My letter to the Lambda Literary Foundation
. . . in response to their appalling clarification of their change in rules.
Dear Mr. Valenzuela,
"Our books are taken from the shelves of libraries all over the country and even from the website of Amazon.com this year."
Oh, the irony of this. You do realize, don't you, that a large percentage of the writers who initially spread the word to the rest of the world about Amazon's action were heterosexual authors of gay male fiction? Now you are citing that episode as a reason to exclude those very authors from your awards.
"We also took into consideration the despair of our own writers when a heterosexual writer, who has written a fine book about us, wins a Lambda Award, when one or more of our own LGBT writers may have as a Finalist a book that may be the only chance in a career at a Lambda Literary Award."
As an LGBT writer, I am deeply disappointed that the LLF believes that the only way in which LGBT writers can compete with their heterosexual peers is through affirmative action.
The LLF states that it believes that this change in rules is necessary in order to "elevate the status of openly gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans (LGBT) people throughout society." Well, the gay male novel that caused me to come out as bisexual to my mother, at age eighteen, was Isabelle Holland's "The Man Without a Face." If Ms. Holland was lesbian, she certainly wasn't openly lesbian. The authors of gay male fiction whose literary courage inspired me to be courageous enough to come out as gender-variant? Slash writers - mainly heterosexual women.
Obviously, in the eyes of the Lambda Literary Foundation, I've been following all the wrong role models.
I'm quite open about my orientation and gender identity, but I am not crushed if a heterosexual writer or a closeted LGBT writer wins an award for LGBT writing. Instead, I am heartened to know that more good LGBT literature is available. That is what I have always looked to the Lambda Literary Awards for: excellence in LGBT literature. Narrowing the field to "excellence in LGBT literature only by out-of-the-closet LGBT writers" weakens the worth of the award, in my view.
At any rate, I hope that you will make very clear in any promotional literature about this year's awards that only out-of-the-closet LGBT writers were eligible, since the awards have, until now, been broader in scope.
Dear Mr. Valenzuela,
"Our books are taken from the shelves of libraries all over the country and even from the website of Amazon.com this year."
Oh, the irony of this. You do realize, don't you, that a large percentage of the writers who initially spread the word to the rest of the world about Amazon's action were heterosexual authors of gay male fiction? Now you are citing that episode as a reason to exclude those very authors from your awards.
"We also took into consideration the despair of our own writers when a heterosexual writer, who has written a fine book about us, wins a Lambda Award, when one or more of our own LGBT writers may have as a Finalist a book that may be the only chance in a career at a Lambda Literary Award."
As an LGBT writer, I am deeply disappointed that the LLF believes that the only way in which LGBT writers can compete with their heterosexual peers is through affirmative action.
The LLF states that it believes that this change in rules is necessary in order to "elevate the status of openly gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans (LGBT) people throughout society." Well, the gay male novel that caused me to come out as bisexual to my mother, at age eighteen, was Isabelle Holland's "The Man Without a Face." If Ms. Holland was lesbian, she certainly wasn't openly lesbian. The authors of gay male fiction whose literary courage inspired me to be courageous enough to come out as gender-variant? Slash writers - mainly heterosexual women.
Obviously, in the eyes of the Lambda Literary Foundation, I've been following all the wrong role models.
I'm quite open about my orientation and gender identity, but I am not crushed if a heterosexual writer or a closeted LGBT writer wins an award for LGBT writing. Instead, I am heartened to know that more good LGBT literature is available. That is what I have always looked to the Lambda Literary Awards for: excellence in LGBT literature. Narrowing the field to "excellence in LGBT literature only by out-of-the-closet LGBT writers" weakens the worth of the award, in my view.
At any rate, I hope that you will make very clear in any promotional literature about this year's awards that only out-of-the-closet LGBT writers were eligible, since the awards have, until now, been broader in scope.
Like Columbia University believes that the only way in which American writers can compete with the rest of the world's writers in Letters, Drama and Music is through affirmative action?
I do frankly find it a little weird that the pool of writers for a prize should be restricted by sexual orientation and gender identity, not least because it mandates a person coming out of the closet before they're allowed to have their writing put forward for a prize.
But it is not "affirmative action" to have rules about who is and is not eligible to compete.
