Debra Hirshberg Interview, 11 July 2023

Abstract

Debra Hirshberg (b. 1954) grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, and moved to Cleveland in 1972 to attend Case Western Reserve University. She discusses coming out as a lesbian in the 1970s and becoming an active member of the East Side lesbian feminist community in Cleveland Heights in the mid-1970s. Hirshberg describes her involvement in Cleveland Heights' vibrant lesbian feminist communities in the 1970s and 1980s, including her role as a founding member of lesbian feminist collectives Hag House (Berkshire House), Oven Productions, and the Land Project. Debra also describes lesbian feminist spaces, activism, and cultural production in Cleveland, including the Three of Cups, the Womyn's Variety Show, and her work with the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival.

Interviewee

Hirshberg, Debra (interviewee)

Interviewer

Habyl, Riley (interviewer)

Project

LGBTQ+ Cleveland

Date

7-11-2023

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

115 minutes

Recommended Citation

"Debra Hirshberg Interview, 11 July 2023" (2023). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 701001.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1272

Transcript

Riley Habyl [00:00:03] All right, I've just started recording. Today's date is Tuesday, July 11, 2023. This is Riley Habyl with LGBTQ+ Cleveland Voices Oral History Collection. I'm interviewing Debra Hirshberg at her home in Pennsylvania. So, thank you for speaking with me Debra.

Debra Hirshberg [00:00:22] You're welcome.

Riley Habyl [00:00:22] To begin, could you state your name for the record?

Debra Hirshberg [00:00:26] Debra Hirshberg.

Riley Habyl [00:00:28] Thank you. So Debra, where and when were you born?

Debra Hirshberg [00:00:34] I was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on (redacted) 1954.

Riley Habyl [00:00:43] So, when did you move to the Cleveland area?

Debra Hirshberg [00:00:46] I came to Cleveland in September 1972 to enroll in Western Reserve College, which is now part of Case Western Reserve [University], or Case. I don't know what the current name is.

Riley Habyl [00:00:58] What drew you to move to Cleveland?

Debra Hirshberg [00:01:03] Going to college, I wanted to get away from Boston. I applied to schools in Ohio because I had an aunt and uncle in Columbus and my parents said, "Okay, Ohio is okay." And I chose Cleveland because it had a major medical center and it had a vibrant Jewish community, and the University had what I wanted, which was a non-sectarian department of religion and an active theater department.

Riley Habyl [00:01:42] What is your current occupation, or previous occupations?

Debra Hirshberg [00:01:46] I was a software consultant. I am retired, and that's what I was—in business.

Riley Habyl [00:01:58] What is your level of education, or (crosstalk) educational background?

Debra Hirshberg [00:02:06] I have a B.A. in religion and technical theater.

Riley Habyl [00:02:15] Can you tell me a bit about your childhood and family background?

Debra Hirshberg [00:02:23] Let's see. I was born with a heart defect. I have congenital heart disease and so a major part of my childhood was dealing with my health. I was not expected to survive my youth, and I did. I had open heart surgery when I was five in 1959—one of the earliest. And then, you know, various things happened, and my childhood was not very happy because of my health. And then as a high schooler, I became much more aware that I was probably a lesbian. So it was—I was not part of the social scenes, and in the seven—early seventies, late sixties there wasn't much visibility or that. I got into feminism and that is what affirmed me as being a lesbian. That yeah, I'll dedicate my life to women.

Riley Habyl [00:03:32] How did you first become aware of feminism and lesbianism—or how did you first make contact with people in the community?

Debra Hirshberg [00:03:42] Well, I didn't have a community in Boston, but I had a student teacher in high school. She was the student teacher, and at an after-school voluntary reading thing we read Sisterhood Is Powerful and it changed my life, and that's how I became aware of it. And I went to Campfire Girls summer camp, along with some Jewish summer camps, and I fell in love with somebody at camp—Campfire Girls summer camp. But it took us a long time to do—to get from being friends to being lovers. Years. But by the time I was out of high school, we were lovers.

