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The 1940s
“Cal had about fifteen thousand students at that time. It was a
horrendous number, but — I managed to get registered and get classes and
get going.... As it turned out we had some problems with my roommate,
the one from San Diego. And that’s a whole story of how I had my first
experience with being a lesbian — which is a term I really resisted
adopting for umpteen years. It just took me a long, a long time to view
that term as being other than sort of — I don’t know — sort of a dirty
word, or something. I don’t know.... Some distaste for that term. It
seemed like that was something worse than being a homosexual. I don’t
know why. It was just kind of a nuance that I didn’t like. It actually
took me until about ten years ago, and I’m now seventy-eight, so.... It
took a lot of re-education for me to accept that term. Anyhow, I’ll
stop right there. That’s a long way to say that I was pretty innocent
when I arrived at Berkeley.
Well, what happened was that my friend from San Diego (whose name was
M---) she had signed up for a pre-med course and was taking Chemistry
1A, which I guess is about one of the worse courses that anybody can
take at Cal, one of the toughest, and everybody is pretty miserable and
scared to death about it. I don’t know whether that triggered her
problem, but she developed a strange phenomenon of waking during the
night and being very aggressive. Well, appearing to awake, but actually
being asleep — sleep-walking in a very aggressive, noisy, attacking
manner. And she started (this was, I guess, two-thirds of the way
through the semester, maybe a little less) and she began to attack
Joanne and myself in the nighttime. And we physically had to fight her
off, and hold her down, until she’d finally come to. And then
everybody’d go back to bed!
But it finally got to be very scary — one night she did in fact pick up
a knife — went in the kitchen, got the biggest knife we had, came out,
started attacking us with that. Well, fortunately, I was pretty
athletic and aggressive enough to finally get the knife — somehow we got
the knife away. I don’t remember how we did, but I remember we were
pretty damn scared. Got the knife away from her, and got the thing all
settled down. But then the next day, Joanne and I decided, you know,
this is getting really scarey! So we went to the hospital — Cowell
Hospital, the student hospital — and talked to a doctor there who
arranged for M--- to go up and have a discussion with them about what
was going on....
And I think she must have talked to a psychiatrist who advised her to
take a leave of absence from school and go home for a while and try to
get settled down. While all this confusion was happening and before she
left, M--- was sleeping on the couch. Joanne and I were sort of drawn
together physically in the bed, you know, sort of in fear and
trembling. And at that point I realized that I had a really strong
emotional affection — I was really very much in love with Joanne. But
part of it was that we were very congenial. It wasn’t just this
circumstance, but we were really congenial. And I had really enjoyed
for the first time really getting to know somebody that I hadn’t known
all my life.... I never had a chance to get to meet and know somebody
else on a sort of personal basis, or to know anybody whose background
was different from my own, so to speak. To me it was just really
exciting to get to know somebody that way. Joanne was two years older
than I. She had finished junior college in Santa Maria. So I looked up
to her. For one thing, she knew all sorts of things I didn’t know....
So I was, from a friendship point of view, really, really, really taken
with this gal and impressed by her wisdom and experience and so forth.
And then we fell in love. So then that came as a great shock, because I
didn’t know what really was going on. I couldn’t quite figure out — we
didn’t engage in a lot of heavy sex, but we engaged in a lot of hugging
and — mostly hugging, and some kissing, but mostly just holding on to
each other. But I found that very gratifying.”
Ann Wansley, ‘44
“A Lifetime Learning to be a Lesbian”
Oral history interview
Gay Bears! Collection, The University Archives
The 1950s
“It was an exciting, interesting period. I mean, I never have looked
upon that with any negativity, and I don’t think with any over-romance,
either. All of us were very troubled. We were all going through
horrible things psychologically because none of us could admit we were
gay. And obviously a large number of people who were drawn together, as
always happens, in fact turned out to be gay in the long run. And most
of us had done (because most of us were fairly bright) the same things
— which we only mentioned many, many years later. You know, gone to
the Library, and we’d gone to the card catalog and looked for
Homosexuality and found out that in the end we always get killed or
commit suicide. So it did not seem like a good lifestyle choice....
So anyway, it was a kind of a bizarre life, and the fun was wonderful.
But also, a lot of complications, because of course a lot of us did
sleep with each other. And there was either denial the next day — you
just kind of ignored it, though you liked it — or it was that game of,
“Gee, I was so drunk last night I don’t know what I did.” At no point
did any of us ever sit down and talk.
And sometimes — you know, there was one person who we all were in love
with — straight or gay. Part of our group was a fascinating person (I
really don’t know how I can say much about him, because I really don’t
want this person to be identified) — but anyway, someone who was a
German who had been in Japan throughout World War II, in Nagasaki when
the bomb had fallen on him. Fortunately, he was in the hills. But
someone who we found very intriguing, and very exciting.... And —
blond, blue-eyed, tall, handsome — really interesting person. Had a
fascinating life. And I think he got seduced by all of us at various
times. Sometimes, like with me, in the Eucalyptus Grove. And again,
all that was very dangerous, because if you had ever gotten caught, it
would have been — God knows what. I mean I hate to even think what the
Administration would have done to you had they caught you doing any of
these things.”
Erwin Kelly, ‘54
“Gay Life at Berkeley in the 1950s”
Oral history interview
Gay Bears! Collection, The University Archives
The 1960's
“Essentially, there is not a homosexual community in the Berkeley
campus; rather the college homosexuals are scattered throughout the
community and each one belongs mostly to a San Francisco or Oakland
click. This is not to say that they do not know about each other but
rather that campus homosexuals do not form a joined group having the
same interests and social activities.
Upon interviewing homosexuals, the writer found that the major source of
attraction and social activity is in San Francisco. Thus the typical
Berkeley college homosexual lives what appear[s] to be a double life: he
sleeps, eats and studies in the dorm and goes to San Francisco early in
the evening. In San Francisco he will congregate with other young
college homosexuals from the Berkeley campus or San Francisco State
College. In fact, the writer was told many times that in order to meet
young Berkeley college homosexuals she ought to visit Pearls (a coffe[e]
house in San Francisco for homosexuals under 21 years of age) rather
than expect to meet any in the community....
One homosexual interviewee differentiated between the ways he met
homosexuals in San Francisco and the ways he met them here. Thus, “in
San Francisco I walk up and introduce myself. Here one almost always is
introduced by a friend.” However, even though a few homosexuals will
attend some private parties, they refuse to attend any public homosexual
dances in Berkeley. Rather, they go to special dance halls in San
Francisco reserved for them. The same interviewee told the writer that
a few months ago the Sexual Freedom Forum was going to sponsor a
homosexual dance in the Pauley Ballroom; though many campus homosexuals
were aware of this they were not going to attend for fear of being
exposed, labeled, and put perhaps in compromising positions in the
future. This particular homosexual explained that if the dance had been
given he would’ve attended but with a female homosexual. Thus
satisfying his curiosity and appearing ‘straight’ before the campus
community....
Friday and Saturday evenings from 10:30-12:30 are the prime ‘cruising’
time on Telegraph Avenue. Though in San Francisco a typical homosexual
dresses in a very flashy, suggestive manner — brilliant colors, silk
shirts, wide sexy-looking belts with large buckles — the typical campus
homosexual dresses very ‘straight’ and collegiate — white socks, white
tennis shoes, tight levis and madras shirt.”
Amelia Jackson
“Recreation, Communication and Social Activities Among Campus
Homosexuals”
Student paper (circa 1965)
Gay Bears! Collection, The University Archives
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