Queer. Fat. Political. Commemorating the life and work of Judy Freespirit. July 24, 2011
14 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
ANNOUNCING…
Queer. Fat. Political. a flabulous star-studded, politically inspired evening of fierce fattitude and performance sponsored by the GLBT Historical Society.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
@ the GLBT History Museum – 4127 18th Street
5-7pm
$5 donations are requested but no one turned away for lack of funds!
This event will commemorate the life and work of fat activist Judy Freespirit (who has an archive at the Historical Society) and will feature performance from the legendary FAT LIP Readers’ Theater, Jezebel Delilah X and others! Performances will be followed by a discussion/Q&A and is meant to create dialogue between generations of fat queer activists.
If you have questions or want a jpeg of the flier send me an email at nyboheme@yahoo.com
Thanks and big fat tummy rubs!
Virgie Tovar, Event Organizer
Read more about the GLBT Historical Society and the GLBT History Museum at www.glbthistory.org
Judy Freespirit was an architect of the fat liberation movement. She was a founding member of the Fat Underground and of FAT LIP Readers Theatre. She was a performer, an activist, a lesbian, a feminist, and all around fearless shit kicker.
Cathy Cade, a member of the GLBT Historical Society Women’s Committee, has completed an archive for Judy Freespirit which can be viewed at the GLBT Historical Society. Pieces from the collection will be on display at the July 24 event.
http://queerfatpolitical.weebly.com/judy-freespirit.html
Sharonah Robinson aka Sharon Lia Robinson
14 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
Judy Freespirit introduced me to fat feminism at the Women’s Center in Venice, California, circa late 1973. Because of her inspiration, I then joined the first fat women’s problem solving group, circa 1974, in Venice, Ca. Today, I continue to work with body image in my art and writings. Blessings, Sharonah Robinson (aka Sharon Bas Hannah). For examples of my size esteem work and Rubenesque Landscape project, see www.sharonrobinson.org
Laurie Ackerman
22 Dec 2010 Leave a Comment
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
I dreamed about you last night Judy and heard your soft voice which I am starting to miss. It still lives in my head. I remember going to your apartment when the kids were small and lighting the menorah with you. I remember your wonderful chicken soup and all the good things that sprang from your kitchen. I miss you Judy. We all do.
Laurie
Kata Orndorff
14 Dec 2010 Leave a Comment
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
I met Judy in the mid 80s when I lived in Sonoma County, CA. and was looking for a place to live She was in a 2-bedroom sublet for the summer and needed a roommate. A mutual acquaintance in the lesbian community gave me her phone number.
She did not tell me that Judy was a fat woman involved in the Fat Liberation Movement. But Judy did just fine educating me about fat politics. It was one of those “aha” feminist moments for me. Judy had such a clear understanding of the way that society oppressed women around body image. As well as the double whammy of then getting many of them on the seesaw between starving themselves to lose weight and then gaining it all back plus more because of the body’s healthy reaction to being starved.
I reconnected with Judy in the 90s at a co-counseling conference for disabled people. By then I had become chemically sensitive. Judy was there for me during some difficult times in my life. When my partner left me after moving to Tucson she called me every week to do co-counseling by phone on her dime. I was able to travel to the Bay Area to visit and interview bisexual women for a book I was working on because I stayed with Judy in her environmentally safe condo.
In the last several years Judy and I have kept in contact by phone, talking to each other every few months or so. She knew she could share with me the struggles she was having in her life. I knew I never had to censor how difficult and, at times, painful my life is with Judy. She understood.
Judy I know you’re fine. I know you truly have no limits now. I know you’re in a state of bliss. So, I know it is for my loss of you that I mourn. I miss you, dear friend.
Kata Orndorff
Program from the memorial
15 Nov 2010 Leave a Comment
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
For those who were unable to attend the memorial on Nov. 6, you can download the program booklet that was distributed there.
CL Post
15 Nov 2010 Leave a Comment
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
Hola: Judy was my neighbor on Orange St. and her spirit inspired me. We served together on the homeowners’ assn. board and faced some interesting communal challenges. When Judy married herself, I smiled and had my horizon further expanded. Judy helped her Mother, as I’m helping my Mom. So many parallels and so much resonance. Every time I feel a breeze across my life, I’ll think of Judy. Cuidate, CL
Elizabeth Fides Chiment
02 Nov 2010 Leave a Comment
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
I knew Judy many years ago, and, as for so many of us, she inspired, challenged, and nurtured me. My heart is heavy tonight…but knowing that Judy’s Free Spirit is finally Free, I look up at the late fall sky, and the huge harvest moon, and I believe she is smiling at us all.
