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A place of their own: "Outliers and Outlaws" in Eugene

The 20th century saw waves of migration to Eugene, Oregon by lesbian-identified women.
Photographer unknown.
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Outliers and Outlaws
Full Moon Rising, a lesbian forestry crew with the worker co-op Hoedads, Inc., was part of a wave of migration to Eugene, Oregon by lesbian-identified women from the 1960s into the '90s.

The documentary "Outliers and Outlaws" is one piece of the University of Oregon's Eugene Lesbian History Project.

Vanessa Finney: Today's episode brings us an example of how art can preserve and celebrate cultural memory. From the 1960s through the 1980s, hundreds of lesbian-identified women from around the country began migrating to Eugene, Oregon to build community and find a sense of belonging. One of those transplants, Judith Raiskin, eventually became a Professor of Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Oregon. In 2018 she began collecting material for what will become the Eugene Lesbian History Project. One piece of this sprawling digital humanities project is the documentary “Outliers and Outlaws”, which screens in Eugene on February 2. Here to talk about that documentary are Courtney Herman, the film's director, and G. Chesler, who's in charge of outreach for the film. Welcome to you both.

Courtney Hermann: Thanks so much for having us. Vanessa,

G. Chesler: It's great to be here.

VF: Courtney, let's start off with some context. Explain what you call the multiverse of the entire Eugene Lesbian History Project that this is a part of.

CH: Yeah, it's definitely a sprawling digital humanities project. It has four distinct parts. Firstly, the oral history archive of 83 narrators who share their experiences as lesbians who migrated to Eugene from the 60s to the 90s to build their own world. And these 83 oral histories are in a publicly facing archive at the University of Oregon Library. And so they're searchable transcripts. You could watch the videos. Also, there's an archive that is being developed by Linda Long, who's the curator of manuscripts at University of Oregon Library that includes all kinds of interesting photographs and event flyers, T-shirts, diaries, zines, newsletters for the community, and people's papers. So this archive of oral history and also of artifacts is where it all started.

"In queer films, so often our stories are told with opposition at the forefront [...] This is a story that shifts entirely that narrative."

Then from that, there's a little bit of a more curated experience of this history through a digital exhibit that's online. If you go to the Outliers and Outlaws website, you can find your way to the digital exhibit, and then from there, a physical exhibit was created in collaboration with the University of Oregon's Museum of Natural and Cultural History. And so that exhibit was up for 13 months and was accessible to around 30,000 visitors to the museum. And there were panels that were held and discussions in conjunction with the exhibit. A traveling exhibit is now moving forward with the first iteration planned for 2025 at the Oregon Jewish Museum. Then the fourth and final - we think - part of the Eugene lesbian History Project multiverse, is the documentary film “Outliers and Outlaws,” which is a full length documentary chronicling the contributions of representative members of this robust lesbian community. And it's out now!

VF: And that project you described is now apparently the largest, accessible lesbian oral history project in the world, which is quite an accomplishment. But the documentary was a chance to show the impact that history has on the present, for one thing.

VF: G., since you're in charge of outreach, there is that notion that's talked about by some of the women featured in the film. They say, “We were looking for ways to establish our own identity.” How would you describe the importance of, especially for a marginalized community, to not only establish its own identity, to feel strength there, but to feel visible through works of art like this - and also to feel connected with that community's elders.

"The Eugene lesbians were actually very musically inclined."

GC. So, one of the experiences we've had in screening the film so far is hearing from our younger viewers who didn't understand that there were elders who were queer and lesbian, living in their joy. Courtney and I have been involved in making documentary films for decades, and we've seen this throughout the history of our own short spans of making documentaries: In queer films, so often our stories are told with opposition at the forefront, like queer people are fighting for their survival. Queer people are trying to eke out a living. They're tormented by their home lives, their biological families. This is a story that shifts entirely that narrative. And while the lesbians involved in Eugene, Oregon experienced hardship, and they did experience homophobia, they didn't live in that reality. They lived in a reality of affirmation, of joy, of collective living. And when, when we share this with people of all genders and sexualities in the queer community, we hear resoundingly a sense of affirmation and empowerment, and that's something that we are trying to share with a variety of audiences.

Right now, we're focusing on a very broad outreach strategy - which doesn't sound focused at all - but we know one of the things we're after is, “Where can we support people in knowing their power and their their joy and community, and where can folks come and see each other online and in real space?” So we're talking to high school groups. We're talking to faith based groups. We're talking to senior centers, libraries, museums and theatrical settings, traditional theaters.