"But it is not 'affirmative action' to have rules about who is and is not eligible to compete."
Wikipedia says: "The terms affirmative action and positive action refer to policies that take race, ethnicity, or gender into consideration in an attempt to promote equal opportunity or increase ethnic or other forms of diversity. . . . The impetus towards affirmative action is twofold: to maximize diversity in all levels of society, along with its presumed benefits, and to redress perceived disadvantages due to overt, institutional, or involuntary discrimination."
That's precisely the justification that LLF offers for the change of rules: that this change is necessary in order to overcome the disadvantages that LGBT writers undergo due to societal discrimination.
It was the justification they offered that angered me - particularly the bit about "the despair of our own writers when a heterosexual writer, who has written a fine book about us, wins a Lambda Award."
No: I mean that the Letters, Music, and Drama Pullitzer Prizes can only be awarded to US citizens. Is that, in your view, affirmative action for US citizens - Americans can't compete with the rest of the world so you have to have these prizes that only US citizens can compete for?
I don't disagree with you that the Lambda Awards ought to have stuck with "we're promoting LGBT fiction" - fiction about LGBT people or issues, rather than taking the highly dubious step of requiring a sexual orientation/gender identity check of the author.
I disagree with you that this is, or could be described as, "affirmative action". By trying to claim that it is, it appears to me that you are trying to assert that straight writers are actually better at writing about LGBT people/issues than LGBT people are...
If somebody sets up an award that's meant to be only for American writers, I'm fine with that.
If somebody sets up an award for literature about America, and restricts it to American writers, I'm dubious about the value of such an award, because the award cannot reveal who is actually writing the best literature about America.
If somebody sets up an award for literature about America without restricting eligibility, and then a few Brits win the awards, and then the rules are changed to only allow Americans to win the award, I become suspicious as to the motives of the award-givers.
If the award-givers then admit flat-out, "We didn't like the fact that Brits were winning awards rather than Americans," I would take this as a statement that they believe that "Americans can't compete with the rest of the world so you have to have these prizes that only US citizens can compete for."
"it appears to me that you are trying to assert that straight writers are actually better at writing about LGBT people/issues than LGBT people are... "
That is essentially what the LLF says in its statement: that they intended the awards to be for LGBT writers, but to their dismay, heterosexual writers began winning the awards, so the LLF is going to change the rules so that this doesn't happen again.
If somebody sets up an award for literature about America, and restricts it to American writers, I'm dubious about the value of such an award, because the award cannot reveal who is actually writing the best literature about America.
That's the Pullitzer Prize for Letters, yes.
That is essentially what the LLF says in its statement: that they intended the awards to be for LGBT writers, but to their dismay, heterosexual writers began winning the awards, so the LLF is going to change the rules so that this doesn't happen again.
I think you're slightly missing a point here.
They assumed (I think) that only LGBT writers would want to write LGBT fiction. For most of the past hundred years, as far as commercially published under your own name fiction went, they would have been absolutely right: writing LGBT fiction could get you into such crap that only an LGBor T writer would have found it worthwhile to take that step.
These days, not so. Thanks to the work of all the LGBT activists (I just did a presentation on the work of LGBT activists in Scotland over the past 40 years, so this is on my mind) it's perfectly safe for straight writers to write LGBT fiction - indeed, it's probably safer for a straight writer to do so, just as it's safe enough for a straight actor to play a gay role but still career-hazardous for a gay actor to do so.
So, while I agree with you that it's wrong to change the conditions for an award midstream, as it were, and wrong to try to restrict an award by the sexual orientation of the writers, I disagree with you that this is affirmative action (though I look forward to reading your letter to Columbia University protesting the affirmative action of the Pulitzer Prize) and I certainly disagree with you that they think straight writers are better at depicting LGBT lives than LGBT writers: they've just decided that promoting straight writers, who already have the heterosexual privilege of writing about any topic they choose, are not the writers they wanted to promote with this award.
Your arguments are making me, a lesbian writer, feel more sympathetic and supportive of them than I want to be: since, as I said, I basically disagree with their decision. If your goal is to let them know that you feel contemptuous of and angry towards them, you'll achieve it: if your goal is to change their mind, I think these arguments will have exactly the opposite effect.
