24 | |
And then I left for two years in the 80s | 35:25 | |
and went to work for my brother in St. Louis, | 35:28 | |
God, was that a cultural shock. | 35:32 | |
I couldn't believe it, | 35:37 | |
every time I opened my mouth people fainted. | 35:39 | |
I've never seen such a right wing town. | 35:44 | |
(dog squealing) | 35:47 | |
A bunch of Catholics, unbelievable, | 35:49 | |
I really missed home, I used to come home, | 35:52 | |
ride for about 12 hours, come every other weekend. | 35:54 | |
(laughing) | 35:58 | |
God, oh my, I couldn't believe it | 36:02 | |
how provincial those people were. | 36:03 | |
But then when I came back I continued being | 36:15 | |
a guardian ad litem | 36:17 | |
and worked with the battered women shelter, | 36:20 | |
and I was on the board for the late midwifery school, | 36:26 | |
Florida school for midwives | 36:34 | |
and helped them get started. | 36:38 | |
And help them get the birth center, | 36:42 | |
they bought the birth center. | 36:45 | |
- | Oh, they bought the birth center from the, oh. | 36:51 |
- | Yeah, they bought the birth center, | 36:55 |
so they had, in the same building they had the Florida, | 36:58 | |
they have the Florida midwifery school | 37:02 | |
and they have the birth center, | 37:05 | |
it's very nice, it's very nice. | 37:06 | |
So I've stayed involved in the women's health side, | 37:12 | |
but I understand Sally | 37:22 | |
and there was not a whole lot going on politically. | 37:24 | |
Not really. | 37:30 | |
- | Mm-hmm, well, she said, that the election of Reagan | 37:32 |
just sort of put the wind out. | 37:37 | |
- | Well, my experience has been, | 37:41 |
that when you get involved with movements | 37:45 | |
you get involved, you eat and drink it | 37:48 | |
and you implode, so you have to back out | 37:54 | |
and take a couple of years off. | 37:59 | |
- | Mm-hmm. | 38:01 |
- | And then you can do it again, | 38:03 |
but I know very few people who can keep | 38:09 | |
that kind of intensity up, | 38:13 | |
very few people. | 38:15 | |
- | Mm-hmm. | |
- | And I think there was just enough lapsed time | 38:20 |
between the civil rights movement | 38:23 | |
and the women's liberation movement, | 38:25 | |
that allowed that breather. | 38:29 | |
You know, it's not, that we weren't doing anything, | 38:31 | |
because we were, | 38:33 | |
but it was more like, you know, | 38:37 | |
(scratching) abilities, | 38:40 | |
like they say, you sew and break, | 38:41 | |
you know, that kind of thing, | 38:44 | |
that didn't take that enormous energy, | 38:50 | |
that a movement takes. | 38:54 | |
And then the women's liberation movement came along | 38:55 | |
and we did, you know, we were in the women's health part, | 38:59 | |
feminist women's health part, | 39:06 | |
after that, I mean, all of my advocacy | 39:16 | |
was for women and kids and I did a lot of school counseling | 39:18 | |
for IPs for special needs in the school system | 39:22 | |
and a lot of that kind of thing. | 39:28 | |
But there really wasn't any, | 39:32 | |
actually, we didn't do a whole lot, | 39:37 | |
I mean, we went to the marches when they had the march | 39:40 | |
when Jeb Bush threw | 39:46 | |
three black legislators | 39:54 | |
and the women's advocate out of his office, | 39:56 | |
'cause they were gonna stay in his office | 40:04 | |
until he showed up. | 40:05 | |
And it was over the affirmative actions. | 40:08 | |
And we did that march, and that was in the 90s, late 90s, | 40:12 | |
then I ran for city commission in 93 | 40:23 | |
and then I lost. | 40:27 | |
- | Did you win? | |
Oh. | 40:29 | |
- | No. | |
Won the primary, lost the general. | 40:30 | |
And then my mother died, I was taking care of her, | 40:39 | |
I took care of her for eight years before she died | 40:42 | |
and she was bedridden. | 40:45 | |
So I was fairly busy so, that the only things | 40:50 | |
I really did was advocate for women and kids, | 40:54 | |
I did it on a case by case basis, | 40:57 | |
I wasn't involved in any overall-- | 40:59 | |
- | Movement. | 41:02 |
- | Movement, you know, | |
I didn't really feel like there was that all consuming, | 41:04 | |
you know, let's kick ass. | 41:09 | |
(scratching) | 41:12 | |
It was great before Kennedy came down | 41:15 | |
and she was funny, she was great fun. | 41:17 | |
(scratching) | 41:20 | |
But she was like-- | 41:21 | |
- | Yeah. | 41:24 |
- | The best way | |
to get high is kicking ass. | 41:25 | |
(laughing) | 41:26 | |
Kicking ass will make you high | 41:28 | |
and by God, we kicked a lot of ass. | 41:30 | |
- | Yeah. | 41:32 |
- | Did a lot of drugs too and we kicked a lot of ass, | 41:33 |
we were high for the entire time. | 41:37 |
Item Info
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