Eugene weekly., July 24, 2003, Page 10, Image 10

Bobbie Willis
Ana Hewitt and Sebastiane Powers
Where She Hangs Her Hat
Do women seeking women seek Eugene as home? ■ By Bobbie Willis
I
f gay and lesbian rights were in a soup pot
on the stove, now would be an interesting
time to see whether that pot o’ rights
cooks to something presentable or boils over
in a charred and smoky disaster. Given last
year’s local enactment of the Domestic
Partnership Registry, last month’s national
Supreme Court decision to strike a Texas law
banning private, consensual sex between
same-sex adults, and the recent move in
Canada to recognize same-sex marriages,
your gut might tell you, “Things are chang-
ing …” But the most difficult of the battles
— gays in the military, gay adoption and gay
marriage — hang in the balance; all heating
up just in time for the 2004 elections.
Census figures do not indicate a definitive
number of lesbians nationwide — they only
indicate the number of same-sex households
willing to be described as such, and willing
to participate in the study. The actual number
of lesbians could very well be much greater
than the census shows. Willingness to partic-
ipate in such studies to more accurately
reflect the true numbers of gays in America
will depend on what future developments
take place in gay and lesbian rights nation-
wide.
In any case, to see Eugene ranked so high
on a list of cities that doesn’t include metro-
politan heavyweights such as Boston,
Chicago or even New York City might make
you wonder: Does the Emerald City deserve
such props? Is Eugene a Mecca for women
who love women? And what is it about the
Big E that appeals to the lesbian community,
if it really does appeal to the lesbian commu-
nity?
Good Ol’ Girl
Sue Hartman didn’t choose Eugene. She
was born and raised here. She knew as early
as first grade that she was attracted to women,
“but I didn’t have the words to talk about it
…” she says.
10 JULY 24, 2003
When Hartman was a girl, harboring
crushes on other little girls, her conservative
mother discovered Hartman’s feelings, and as
Hartman describes it, “The shit hit the fan …
I wasn’t allowed to figure out my sexual iden-
tity for sure.”
“So,” she says, “I had boyfriends in junior
high school.” Later, in the early 1960s, while
a student at South Eugene High School, the
shit, so to speak, again hit the fan. “I fell in
love with one of my best friends, who was
straight. The school found out … South
Eugene was nothing like it is today …
Nobody came out. I was out there by myself,
ostracized by my friends.”
Later after that emotional upheaval,
Hartman joined South Eugene’s softball
team. She even agreed to join a teammate on
a double date. And, she says a little ruefully,
“I got interested. You know, he was a nice
guy, a country boy. We got married and
moved to Seattle, which” she pauses, “didn’t
work out.”
Soon after they married, Hartman’s hus-
band was drafted to fight in Vietnam, and she
says, “People are different after war.” She and
her husband did have a child together, a
daughter.
Hartman didn’t choose Eugene, but after
three years in Seattle and a split from her hus-
band, she decided to move back home.
“Actually, I moved back to Springfield,” she
says. “More affordable.” She worked as a
heavy equipment operator, a job scene that
didn’t make it easy to meet people, or more
specifically, to meet women.
Hartman decided after some time to take
action: She started a social group for les-
bians — a gathering where women could
hang together and get to know each other.
The group originally began with Hartman
and a friend who frequented Neighbors,
probably Eugene’s most openly queer-
friendly hangout.
Seven years ago, a very serious on-the-job
accident left Hartman with little time or ener-
gy to contemplate nurturing her social net-
work. As a result of the accident and
Hartman’s stress following, she left her job
and has spent the last few years trying, she
says, “to get myself together.” Only recently
has she felt healed enough to approach life
with some normalcy, to look around again at
the lesbian scene in Eugene.
Last October, she decided to revive the
social group, moving it further and further
from the nighttime bar scene. “We were at
Cornucopia Deli, then North Bank,” she says.