Riley Habyl [00:04:29] What year would you say that was around—when you first met at the camp?

Debra Hirshberg [00:04:33] 1970 (crosstalk).

Riley Habyl [00:04:33] '72?

Debra Hirshberg [00:04:36] '70. We met in 1970, and I'm still very good friends with her. I hope she's coming in August to come visit me here in PA [Pennsylvania].

Riley Habyl [00:04:51] Were you out to your family? And if you were—.

Debra Hirshberg [00:04:54] Not initially. No, it took years, years, years. We never had really the sit-down conversation, "Look, mother and dad, this is what I am," but I was very open about what my life was about.

Riley Habyl [00:05:10] Mhm.

Debra Hirshberg [00:05:11] So, they made the inferences and met my girlfriends and that kind of stuff—but not with Sharon, you know, my early partner. We were not out. We would bring down the cot from the base—from the attic, put it in the bedroom. We would sleep together in my single bed, then we would mess up the cot in the morning. We very under the radar.

Riley Habyl [00:05:45] Would you say that your awareness of lesbianism in general was—or, I'll rephrase that. How did you become aware that there were other people like you, that there were other people that shared the same feelings and experiences that you did if it wasn't something that you saw in—.

Debra Hirshberg [00:06:03] Reading.

Riley Habyl [00:06:04] Reading? Yeah.

Debra Hirshberg [00:06:04] Yeah, reading. Books were very important to me. Sisterhood is Powerful. I read Lesbian Women by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. I—. What were some of the other early books I read? I don't know. When I was at Reserve—Western Reserve—I went to the medical library and looked up lesbianism. I was horrified but, you know, I was researching it like a good student does. But mostly I was into feminism, so I did a lot of, you know, women's activities.

Riley Habyl [00:06:58] Would you say there was— (crosstalk)

Debra Hirshberg [00:07:03] I worked at a summer camp, a Jewish summer camp in New York State, and several of the high school women that came there—. It was for high school kids. It was like a youth group thing for high school kids—educational, all kinds of stuff, not athletic—and kids would come, women would come, young girls will come—who wanted abortions, who came knowing they were pregnant—coming to New York State and knowing that they could get an abortion in New York before it was legal nationally.

Riley Habyl [00:07:44] How were you introduced to feminism at Case Western? Through reading or did you get in contact—.

Debra Hirshberg [00:07:50] It wasn't at Case Western, it was in high school. Yeah, it was in high school—Sisterhood is Powerful. At Case [Western], well, there was a Women's Center. And Mortarboard—are you familiar with the organization Mortarboard? You know, would sponsor people. And Charlotte Bunch came in from the magazine Quest—which was a very early feminist journal, lesbian feminist journal,—and spoke in, I guess it was 1974 maybe, or '73, at Mortarboard. And I was involved with the food co-op, which was—didn't have a place at the time, but it was—it distributed food at the church, and I was a buyer. And many of the community women involved were active feminists. They weren't lesbians, but they were active feminists, they were working on all the feminist issues at the time. And I spent my junior year in Israel. 1974, '75 in Israel. When I came back in the fall of 1975, Cleveland hosted International Women's Year, a UN [United Nations] conference where Betty Ford came and Lily Tomlin—. Betty Ford was the first lady at the time. You know, it was a very big deal. It was at the convention center and really a very big deal in 1975. And I went representing the Case Western Reserve Women's Center to the International Women's Year, and then I got involved in local activities in Cleveland. The core mission group that eventually founded WomenSpace was an outcrop of the International Women's Year thing, and there were women from all different kinds of organizations. And we had meetings and retreats. And I was like the token lesbian, really, but I came through the [Case Western Reserve] Women's Center—that was the organization. And how I got connected to the community—to the lesbian community—is the lesbian community came into the Women's Center wanting to use our facilities—you know, venues at the university—to host events that they were doing, and they wanted to use our money to help co-sponsor events. So we started meeting about who we were gonna bring in and where we were going to do it, and so I got involved through that with the lesbian community, through Oven Productions and—. At IWY [International Women's Year] there was a card table, and a yellow pad of paper and a sign that says—this is D.Y.K.E., D-Y-K-E, Dykes You Know Everywhere—and if you wanted to join, put your name and phone number. Of course, I was very paranoid. I didn't put my name and phone number, but they eventually—. I eventually hooked up with them.

