Commentary: “Anarchy in High Heels” + Interview with Author Denise Larson
“I am a feminist by destiny.”
- Denise Larson, author of Anarchy in High Heels
Writer’s note: Throughout this commentary, I use the terms “mainstream feminism,” “white feminism,” and “white feminists” interchangeably. Mainstream feminism references the dominant feminist movements in the western world that most of us picture when we hear the word “feminism”, which tend to reinforce western hierarchies and systems that oppress women of color around the world. When I write about white feminists, there is an important distinction to make: there is a difference between white women who are feminists and white feminists. From an anti-racist perspective, simply having white skin does not make you a white feminist. A white feminist is someone who espouses the values of a version of feminism rooted in whiteness which support oppressive structures like white supremacy and capitalism. Not all white women who are feminists are white feminists.
Anarchy in High Heels hilariously memorializes the lifespan of an all-woman comedy performance group called Les Nickelettes, who burst onto the San Francisco campy, counter-culture, theater scene back in 1972. If you’re a performer, a comedian, or a theater-lover, Anarchy in High Heels validates and celebrates many of the trials and tribulations of performing, especially as a woman. If you’re a feminist, grab a copy to see how Les Nickelettes gave women a space to be funny and play together, challenging patriarchal & capitalist standards.
This commentary is for y’all out there who, like me, might be interested in reading Anarchy in High Heels, but have some reservations, fearing that this is just another in a lineup of memoirs by white women who are feminists talking about a version of feminism that isn’t relevant to many of us. I’ll just say now: you have nothing to fear.
My interview with Denise sought to better understand her own politics, as well as the politics of Les Nickelettes at the time, as those politics can, at times, be vague or confusing in the book. My hope is that your reading experience of Anarchy in High Heels will be enriched through access to more of the background political thinking in this commentary.
Denise brings the fun; I bring the (albeit less fun) political framework. Both exist in a state of play together, fueling one another. Neither is more important than the other; both are needed to, as Denise puts it, “get” Les Nickelettes.
A quick, amusing read, Anarchy in High Heels is a fun, alternative take on feminist theater, capturing a distinctly silly, campy, and raunchy humor that poked fun at stereotypes and reveled in women making each other laugh.
As the story of Les Nicklettes unfolds, readers are immersed in photographs, show posters, and theatrical reviews from productions starting with “The Ms. Hysterical Contest,” a spoof on the Miss America competition; to “It’s Vicious Out There,” a musical comedy about rape culture; “Peter Pan: A New Rock Fairytale,” a playful, queer, musical production poking fun at male rock stars who never want to grow up; “Curtains!,” a Kafka-esque musical murder mystery with a giant cockroach in high heels; “Spaced Out: A Sci-Fi Musical,” a Star Wars inspired satire about romance and revolution, rooted in female myth; “I’d Rather Be Doing Something Else: The Didi Glitz Story,” a comedic stage adaptation of an underground comic by Diane Noomin about a woman who chooses crime to fund her and her daughters’ lives; “Anarchy in High Heels,” an alternative Cabaret performance; and finally to “Oh, Goddess!,” combining themes from the resurgence in goddess/witch fascination and the spoiled Princess fairytale archetype to create a satirist, futuristic fable about women’s power.
Though Zoom windows can be blurry, I quickly recognized Denise’s playful smile on-screen from the front cover of her book— a picture of Denise standing in front of a sign for the Intersection Theater in North Beach, “… a deactivated Methodist Church turned center for the arts…” where, in 1973, Les Nickelettes performed in residency. Today, though nearly 50 years have passed since that photo was taken, Denise is obviously still Denise. Short, curly red hair, neck decorated with a colorful scarf, she reminded me of many a dance teacher I had back in the day. There was something very put-together about Denise, yet a wild, creative side hovered like an aura around her. I suppose this makes sense given she started out as a stage performer then turned to a career as an Early Childhood Educator.
During our conversation, Denise (unlike so many of us writers that can go on and on and on) answered my questions with a refreshing kind of brevity. Her voice, surprisingly, was fairly soft for a performer. As she spoke, I even heard the slightest twinge of nervousness, to which I breathed a sigh of relief. At least I’m not the only one who’s nervous! But as our conversation went on, we both loosened up and of course made one another laugh.
Laughter offered us a great place to start.
Les Nickelettes was a revolutionary space for women, as it granted them permission to be silly and funny, when in most other spaces, such behavior was seen as unattractive, unladylike, and even a threat. Larson writes,
“...the biggest fear in most men: women ridiculing their patriarchy. Maybe that’s why men claimed women weren’t funny.”
Is it revolutionary to laugh rather than cry? Or, perhaps more realistically, to laugh while crying? There is incredible power in laughing at exploitative systems, pointing out their inconsistencies, cruelty, and absurdity. Because patriarchy and white supremacy are so interlinked, it stands to reason that if patriarchy can’t weather being the butt of the joke, then maybe white supremacy buckles under laughter too.
Delegitimization of any system is a threat to it. Systems only retain authority if we see them as legitimate or, even worse, natural. But comedy breaks down a barrier between people and systems which relies on seriousness. If laughing at toxic masculinity undermines patriarchy, then could laughing at whiteness undermine white supremacy? I believe so.
“Laugh to Keep From Crying” is the title of chapter 3 in a collection of essays, interviews, and artwork by Black contributors called How We Fight White Supremacy edited by Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin. They start the chapter by writing that,
“Humor is among our toughest suits of armor against white supremacy. One-liners, irony, tall tales, impressions, satire, signifying, playing the dozens, and trolling are all tools that we’ve used to reinforce our culture, pass down mother wit, and vent our rage without getting lynched, fired, or otherwise destroyed.”
