Susie Bright, On Sexual Freedom
I’ve been reading Susie Bright since she published a kinky lesbian porn mag, back in the pre-internet era when “computer porn” meant dialing up to a BBS and watching a dirty picture appear on your screen line by weary line at (if you were rich and lucky) 14400 baud.
When I first encountered her On Our Backs magazine, I was newly arrived in San Francisco and I was just looking for porn. San Francisco: “Porn, we haz it.” But why was I reading Susie Bright’s lesbian porn mag?
Because then, as now, she was a voice for sexual freedom. It didn’t matter if her subject matter (lesbian stuff) didn’t have much (any) intersection with my life. And that “not mattering” is one of those things that never change. Here’s Susie, writing about a new movie I hadn’t heard about, about a band I never heard of, and a cultural scene I never knew existed, but making the whole thing worthwhile anyway because she’s (still) really writing about sexual freedom:
Let me make something clear that the movie only hints at: The Runaways band would not have happened, could not have been conceived, without the Underground Dyke Punk Groupie Slut culture that stretched from the San Fernando Valley to the bowels of Orange County.
What is wrong with saying that? Do dykes never get to claim anything? Is the historical lens going to stay coated with Vaseline and excuses FOREVER?
I’ll tell you why dyke rock’n’roll legacy is important. Because in order to stand up to the shitheads who tried to keep young women out of EVERYTHING, you had to NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THEIR SEXUAL APPROVAL.
You had to NOT want to get married and have babies with a nice boy. You had to be FINISHED with “virtue.”
We did not care if the guys called us “sluts” and accused us of “wishing you had a dick.” We were beyond wishing; we did whatever we wanted.
A lesbian in the ’70s was thought of as someone involved in mainstream feminist politics or the folky Back-to-the-Land milieu. Most girls I knew in the punk scene couldn’t relate to that, or thought of it as their mother’s trip. We were urban, we were not into politics as usual. Everyone called themselves “bi,” although that was really code for: don’t tell me what to do.
My favorite lines in the piece, though, are these:
The Democratic Party lesbians took one look at my lipstick and leather and flipped out. “You are a slut! You are an operative of pimps and pornographers! The S/M white slavers are controlling you!”
Similar Sex Blogging:
Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=4748
Interesting comment down at Susie’s post. I remark here.
Wow. BBS. 14400 baud. Dirty pictures appearing line by line. What memories! But you forgot to mention FLI loop animations. :)
For you fans of the rock group that this film is about, it may interest you that my comment in this earlier posting, http://www.eros...ture/ was referring to an incident involving Joan Jett, formerly of “The Runaways”, who is mentioned in the link article by Ms. Bright. I did not identify Joan by name in the earlier posting…
After reading Suzie’s posting (re: “…you had to NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THEIR SEXUAL APPROVAL.”), it gives Joan’s “I don’t give a fuck about my bad reputation” lyric a more defined meaning.
14400 was blazin’!
I’m so glad you liked this story. So who were you listening to in 1977? If you say you weren’t born yet, I will blush.
I’m about 10 years younger than you and in 1977 I was living WAY off the grid under the thumb of my wannabe counterculture parents (they’d gotten the “drop out” part right and made their friends among the organic gardening hippie set, but were too square to smoke pot).
We were so far off the grid that there was no TV and no radio available to kids — there was AM, but not loud enough for a portable radio to hear, you needed to string a long antennae. Back then there was still music on AM radio, but only country and “easy listening” and religious.
My parents had country and folk on 8-track — think Charlie Pride and Joan Baez and Tennessee Ernie Ford. My older sisters had Panasonic Personal Cassette Players (monaural, requires six C batteries) and were listening to ABBA. I don’t think I got a single opportunity to control what music I heard in 1977, with one exception.
I’m pretty sure it was 1977 (possibly 1976) when an older friend and I spent two or three bored days sitting around in a shed with a turntable and a dusty box of old pop singles that did not belong to us. The only song I remember (he liked it, I didn’t) was a song called I Won’t Go Huntin With You Jake (But I’ll Go Chasin Women).
It wasn’t until I got to college in the mid-1980s that I got any meaningful control over my sonic environment.