WARREN BLUMENFELD

SAN JOSE AND WASHINGTON, D.C. GAY LIBERATION FRONT

Warren Blumenfeld (left) by unknown, 1971.

Warren Blumenfeld is a pioneering LGBTQ+ rights activist, educator, and writer whose journey has spanned from the early days of gay liberation to the virtual classrooms of today. Born in New York City in 1947, Warren survived a deeply traumatic childhood marked by homophobic scrutiny and psychological “correction” attempts in the McCarthy-era 1950s. He found his voice through political engagement in college at San Jose State University in California, where he became involved with the emerging gay liberation movement. His activism soon took him to Washington, D.C., where he co-founded the first nationally oriented LGBTQ student office at the National Student Association and participated in historic protests, including a 1971 disruption of the American Psychiatric Association’s convention in Washington, D.C.

Over the decades, Warren has remained at the forefront of LGBTQ+ advocacy and education. From organizing early campus LGBTQ+ groups under hostile legal conditions to co-authoring one of the first textbooks on lesbian and gay studies in the United States, his contributions have been foundational to the field of LGBTQ+ studies. He was an active member of ACT UP during the height of the AIDS crisis and has published ten books exploring issues of sexuality, gender, and social justice. Now partially retired, Warren teaches online courses in social justice education and queer studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, continuing a lifelong commitment to liberation and learning.

— August Bernadicou, Executive Director of The LGBTQ History Project

“I was born in New York City, and we lived there until I was eight. My father could no longer make a living, so in 1955, he moved the family to Los Angeles, where he was born. In New York, when I was about two years old, my parents thought I was gay. This was during the McCarthy period, and it was a time of very rigid gender roles. My parents thought I was gay at about 18 months old, and when I was four years old, in 1951, they started taking me to a child psychologist.

For the next eight years, from 1951 to 1960, I was taken out of school twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, to see the child psychologist. I was too effeminate. Any sign of gender transgression was immediately stamped out during those times. It was a really difficult, difficult time. At the therapist's office, I would take off my coat and put it behind the door. Then, for the next 50 minutes, the therapist would have me build model airplanes, boats, or trucks—boy toys. He thought that if he could get me to try to play the masculine role a bit that I would maybe be heterosexual, but at least not be picked on by my peers.

I was constantly bullied because I didn't conform to my gender role. Every day at school, my main concern was not getting my nose broken. I hated school because I was constantly bullied and attacked. Part of my parents' concern was that my father was one of three Jews in his school in the San Fernando Valley of California; he and his two sisters were the only Jews, and my father was constantly bullied. During recess time, he would go underneath the building to avoid being bullied by the other boys for being Jewish. He was very athletic, but he was afraid that I would suffer the same kind of pain that he went through when he was growing up. Part of his stuff was, yes, homophobia, but also he wanted to try to help me avoid the kinds of violence that he experienced when he was growing up Jewish in the 1920s and 1930s.

When we moved to California, I continued going to therapy. I went until I was 13 years old. I hated going. I didn't even know what this person was. Why am I going to this person? I called him the toy doctor because he made me play with toys. I learned how to play chess. By age 11, I considered suicide. I heard that if you take large doses of aspirin, you can bleed to death from the inside. So one day, I went to the medicine cabinet and took a handful of aspirin, and I put them in my mouth. They were so bitter, I spat them out. One part of me wanted to live. My grandparents lived with us. The Nazis murdered my grandfather’s parents in Poland. He also lost nine of his 13 brothers and sisters to the Holocaust. When he was living in Poland, he was bullied all the time because he was Jewish, and the Jewish community was very isolated. I was listening to my grandfather in the other room as I was taking the aspirin, and I said, I can't do this to my grandfather. He had lost so many family members. I thought that if he could handle all that, then I could handle the bullies in school.

My motto was to get through the day and try to be as invisible as possible. In high school, it was the first time I had any friends. I was very political. I was the secretary of our Young Democratic Club. I put all of my energy into politics, which helped. I graduated from high school in 1965 and went to San Jose State University. That's when I finally could breathe from the diaphragm. I left my parents' home, and I became a real person.

