Butterfly Effect - ressourcesfeministes

24 white. Eva Johnson’s play, “What Do They Call Me” explores the life of Alison, an
Aboriginal lesbian who is part of Australia’s stolen generation. She writes: “How do I
justify being taken from my mother / being put into government institutions / being
given to white mothers, who got paid / who were subsidized to raise me WHITE.”
Eva Johnson. 1990. “Alison”. In Cathie Dunsford and Susan Hawthorne (Eds.).
The Exploding Frangipani, p. 142. The play has subsequently been published in full in
Dale Spender (Ed.). 1991. Heroines, and in Bruce Parr. (Ed.). 1996. Australian Gay and
Lesbian Plays.
25 Jermaine. Jermaine Hicks, a character in the novel, Push by Sapphire. The reader
can read Jermaine’s life story in the appendix to the novel under the title, Harlem
Butch. Sapphire. 1997. Push.
34
26 Voudou. See Luisah Teish. 1988. Jumbalayah.
27 Afrekete. See Catherine E. McKinley and Joyce DeLaney (Eds.). 1995. Afrekete: An
Anthology of Black Lesbian Writing. Afrekete is a Yoruba goddess and a character
from Audre Lorde’s Zami (1982).
28 explosives. “Car Maintenance, Explosives and Love” by Donna Jackson is a monologue
which explores the explosiveness of a relationship between a working-class and a
middle-class lesbian. The play uses real explosives, handled by writer and performer,
Donna Jackson. This anthology was preceded by The Exploding Frangipani. As
Radicalesbians said in 1970: “A lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the
point of explosion.” See Rosemary Silva (Ed.). Lesbian Quotations, p. 18.
29 suffragists. The anti-property strategy of the suffragists was an original approach
to civil disobedience. They targeted the playgrounds of the aristocracy, including
pouring acid on golf courses, thereby disrupting the pleasures of wealth.
30 Valerie. Valerie Solanas, author of the SCUM Manifesto, was very influential during
the 1970s. Her small book, like the pirated edition of Robin Morgan’s Monster, was
passed from hand to hand. Perhaps its most influential idea was that members of
SCUM would always subvert the system, wherever they were working. Such
women would, of course, be incognito and difficult to trace. A recent edition of her
book was released to coincide with the release of the movie, I Shot Andy Warhol. In
her novel Darkness More Visible (2000) Finola Moorhead plays with the legacy of
Valerie Solanas with a revolutionary cybercell called the Solanasites.
31 guerilla. Because the second wave of the women’s movement coincided with the
wars of liberation in the 1960s, the concept of guerilla was very current in the
early 1970s. There were radical women all around the world who took up arms
or who identified with far left wing “terrorist” groups. Lesbians were active in
the Symbionese Liberation Army, and were probably involved in the capture of
Patti Hearst. In Germany, lesbians were immediately suspect in the eyes of the
state. A friend was held at gunpoint by German police who believed that she and
her companions were members of the Bader Meinhof Gang. Monique Wittig taps
into this zeitgeist with her novel Les Guérillères. Monique Wittig. 1972. Les
Guérillères. A more recent, and more irreverent use is The Guerrilla Girls’ Bedside
Companion to the History of Western Art (1998).
32 Glorious Age. A period of history proposed by Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig.
Roughly it equates with the beginnings of the second wave of the women’s movement
in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig. 1979. Lesbian Peoples.
33 next five years. Such stories are not unusual among lesbians in prison. A rebellious
streak, added to by circumstances of poverty and bad luck, creates fertile ground
for drug abuse and the resulting criminal lifestyle required to sustain it.