Hierarchy of ‘right-on-ness’
1983
“The main place we all came
together and had our big rows, where things went a bit hairy, were at
the Women's Liberation Day Conferences. The heterosexual women in
particular felt criticised for being with men and they thought that we
thought that we were much better feminists than them and much more
right on. Meanwhile other lesbians, who didn’t agree with us
politically, also felt that we looked down on them and thought that we
thought they weren’t as good as us. I can see why that happened, we
didn’t have any contradictions in our lives or any guilt, we didn’t
have to explain anything. It was like, years before (around 1977) I
went to the old Gay Community Centre, and there was a discussion about
setting up a Rape Crisis Centre, and one woman said, ‘If you have
relationships with men that you value, don’t get involved in this’
which decided me not to get involved at the time, and I think later on
it was just easier, you didn’t have those contradictions. I know how
pointless it is to get into that competition about who is more right
on. It just poisoned things, and although I don’t think we thought that
way it was very much a feature of how things were at the time. You
couldn’t get more bloody right on than we were, you’re in an easy
position, the nastiness and falling out, the personal pain, it’s not
worth that, we were all very good at doing more damage to ourselves
than the wider world could do, it’s that realisation, and recognising
that you don’t need to have that much in common, what you need to have
is that shared commonality that isn’t just about sexuality”.
Contributed by: Trisha McCabe, 51