Okay, I looked up the rules (that's a PDF file).
* * *
B. PRIZES IN LETTERS
The following awards will be made annually as prizes in Letters. Except in the case of drama, where production rather than publication shall be the criterion, eligibility for these awards shall be restricted to works first published in the United States during the year and made available in hardcover or bound paperback form for purchase by the general public:
1. For distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).
2. For a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).
3. For a distinguished and appropriately documented book on the history of the United States, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).
4. For a distinguished and appropriately documented biography or autobiography by an American author, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).
5. For a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).
6. For a distinguished and appropriately documented book of nonfiction by an American author that is not eligible for consideration in any other category, Ten thousand dollars, ($10,000).
* * *
It sounds to me as though there are six prizes, five of which are only eligible to American authors, two of them "preferably" about American life.
Honestly, this sounds like a different situation to me than the Lambda Literary Awards. It sounds to me as though the main goal of the Pulitzer Prize is to honor American authors, and some of those prizes also honor American authors who have produced writings about America. Whereas the situation is the opposite with the Lammies; they say, "We're here to honor excellence in LGBT writing (and oh by the way, only LGBT writers are eligible)."
Would the LLF honor LGBT writers who wrote something other than LGBT content? No, of course not. But the Pulitzer Prize for Letters will honor American authors who don't write about America. So I don't think the two cases are parallel.
"They assumed (I think) that only LGBT writers would want to write LGBT fiction. For most of the past hundred years, as far as commercially published under your own name fiction went, they would have been absolutely right: writing LGBT fiction could get you into such crap that only an LGBor T writer would have found it worthwhile to take that step."
I'm afraid that this isn't historically true. Let me run through a few names of early authors of gay fiction.
* * *
Alec Waugh (The Loom of Youth, 1917). Waugh had a brief homosexual affair in school but self-identified throughout his life as heterosexual.
Theodore Sturgeon (The World Well Lost, 1952). He was very heterosexual, judging from his bio.
Rosemary Sutcliff (gay romance subplots in Sword at Sunset [1963] and The Flowers of Adonis [1965]). She was heterosexual, judging from her autobiography.
John Donovan (I'll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip. 1969). A mystery man whose bio appears nowhere.
Isabelle Holland (The Man Without a Face, 1972). Sexuality not identified in any of her bios.
[Continued in the next post.]
Actually, what they're saying is: We're here to promote the work of LGBT writers, by honouring the best of their work about LGBT life.
Exactly the same situation as the Pullitzer Prize - except that the Pullitzer Prize committee has been clear from the start that if you're not a US citizen, you're not eligible to win it.
'm afraid that this isn't historically true. Let me run through a few names of early authors of gay fiction.
I'm afraid you're betraying your heterosexism. The notion that you can be sure that Waugh, Sturgeon, Donovan, and Holland were all 100% heterosexual? You really can't. (Indeed, we know for a fact: Waugh wasn't, though until he was 69, any admission that he had sex with other men could have led to his arrest and his being given the choice between jail and castration: any open and honest discussion about his feelings for other men would have led to his social ostracism.)
Let's also not forget Radclyffe Hall, Patricia Highsmith, Jane Rule, Lillian Hellman, Gertrude Stein, Mary Renault, Isabel Miller, Gore Vidal, Walt Whitman, Henry James... and that's just off the top of my head: the lesbian or gay or bi writers who did write about being LGB at a time when doing so risked considerable opprobrium.
The closet is a much safer place to publish from that the open life: what the Lambda Awards rules change requires is that LGBT writers shall be open about their sexual orientation before they can be eligible. And I disagree with that. But I also find objectionable your idea that you can identify as straight writers whose sexual orientation you don't know.
(Rosemary Sutcliff, on the other hand, having read her autobiography, Blue Remembered Hills, published 1983, does come across as heterosexual/slash fan: I recall not even a subtextual hint that she had feelings for other women.)
And if they are very clear about that from now on, I won't have a problem. But this has been their mission statement until now:
"Our mission is to celebrate LGBT literature and provide resources for writers, readers, booksellers, publishers, and librarians – the whole literary community."
