EFFORTPOST 1973: When Beth Elloitt Asked If Trans Women Were Welcome Here

Origin of an Idea

1955, in the sunkissed city of San Francisco, a group of lesbians congregated to create an offshoot of the Homophile Movement modeled after Harry Hay's Mattachine Society rooted within assimilation and secrecy, calling themselves the Daughters of Bilitis based on an oblique reference to Sappho. This organization gradually moved from secrecy and assimilation toward radicalism and activism, eventually boiling in 1966 during the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations when the itinerary was perceived to have been focused on male homosexual issues. This shunted the Daughters of Bilitis increasingly within an aggrieved and feminist direction, with dissatisfaction growing toward male homosexuals and an increased emphasis on the feminism of the day.

Daughters of Bilitis publication

The breaking point was reached when members of Daughters of Bilitis demanded a focus on lesbian matters and came away with token concessions, causing the founder of Daughters of Bilitis, Del Martin, to pen ‘If That's All There Is' marking the start of the Lesbian Separatist and Lesbian Feminist movement.

The Daughters of Bilitis quickly died as a meaningful organization, folding at the national level in 1970 though operating as a vestige at the local level, the corpse serving to fertilize a thousand flowers.

Del Martin

Fragmentation

Organizations like the Gorgons and Guttercute butches absorbed the displaced cute butches which desired a different direction, one characterized by radicalism and separatism. Armed with copies of Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig these organizations launched an absolute assault, rejecting traditional linguistic practices alongside all traditional politics as being rooted within patriarchal heterosexual priors, striking out as a tradition that sought a total break from the patriarchal past and political present, retreating into separation to achieve this end.

The carcass of the Daughters of Bilitis still writhed, depleted of possibility but still carrying prestige, in 1971 the San Francisco chapter voted on the admission of a new member, Beth Elliot. The difference between Beth Elloitt which raised admittance to the point of controversy was her s*x, being born male and transitioning into a woman after reaching adulthood while pronouncing a lesbian identity within a letter to a radical feminist magazine called ‘It Ain't Me Babe' which mentions someone named Bev. The admittance, contentious, allowed her entrance into the lesbian underground as a formal member of a coveted sisterhood. She moved into the position of vice president of the San Francisco branch and editor of the group's new letter termed ‘Sisters'.

Beth Elloitt and her album 'Buried Treasure'

The Purge

Members of the derivatives, outraged that the homeland had become occupied by a male, launched a counterattack. A vote is held in the aftermath, expelling Beth from the Daughters of Bilitis within 35 to 29 against Beth, and the editorial staff of ‘Sisters' resigned in solidarity.

A figure, obscure at the time and attaining minor fame, Bev Jo Von Dohre, came forward to accuse Beth Elloitt of sexual harassment by revealing herself to be the Bev mentioned in Beth Elloitt's aforementioned letter. The account that Bev provided contradicted Elloitt's account deeply, portraying Beth Elloitt as a shy heterosexual man with whom she shared no meaningful connection beyond base pleasantry and that Elloitt had transitioned to have s*x with lesbians and impersonate her, adopting a name similar to her own and dying her hair a similar color.

Bev Jo Von Dohre

This marks the start of a concept that many on this site are deeply familiar with, that trans women become perverse imitations of the women with whom they wish to sleep with, in this moment the concept of the skinwalkers is born. For her part, Elliot claims that this was motivated by Bev wishing to create distance between her and the hated infiltrator male to not be ostracized from the Guttercute butches. Both have no evidence for their assertions beyond their words.

In the summer of 1973, the West Coast Lesbian Conference was held, a conference which had a small musical festival attached, 1,300 lesbian women from all over the country flocked to the newly founded Lesbos resurrected, making a pilgrimage to lesbian Mecca.

Guttercute butches Distribution

Cast From Eden

A queer rumor begins to spread through leaflets from The Gutter Cute butches, one which many of the women in attendance find impossible to believe or understand, that a male is going to perform as a self-styled country musician. A male who is purported to pronounce a lesbian identity. Disbelief and mockery rapidly turn into confusion and objection as Beth Elloitt, an undeniable male, takes the stage and starts to perform. The audience turns from confusion to rage, the crowd igniting into a riot as Beth Elliot is protected by a thin line of women who wish to prevent violence from breaking out. Beth Elloitt swiftly departs from the stage and the conference concludes with Robin Morgan diverting from her planned speech to rouse the attendants to a vote to expel Beth Elloitt, a vote which two-thirds of attendees reject leading to allegations of an acceptance denied.