Riley Habyl [00:11:05] Can you describe the general attitude of the women that you worked with at the [Case Western] Women's Center towards lesbianism? Was there any sort of coalition between feminists and lesbians as separate groups at that time?

Debra Hirshberg [00:11:18] No. No, no, we were all together, and I would say most of the active women eventually came out as lesbians. Some didn't, but most of them did—and the ones that didn't were fine with the ones that were. It was all volunteer. There wasn't a faculty, there was—wasn't the center. Matter of fact, when they started the Women's Center, Dorothy [Miller]—. I got mad at her saying, "This is the first Women's Center at [Case Western] Reserve," and I kept saying, "No, it isn't! We had a Women's Center when I was there," blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah—but it wasn't staffed and it wasn't fund—. Well, we had funds, we applied through student organizing for funds, but we didn't—it isn't what it is now. It wasn't sanctioned by the university as part of the educational thing, offering. It was like a volunteer organization—like any student group—and we met at the student center. We had a little office. We hung out in the little office, yeah.

Riley Habyl [00:12:37] So what drew you to feminist organizing and feminist activism, and actually becoming involved with the Women's Center and with these organizations—at least the non-lesbian-specific organizations at first?

Debra Hirshberg [00:12:50] At first I agreed with the premise that women needed to organize ourselves in order to gain equality, or equity. Not so much equality, but equity. We don't have to be equal to something, we just have to have equal access to things. And I felt like marriage was a trap for women who got stuck in it for economic reasons—and because there weren't society organizations to support raising families—that marriage really was the way to do it and it was not good for many women. And I wanted there to be universal health care—universal childcare, you know, public housing. Just all kinds of access things—you know, Cleveland Women Working—that allowed women to be able to support themselves and their families without the dependence on a man who may or may not have been kind to them—in a kind way.

Riley Habyl [00:14:18] So, broadly speaking, how would you describe the lesbian community in Cleveland in the early 1970s when you first were introduced to it, or when you first encountered it?

Debra Hirshberg [00:14:31] Really vibrant. I would say we were gung-ho. We were positive. Jimmy Carter was president, there was an office on women. There were—there was an out lesbian representative in Massachusetts. Things were—. We thought we could make headway. Abortion had become legal. There was money for rape crisis centers and battered women's shelters for the first time that it was recognized—but they weren't institutionalized—they were all feminist organizations, you know, not run by social workers or, you know, professionals. They were run by feminists. Art was a big thing. I was very active in Oven Productions. I believe art changes people's minds and allows for self-expression and is very important to—for individuals to see themselves reflected in something like art, whether it's music or poetry or theater or dance. Oven [Productions] was very active. We did conferences. I don't know—I thought the community was really active. We didn't have a place until, I think 1977, the Three of Cups [12814 Buckeye Rd.] opened—which was a lesbian bar, a lesbian community bar—and so then there was a place. Otherwise, you know, we went to bars and Oven [Productions]—Oven was a big place—and the dances that we did ourselves, but there wasn't a public place except for the productions, which were maybe once a month. So it was a big longing. But many of us were involved in many things, so we'd see the same people everywhere (laughs), you know, and all my best friends were women that I was active with and stuff.

Riley Habyl [00:16:51] In the early years, would you say it was a very close-knit community? I know you mentioned that there were a lot of women that were active in a lot of the same organizations throughout the city.