VF: Courtney, can you talk about how you use music in the film?

CH: Well, the Eugene lesbians were actually very musically inclined. Maybe it was about the growth of 1960s folk, but they were ready to sing, and that often meant making up their own music. Right from the very beginning of the film, one of our participants, Sally Shecklow, is about to describe what it was like in Oregon when political measures were expressly put forward to the public in an effort to curtail the rights of LGBTQ+ people. So right off the bat, she just started singing a song that they wrote about the organization, the OCA [Oregon Citizens Alliance], which was pretty hell-bent on defaming the community and putting restrictions on their participation in public life. So from the very beginning of the film, you hear the importance of music to the participants themselves in their own activism, and also in their own processing of the tough times that they were living in. And so there's that organic music that is baked in.

Courtney Hermann directed "Outliers and Outlaws," part of the Eugene Lesbian History Project.
Kerribeth Elliott
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Outliers and Outlaws
Courtney Hermann directed "Outliers and Outlaws," part of the Eugene Lesbian History Project.

We also have music that we've brought in that was very important at the time. Women's music was a genre of music; in fact, one of our participants was a DJ at KLCC who had a women's music program - Enid Lefton - and so this music was very important. And in the film, you hear Enid and her partner singing along to Meg Christian’s “Ode to a Gym Teacher,” which was about a young lesbian’s interest in her gym teacher that helped her understand that she was a lesbian. Then we also have, in the end credits, a very poignant, lovely piece by Chris Williamson, who at one time was the largest independent selling artist in music history.

Then also the very little known ballad called “Eugene Oregon” by Dolly Parton, which apparently she wrote after having been ill while visiting Eugene and having been supported very strongly by the community in a way where she felt very loved and very much safe. So that was something that was a real find, and we were lucky to be able to license that to include it in the film.

VF: Wonderful. G, after the movie has its screening in Eugene on February 2, where does it go from there? How can people see it?

GC: So, our Eugene screening is our coming back home. We only released the film in November, and while it's been very popular and getting a lot of attention in our community, we want people to know that we're just getting started. And so we screened at QDoc in Portland, Oregon, at the historic Hollywood Theatre. We sold out a 400-seat theater the week before the festival even started. And then Cinema 21, which is the site of the first LGBT Film Festival in Portland, hosted this film. We hosted it for four screenings. We sold out all those screenings. They added more. We sold out most of them, and audiences here in Portland are like, “When can we see it again?”

"There was a lot of cross pollination between Southern Oregon Lesbian Lands and Eugene."

But we have to go to Eugene. Eugene is where the story happened, and we're so excited to be able to screen there. We're going to have an event in early February at the university - on February 2 - that will include most of the filmmakers, most of the participants. Then we'll go to the Eugene Art House, and we have several dates already booked from February 28 to March 2. But we intend to fill the theater and add more dates as the audience asks for the film. Then we'll continue screenings in Oregon. We have hopes for some of the premier film festivals that happen in Southern Oregon and Eastern Oregon, and we'll know about those in the coming months. We're also starting to screen nationally at universities and at different film festivals, and then Courtney and I are working on our distribution strategy beyond that, which would allow an online platform to emerge, some online screening, some streaming, and all of those things are in the works.

VF: Okay, so obviously, a topic that had a huge amount of interest, so they've just been waiting for this project and this film. So it's definitely a film with some legs. Any last things you'd like to say before we wrap up?

CH: Yes, I actually wanted to mention that for Southern Oregon listeners, that part of the story of the lesbian community is actually intertwined with the Southern Oregon Lesbian Lands - especially an important set of photography workshops that were taught between 1979 and 1982 near Wolf Creek, Oregon, at at a lesbian enclave called Rootworks. And at these photography workshops, photographs that were taken there were published in the Blatant Image, which was a magazine of feminist photography. So Southern Oregon is a place where these Eugene lesbians would often either come from or go to and then come back to Eugene. There was a lot of cross pollination between Southern Oregon Lesbian Lands and Eugene.

VF: Thanks for adding that. Well, Courtney Herman and G Chesler, thank you so much for your time, and best of luck with your movie.

CH: Thank you so much for having us. Vanessa,

GC: Yeah, so appreciated.

Vanessa Finney is JPR's All Things Considered host. She also produces the Jefferson Exchange segments My Better Half - exploring how people are thriving in the second half of their lives - and The Creative Way, which profiles regional artists.