The above link is to their Facebook site, which still states this. And if you do a Web search on that phrase, 70 hits turn up. This is what the LLF is known as: an organization that celebrates GLBT literature. If they're going to take the organization in a different direction, they need to be very frank about what they were doing - and they weren't, in their original explanation of the change of rules. The rules were so ambiguous that people in the blogosphere were arguing over what they meant.
(Incidentally, is it just a coincidence that their president of their board of trustees resigned yesterday, or has there been internal dispute over which direction to take the LLF in?)
"The notion that you can be sure that Waugh, Sturgeon, Donovan, and Holland were all 100% heterosexual?"
How can I be sure that you're 100% lesbian? I can't, but I can make an educated guess that you're a lesbian, based primarily on the fact that you publicly self-identify that way.
Believe me, as somebody who also lived in the bad old days, I don't treat lightly the issue of whether someone says they're heterosexual because they're closeted. But - as in the case of Rosemary Sutcliff - it's sometimes possible to make an educated guess. Theodore Sturgeon wrote the "The World Well Lost" in 1953; there's been over half a century for science fiction historians and gay historians to dig up evidence that he was gay or bisexual. Yet there's no hint on the Web that he was.
More importantly, even if I were wrong, and every single one of the people I listed was closeted, it would make no difference as far as the LLF is concerned. Closeted LGBT folk are disqualified from the Lambda Literary Awards. This means that, if Mary Renault were alive today, and if she chose, for reasons of her own, to remain closeted, she could not win a Lambda Literary Award.
I really don't feel that such an exclusion would do anything to promote the lives of LGBT writers. The great danger is that, by limiting the awards to openly LGBT writers, a minor LGBT writer who happens to win the award in the same year that a closeted "Mary Renault" is ineligible will wrongly consider themself to be the best LGBT writer of that year. They will certainly be likely to consider themself to be a better writer of LGBT literature than some terrific heterosexual writer who was ineligible. And so the award-winner - and the award-givers - will get inflated egos in a year when they actually ought to be mourning that openly LGBT writers aren't producing LGBT literature that's as good as closeted LGBT writers or straight writers.
(I'm not saying that this would happen every year - just that, in any given year, in any given category, it's a possible scenario.)
[Continued in the next post.]
"were all 100% heterosexual"
If you're going to classify as LGBT as anyone who isn't 100% heterosexual, then we're going to have a problem with definitions. I'm bisexual; I consider myself 50% heterosexual and 50% gay. I do not consider myself only gay, simply because half my attractions are to the same sex. Similarly, I see no more reason to label a self-identified heterosexual person as gay, just because their experiences haven't been 100% heterosexual, any more than I see any reason to label a self-identified gay person as heterosexual, just because their experiences haven't been 100% gay. There are societal reasons why people of a particular orientation will choose to have sex with a gender they aren't particularly attracted to, or have only a minor attraction to.
As a bisexual, I feel really quite strong about this. I dislike any group - whether they be a gay history club or the Moral Majority - trying to lay claim over a historical person who would, in all likelihood, not have self-identified as being part of their group.
(Oh, do you know stuff about Alec Waugh than I don't? Please say more, because I'm very much interested in his life.)
"the lesbian or gay or bi writers who did write about being LGB at a time when doing so risked considerable opprobrium."
Did you get the impression that I don't admire their courage? I've been in situations where being open about one's sexuality could make a great deal of difference in how the public perceives that sexuality. I am positively enamored with people who have the courage to come out of the closet in dangerous situations.
But I do believe that straight writers and closeted writers of LGBT literature face dangers of their own. (I just mentioned to my apprentice your view that straight writers of LGBT literature don't face danger today, and he was more than a little puzzled at that stance.)
"I recall not even a subtextual hint that she had feelings for other women."
I dearly wish (for many reasons) that Rosemary Sutcliff been able to finish the second volume of her autobiography, but my main reason for guessing that she was a heterosexual m/m fan rather than being bisexual is that she had the opportunity to write about Alcibiades' gay life (in "Flowers of Adonis"), and she passed it up. That could have been due to pressure from her publisher, but this was 1965, for heaven's sake. Mary Renault had already paved the way.
Firstly: for well over 20 years, I have accepted without argument whatever anyone chooses to identify themselves as. You want to identify yourself as "50% gay and 50% heterosexual" rather than bisexual - and therefore include yourself out of the category LGBT writer because you identify yourself as too heterosexual to fit inside it? That's your decision, and no one should have the impertinence to argue with you about it for as long as you live.