Debra Hirshberg [00:17:03] Well, there was a group of us that were very close-knit not (unintelligible)—and then there were other lesbians in Cleveland that we would see at events that weren't active in our community. That didn't mean they weren't doing anything, they just weren't in the—what I would call the [Cleveland Heights] East Side lesbian community. We were marginally involved with the [LGBT Community] Center—very marginally—like, I gave them money, that's how marginally, but I never went. [Laughs] But we could use the [High] Gear magazine and, you know, to advertise our stuff. We had our own magazine—What She Wants—and that was feminist, it wasn't just lesbian. And it, you know, stimulated ideas and promoted at events an organized people. It was a phenomenal tool. So if you go back and look at some of the What She Wants from the seventies, you'd be really impressed with the quality of the newspaper at that time.

Riley Habyl [00:18:18] To circle back a little bit to your early introductions to Cleveland's lesbian community—. How did you sort of come to a—an understanding of your identity and your politics within Cleveland's lesbian community? Would you say that you identified more with the lesbian community in general, or with a specific lesbian feminist subgroup within that community?

Debra Hirshberg [00:18:45] Yeah. And the lesbian feminists. The women that came to the women's center. The lesbians that came to the Women's Center who wanted to bring in, like, Rita Mae Brown or Susan Rennie—or we brought in Flo Kennedy, and we were bringing in activists to talk about changing the world. That's what we were interested in, and there was a like group of women that were interested in doing that. And occasionally we'd bring in a band or something.

Riley Habyl [00:19:24] Can you talk a little bit about how you first encountered lesbian feminism, and how that sort of motivated your activism and your politics in the early-to-mid 1970s?

Debra Hirshberg [00:19:39] I encountered it through the [Case Western Reserve] Women's Center. Yeah, before I was just this isolated lesbian with this remote girlfriend in Massachusetts, and—and then I met women in the community and we would talk ideas. There was something called the Feminist Forum, which met at somebody's house once a month to talk about ideas, you know, strategies. There were—. It was a conference to say, "What did we want to do as a community? What organizations did we need to support ourselves?", and to encourage the—strengthening women's participation in society. A lot of women work that Preterm, the abortion clinic. I never worked within the feminist community—I'm all volunteer. Well, there was a very short stint that I was an Interim Executive Director of the Women's Community Foundation, but I was—my life has been a volunteer. My work has been as a software consultant. I don't know how I encountered them, I—. The three women who I first met at one of the—at Godmothers [Godmothers II, 1014 E. 63rd], an old bar—Susan [Woodworth], Jamie [Hecker] and Sally [Tatnall] are still my best—you know, my really good friends. So I'm in a relationship with Jamie [Hecker]—(Debra's phone rings) I was in a relationship with Susan [Woodworth], and I met Sally [Tatnall] and Jamie [Hecker] in a collective. And yeah, I just—. And I'm still engaged with Sally [Tatnall] in her life, and her daughter, and her grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Riley Habyl [00:21:37] Just to clarify, is the Sally that you're referring to Sally Tatnall and her house, the Berkshire—I think—Hag House collective? Is that the one?

Debra Hirshberg [00:21:49] Yes, I was part of that. Yeah, Yeah, I was in there—one of the founders.

Riley Habyl [00:22:03] So how did you find out about the concept of collectivist living? Or how did that—the idea of collectivist living sort of become something that you and the other founding members of the collective you were part of wanted to pursue?

Debra Hirshberg [00:22:22] Quest, the lesbian feminist journal, was written by a collective of lesbian feminists, and they wrote about collective theory, and I knew the family wasn't the best organizing tool. What are our alternatives for organizing? I had spent a year in Israel, so I was very familiar with the Kibbutz, and the Kibbutz organizing tool—and yet it didn't support women in the same way it supported men, and so it was still not really ideal and—. But it was a bet—. It was a good experiment, it's—it was a good change. But I thought that there need—. I don't know. I was willing to pursue other alternatives. I wasn't going to have children. It wasn't about being a family to raise children, but other alternatives to support ourselves and allow ourselves to have greater access to do the things we wanted to do because we didn't have to spend as much time just surviving. It was very, very economical to live in a group and to support each other, and out of the collective we did a lot of organizing individually and as a collective. And it gave us a foundation where we weren't focused on our own survival. So it was, it was good. It didn't succeed, and it was—the worst breakup of my life was the breakup of the [Hag House] collective. But I'm still very good friends with everybody, wherever they are. I spend time with all of them—not all of them, but with Willow [Bentley] and Phyllis [Balcerzak].