Speaking directly to the absurdity of whiteness, chapter 3 of How We Fight White Supremacy tells a story about a white teacher by the name of Patricia Cummings, who, in 2018, “celebrated” Black History Month in her class by allegedly telling three Black students to lie on the ground so she could step on their backs, as some demented metaphor for slavery.
“The most likely explanation for Patricia Cumming’s behavior, though, is that like millions of White people before her, she’s lost her goddamn mind. The pervasiveness of white supremacy has made White people fucking crazy.”
Of course, Cummings decided to sue the New York Department of Education due to “reverse discrimination” because she claims there was no proof she placed her knee on a student’s back.
In the face of such Caucasity, Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin write,
“… laughing is one of our most important tools of war.”
I asked Denise if play and humor can be tools for dismantling white supremacy, to which she responded that, yes, humor and particularly satire can be powerful non-violent forms of systemic change.
I believe play is easily dismissed as a pathway to liberation because adults don’t know how to play or won’t allow themselves room to play.
This had me wondering: Why is it adults are so afraid of play? Are there ways we can encourage one another in regular everyday life to play more?
Denise told me,
“I was an Early Childhood Educator for 20 years (14 years as a preschool teacher). It was a struggle to convince parents of very young children the value and educational benefits of play, so convincing adults they can benefit from play is a hard sell. Improv is a great way to introduce play. Tech companies hire improv teachers to come into the workplace and do workshops for super serious geeks to loosen them up – that tells you something.”
Seriousness is a tenet of adulthood. Les Nickelettes, as described in Denise’s memoir, often spoke to their desire to be “taken seriously” as performers and artists, in the sense that they sought out the credibility as well as stability that comes with being “legit”.
Denise shares excerpts from reviews of Les Nickelettes’ shows, some laudatory and others confused. One word comes up again and again in these reviews that rubs Denise and the rest of Les Nickelettes the wrong way: amateur.
For most of the first half of the book, it seems like “amateur” being used to describe Les Nickelettes was incredibly irritating and sexist.
But, towards the end of the book, Denise writes,
“Definition of amateur: a person who engages in activity for the pleasure rather than financial benefit or professional reasons. Punk rockers embraced the label of amateur, and maybe we should have too.”
While reading, I understood Denise’s valid frustration with the use of the word “amateur”, as it was clearly used to delegitimize rather than praise. But I also wondered why being an amateur was a bad thing. In patriarchal & capitalist systems, professionalism is valued above everything else. It’s a moving goal post that seeks to keep some people out and can feel impossible to attain.
If professionalism is a means to keep the wheels of capitalism turning and gatekeep who can access privilege, then can being an amateur be an act of resistance? It reminds me of the phrase, “I don’t want equality with men; I want liberation from them.”
I asked Denise: Is our aspiration to be seen as valuable by men under capitalism or is our aspiration to build something else that doesn’t hierarchize skill and passion? What are your thoughts on this?
Denise pondered and replied,
“Your response of the word ‘amateur’ being not a bad thing, is to me, a fairly new idea. Les Nickelettes certainly didn’t consciously link it to capitalism and the patriarchal culture. We knew it marginalized us, but we saw it as a dismissal of our form of humor and our style. My older and wiser self loves the idea of embracing the word “amateur” as a repudiation of the hierarchical definition of what is art?”
I wonder how things would change if, instead of trying to prove we’re serious, we proved how playful we are. How would capitalism stand the crumbling of our obsession with professionalism?
Les Nickelettes also turned to guerilla theater to poke fun at the wealthy and explore the absurdism of capitalism. In chapter 2, Denise tells the story of Les Nickelettes crashing the San Francisco Opera opening as a way to get media attention. Denise writes,
“Stealing the spotlight from the privileged elite without paying to be in their club was the message.”
She later connects Dadaism with play that undermines capitalism. Dadaism, she writes,
“… prized nonsense and sought to subvert the orderly bourgeoisie.”
There’s so much about how Les Nickelettes operated that delegitimized capitalism through play. When there were few resources, it was mutual aid (and the group’s hard work, of course) that helped the show go on. Les Nickelettes were constantly bringing in the community to the performance process, largely out of necessity, but I’m sure out of love too. But then, later down the road, Les Nickelettes became a 501-c3, allowing them access to grants and government funding that they needed to get Les Nickelettes to the next level. Denise writes about there being some discomfort with this.
“But Les Nicklettes have always been lawless and non compliant.”
I asked: At the time, were you or the other members thinking about the group’s relationship with capitalism? Was the dynamic between performance and profit an active conversation within the group? How did politics around money and economy affect the group’s aspirations or sense of identity?
Denise answered,
“Les Nickelettes didn’t sit around discussing anti-capitalism, nor did we have active conversations debating performance and profit. It was more innate. If we had wanted a lot of money we would have conformed to a more acceptable style. We just saw ourselves as starving artists unwilling to compromise. But we did want money to achieve the independence to do what we wanted. For instance, wouldn’t it be great to have the means to have our own performance space? But I should also point out that we came out of the milieu of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s underground/counterculture concepts. These movements arose because the young Boomers rejected capitalism and the mainstream cultural norms. It was all peace, love, and understanding, man.”
Hearing Denise talk about the Boomers rejecting capitalism almost made me laugh considering how today Boomers are some of the fiercest defenders of oppressive systems. But she’s right. Historically, at the time when the Boomers were young and questioning the world they grew up in, they participated in counter-cultural movements that turned away from capitalist structures. Just like the Zoomers (Gen Z) are doing now. That got me thinking about the generation gap and the palpable tension between Boomers and Zoomers today.
I asked: How do you think we can bridge the gap that feels like it’s widening every day? Specifically, can women’s spaces (like Les Nickelettes’ production, Curtains! Which intentionally built a cast from older and younger generations) offer guidance/wisdom on intergenerational solidarity?