Speech in Question

>Are we, out of the compassion in which we have been positively forced to drown as women, are we yet again going to defend the male supremacist yes obscenity of male transvestism? How many of us will try to explain away—or permit into our organizations, even, men who deliberately re-emphasize gender roles, and who parody female oppression and suffering as “camp”? Maybe it seems that we, in our “liberated” combat boots and jeans aren't being mocked. No? Then it is “merely” our mothers, and their mothers, who had no other choice, who wore hobbling dresses and torture-stiletto-heels to survive, to keep jobs, or to keep husbands because they themselves could get no jobs. No, I will not call a male “she;” thirty-two years of suffering in the androcentric society, and of surviving, have earned me the name “woman”; one walk down the street by a male transvestite, five minutes of his being hassled (which he may enjoy), and then he dares, he dares to think he understands our pain? No, in our mothers' names and in our own, we must not call him sister. We know what's at work when whites wear blackface; the same is at work when men wear drag.

Inoculation

This serves as the first mention of the concept that trans women r*pe through infiltration of women-dominated spaces.

These events electrify lesbian separatist whisper networks, Robin Morgan's words terming Beth Elloitt as having ‘the mentality of a male feminist' find fresh tinder as an inferno turns bright. Lesbian feminist organizations, previously never considering the possibility of trans lesbians, issue formal policies of exclusion, publishing polemics of a group of shapeshifting infiltrators that seek to subvert the good old cause.

Robin Morgan

Beyond the Fringes and Into the Mainstream

The events, not witnessed only recounted, reach the ears of one Janice Raymond coalescing the percolating perception found within the lesbian separatist underground into formal regard, ‘Transexual Empire'. The book delivers only a single sentence on trans men, totally fixated upon trans women. The book serves to codify what is recognized today as the transexual infiltrator as clearly stated here ‘All transsexuals r*pe women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves' though she would later recant the specific usage of r*pe within this context. The book would win acclaim within feminist circles as the definitive account of the growing transgender phenomenon One of the figures focused on in the book is a trans woman named Sandy Stone, working as a recording engineer for Jimi Hendrix and serving as a member of the Olivia Records recording label an organization which had bucked the trend of trans exclusion.

Sandy Stone leaves Olivia Records in the aftermath, offered protection from the label which was shirked after a threat of boycott, instead she left for university. Attaining a philosophy PHD with her thesis ‘The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttransexual Manifesto' which served as the genesis of transgender studies, cited as the work which killed transsexuality and birthed trans as a demedicalized conception.

Sandy Stone

Fallout

In the end, Beth Elloit becomes more a martyr than a musician with Bev Jo Von Dohre mirroring, Robin Morgan becomes the preeminent anti-pornography feminist, Janice Raymond peaking as the preeminent feminist scholar of transgender women before being eclipsed by Judith Butler, Sandy Stone becoming the founder of trans studies and the Godmother of all modern trans activism. All the mentioned organizations die and this moment serves as the high-water mark of the lesbian separatist movement though for reasons unrelated.

The Summer Which Never Ends

This cycle repeats Michigan Womyn's Music Festival and all over women's spaces as valids ask the always pertinent question 'are trans women welcome here'. The Summer of 1973 lives on like the spirit of May '68, a moment, an idea, and a legacy which presents as the principal hauntology of a current. The Summer of '73 refuses to end as we all wait for the come of fall as the trans question comes to resemble commedia dell'arte, a rotating cast of actors playing archetypal roles and repeating beloved catchphrases.

Sources

Anti-

Link to Beth Elloitt's letter with anti commentary

https://www.evakurilova.com/p/a-womans-love-gender-wars-history

Bev Jo's account

https://bevjo.substack.com/p/truth-versus-lies

https://www.evakurilova.com/p/gender-wars-history-series-bev-jo

Janice

Transsexual Empire by Janice Raymond

Pro-

https://theterfs.com/2013/10/12/1973-west-coast-terfs/

Trans History by Susan Stryker

Mirrors: Portrait of a Lesbian Transsexual by Beth Elliott

I'm sure that I fricked up the tense somewhere by presenting the events of 1973 in present tense and those prior in past tense and I'm sure that people will quibble of what pronouns were used and the current recounting of the events, know that I won't read any of that.