Riley Habyl [00:24:40] To get a little int—or, to get into more detail about the [Hag House] collective—do you remember what year it was founded, and for how long it lasted until it dissolved?

Debra Hirshberg [00:24:49] Okay. We started meeting in 1977. We met for almost a y—almost two years before we moved in. We moved in in 1979. And I left—. I left. I was—. I left in 1988, so I was there nine years.

Riley Habyl [00:25:17] What happened in the two years— (crosstalk).

Debra Hirshberg [00:25:20] It dissolved when I left. (laughs) What happened in the two years we were meeting?

Riley Habyl [00:25:28] Yes. Yeah, before you ended up moving in, was that time to sort of— (crosstalk)

Debra Hirshberg [00:25:34] Theory.

Riley Habyl [00:25:35] —plan out how it would work? Yeah.

Debra Hirshberg [00:25:36] Yeah, theory. What we wanted. Why we thought it was a good idea. How we thought we could work together. What the parameters would be. How it would be structured. Yeah, we made a fatal mistake—which was moving into a house that was owned by Sally [Tatnall]. And so, in the end Sally [Tatnall] had more say than the rest of us, even though we took on shared responsibility for the house (unintelligible) and blah-blah-blah. We should have purchased collectively our own place. That's what I would recommend for other people who want to do a live-in collective is—you have to all start on equal ground.

Riley Habyl [00:26:32] Mhm. Would you say then there was a hierarchy to the house dynamics that wasn't intended to be there in the first place?

Debra Hirshberg [00:26:46] Not so much within the house. No, there wasn't a hierarchy in the house, but it—when the going got tough, it became clear that I had to leave. Jamie [Hecker] had to leave. Sally [Tatnall] wasn't going to be the one to leave because it was her house.

Riley Habyl [00:27:14] That makes sense.

Debra Hirshberg [00:27:15] You know, and Phyllis [Balcerzak] left, and Willow [Bentley] left—you know, people left and Sally [Tatnall] was left in the house [2953 Berkshire Rd.]. Whereas if it had been a joint property, we would have disbanded together or worked it out together.

Riley Habyl [00:27:39] Did you leave on—. And I know that you mentioned that you're still in contact with a lot of the women who were part of the collective. Did it dissolve on relatively rocky terms? Or, well, sort of a—.

Debra Hirshberg [00:27:56] It dissolved over time. Sally [Tatnall] tried to keep it going. I would say—I was hurt, I was very hurt emotionally—and I maintained a relationship with Sally [Tatnall], and we have come to—we overcame it nearly 30 years ago. But yeah, I mean, it's been a long time. We've been in each other's lives for a long time. You don't throw that stuff away. But, you know, of course there were feelings that have to be worked out. But yeah—. We love each other. No problem.

Riley Habyl [00:28:47] Can you tell me a little more about the dynamics of living within the house and the [Hag House] collective?

Debra Hirshberg [00:28:57] Well, let's see. We had weekly meetings. We tried to eat meals together. We had—. We planned events together. We supported each other's activism, whatever the other ones were doing. Sally [Tatnall] and I were very engaged in bringing the Dinner Party—Judy Chicago's Dinner Party—to Cleveland. That took up a lot of our time. Sally [Tatnall] and Phyllis [Balcerzak] were very engaged in hosting a Radical Thought Conference, and that took up a lot of their time. We supported them. We had Feminist Forums at our house. We developed our own winter holiday that we did every year, and we would invite the community to it. We had parties, lots of dance, disco parties. We had a disco machine that I was involved in—in the community that we use for community dances. But it was stored at our house so we could just use it at our house whenever we wanted to have a disco party. We babysat infants—we got involved in some childcare stuff. We—there were lots of meetings there. If somebody was involved in an organization or a group, oftentimes it met at Berkshire [2953 Berkshire Rd.] because it was a big house. We did the holidays—the solstices and equinoxes—that were open to women. We did a Thanksgiving dinner that was open to women—anybody—any woman who wanted to come. We were pretty much savages. But, you know—.