Denise answered,
“I have great hope for the Zoomers. As an example, your questions are deep and probing; a conversation between the two generations. The conflict between ‘The Boomers’ and their parents ‘The Greatest Generation’ invented the phrase ‘generation gap’. This is not new. The internet and social media are new and have changed things. If we can listen and respect each other we can bridge the gap. Women’s spaces tend to be more communal, cooperative, and open to compromise. So, more women leaders?”
What a fantastic answer, I feel. But right there at the very end, “So more women leaders?”reminded me of something mainstream feminism gets criticized for today: girl bossing.
“Girl boss” is a self-identifying term born more recently as a label for women who are bosses (either literally or figuratively) in businesses or in other high profile positions, like elected office. Some use it as a celebratory term as something to aspire to, but many others use it negatively, pointing out the unironically patriarchal nature of the word. The term can be used as a noun, adjective, and/or verb.
Denise told me that one of her goals with Anarchy in High Heels was to “… teach a little feminist history.” But I feel there is more to the history that isn’t spoken to in the book, perhaps some of the most important parts of that history, which many white feminists struggle to face today.
Mainstream feminism, especially over the last 50 years, has emphasized that the world’s problems would be fixed if women had the power. Naturally, there is some truth to this idea. Women bring a radically different perspective to leadership, care, and profit than men do, yet, we (especially white women), are still indoctrinated with the values of patriarchy and white supremacy. And furthermore, this claim implies that women are inherently more moral or ethical than men, which is a generalization that simply isn’t true and treats women as a monolith.
In her book Why I Am Not a Feminist, Jessa Crispin writes,
“We assume the patriarchy will automatically be dismantled if we just manage to get all women to call themselves feminists. A woman CEO can proudly stand up and proclaim her belief in feminism— after all, it got her to this position of power— while still outsourcing her company’s labor to factories where women and children work in slave-like conditions, while still poisoning the atmosphere and water supplies with toxic run-off, and while paying her female employees disproportionately low salaries.”
A classic example: Elizabeth Holmes, Founder and CEO of a blood-testing start up called Theranos, valued at $9 billion according to Vanity Fair special correspondent Nick Bilton in his article, “Exclusive: How Elizabeth Holmes’ House of Cards Came Tumbling Down”. Heralded as the next Steve Jobs and the ultimate girl boss, Holmes built a Silicon Valley start-up to make blood test sampling easier, but the medical technology that was supposed to change the world turned out to be a sham. According to health-care journalist from The Wall Street Journal, John Carreyou, who wrote numerous high-profile articles exposing the fraudulent company,
“It’s O.K. if you’ve got a smartphone app or a social network, and you go live with it before it’s ready; people aren’t going to die. But with medicine, it’s different.”
Holmes modeled herself after Steve Jobs and surrounding herself with powerful white men (who did not have experience in health care) like former Secretary of State (and war criminal) Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Georgia senator and chairman of the Armed Forces Committee Sam Nunn, and William J. Perry, the former defense secretary, who all, as so well-stated in Nick Bilton’s exclusive, “… [were] better suited to decide if America should invade Iraq than vet a blood-testing company.” Holmes girl-bossed her way to the top by lying to the public and her own employees, using extortion to silence dissenters, and caring not one bit that her lies could hurt people seeking medical assistance.
Does that sound any different than what white male CEOs do? How does Holmes’ identity as a woman change the impact of her secrecy, power-hoarding, and accumulation of wealth off of a non-existent product? In fact, as Bilton argues in his exclusive article, Holmes used her narrative as a self-made “female billionaire trying to change the world” in order to achieve the wealth and power she did.
Mikki Kendall in her book Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot, writes of white feminism,
“Instead of a framework that focuses on helping women get basic needs met, all too often the focus is not on survival but on increasing privilege.”
This is clearly the case with Elizabeth Holmes and many other white women CEOs with wealth and power. Being a girl boss and breaking the glass ceiling isn’t about changing the world so that all women can thrive; it’s about keeping things the same so that those in power can thrive at the very top while everyone else struggles to survive.
During a university lecture, Angela Davis speaks to glass ceiling feminism.
“You hear the term ‘glass ceiling feminism’… This is what Hilary Clinton represented. But glass ceiling feminism is grounded from the very outset in hierarchies. I mean how else does that metaphor work? Those who are already high enough to reach the ceiling are probably white and if they’re not white, they are already affluent, because they are at the top. All they have to do is push through the ceiling. As long as I’ve identified as a feminist, it has been clear to me that any feminism that privileges those who already have privilege, is bound to be irrelevant to poor women, working class women, women of color, trans women, trans women of color.”
To me, I see very little difference between female and male billionaires because, at the end of the day, they still value the exact same thing above all else (including peoples’ safety and wellbeing): wealth.
The wealth/resource-hoarding mentality is the basis of colonization historically and today. Holmes participated (and still participates) in a legacy of white colonization that relies on the disposability of human bodies, particularly Black and Brown bodies. Her wealth, her success, and her girl boss identity empower white supremacy and capitalism to continue.
In How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, editor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor interviews Alicia Garza, organizer, writer, and freedom fighter who co-created #BlackLivesMatter. When asked about why there is tension with the white feminist movement, Garza answers quite simply,
“Because they’re ambivalent about capitalism.”
Of course there are dozens and dozens of other examples of girl bosses like Holmes, who ensure the continuation of oppressive systems, rather than their demise. But the bottom line is this: More women in positions of leadership doesn’t necessarily result in a better world. In fact, when white women are in positions of leadership, they tend to continue the work of their male forebears in the direction of harm.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes in the introduction of How We Get Free,
“The inability or unwillingness of most white feminist organizations to fully engage with anti racist issues affecting Black women, like campaigning against sterilization and sexual assault or for low-wage labor and workplace rights, alienated Black women and other women of color from becoming active in those organizations.”