I came out to my roommate in 1966 before Stonewall. The gay community in San Jose cruised the Greyhound bus station bathroom. That was our group, and I was too afraid to go there. I was intimidated, but my roommate went there every night, it seemed. I finally started feeling more comfortable with myself, and I visited the counseling center. Luckily, I saw this one counselor for two years, and we talked about being gay. Then, one day, the last time I saw him, I left the building. He came running after me, and why? What's happening? So he said, 'Warren, I just want to say, I'm really proud of you.' The next day, he committed suicide. He was going through a really bad divorce.

Luckily, he was replaced by this out lesbian. She was so wonderful. I joined a therapy group, and I came out to more and more people. I started feeling comfortable. I joined the gay liberation group, which began at San Jose State at the end of 1969 or the beginning of 1970. I started making friends. I had sex a few times there in 1969, and I went to my first bars in San Jose.

The governor of California was Ronald Reagan. Because it was illegal in California to have same-sex sexuality, our Gay Liberation Front was not allowed to form officially on campus, which meant we didn’t have access to any of the rooms or resources available to other student groups. As a result, we formed an off-campus group as a private entity and met at this little sleazy diner in town.

The first meeting I went to—the president of the group was a male student who talked about how he and his lover were attacked and beaten up. He came with bandages on his face. The group began by discussing self-defense and which streets to avoid, as well as how to express oneself in public. As a holocaust scholar, I've been back to my ancestral town in Poland eight times—I really felt like I was attending a meeting of the underground in Nazi occupied Poland. It was terrifying, but it was also empowering, because men and women worked together. There was no separation because we needed one another, and we were in it together. In many ways, it was really exciting, and it helped me when I moved to Washington, D.C., because I had some of the skills necessary for organizing. It was a good training ground. I was only in the group in San Jose for about six months before I moved to Washington. It was a truly empowering experience.

Warren Blumenfeld by unknown, 1971.

Then, my friend, whom I met in fifth grade, was in Washington, D.C., and worked at the National Student Association. He asked me if I wanted to come to Washington at the beginning of 1970. I said, sure. He flew me to Washington, and I started working at the National Student Association. One of the employees there was also gay, and he took me to the gay liberation house in Washington at 1620 S. Street. It was like a whole, wonderful, liberated, multi-racial community. It was some of the best years I've ever had being at the center of the Gay Liberation Front in Washington, D.C.

I started what was called the National Gay Student Center at the National Student Association. There was no gay representation, so I started a new office called the National Gay Student Center, which was one of the first nationally oriented LGBT groups. We began a newsletter, and I traveled around the country helping new student groups on college campuses form. We were like a clearinghouse. They flew me to Alabama and Illinois and Colorado.

We were influenced by the feminist movement, which led to the establishment of encounter groups, also known as non leader therapy groups. We would sit in a circle and share these intimate secrets of our lives that we had never told anyone. It was a lot of crying, and a lot of tears, and a lot of it was therapeutic without officially being a therapy group. We talked about our fantasies, and we talked about our sexual experiences. This one man led a workshop called ‘How to Get Fucked and Like It.’

We formed demonstrations. We had the Gay May Day of 1971. It was like we lived in the place where the revolution came to us. This was during the height of the Vietnam era. We joined with Vietnam Veterans Against the War. It was a wonderful, yet weird, coalition coming together for a common purpose. Gay liberation was a time of recovery when we needed to get together without professional therapists. It carried us through really well.

One of our actions was at the American Psychiatric Association national convention at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C, on May 6, 1971. This is where all the prominent psychiatrists gathered for their annual meeting. There were hundreds of them. We planned a demonstration because, in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, they considered homosexuality to be a mental disorder.

Some of us went into the conference hotel the day before, and we put a book of matches in the back door so that it wouldn't lock. Inside the conference were Frank Kameny, Barbara Gittings, and Jack Baker—he was the first openly gay university president at the University of Minnesota.

They were all going to be on a panel. Frank was our Trojan horse. The former Attorney General of the United States gave the keynote address. All the doors were locked. So Frank, Barbara, and Jack Baker went to the doors and opened them up. We walked, and we overtook the stage where these men, with chains around their necks and medals—the older men receiving their lifetime achievement awards—took their medals and started beating us. ‘You're sick, you're sick, you're sick.’ They beat us up and called us sick, but we overtook the stage. Frank got up on the stage and took the microphone, and they turned it off, but he screamed about how we should declare war on the psychiatric profession. Then, pandemonium broke out. I feel like those were pioneering days, and I feel like I was there during this transformation in our society. I am proud of my contributions.”