Judy changed my life in so many positive, loving ways. I am profoundly grateful for her strength, her courage, and her delightful love of life.
blessings,
elizabeth fides chiment
Elena Moser
29 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
I first met Judy in 1980. I had recently moved to the Bay Area to go to graduate school and I called her after seeing a flyer for Fat Lip Readers Theatre. Judy was a beautiful combination of fierce and soft and I always marveled at her capacity to hold her position while staying passionately engaged with the other person. I loved her poetry, especially about food and Jewish food especially. One of my favorite lines from “So, what is Jewish food anyway” which comes after a list of things like bagels and lox and noodle kugel… is “and Pepsi Cola and Clark Bars. Pepsi Cola and Clark Bars? Yes, when you are a Jewish kid whose mother loves Pepsi Cola and Clark Bars that is Jewish food too.”
I am glad to have been on the planet with you Judy,
With Love,
Elena Moser
D’nah Freespirit
29 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
I met Judy Freespirit at the Fall Fat Women gather of 1997. I was so impressed with her spirit, that when I wanted to change my name, I thought of her. Being a fellow fat-Jewish-lesbian, I thought in embodied all that I wanted to be. When I had a mutual acquaintance ask her if it would be okay for me to take her name, and she told me, “A Freespirit needs no permission.” I hope I can live up to even a fraction of her inspiration.
G.L. Morrison
28 Sep 2010 2 Comments
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
Judy Freespirit.
In death as in life, she looms huge and magnificent –a spirit flying free.
Writing, remembering brings up odd stirrings in me. Judy was one of the women who I held closest in the 90s. I frequently traveled to sleep on her couch, to try out her new favorite restaurant, to discuss activism, poetry, whether we should be lovers, dybbuks, the dirt on my fave lesbian icons, and all the reasons I should move to the bay area.
She took me to her gym where we could swim naked. I spent a lot of time with Judy swimming naked… chunky dunking in the hotel pool at Fat Feminist Fests.
I was at home staying with her and seldom came for less than a week. I with her the day I got news there was a spot on my lung. We talked about fear and death and our beliefs and our children and the terrible bias in health care that shamed and killed women of size (both by neglect and reckless “treatment”).
I remember the daily phone calls Judy would make to her co-counseling group. What an intimate connection to have the same hour –to be Judy’s Tuesday morning for (I think she told me their group had been co-counseling for 7 years at the time) Longer than any of my relationships has lasted (at that time).
Her blueprint for living was an inspiration. Her dream group has stayed with me. Pictures of the life I hadn’t seen. Her model for community –circles upon circles– with a shared goal and clear agenda. She made things happen. She made people want to make things happen.
We met on a fat lesbian activist email list. I don’t even remember what it was called. Do you Max? Laurie? Fat Dykes I think. Smart funny writers we wove the world together –supporting the tired activists, healing the wounded women who were using the world’s mirror to injure themselves… the group, the community formed there plotted and healed and laughed.
She recruited me to be the poetry editor of New Attitude, the fat feminist caucus newsletter, which she published. She lured me to my first fat feminist festival where I had the joy of teaching workshops, performing, singing with and making love to brilliant radical women. It was at one of those I met my lover D’nah who when she was remaking herself, renaming herself asked Judy if it would be alright to take her last name. I think she wanted to be sure Judy knew it was meant to be a homage, not an imposition or stalkerish intimacy. She asked for “permission” and Judy said “a free spirit doesn’t need permission.”
I remember the erotica about the sour cream in the fridge demanding to be eaten. The stories that required a yiddish lexicon for gentile girls like me. The stories about her grandmother, her son. I remember the time of the great condo flood and its neverending repairs.
There are fissures in lesbian communities. Fissures in lesbian identities. My heart went with the young anarchists and the bulk of my work followed my heart. The year that one of the organizers of a fat feminist conference went in front of the podium to publicly decry my sneaking food from the breakfast buffet to my room -to feed my theater troupe “Fierce Pussy Posse” who had traveled to perform for no compensation and at great (relatively) expense- as “theft” from those who paid entry. That was the last conference I attended.
I hadn’t meant to leave that community as a protest. I intended rather to return when I could redress the issues that divided us: shelter (an extra suite? space available posting?), food (donated, purchased in the open suite, adjacent restaurant/buffet that would sell a weekend pass –getting a number of passes donated for each however many paid), workshops (open to non-conference-goers by instructor consent) etc.
But there were always other fires to put out. Controversial times. (Perhaps all times are.) “Lesbians eat their children,” Judy had said.