Secondly: once a writer - or any public figure - is dead, however they chose to identify themselves in their lifetime, we their readership have a perfect right to discuss their sexual orientation / gender identity in terms that make sense to us.
Did you get the impression that I don't admire their courage?
I get the impression from this discussion that you admire neither their courage nor their writing, but prefer to promote heterosexual writers.
That is part of what I mean about your letter not having the effect I presumed you wanted, if you wanted to change their minds.
Oh, do you know stuff about Alec Waugh than I don't? Please say more, because I'm very much interested in his life.)
I'm not familiar with Alec Waugh's writing. But I wouldn't identify him as heterosexual merely because he was married: he lived at a time when that would have been socially obligatory, whatever his feelings for other men. For you to specifically identify him as a heterosexual writer is just pure heterosexism: how on earth do you know? Why claim him as heterosexual if you're ignorant of his life and don't know?
Idearly wish (for many reasons) that Rosemary Sutcliff been able to finish the second volume of her autobiography, but my main reason for guessing that she was a heterosexual m/m fan rather than being bisexual is that she had the opportunity to write about Alcibiades' gay life (in "Flowers of Adonis"), and she passed it up.
That if anything seems like evidence on the other side.
My main reason for supposing her to be heterosexual is in reading her autobiography, which she wrote at a time when, if she had had feelings for other women, she could have shared them: she didn't. All the emotional/romantic feelings she recalls are for men or boys.
Quite simply, it was easier, until recently, to write gay male fiction if you were (1) female and (2) either heterosexual or closeted. Moreover, certain types of genre fiction, such as young adult novels and fantasy literature, have attracted a great many female authors since the 1960s. The only genres in which male writers strongly dominated gay male literature prior to 1980 were literary fiction and porn - and maybe not even the latter, given how easy it is for a porn writer to fake his/her gender.
"it's probably safer for a straight writer to do so, just as it's safe enough for a straight actor to play a gay role but still career-hazardous for a gay actor to do so."
Which is precisely my point. It was always safer for straight writers to write LGBT stories. Because of that, many early gay writers pretended they were straight. It was easier to get away with this if you were female.
I'm not going to disentangle which orientation owes the most to the other. I'll just point out that openly LGBT writers, closeted LGBT writers, and heterosexual writers all played equally important roles in pioneering LGBT literature.
[Continued in the next post.]
Just as with the statement "it's perfectly safe for gay writers to write LGBT fiction," a lot depends on (1) one's location and (2) one's subject matter.
As a reporter, I wrote on sexually touchy homosexual topics for four years in the 1990s, at a time when I was in the closet. I was literally in fear of my life every day of those four years. I still am, because those writings continue to be available. The vigilantes who hate the subject matter I wrote about (and there are quite a few of them out there) simply don't care whether I'm gay or straight. They just want to attack anyone who writes about these topics in a way they don't like.
Now, as to location: Is a writer of gay literature who lives in a tolerant neighborhood relatively safe from gay-bashing? Probably, regardless as to whether they're gay or straight. Is a writer of gay literature who lives in a homophobic neighborhood safe from gay-bashing? Probably not, regardless as to whether they're gay or straight. I think we can agree that an author who is openly LGBT is going to be in double danger, but that doesn't mean that straight or closeted writers are immune from danger.
I've known of more than one female writer of slash fiction who lost her job when her slash writings were discovered. It's hard to disentangle whether the problem was that these authors were writing fan fiction, porn, or gay fiction, but I suspect that all three elements added into the quotient.
This is the sort of thing that makes me angry about LLF's justification. They cite the Amazon episode as reason to exclude heterosexual authors of LGBT literature from their awards, yet there are heterosexual authors involved in the fight against Amazon who risk their jobs, marriages, and friendships because they believe that it is important for them to write LGBT stories. I don't think that it in any way detracts from the courage of LGBT writers to acknowledge that heterosexual writers of LGBT literature may also undergo societal persecution.
"If your goal is to let them know that you feel contemptuous of and angry towards them"
I thought my letter to them was softly worded - did you feel otherwise? I'm not a good judge of my own writing.