Black feminists over history have worked more towards meeting these basic needs than white feminists. Perhaps one of the most influential Black feminist groups, the Combahee River Collective (CRC), was created in 1974, and named after Harriet Tubman’s 1853 raid on the Combahee River in South Carolina that freed 750 enslaved people.
As an anti-capitalist, socialist organization, the CRC was important in the United States and beyond.
“… Black women saw themselves not as isolated within the United States but as part of a global movement of Black and Brown people united in a struggle against the colonial, imperialist, and capitalist domination of the West, led by the United States.”
Does it sound like white girl bosses align with that kind of mission? Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor continues,
“One issue that is of major concern to us and that we have begun to publicly address is racism in the white women’s movement. As Black feminists we are made constantly and painfully aware of how little effort white women have made to understand and combat their racism, which requires among other things that they have a more than superficial comprehension of race, color, and Black history and culture. Eliminating racism in the white women’s movement is by definition work for white women to do, but we will continue to speak to and demand accountability on this issue.”
Anytime I pick up a book written by a white woman who identifies as a feminist, I enter with caution. Girl bossing aside, there are several other areas where white feminism tends to bolster the values of white supremacy and capitalism: sex work, gender and the idea of being a “real” woman, as well as race.
Naturally, these topics did pop up throughout Denise Larson’s book in ways that, to be honest, at times confused me. My questions were therefore designed to gain greater understanding, as it seemed the book only told part of the story. This is, after all, a memoir about Les Nickelettes, so there wasn’t necessarily room to include Denise’s individual thoughts and opinions on every single issue that came up. So I approached our conversation with curiosity, simply wanting to hear what Denise had to say so that I could better understand her and the book, especially for the purposes of this commentary.
Sex Work:
Sex workers, particularly porn stars and dancers, appear throughout Anarchy in High Heels often crossing paths with Les Nickelettes, as both existed in similar counter-cultural spaces. These women find one another in theaters, in clubs, and even exchange wisdoms in conversation.
The way that Denise writes about the sex workers in the book alternated between supportive and condescending. There are times while reading that I can sense the solidarity between women in her tone and how sex work should be legalized so that it’s safer. And yet there are also times while reading that I can sense her discomfort with sex work, distancing herself and her art from theirs. I’m particularly remembering chapter 3 during Les Nickelettes’ visit to the Victoria Theater, where they meet several dancers performing strip-teases on stage for an audience of mainly “horny men” as Denise describes. The dialogue Denise and her friends had with the dancers felt like a perfect blend of solidarity and condescension, a good example to explore together.
I see solidarity in Denise’s question to them,
“Do you get tired of performing for horny men?”
This after one of the dancers said,
“We’re so thrilled you came to see our show. Our dances are art and can be enjoyed by anyone.”
Denise’s concern for them performing in front of a very male-gaze type of audience shines through here and I feel sisterly camaraderie. She even writes later,
“On the surface, this encounter was similar to girlfriends confiding in each other, exchanging little artistic tricks.”
She also includes a story from the First Annual Hookers’ Masquerade Ball held by COYOTE (seeking to “provide dignity, health, and legal protection for prostitutes and to fight to decriminalize prostitution,”) where Les Nicklettes made an appearance. This struck me as an important moment of solidarity.
However, I see condescension in what Denise writes after the conversation with the dancers ended,
“Later, I realized that our uneasiness stemmed from the feeling that someone or something had eroded these women’s self-worth,”
suggesting that sex work is inherently demeaning or shameful.
Womanism is a term coined by Alice Walker (author and activist) as a specific designation that places focus on issues that Black women, men, and families uniquely face. Yet Mikki Kendall also criticizes womanism for its exclusion of sex workers.
“By the time I reached a place to engage with feminism vs womanism— the former paying more lip service than actual service to equality, the latter being closer but still not inclusive enough to people who were engaged in sex work, in vice, as a way to pay the bills and as a way of life— neither felt like they fit me or my goals completely.”
Even outside of white-centric feminist spaces, people struggle with the politics of sex work. Given this country’s history of Puritanism, this should not be a shock to any of us.
Denise responded to my observation about how she writes about sex workers.
“It was a different era. At the time acceptance of sex work (and gay rights) were just being brought to national attention and were evolving. I grew up learning prostitution and being gay was wrong. Contrast this to my daughter (a millennial) who grew up learning the opposite. It’s different now.”
I asked Denise: How do you feel about sex work at this point in your life? Has your perspective changed at all since the Les Nickelettes era? If so, how?
“I feel women should be able to do what they want – as long as it’s their choice and [they’re] not manipulated or recruited for the benefit of others. I had to tell the truth of the times. However, the women in the story didn’t seem to be entirely making a free choice – whether because of economic reasons or overt manipulation.”
I added: I also wonder how you feel about the growing online popularity of sex work today (think Onlyfans), especially during COVID. On social media, there are simultaneous efforts to normalize and decriminalize sex work as well as efforts to confront the glamorization of sex work that’s luring young people into an industry that they aren’t prepared for. As an elder, what wisdom or perspective would you want to pass down to younger women today considering sex work?
“Being an elder, I’m not familiar with the online popularity of sex work. I think women should do what they choose, but would caution them that anything you do just for money (like other jobs) can be a trap. Always be true to yourself and retain your self-respect.”
I can’t help but wonder if some of this comes from respectability politics, which punishes especially Black women for not performing white femininity and punishes people like sex workers for a career path that doesn’t seem “respectable” to dominant culture.
Mikki Kendall addresses this directly in Hood Feminism,
“Respectability narratives discourage us from addressing the needs of sex workers, incarcerated women, or anyone else who has had to face really hard life choices.”