We discussed what that meant to our collective history. The past disappeared as if our biographies were written on the beach at low tide. The genesis and foremothers of our struggle(s) were forgotten in their own lifetimes. And this was no surprise because the founding generation refused to yield their hard-won truths to the upstart generations. Judy worked hard to bring in the younger activists, the next wave and was discouraged at the way they were often pushed away with equal fervor. She had neither time nor energy for the one step forward, two step backward crawl. She had urgent fires burning –issues pertinent to disability and aging, the neglect of LGBT elders.
In a fight for justice where our allies were too often each other’s enemies, we chose not sides but priorities. It was a time of shifting genders and slippery alliances. Lesbians who slept with men. Lesbians who became men. Boi dykes who loved other boi dykes and considered themselves fags. Dismantle the military or support our gay troops? Deconstruct monogamy or legalize gay marriage?
I love my old garde –women’s lands and collectives but the purity, the exclusivity of it, created clouds of privilege… I chose to stand in the streets with transgender warriors and anarchist youth and sex workers. The dispossessed will always be my first people. My first choice. Judy chose disability activism. She said that it wasn’t comfortable to acknowledge the relationship between fat and disability. Those of us in poor health made poor poster children for fat acceptance since so many people saw “obesity” as its own disability. She put her energies where she felt they were most needed. Where she saw an unserved need she served. With intention, devotion and ferocity.
At her best, she was everything I strive to be.
She had turns of depression, fatalism, exhaustion that no one who struggles for justice in an unjust world can fully avoid.
So many of her tributes involve half remembered poems. I remember that she was enchanted with that acrobat’s quote… “everything else is waiting”.
Judy, judy, judy. My fat maven. My virago. The nights I spent not sleeping on your couch –that we stayed up all night talking, reading to each other, sharing stories, sharing books, sharing visions. I loved that time and who we were in it. Fat lives, fat lips. I attended a show of Laurie Toby Edison’s Women En Large with Judy. She sent me a postcard that looked wildly like me at the time. “You have a doppleganger. And here she is. Naked.” The resemblance was startling. And flattering.
I loved those Fat Fest weekends when the waitstaff appeared so small. If there is this “fat epidemic” where is it? Where are we hiding our beautiful selves?
Judy– I will miss the beautiful way in which you took up space, refused to be belittled, dreamed big and lived large.
Public Memorial for Judy Freespirit
26 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
.
The Public Memorial for Judy Freespirit will be
Saturday, Nov. 6th, from 3:30-8pm
Program will start at approximately 4 pm
Montclair Women’s Cultural Arts Club
1650 Mountain Blvd (at the corner of Thornhill)
Oakland, CA 94611
All are invited.
Anyone who wants to speak is welcome to, though we request you respect a 4-minute time limit.
In the spirit of the ’70s women’s movements, we will have a pot luck – if you can, please bring a dish to share with a card listing the ingredients.
Please, no scents, perfumes, flowers or candles to keep the space safe for folks with chemical sensitivities.
The Montclair Club is accessible through the rear parking lot. Accessible parking is limited (street parking is relatively easy). Please contact Susan at taxmomsusan@yahoo.com to reserve accessible parking.
For any other questions or info, or to volunteer to help, contact Elana at dykewomon@yahoo.com
Mary Ganz
24 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
Judy was a prophet. The world will not be the same without her in it. Farewell!
Bill Fabrey
21 Sep 2010 1 Comment
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
I learned of Judy’s passing from Frances White’s excellent obit in the NAAFA newsletter. I first had dealings with this remarkable woman around 1970, in the early years of NAAFA, around the time that the LA chapter closed and the Fat Underground was formed. She and others in the group convinced me (but not all of my fellow officers) of the urgent need for the radical direction they were taking, and I have always admired her determination, and that of others in that group. I have known of some of her other areas of work in liberation, and admired what I knew of them.
In more recent years, I spoke with Judy several times by phone, about different matters, and was always impressed with her thoughtfulness. I guess we would have been closer friends if she had lived on the east coast, but what is important is the lasting legacy she gave in all of her work through the years, and her example to other activists!
Most of her friends apparently were women, but I never got the impression that she held my gender against me…
Bill Fabrey
Council on Size & Weight Discrimination
www.cswd.org
Mt. Marion, NY
Elizabeth Keir: Judy’s burial
16 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
Judy’s body was buried today on a mountain in Marin County. A small group of loved ones gathered above the valley and the grave to speak about our relationships with Judy, her final hours, her history and her family…both biological and chosen. The day was beautiful, the cemetery natural ground, the view was of other mountain tops and a school in the valley. Children were heard playing and laughing and a hawk flew over her grave. We hugged one another, we who for years had met at Seders and birthday parties, and most recently at Judy’s mother’s memorial service. We covered her coffin with soil, the sound louder than I had imagined, never to be forgotten. Judy’s spirit is truly free now.