I'm sorry if my comments here aren't well worded. I tend to get overly passionate when I see a group of people undergoing what I believe to be discrimination.
But just to underline again: I am not angered by LLF deciding to restrict the awards to LGBT writers. I think their decision is silly, and it means I'll cease to pay any attention to any awards they give out, but that is not what angers me. I am angered by the justification they've offered for the change of rules.
I am also concerned at the possibility that their promotional literature will fail to make clear that they restrict eligibility to LGBT writers. If they do not make this loud and clear in next year's promotional literature, most people will continue to assume that they give awards for LGBT literary excellence (because that's where their reputation currently lies), rather than giving awards for LGBT literary excellence by LGBT writers.
Well, it made me angry and want to disagree with you, and - while I strongly disagree with the way you phrased it - I am in essential agreement that the rules change wasn't a good one.
So when you're writing a letter to people most of whom presumably think the rules change was a good one, I somehow doubt you're going to get anywhere if they're as aggravated by the tone and phrasing of your letter as I was.
I think excluding people from a group on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity is wrong.
I have been an activist against such practices almost all my adult life.
I don't think it becomes "right" when the people being excluded are heterosexual and cisgendered and are being excluded for that reason.
(There are gay football and gay rugby teams where I live: every so often a journalist interviews them and expresses surprise that some of the players - never many, but a few - are straight men. The team organisers point out that they're all about NOT excluding people for their sexual orientation: the straight men just shrug and say they're here to play football/rugby and socialise and these are good teams to play and socialise with.)
Yeah, people keep telling me this, and then looking at me funny when I point out how many slash writers are lesbian or bisexual women - and how many more are trans men... and the sprinkling of gay men... but no: the concept that slash is mostly written by heterosexual woman overrides my lived experience as a slash fan.
My literary role models were Mary Renault and Pat Califia...
I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on this because - for obvious reasons - this is a topic of interest to me.
Ever since I arrived in the slash community, I've been trying to get a sense of how large a percentage of slash authors are LGBT. I've been tracking it in four ways: (1) conversations among slash writers about LGBT matters, (2) slash writers' profiles (if they're LGBT, the keywords or bios or subscribed comms/asylums will often reveal this - that's how I found out about my apprentice), (3) the content of programs at slash conventions, and (4) the only survey I know of that has addressed this topic, namely a very unscientific survey conducted by Rushlight in 2003 of 1000 slashers. Rushlight found that, on the Kinsey scale (with 0 as exclusively heterosexual and 6 as exclusively homoxual), the surveyed slashers averaged out to 1.82.
My rough impression is that (1) a larger-than-average percentage of slash writers are LGBT, and (2) most slash writers are heterosexual women. This is what I'd expect, given slash's history and content and the relative percentage of self-identified LGBT folk in society. But I take it you've had a different impression?
Then again: I have not encountered (what other slash fans tell me they have) the phenomenon of the homophobic slash fan who argues against equal marriage and other civil rights for LGBT people, while happily writing gay romances between men that turn her on.
On the gripping hand: I have never heard of Rushlight's survey, and I was active in slash fandom (and on livejournal) in 2003. So I suspect it too fell victim to the "go with who you know" grouping that tends to bias the kind of unscientific research done in fandom by fans about fans.
(*Starts totting up in mind the slashers who have been my friends.*)
One gay . . . one bi . . . another bi . . . another bi . . . another bi . . . another bi who is also trans . . .
One heterosexual. Whoo. I was beginning to worry.
Against that, I've been at slash convention discussions where people were talking about how their sexuality affected their slash writing, and it was quite obvious that most of the women in the room identified (publicly) as heterosexual. So it would be nice if one of those scholars who blithely describes slash as fiction for heterosexual women actually did a scientific survey to provide insight into this matter.
"I have never heard of Rushlight's survey"
I wish I could link to Rushlight's survey; alas, it's no longer online, and it wasn't cached. Maybe a few of us can nudge her to put it back online. :)
(And there goes my gender bias, because I don't actually know for sure that Rushlight is female. But I figure that, since I use "he" as my general pronoun in the rest of the world, it does me good to refer to slash writers in the abstract as "she.")
So tell me: What was the slash world like in 1983? Were there cons? Or were you meeting in private houses? What were the people like?