Les Nickelettes, in practice, denounced respectability politics as they related to white women’s experiences, namely rejecting the idea that women have to perform feminine respectability for men’s comfort and pleasure. Does this not seem like exactly the space to criticize respectability politics across the board, including regarding sex work?
Respectability politics has a role to play in gender discrimination across the spectrum.
Gender:
Drag Queens. At several points in the book, Denise writes that she and Les Nickelettes were afraid people would think they were drag queens, “… rather than actual women.”
Reading this, I feared that I was about to encounter some TERF (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist) shit, which is all-too common in mainstream feminism as embodied by famous, wealthy women like J.K Rowling.
Mikki Kendall writes,
“Trans women are often derided or erased, while prominent feminist voices parrot the words of conservative bigots, framing womanhood as biological and determined at birth instead of as a fluid and often arbitrary social construct.”
As a gender-fluid person who was raised and socialized as a woman and who the world perceives as female, I’ve felt excluded from many women’s spaces, including the Women’s Marches that are supposedly for all of us. (The only reason I helped organize the 2020 Central Oregon Women’s March was because a) it was being led by women of color and b) we were very intentional about being inclusive to all genders.)
When I read the line, “rather than actual women” the actual women part really threw me. However, I know the comment was made in reference to drag queens who are often the first ones to acknowledge they aren’t women; they are men who play with gender presentation and femininity as a form of queer pleasure and joy.
While yes, drag queens individually identify with gender expressions across the spectrum, there seems to be a shared understanding that this is to an extent pretend. And pretend doesn’t necessitate “passing”.
Side note: There’s an anecdote in Anarchy in High Heels about the John Waters-famous drag queen Divine showing up to one of Les Nickelettes’ shows and the women in the group being really excited by this. Their reaction to Divine’s presence soothed me and helped me see that Denise’s comment was most likely not coming from a TERF place.
So, given the context, I wasn’t too concerned. Yet, I still made sure to ask Denise about it directly.
I asked: Why were you and Les Nickelettes afraid of being seen as drag queens? Did it have to do with wanting women to be centered in your performances, fearing men might try to invade that sacred space? Was there discomfort with men exploring femininity?
Denise told me,
“We were afraid people would think we were men. We felt if we were perceived as men, it would take away the significance of women dressing up in wild costumes and doing cutting-edge humor. Please note, we also loved drag queens, and I took pains to write these sections so as not to put down the divine queens and their ‘art’.”
The women of Les Nickelettes being protective of their all-woman space makes sense. As Les Nicklettes were swimming upstream, gaining momentum, voice, and notoriety, there were instances of men interfering with the group’s art, specifically urging them to tone down the messaging of some of the pieces. I found it incredibly liberating that Les Nickelettes made the decision (as hard as it was, since there were boyfriends involved) to get the men out of positions of authority in the group. While there still were men involved in supporting Les Nicklettes, the women took control and made sure those men didn’t have the power to change the shows.
Denise explained to me in our interview,
“You can’t play with each other when you’re competing. It was a set-up. Like pit women against each other and watch them fight. That’s fun for men. To come together with women and not have that be a part of the dynamic of the group freed us so much to laugh and say things that were hidden. You didn’t say some things in mixed company or even with a woman you might have felt you were competing with because they could use it against you. It was just very liberating to have that group of women that you could work with and trust.”
I then asked Denise about the transition period between having men in the group and not. I asked what helped her to have the core strength and confidence to make that move.
”It was tricky. At first, I wasn’t all in about kicking them out because of my relationship with Vince. I relied on him at that point. I didn’t have full confidence in myself. But underlying that was that they were trying to change what we were presenting. They wanted it to be more palpable to a mainstream audience because in their minds they knew it would be a more profitable way to go and that more people would come to see it if we toned down our way-out-there stuff, our cutting-edge stuff. If we toned it down, it’d be more acceptable. It was actually a couple of the other women in the group who had the strength and courage to say, ‘Listen, we don’t want these guys around anymore. Get rid of ‘em.’ They had the confidence I didn’t have. It was through them. It was how we supported each other and trusted each other that finally made me pivot to that point of view. It was a big pivotal moment.”
This, naturally, got me thinking about gender and how various gender identities might have engaged with Les Nickelettes.
I asked Denise: I wonder if you all ever had conversations about how you would handle a trans person joining the group? How might you all have navigated that to ensure the quality of your art and the integrity of your messages while also building community with women?
“This may sound strange to you, but this issue was not at all on our radar. As I said gay rights were just beginning to be accepted – and, of course, San Francisco was at the forefront. My gut feeling is that if a trans person came along and laughed at the same jokes as us and bought into our anarchistic style, we would have no issue with them being in the group. We also had women dressing as “drag kings” playing male parts.”
I get the feeling from reading the book that this is true given the quick turnover within the group. There was a necessity to keep those doors open, as members joined, left, returned, then left again. But I wanted to dig deeper. Since my question about a trans group member wasn’t on her radar at the time, I asked if she remembered when trans-ness came into her awareness.
“It was more recent. Of course there were trans people in those days, but it was mostly hidden; it wasn’t out in the open. And I think trans people kept it that way for their own safety. In my generation, or from my perspective, it’s a new thing. All the gender stuff that’s emerged in the last 15 years is new. It’s great people don’t have to pretend to be someone else. There was that acceptance [in the group] so long as you can get with the sense of humor and the style, great! And there were people who didn’t and I do document that too. They didn’t fit in, so they left, but it wasn’t because of who they were, or what they were, or what color they were, or what their sexuality was, or as my friend Rose says, ‘No matter what girlfriend or boyfriend they had,’ it was just if we fit together. But it was just a different time.”
