Written by:
Stephanie Schroeder
Photographer:
Kathryn Kirk
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this Issue of Curve:
Vol. 17 #5
Joan Nestle is tired of telling interviewers who have not done their homework how she opened the Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA) in her pantry in 1976 along with her then-partner Deborah Edel. She tells them to read her books and visit her website (joannestle.com) as well as the archive’s site (lesbianherstoryarchives.org). A 67-year-old femme lesbian who writes explicitly about love, lust, play, creativity, illness and social concerns, Nestle says “We used to think that identifying labels told us things about each other. I always used to say ’I am a New York Jewish socialist femme lesbian who is also a cancer survivor’. Now I think these labels hide just as much as they reveal. I want lesbian and gay people to read my work, see where my name comes up in a Google search or check out the LHA website and make up their own minds as to who I am and whether I should be in their lives.”
Writer Stephanie Schroeder caught up with Nestle when she was in New York City this spring on what has become an annual visit to her hometown from Melbourne, Australia, where she has settled with her partner, international human rights activist and law professor Dianne Otto.
Do you consider yourself an ex-pat and how do you now—having lived in Australia for the past six or so years, view the political situation in the U.S, today?
I would put it another way: My eyes have been opened through my relationship with Di (Otto). I feel I belong to no country and I term myself a “productive stranger,” neither an enemy nor friend in the countries I transverse. Like so many people on the move through borders and boundaries, safety nets and barriers and in my new writing, I’m trying to find a way to tell a story who heart is broken by the international ugliness of my own country.
You’ve written extensively and extremely openly [In A Restricted Country and A Fragile Union] about butch-femme dynamics, censorship, lesbian sexuality and many other taboo—or once-taboo subjects. What haven’t you written about?
I have never written about my abusive relationships with women. Because there was so much judgment around my sexual writing, I didn’t want to feed into easy stereotypes. Also, my batterers are still alive, and in a way only other battered women can understand, I’ve wanted to protect them and still do. I feel more ashamed for them than they do themselves, I think.
You’ve said that you used to teach women about sex and sexuality, but that now other women teach you.
I’ve met the most incredible young women, who have grown up with different historical tensions—or lack of tension—around sexuality and don’t freight their sexuality with the same sense of shame or sense of rebellion. But, I still think I also have a lot to learn about how complex sexuality is them. Also, I’m beginning to see a new backlash against young women’s sexuality, a new Puritanism that sets up the bad old dichotomy of good girls vs. bad girls. There is real judgment around hooking up, labeling girls and women “sluts” just for exploring their sexuality openly and freely.
You edited Genderqueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary with Clare Howell and Riki Wilchins. What is your role, if any, in the growing transgender movement?
Just as I’ve been really lucky enough to be a part of a historical time when things that were born that had never existed such as the national gay and lesbian archiving movement, I am witnessing the community building and political organization of the trans community as a historical movement. I am seeing new kinds of courage and new people who will force deeper societal thinking about gender. I’m also very curious about how histories—personal and cultural—will happen. I won’t be here to find out the end result, but with new kinds of men and women and other genders, such as a transman who lived his first 20 or 30 years of his life as a lesbian-feminist, I am interested to see how he grows and matures. And, of course, we have yet to see the effects of long term use of testosterone. It is also yet to be seen whether our society will be open to new types of genders or how we will make society open to them. These are once again pioneer times.
Editor’s Note: A portion of this interview appears in the June issue of Curve. Unfortunately, the wrong author’s credit is printed along with it. Stephanie Schroeder is indeed the author of this interview.
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