ABSTRACT
This address was given by Valeska, at that time coexecutive director of the National Gay Task Force, as the opening speech to the annual conference of the National Organization for Women in San Antonio, Texas, on October 4, 1980. She was the only lesbian speaker to appear at this event. This text is combined with remarks made by her a few weeks later in Portland, Oregon. The same address was given by Valeska to the Dorian Group at the Eastlake East tavern in Seattle on October 16,1980, and reprinted in the January 2,1981, and January 16, 1981, issues of Seattle Gay News. The quotation from Sally Gearhart is taken from an open letter sent to District Five on the relative qualifications for office of Harry Britt and Kay Pachtner, and was only one point in the larger discussion but was picked up and reprinted in the Village Voice and elsewhere. The “first manifesto” quoted is the 1970 essay “The Woman-ldentifed Woman” written by the Radicalesbians, which helped start the lesbian-feminist movement.