Of course today transphobia in the feminist community is an issue on our radar. Nowhere is this more visible than in conversations about reproductive justice.
Mikki Kendall writes,
“… reproductive health imagery centers on cisgendered, able-bodied women to the exclusion of those who are trans, intersex, or otherwise inhabiting bodies that don’t fit the narrow idea that genitalia dictates gender.”
There’s also incredible overlap between reproductive justice and racism.
In the same interview with Alicia Garza in How We Get Free, Alicia talks about Planned Parenthood and Margaret Sanger, who, if you don’t know, founded Planned Parenthood and helped bring about the birth control pill. She is often heralded as an iconic feminist and someone to be celebrated. However, as is often the case, most people only know part of the story. Sanger was also a eugenicist, who wanted to “exterminate the negro population” according to a letter she wrote to Dr. Gamble about getting Black religious leaders to spread their new gospel of access to abortion. Access to abortion, that’s a good thing right? Yes, but it can also be easily manipulated into a tactic for population control. Many abortion clinics were intentionally and strategically placed in working class neighborhoods where primarily Black families lived.
Alicia Garza shares in her interview,
“[Margaret Sanger] had this vision for women to have access to choice basically about how and when and where you wanted to start a family. And she marries this man, who was actively a part of the eugenics movement and rich [he was an oil tycoon]. And basically gets him to fund the development of the birth control pill. But then she gets involved in this movement. And these two things start to align where, well, the reason that we need this isn’t just about individual choice and self-determination, it’s actually about population control and controlling ‘undesirable’ and ‘deplorable’ people, essentially.”
Sanger is not the only example of popular feminist historical figures who were incredibly racist. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the leaders of the first wave of the feminist movement in America whose philosophies dictated a lot of mainstream feminist thinking, spoke publicly against Black men whom she called “Sambos” and rapists. She was also vocal against the 15th Amendment, seeking to give Black men the right to vote.
Anti-blackness has, historically, been a big part of mainstream feminism. But it’s not just racism against one race.
Race:
The first line of Anarchy in High Heels reads, “I am a feminist by destiny,” a theme that resonates throughout the entire memoir, bookending the story of Les Nickelettes. Today, white feminism is getting a lot of public scrutiny, as Black and Brown women & femmes urge us to reflect on the history of the feminist movement, including who has been erased, dismissed, and even brutalized in those spaces.
As Mikki Kendall writes in Hood Feminism,
“Feminism as defined by the priorities of white women hinged on the availability of cheap labor in the home from women of color.”
She continues later,
“For women of color, the expectation that we prioritize gender over race, that we treat the patriarchy as something that gives all men the same power, leaves many of us feeling isolated.”
Historically, white/mainstream feminism has asked Black and Brown women to organize their needs second to the needs of white women. “We’ll get to you,” is the (false) sentiment most apparent when reading the history of the suffrage movement.
Brent Staples, writer for The New York Times, wrote an opinion piece titled, “How the Suffrage Movement Betrayed Black Women” and in it he articulates a major difference in motivation between Black and white women in seeking the right to vote.
“It became clear after the Civil War that black and white women had different views of why the right to vote was essential. White women were seeking the vote as a symbol of parity with their husbands and brothers. Black women, most of whom lived in the south, were seeking the ballot for themselves and their men, as a means of empowering black communities besieged by the reign of racial terror that erupted after Emancipation.”
White women earned the right to vote in America in 1920 with the passing of the 19th Amendment, whereas Black women (and men) did not have the right to vote until much later in 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act. That’s a long time to wait for “solidarity” from white women.
The assumption that Black and Brown women can wait, as their needs are not as urgent as white women’s, leans into stereotypes against especially Black women, namely that they are tougher than white women and so are capable of suffering sexism (and racism) “just a little while longer.”
Mikki Kendall explains,
“The myth of the Strong Black Woman has made it so that white women can tell themselves that it is okay to expect to wait to be equal with them, because they need it more.”
Author Chanequa Walker-Barnes wrote about the Strong Black Woman myth in her book Too Heavy a Yoke: Black Women and the Burden of Strength,
“Ask anyone— Black or White, male or female— to describe Black women and the most common answer is likely to be strong. The StrongBlackWoman [note: this is how Walker-Barnes writes the term throughout her book] is a legendary figure, typified by extraordinary capacities for caregiving and for suffering without complaint. She is a cultural myth that defines— and confines— ways of being in the world for women of African descent… Rather than being a genuine expression of personality, it is a mask that stifles authenticity, subsuming multifaceted selves behind a singular wall of self-sacrifice and emotional stoicism. The StrongBlackWoman is at once an archetype, a performance, and an ideology.”
The Strong Black Woman myth generally dehumanizes, but when we investigate all the myriad ways it manifests in specific, harmful ways, we witness how it affects everything from access to mental health care to domestic violence. But, again, white feminism’s racism doesn’t stop with Black people.
There is a particular strain of racism in the mainstream feminist movement that impacts Indigenous women across North America and around the world.
In some, but not all, Indigenous cultures and political structures, women were respected leaders with a great deal of influence over the tribe or nation’s politics. In her book An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, author Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes,
“Among the Muskogees and other southern nations, women hardly participated in governmental affairs. Haudenosaunee and Cherokee women, on the other hand, held more political authority… Haudenosaunee clan mothers held the power to recall unsatisfactory representatives.”
In Susan Haven-Hammond’s book Spider Woman’s Web: Traditional Native American Tales About Women’s Power, she writes,
“… Native America was never a single culture, but always a multitude of cultures, traditions, viewpoints, values, languages, and heritages. Still, as Paula Gunn Allen and numerous other scholars have pointed out, the tendency across the continent was toward appreciating, honoring, and even worshipping the powers of women.”
