D.J. O’Donnell

Doreen-Jean became active in the Women’s Caucus in 1969 and contributed much to our internal debates, the Indo-Chinese Women’s Conference and later by initiating discussion on Lesbianism in the women’s movement. She was interviewed about her memories of the Caucus in November 2015.

When D.J. became active in the Vancouver Women’s Caucus she was a student at UBC and had been elected as a student representative to the University Senate for the 1969/70 year. She came to her political positions intellectually and had become a member of the Campus Left Action Movement which was loosely affiliated with the Progressive Workers’ movement. She knew of the developments at SFU through a friend and by September 1969 her attendance at Women’s caucus meetings was her primary political activity. She recalls that the NDP Youth conference at UBC met across the hall from the Western Regional Conference of the Women’s Caucus in October 1969. She joined the NDP for election work in Vancouver Quadra that summer and attended a Waffle Conference in Winnipeg in the winter of 1969, but this was her last involvement with the NDP. Waffle was a name given to the Movement for an Independent Socialist Canada, a radical wing of the NDP.

In the summer of 1970 D.J. attended the Women’s Caucus conference on strategy where several papers were discussed, one being one she had helped write – the paper “The Rising of the Women means the Rising of the Race?” She was not entirely happy with the Women’s Caucus’ lack of clarity over issues defined as feminist or liberation politics. At that time such organizations were seen as extra-parliamentary organizations as opposed to those within the electoral system. Those involved with her in writing that paper continued as a group calling themselves Vancouver Women’s Liberation. She saw this as a friendly difference and it did not prevent her from continuing to be involved in the activities of the Women’s Caucus as before.

D.J. attended the UN World Youth Assembly that summer in New York as a Canadian delegate. She was encouraged to go to that conference by Lydia Sayles, a member of the Canadian “Voice of Women.” It was at a meeting of New York activists to welcome the UN Youth delegates that there was an extraordinary outburst of catcalls from the audience when she, as a Canadian, walked up to the platform to speak; catcalls such as “Trudeau is a sexist … …..Trudeau is a faggot.” She responded by saying that Trudeau was clearly sexist but to call him a faggot was an insult to all present and she was appalled by the homophobia displayed. This resulted in members of the Gay Liberation front introducing themselves to her and she remembers asking if it was a Marxist Leninist party. She said when she returned to Vancouver as an out gay woman she was surprised to discover many others like her and she moved into the gay women’s collective called New Morning with Margo Dunn, Ellen Woodsworth, and Sage. As far as discussions of lesbianism in the caucus she does not remember any. At the time of the War Measures Act, Women’s Liberation put out a leaflet in support of the FLQ “Everything they say we are, we are.”

In 1971 DJ was active in organizing for the Indochinese Women’s Conference, the IWC held in early April. She said that the New Morning Collective had known of the intention to hold the conference much earlier than did the Women’s Caucus. She thinks this was due to them being a group called Vancouver Women’s Liberation and therefore the Women’s Liberation groups in the east contacted them given their similar denomination. She also had been given information from the Voice of Women organizing group through her contact with Lydia Sayles. It was D.J. who arranged for the Student Union Building and other facilities on the UBC campus to be made available for that Indochinese Women’s Conference.

D.J. went to the conference held in Portland in February, 1971 with a number of others from the Women’s Liberation group and from the Women’s Caucus to finalize arrangements for the IWC. At that meeting she had felt a great affinity for the Portland group of women and also those representing ‘third world’ women in the US. She said she had problems with the San Francisco group of Radical Feminists from the get go. This was also so at the IWC itself where she said her perception was that the Radical Feminists from San Francisco were a disruptive force from start to finish. The reason she gave was that they ignored the central intention of the IWC which was to enable the IndoChinese women guests to discuss with North American women the devastation of the US war on Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos with the expectation that working for peace and the end of the war would be imperative. The S.F.Radical Feminists she saw as attempting to use the conference to promote their own political agenda which had nothing to do with the IndoChinese women. She thinks the flexibility of the organizers managed to keep the factionalism under control so that at the Vancouver conference there were not the disastrous consequences experienced at the IWC in Toronto.

In the summer of 1972 DJ wrote a paper for the book “Women Unite” which was published in 1973. Her article was entitled “Lesbians belong in the Women’s Movement.” This came about due to a Toronto woman, who was compiling an anthology of women’s writing asking her to contribute since no writings by lesbians about lesbianism had been contributed. She had continued working with the Working Women’s Association because she understood this work to involve class action which was important to her and she is proud of what was achieved. She joined CPC-ML in 1973 to continue her interest in internationalism and class action..

In answer to the question about what she thinks now about the actions and activities of the Vancouver Women’s Caucus, DJ.. believes it made a contribution to the broad movement of resistance and provided a great context for serious discussion and debate which had a perspective way beyond that of gender equality. She is very definite that the multi-issue aspect of the Caucus’ work was most important and she thinks the way in which it enabled young women, to develop those capabilities was remarkable. These were women who had never been encouraged to speak out and develop positions on political issues before and numbers of them are now still in BC and elsewhere speaking out and organizing with confidence. She mentioned several writings which had been of significance to her. Among them, “They are burning, they are burning Effigies, Why, Why, Why Effigies?” by Peggy Morton. She also remembers that at a speech given by Morgenthaler in the Hotel Georgia in downtown Vancouver, she was impressed by a skit done outside the hotel by three women under the labels PAST, PRESENT and FUTURE? – one with a bucket and mop, one with a sign ‘Equality Now’, and the third, Marg Hollibaugh, holding a machine gun and bandolier, indicating the spirit of resistance of the times.

One last memory D.J. recalled was of her involvement in the occupation of a Ministry of Human resources building at 6th Ave., west of Main in Vancouver on August 30th ,1973 to protest the Day Care provisions of the Provincial and Federal Governments. Forty two years later those policies are still a disgrace. She composed a talking blues about the event which was published in the first BC Daycare Resource Guide.

Interviewed by Elizabeth Briemberg in 2015