But the group’s growing numbers necessitat-
ed a final move to Roaring Rapids Pizza,
where they’ve been happily getting together
for months now. Every first and third
Saturday of the month at 5 pm, Hartman facil-
itates a group of women ranging in number
“from six to almost 30,” in the process of
socializing, networking and just generally
having a good time. Each of the establish-
ments at which the group has gathered,
Hartman says, has “just been so great, treated
us all so well.”
Has Eugene-Springfield been the perfect
place for Hartman? “I haven’t been in a com-
mitted relationship in 15 years,” she says. But
her roots run deep here; with her new job as a
care provider and a flourishing group of
friends, she’s here for now.
Career Move
Lynn Stephen, professor and head of the
UO Anthropology Department, says, “I didn’t
decide to move to Eugene.” Eugene original-
ly came onto her radar when her partner,
Ellen, was offered a job with the UO
Sociology Department. They moved here
from Boston in September 1998. “Basically,
[Ellen] said that she would not accept the job
if there was not the possibility of a job that I
could apply to here, because we were a cou-
ple.”
Stephen doesn’t see Eugene as a hotbed of
lesbian lifestyle and politics, mostly she says,
because of her own background and history.
“I had lived in Boston since 1979 — basical-
ly my whole adult life. Boston was really one
of the sort of birthplaces and bastions both of
the women’s movement and the lesbian and
gay movement …. That was the period of my
life when I had the most consolidated, public
gay identity type.”
Stephen and her partner had both a thriv-
ing, politically active social network and a
growing family to tend to in Boston. “We had
a small child, who was 4 when Ellen applied
for the [UO] job and 6 when we finally
moved here. We had just bought a house
together, and I was tenured and had been pro-
moted to a full professor.”
But in September 1998, the UO offered
jobs to both Stephen and her partner. “It was
being a couple, and actually the university
responding to that, though it took two years
and was uncertain at times … But the fact that
the university took seriously partner hires,
and lesbian partner hires — that’s why we
came. [While] we didn’t select to come here
... I felt our relationship was valued, and that
the university also valued us as individuals
who could contribute something and be a
worthwhile investment. This was what got us
here.”
Stephen did not come with preconceived
notions about Eugene being particularly les-
bian-friendly. “The talk I heard was more hip-
pie, ecology, etc. My first impressions didn’t
include this gay thing.” It was only after being
in Eugene and seeing other couples around
town that the tolerance became apparent to
Stephen. “But,” she says, “I’m not really in
that in my daily life at all the way I was in
Boston,”
Having a family and settling into family-
friendly Eugene was more the focus of this
place. “I came here as a parent. I got to know
all of the parents at school, helped in class,
went to a few zillion soccer games …”
September marks five years in Eugene for
Stephen and her family, which includes her
11-year-old son and now another son, three-
and-a-half. They have built a community
around the kids’ school life and their own uni-
versity connections. Stephen has even been
thinking again of specific activism — she’s
decided to pursue a minor in
gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered/queer
studies. In fact, she and her partner recently
turned down the opportunity to return to the
East Coast.
She explains, “As a couple with two chil-
dren, there were some very positive things
about being here versus being in the East:
good school system; we like our house;
there’s tons of stuff for kids — sometimes it
seems like Eugene is organized for children;
there’s no traffic; it’s clean; it’s safe; kids can
walk to school; they can ride their bikes; they
have more freedom … We want to give this
experience to our kids.”
Is Eugene Stephen’s last stop? She says
with a smile, “We’re here for now.”
New Wave
Ashley Birch, 22, moved to Eugene with
her high school girlfriend three and a half
years ago from Salt Lake City. Birch has been
out since she was 15. In comparing life in
Eugene to life in conservative Utah, she paus-
es a second to think and says, “In Utah, at
least you know what you’re dealing with” in
terms of who’s going to have a problem with
a person’s sexual identity. In Eugene, the lib-
eral reputation can be a little misleading, she
says.
Birch is part of a thriving new wave of
young lesbians in Eugene. Between the UO