A community wide service is planned for the end of October. No date is yet set.
Lovingly,
Elizabeth Keir
Sara Fishman
16 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
Aside from my parents, Judy was probably the greatest influence on my life. I remember first seeing her at the Los Angeles Women’s Liberation Center some time around 1971–I was shy and self-deprecating, embarrassed about my size, and there was Judy, fatter than anyone I’d let myself see before, absolutely radiating charm and kindness, right in the middle of the action. Until then, I had no idea that a fat person could be so strong, so appealing. Judy opened my eyes.
We were part of the same radical therapy collective. That was where I first explained the ideas I’d formed about fat oppression. Had it not been for her early, enthusiastic support, I’m sure I’d have kept the ideas to myself, and ultimately given them up as a personal self-delusion. Judy was the strength behind this movement that changed so many of our lives.
I recall a comment by another member of our RT collective, that each person has a gift that enables them to survive in the world, and that Judy’s gift was her personality. Looking back through the perspective of age, I realize that that personality must have been more than a gift; it was something she worked on to develop, to sustain, to advance. We’ve all benefited from her work. Me, especially. She was, and is, a very great soul.
Charlotte Cooper
16 Sep 2010 1 Comment
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
Letter to Judy, August 2010
I wrote and sent this a few weeks ago. I don’t know if Judy got to see it, I hope she did. It seems funny posting this letter here, my memories of being with her are brief for someone who was a big influence in my life. I often cite Judy’s work in my own work, and I talk about the Fat Underground whenever I can. Memory is quite an odd way for me to think about Judy because she’s so present within my worldview.
I am currently transcribing the interview I did with her and will publish it on my blog soon.
Dear Judy,
It’s been a couple of months since I saw you in San Francisco, and you may have forgotten me. I’m the British researcher-activist that Esther Rothblum brought to meet you in June. We had lunch together, you showed us around the Jewish Home, and then I interviewed you about fat activism and the Fat Underground in the art room.
Meeting you was one of the highlights of my trip to San Francisco. In the weeks following, I went to the GLBT History Society and looked through your archives there. I found this very moving and inspiring, especially your notebooks and diaries from the early 70s and 80s. I admire and respect very much your commitment to social justice, your integrity and creativity. You produced your work whilst holding down a day job and whilst being marginalised again and again by more ‘respectable’ factions in feminism and the left. I am deeply grateful to you for your work and your vision for fat women, and your persistence within very trying circumstances. Thank you Judy!
I’ve been putting off writing until I had the transcription of your interview all ready to go. I thought that I’d have had this done by the time I went to Australia, but that was wishful thinking. I leave tomorrow for three weeks and don’t want to hold off sending you a package until I get back. So this is for now, and I’ll send the rest later.
Enclosures:
1. Fat & Proud.
This is a book I published in 1998. It is based on my Master’s degree dissertation from the University of East London. I had big fights with the feminist publishers; they would not agree to me calling myself queer, or talking about fat women’s complicity with their own oppression, or mention trans people at all. They threatened me with non-publication unless I removed all references to Fat Girl zine, which they couldn’t support because it ‘promoted pornography.’ Sigh. So I look upon this work as being terribly flawed and painful to produce. But here it is anyway. I think the stuff on the FU is pretty sketchy because I didn’t know very much at that time.2. Kick Out The Jams! Fat, Activism and New Ways of Thinking
I’m going to Australia tomorrow to be a visiting scholar at Macquarie University in Sydney. I’m not really sure what this means, but I’ll be doing some more research for my PhD whilst I’m there. The main reason for my trip is to deliver one of two keynote speeches at a Fat Studies conference called Fat Studies: A Critical Dialogue. This is the first of its kind in Australia and it is being convened by Dr Samantha Murray, who wrote a book called The ‘Fat’ Female Body. She’s a friend of mine.So my keynote is about why fat activism is important and shouldn’t be marginalised in Fat Studies, or anywhere really. I think of you as being one of the founding mothers of fat activism, without which Fat Studies would probably not exist, and I’m dedicating this presentation in your honour.
So these are the notes I’m using. There are some Powerpoint slides too, and I will make an audio recording of the talk. Let me know if you want copies of these.
That’s all for now. Much love to you, Judy, I hope you are okay. I’ll send the interview transcript as soon as I can.