Riley Habyl [00:31:07] Do you remember the name of the holiday that you mentioned?

Debra Hirshberg [00:31:12] Oisia.

Riley Habyl [00:31:15] Could you spell that out for me?

Debra Hirshberg [00:31:22] O-i-s-i-a, but I'll look at my folder and I'll send you an email. Oisia. It's a word we got from Madeline L'Engle. Do you know her? She wrote A Wrinkle in Time. Anyway, she's an author. She wrote some more spiritual books, and Oisia was some kind—. You know, I don't even remember anymore—that's awful—but it had meaning at the time. Let me get back to you on what that meaning was (laughs). But what we did was we hung apples from the ceiling and we put fortunes on the apples—we wrote fortunes, we wrote our own fortunes—and that women would come, and they would pick an apple with them fortune. And we would have conversations about the solstice and the rebirth that comes with the winter solstice, the darkness, and then the coming of the light. Everything doesn't end, it starts over again. Yeah, I think we had like five nights of Oisia. Some were dinner parties with some of our closest friends, some are open to any woman that wanted to come. You know, different kinds of events—but we had these events. My file cabinets are behind me. I could look it up, but I would—it would take time for me to find the Oisia folder. But I'm sure I have it, and if I don't have it, Jamie [Hecker] has it.

Riley Habyl [00:33:06] What were some of the events that you held at the house?

Debra Hirshberg [00:33:13] Feminist Forums. Conversations. We did a whole book discussion on Mary Daly's Gynecology—that was interesting. We read other books that people in the community would come to. We did the holidays, the solstices, and equinoxes, the Oisia, parties. And then whatever women were involved in. Like if I was involved in a Jewish lesbian group, we sometimes met at the house. Or SOAR [Stop Oppression and Racism]—are you familiar with SOAR?

Riley Habyl [00:33:53] I don't believe so.

Debra Hirshberg [00:33:54] Anti-racism groups that met a lot at the house. I don't know—we planned conferences, we planned a [local radical feminist] conference in 1981 out of the house. We planned the [Radical Thought Conference] Conference in 1987 out of the house. The Building Project—the Community Foundation—you know, all these things some of us were involved in.

Riley Habyl [00:34:36] Was the core group that you were involved with—that was also part of the collective—involved in the development of a lot of the lesbian feminist organizations and conferences and events and spaces that later emerged in the late seventies and eighties? Like—I'm thinking about the—like the Womyn's Variety Show, and Egg Moon Farm, and things—.

Debra Hirshberg [00:35:06] Not Egg Moon Farm. We were involved in the Land Project—we had Land Project meetings at the house. The five of us of the original collective were all members of the Land Project, and then—I'm still a member of the Land Project, so is Jamie [Hecker], yeah. Yeah, so the Land Project—Egg Moon Farm was a split—something that happened when some people left the Land Project. Yeah so, yes, we—some of us more than others. A lot of—Willow [Bentley], Jamie [Hecker], and Sally [Tatnall] all worked at Preterm at some point. Jamie [Hecker] retired from Preterm, so she worked there like 35 years. And Sally [Tatnall] and I were involved with the Dinner Party. Jamie [Hecker] and I were involved with the Building Project. All of us—Jamie [Hecker], Sally [Tatnall] and I, and Willow [Bentley]—did the conference. And then Sally [Tatnall] and Phyllis [Balcerzak] and I did the Radical Thought Conference. Phyllis [Balcerzak] and Sally [Tatnall] were active in SOAR [Stop Oppression and Racism], and I was marginally active. I wasn't an organizer, but a participant. Sally [Tatnall] and I were active in the [Women's Community] Foundation. I became very active in the Women's Community Foundation, and—. But the collective helped me—like when I was writing guidelines for the allocations committee and funding guidelines, and how we were going to start. I did all that work within the collective. We would-—. At our meetings I'd say, "What do you think about this idea? Help me develop this idea." And so the funding guidelines and the philosophies of some of these things came out of our group thinking, because it's always better to have a group think out of one mind. I don't know. It was an open door, our collective—people would come.