As I’ve read more and more Indigenous womens’ writing, particularly about traditional ways of being regarding gender, the more I see just how radically different white women are seen by white men compared to how Indigenous women are seen by Indigenous men. Women’s roles in society were and are varied and held both surface-level necessity and intrinsically nuanced spiritual importance.
In An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, we learn that women were the ones who began domesticating wild plants and cultivating others. In Spider Woman’s Web, we learn about,
“… the role that feminine energy plays in restoring order and harmony during times of upheaval and chaos.”
Spider Woman’s Web adds,
“In the Iroquois Confederacy, it was men who went to war, but women who decided when to make war, and when to keep the peace.”
As we can see, the roles women played and continue to play in Native communities are diverse and hold incredible power. Imagine looking at the disenfranchisement of white women from this perspective. White women are treated far differently by white men in terms of power, voice, and decision-making than Indigenous women were and are treated by Indigenous men.
Now, none of this is to say that Indigenous women therefore do not experience sexism, because they do and to a much more violent extent than white women do. Rather, all of this is to say that the issues Indigenous women face are not the typical priority of white feminists, who are more set on achieving equality with white men.
White feminism tends to ignore issues specific to Indigenous women— issues that are life-or-death. For instance, Indigenous women and femmes experience the highest rate of homicide and are much more likely than white women to go missing. According to Native Women Wilderness,
“Indigenous Women are 1.7 times more likely than Anglo-American women to experience violence, are two times more likely to be raped than Anglo-American white women, and the murder rate of Indigenous Women is three times higher than Anglo-American women.”
White feminism also tends to separate issues that are of importance to Indigenous women into other categories that seemingly don’t have anything to do with feminism. For instance, climate change and organizing efforts around clean water, clean air, access to sacred sites, and restoring ecosystems are typically categorized as “environmental” issues, not feminist ones. However, for Indigenous women, gender and land/place-related issues are inextricably intertwined. This type of political compartmentalization of issues ultimately leaves the feminist movement with little beyond reproductive justice as an issue to tout.
Mikki Kendall writes,
“As debates over last names, body hair, and the best way to be a CEO have taken center stage in the discourse surrounding modern feminism, it’s not difficult to see why some would be questioning the legitimacy of a woman’s movement that serves only the narrow interests of middle-and-upper-class white women. While the problems facing marginalized women have only increased intensity, somehow food insecurity, education, and health care— beyond the most basic of reproductive needs— are rarely touted as feminist issues.”
Furthermore, white women have historically participated in or at the very least empowered the sterilization of Indigenous women, a trend extending hundreds of years that still occurs today. As a tactic of genocide, Indigenous women were and are targeted for sterilization, oftentimes against their will or without their consent. White women participated in this alongside white men and the mainstream feminist movement does not center sterilization as a major point of organizing, even though it impacts both Indigenous and Black women at terrifying rates.
This racism also extends to Brown women, particularly Muslim women. Again, Jessa Crispin writes,
“The condescending attitude of Western feminists toward women in Muslim countries— this idea that these women need to be rescued from their head scarves and their traditions— is a good illustration of [not listening]… Our attempts at conversation are asking women to devalue what they find valuable about their existence, to take on our values…”
The list goes on and on. And it all points to the racism baked into the mainstream feminist movement. I asked Denise: How do you feel about this conversation around white feminism? What kind of reflecting have you been doing yourself?
“I feel it is a valid criticism and an important conversation. Les Nickelettes didn’t consciously include or exclude anyone (except men). It was more like, whoever came along. We had women of color and lesbians in the group, but it came down more to: do you share our sense of satirical humor, our anarchistic style?”
During our conversation, we explored examples of women who reject the label of “feminist” for various reasons.
The first example I brought up was, of course, Dolly Parton. In a podcast about Dolly called Dolly Parton’s America, one episode specifically focuses on feminism, as Dolly has become (unwittingly) a symbol of feminism today. When asked if she identifies as a feminist, Dolly straight up says no.
She explains that her mother was tough as nails, someone the community turned to for help or advice, and made sure the women around her had their basic needs met, yet would never have called herself a feminist. To me (and to the interviewer in the podcast) this sounds a lot like what feminism should be and could be. But Dolly separated herself from feminism based on the misconception that feminists hate men. This is a widely-held misunderstanding of feminism, because, in its best form, feminism not only helps women but it helps men too by deconstructing toxic masculinity and offering new paths for healthier, happier humans of all genders.
As someone from East Tennessee, from the Smokies where Dolly grew up, I heard about this misconception from lots of especially older women around me. They didn’t want to be a part of something that they felt was based on hatred, which I can understand. Sure there are women out there who hate men, but this is not a requirement to get your feminist “card”.
This example of rejecting feminism is based on a misunderstanding of the philosophies that guide the movement. However, another vastly different example reveals how a deeply accurate understanding of the movement can also push people to reject the label.
During a lecture, Angela Davis once said,
“I’m not a feminist; I’m a Black revolutionary.”
To which Denise replied with a smile,
“I’m glad Angela Davis calls herself something that sounds exactly like who she is.”
Angela Davis further explains,
“… the mainstream feminist movement [long pause] has made serious, serious mistakes. I often point out that when I wrote a book that was published in 1981 called Women, Race, and Class, everyone started referring to me as a feminist. And my response was, I’m not a feminist; I’m a Black revolutionary. But I realized I was talking about a certain kind of feminism. A bourgeois feminism. A feminism that is still unfortunately white. People think of that as feminism. But that ignores the fact that huge numbers of organic and academic intellectuals who are women of color have transformed the very nature of feminism and the hallmark of feminism today is what we call intersectionality— and not only the interrelating character of identities, but as I frequently say, I think intersectionality is most helpful when we think of the intersectionality of social justice struggles. The mistake made by mainstream feminism: its continued reliance on categorical representations of women— as soon as one assumes that women can be categorically represented, that means there is some clandestine racialization happening there.”
