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SEQUENCE:19021320
CREATED:20230604T064400Z
DESCRIPTION:The Communist Party in the US banned lesbian, gay, bisexual, and 
 transgender (LGBT) people from membership beginning in 1938 when it cast 
 them off as "degenerates." It persisted in this policy until 1991. During 
 this 60-year ban, gays and lesbians who did join the Communist Party were 
 deeply closeted within it, as well as in their public lives as both queer 
 and Communist.\n\nBy the late 1930s, the Communist Party had a membership 
 approaching 100,000 and tens of thousands more people moved in its orbit 
 through the Popular Front against fascism, anti-racist organizing, 
 especially in the south, and its widely read cultural magazine, The New 
 Masses.\n\nBased on a decade of archival research, correspondence, and 
 interviews, Bettina Aptheker explores this history in her book Communists 
 in Closets: Queering the History 1930s–1990s, also pulling from her own 
 experience as a closeted lesbian in the Communist Party in the 1960s and 
 ‘70s. Ironically, and in spite of this homophobia, individual Communists 
 laid some of the political and theoretical foundations for lesbian and gay 
 liberation and women’s liberation, and contributed significantly to 
 peace, social justice, civil rights, and Black and Latinx liberation 
 movements.\n\nBettina Aptheker is Distinguished Professor Emerita, Feminist 
 Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz where she taught for more 
 than 40 years. An activist-scholar she co-led the Free Speech Movement at 
 UC Berkeley in 1964, and the National Student Mobilization Committee to End 
 the War in Vietnam. She played a leading role in the international movement 
 to Free Angela Davis. Bettina was a member of the Communist Party from 
 1962-1981 and has been part of the LGBT movement since the late 1970s. She 
 has published several books including, The Morning Breaks: The Trial of 
 Angela Davis, Tapestries of Life: Women’s Work, Women’s Consciousness 
 and the Meaning of Daily Experience, and a memoir, Intimate Politics: How I 
 Grew Up Red, Fought for Free Speech & Became A Feminist Rebel that was 
 nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in 2006. She and her wife, Kate 
 Miller, have been together since 1979. They live in Santa Cruz.\n\nPlease 
 be vaxxed and masks strongly encouraged. Thanks!\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2023/06/03/18856450.php
SUMMARY:Being Queer and Communist in 1930s–1990s Meant Two Closets With Author Bettina Aptheker
LOCATION:The Green Arcade\n1680 Market Street\nSF, CA  94102
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2023/06/03/18856450.php
DTSTART:20230615T020000Z
DTEND:20230615T033000Z
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