Riley Habyl [00:37:39] How many members would you say there were at the peak of the collective? Aside from the five—

Debra Hirshberg [00:37:46] Five w—.

Riley Habyl [00:37:46] —foundational members?

Debra Hirshberg [00:37:48] Yes, it's—. Only five women ever lived there at the time. As some women left, some other women may have joined. And so the five of us—Sally [Tatnall], Willow [Bentley], Pam [Markley], Jamie [Hecker] and myself were the founders. And then Pam [Markley] left and there were four of us for a long time. Rebecca [Levin] joined—Rebecca Levin—but she joined and left. Catherine Sicilian came and left. Phyllis [Balcerzak] came after Willow [Bentley] left. It was Jamie [Hecker], Phyllis [Balcerzak], Sally [Tatnall] and I for a while. And then I left, and Jamie [Hecker] left shortly thereafter—and it was Sally [Tatnall] and Phyllis [Balcerzak] and whoever they got involved in the collective. But most of the people that lived there after that were just living there—were not part of the collective. Sally [Tatnall] and Phyllis [Balcerzak] maintained a collective of two for quite some time, until that fell apart. Have you heard about the Woofer Tweeter Theory?

Riley Habyl [00:39:03] I think I've read that—I've read that term somewhere, but I honestly can't recall quite where I've heard that.

Debra Hirshberg [00:39:11] Okay. That was something Sally [Tatnall] and Phyllis [Balcerzak] developed of sexual response—dominance and submission—butch-femme. Woofer Tweeter is what they called it, and there's a chapter that they wrote in Sonia Johnson's book, Diving Into the Wreck. I think that's the name of the book. Do you know who Sonia Johnson is?

Riley Habyl [00:39:31] No.

Debra Hirshberg [00:39:31] She was an excommunicated Mormon who became a lesbian and wrote several books—and became a radical feminist really, and that's why she was excommunicated. But she wrote a book, Diving into the Wreck, which you could look up online—and there's a chapter in there on the Woofer Tweeter Theory, and that was developed by Sally [Tatnall] and Phyllis [Balcerzak] as part of the—in the [Hag House] collective.

Riley Habyl [00:40:10] So I know that you've mentioned that there have been a lot of good things that came out of the dynamics of the collective and a lot of things that were organized through collaboration within the collective but—. What were some of the biggest hurdles, or biggest challenges, that the collective faced over time?

Debra Hirshberg [00:40:32] In the Land Project—all of us were in the Land Project—but the other women in the Land Project thought we were a power group that talked among ourselves. Of course, we did sometimes, and came as a block to the Land Project—which is another collective. The Land Project is—I don't know if you know anything about that—but a collective of women that own land right across the street here in western Pennsylvania. It's been going since 1975—and it purchased land in 1979. And we still own the land and we expand it and lots of new people are-—have come and are part of it. Jamie [Hecker] and I are the only two still there from the beginning. But—. So there was a little tension because we would come and people saw us as a power group. What was your question? What were some of the problems of being in a collective?

Riley Habyl [00:41:32] Some of the problems, or some of the issues that you faced?

Debra Hirshberg [00:41:42] There was a sister collective—at Hampshire House—of women that we had been involved with in many organizations over the years, and they did their own collective. So we were Hag House and they were—. Jesus, I'll think of it. I'm going to write it down what Hampshire House's name was. And so parties started happening there and—. And many of them were in the Land Project also so, you know, it's like part of the initial core group of active lesbian feminists—some at Berkshire, some at [Hampshire]—what is it called? I

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