When I asked Denise how she felt about people rejecting the feminist label, she said,
“It’s like any label; it has different meanings for people. I could see how some see the feminist movement as mostly white women and excluding others, and I think that’s valid. I could see why people who don’t feel included would reject that label.”
She continued by encouraging those who reject the feminist label to consider what they want to see happen in the world and to describe themselves based on that. Having an alternative is nice.
After we explored these areas where feminism bolsters white supremacy and capitalism (and by extension the Patriarchy too), I found that many of the answers to my questions included “It was a different time”, which is a fair answer, honestly. Awareness shifts with time. Things float to the top of public consciousness and then sink back down to the bottom, rising and falling over generations.
In my opinion, the answer “it was a different time,” is problematic only when the person is using it to avoid the discussion. There’s a difference between an excuse and an explanation. And Denise’s answers felt like an honest explanation of her reality at the time. It’s not to say that in the 1970s and 1980s no one was thinking about sex work, gender, and race; it’s only to point out that a white woman at the time wasn’t thinking about it. It takes a certain amount of courage to acknowledge our blind spots, rather than pretending we don’t have them. Denise even shared during our interview,
“I was kind of blown away by your questions, because people haven’t asked me kind of deeper dive questions into the material. That was really fun.”
I asked Denise if she had any advice or perspective to share with other feminists, especially white, who maybe have a harder time with what we’ve been talking about today.
Denise encourages,
“Be open. Be curious. Because someone doesn’t want to be labeled a feminist, you don’t need to reject them or anything. It’s a start to a conversation, like we’re having now. I’d say to stay open, because you never know.”
There are many who believe that any critique of feminism is “in-fighting” and only strengthens patriarchy. Any movement that silences dissent by claiming conversation divides us is authoritarian-leaning at the very least. A major red flag, in my opinion.
In Anarchy in High Heels, Denise shares that there were plenty of other feminists who attended their shows and deeply disagreed with their politics and methods.
I asked Denise in our interview, How did you deal with having your community not be okay with your work? Did it cause any self-doubt?
“I wouldn’t call it self-doubt, but there were conversations about it. Our point of view was that we were making fun of stereotypes, to get back to play. The very serious feminists were saying, ‘We’ve got to change the world,’ and were very… didactic? [Laughs] We were saying, ‘Well, let’s laugh at it.’ But they thought we were laughing at them. And we did take it personally because sometimes they were our friends. But at the end of the day, this was our message and this was our way of doing it. But there were times when we did try to adjust a little bit. [In the production Curtains!] we did a more serious play, where we didn’t do a lot of raunchy jokes. But then the audience said, ‘Oh, we missed all that stuff!’”
Of bad reviews, Denise told me,
”Sometimes we’d get these reviews that were so bad. I call them Deliciously Bad reviews. One woman said, ‘Watching the Nickelettes was like watching a male in a toilet stall masturbating.’ So out there. We had that impact on you? [Laughs] But then I developed this thing of laughing at them because it was so over the top. And how creative you had to be to write these!”
She added,
“We used to say, ‘They got it.’ And there were people who just didn’t get it.”
Denise shared a more contemporary story from her life today that related to this.
“I’m in this little theater company in San Francisco. We’re called The Cosmic Elders. We started in an improv class. There’s a woman in the group that’s older than me and she read the book. She’d been a dancer in San Francisco during that period, so she had the same kind of trajectory, but as a dancer. I told her, ‘Well, there were a lot of feminists in those days who didn’t like us,’ and she said, ‘Yeah, I would have been one of them.’ But now she sees it and she see what we were doing. In fact, she did a little skit— it was a very ‘Nickelette’ skit, which was hilarious. So yeah, it hurt a little to feel rejected. You’re rejected on both sides: on one side, it was this male, patriarchal dismissal, then on the other side, it was this really serious feminist movement that said, ‘You’re just being silly.’ It was hard, no doubt about it.”
I asked Denise if she had one or two productions that really stood out in her mind as informing the group’s politics. She told me about “Peter Pan: A New Rock Fairytale” and “Oh, Goddess!”. I believe that we can find guidance from each.
Denise shared,
“I know everybody loves Peter Pan because of the whole ‘Oh, never grow up’ thing, but we were pointing out that yeah, not growing up means not taking responsibility. We saw that a lot with the males of our generation at that point. So it was fun to kind of make fun of that.”
Accountability. If the mainstream feminist movement wants to “grow up”, then we must hold ourselves accountable to the facts of the history of the movement.
Of “Oh, Goddess!” Denise said this,
”It was disappointing because it did kind of spell the end of the group, even though we kept going on after that for some time. But just doing that research and learning about these whole other civilizations before the Patriarchal ones. It was eye-opening.”
Learning. Success stories of women’s leadership from around the world and through history, before white supremacy even existed, are available, if we seek them out. Opening our eyes, we’ll start to notice the oppressive structures everywhere. As we learn, conversation about growth won’t look like in-fighting; it will look like hope.
I’ll conclude with the words of Angela Davis,
“Revolutionary hope resides precisely among those women who have been abandoned by history and who are now standing up and making their demands heard… the whole world will rise with them.”
If you’d like to see videos of Les Nickelettes’ performances, check out their YouTube channel.
If you’re into Anarchy in High Heels, you may also be into Rebellion, 1967 by Janet Luongo.
And, if you appreciated the criticism of white feminism in this commentary, you’d also enjoy “Why Educated Bothered Me”, my critique of the popular 2018 memoir Educated by Tara Westover.
If you appreciated and/or learned from this piece, please consider supporting Chava Possum here.