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Les idéaux féministes d'égalité formulés au cours des années 1970 et 1980 sont aujourd'hui confrontés à des discours divers qui pénètrent les groupes de femmes. D'une part, la vision des technocrates les incite à accepter des fonctions instrumentales en retour d'un financement considéré essentiel par plusieurs. La majorité des groupes en sont ainsi venus à offrir des services qui se situent dans le prolongement de ceux offerts par le réseau de la santé et des services sociaux. À travers ces ajustements, les groupes de femmes ne se définissent plus seulement comme des lieux de conscientisation et de résistance, mais bien comme des groupes communautaires travaillant, de concert avec d'autres groupes communautaires, à l'amélioration du bien-être collectif. Les discours savants portant sur le féminisme, sur les conditions de sa mise en oeuvre ou sur le rapport entre l'État et le communautaire rejoignent eux aussi les militantes et affectent de façons diverses le portrait qu'elles tracent de leurs pratiques. C'est cet ensemble complexe dans lequel des rapports de force se nouent quotidiennement que nous voulons décrire et analyser ici.
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Lesbians played a role in all phases of Grove development, albeit that of a minority in number and, usually, in terms of power and recognition. Newton devotes two chapters (of eleven) exclusively to lesbians, and this seems adequately proportional to the lesbian presence in the decades she covers. Importantly, the differences for women between the two eras -- 1930s to 1960 and 1960 to 1980 -- appear to be determined by class and ethnicity rather than by gender. In the earlier period, says Newton, the gay "girls" or "ladies" (Grovers' terms) "were an elite, privileged group who faced relatively little cultural exclusion or discrimination from their male peers" (204); and, she reminds us, in both eras "whatever problems 'girls' had with 'boys,' physical safety was not one of them" (204). Although they never completely shared in the camp sensibility, and not at all in the public sex of the "Meat Rack," then, Grove lesbians were on an even footing (except in numbers) as long as they were white, Protestant, moneyed, artistic/theatrical, and devoted to the "fun" ethos of the settlement (indeed, "party" meant costumes and drinking, never politics). At the opposite end of New York State from Buffalo is Cherry Grove, a gay community as different from that treated in Boots of Leather as the geography symbolizes. As Esther Newton describes it in Cherry Grove, Fire Island, it could be a typical "all-American" postwar town -- dominated by the sensibilities of elite WASP males benefiting from the prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s, and hostile at times to those perceived as outsiders (by race, gender, ethnicity) or interlopers (day-trippers, pretentious Pines neighbors). The crucial exception, of course, is that the elitist WASP men (and some women) who built the town were gay. For these reasons, my reactions divided according to my dual identity. As a historian, I found this book superb in every way: it is an engaging narrative of six decades of the area's development textured with insightful commentary on the larger context of American life and questions regarding how and why Cherry Grove originated and endured. However, the lesbian reader in me, although agreeing that the presentation is wonderful (it is actually more fluid and readable than Boots of Leather), reacted to the sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, and classism that have characterized this community at various stages of its existence, and especially to the community's dismissal of women. As Newton herself summarizes in a passage concerning the "invasion" of the neighboring Pines community, "Whatever the Queen's function -- selling tickets to a play or blessing the bathers -- she also is the Grove, its key symbol and core representation" (269; italics in the original); and she adds in the accompanying endnote, "The normal processes of Grove action and narration tend to marginalize or even erase women" (345, n.7)