With much love,
Charlotte
(ed. also see Charlotte Cooper and Judy Freespirit in conversation)
KPFA radio show about Judy to air on Friday Sept. 17
15 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
Pushing Limits, KPFA’s show for the disabled community, will be doing a piece on Judy Freespirit on Friday September 17, 2:30 PM Pacific Time, on 94.1FM in the greater SF Bay Area, 88.1FM in the greater Fresno area, and streaming at http://www.kpfa.org
(Thanks for the info to Avery Ray Colter)
There’s also an obituary prepared by Avery that aired on KPFA at the end of the 7AM headlines Tuesday morning, about 8:07 in, after the obituary for former UC Regent Richard Koblenz.
Pat Dixon
15 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
Over the years I have had a multitude of Judy Freespirit contacts and sightings, mostly joyous, but sometimes serious and thought-provoking. I will NEVER forget Judy’s reading of “Daddy’s Little Girl (?)” in – was it modern times, was it the 80s? The room was packed and there were people in the upstairs (I for one) leaning over to hear every word. I had no idea what I was about to experience…the brutal honesty and smooth, almost effortless rendering of convoluted situations and complex feelings that Judy talked about/read blew me away! As I write this down blood is rushing to my skin, and my stomach aches a little from the shortened supply. The woman could bare it.
When I look back on my life as I round out my 64th year, I think about the days I can remember. You know, some stuff stands out. I would have to say the days that stand out with Judy in them are among the most frequent of people that I did not really know or was friends/buds with. That is pretty amazing for an acquaintance. Well, she was amazing.
Just a little story of how Judy’s influence was felt at even the earliest of years. Back in the mid 70’s I met a fat woman named Shawn. She was persistently tired of being fat, I could relate to that. Every now and then she would begin a diet, which often makes some/many women feel good about themselves (Shawn even relates that on one diet she walked down the street on her very first day, and a man hit on her for the first time in years. So it is in your head?) But, anyway… in this case Shawn felt a little guilty since she was just beginning to get politicized around fat liberation. Shawn told her story to us while sitting around the kitchen table. There was a lengthily preamble about her guilty conscience that I do not remember, but the punch line was she went out on the very first day of her new diet, and the very first person she saw on the street that she knew was Judy Freespirit! The message to not pursue her dieting ways was very clear. At that time I did not even know who Judy was, but other people in the room were laughing at/with Shawn and her amazing karma. I don’t think Shawn and Judy even said a word to one another that day. Judy was a whole book just walking down the street – well, a whole story for sure.
Judith Masur
14 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
I first saw Judy in that Fat Chance performance at Skylight studio in 1979. I was there in clown, as Prosciutto, selling Mom’s cheesecake with my then lover Sara (as Mabel) and hawking the very first edition (of 4) of Big Woman Notecards. I was blown away by the performances – both the physicality of the trapezes and, yes, handstand/backflips, and the depth of the personal stories that tied them all together. I immediately wanted to be part of telling the story of growing up and living fat in our American fat-hating society. In those days I had been working with Mothertongue doing readers theater and I approached Judy after the show and told her I thought I could help in creating a readers theater around fat oppression/fat liberation. What followed was Fat Lip Readers Theater, ten first-born fat women, nine lesbians and one confirmed bisexual.
We wrote every week for a year and then launched ourselves, some kicking and screaming, into performance. How great it was to send out that message from the stage. Judy was the foremother and we were the messengers. She was exasperating and inspiring, a fierce advocate and critic all at once. Many’s the time we quarreled and came again to an understanding based on principles and a common desire to fight for a just outcome and to care for each other.
I used her as the body model for my FAT POWER t-shirt and so she remained with me even years after I left the Bay Area for the southwest with my partner Jess, who died in 1998. Big Woman Notecards grew to 26 cards, Fat Liberation touched millions of lives, and Prosciutto still wears that t-shirt, 13 SF and 12 Santa Fe Pride parades later. I honor Judy for what she gave us all.
Carole Cullum
14 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Remembering Judy Freespirit
There is no doubt about it, Judy changed my life in so many ways. I think I met her in the late 70′s in southern California. She was outrageous! Her presence, words and actions shocked me. What? It was ok to be fat? That’s not possible. And it was a scary thought. But yes, I learned from Judy, from Fat Lip Readers Theatre, from Tightrope and from her directly that I could take strength and power from being fat, and it was more than ok, it was an important step for me to take and to urge others to join me. It was a difficult path, but I made it. Judy and others in the fat liberation movement were revolutionaries–our fat foremothers. We need to continue to take up the banner of fat liberation and continue the fight against fat oppression.
I know that I will. Carole Cullum
