Before writing the landmark classic Rubyfruit Jungle, Rita Mae Brown was a young activist moving through nearly every major social movement of the era. She was kicked out of the National Organization for Women by Betty Friedan, and walked away from both the Student Homophile League and the Gay Liberation Front when they sidelined lesbian issues.
“Two steps forward is better than no steps at all,” she told me. “And I was willing to fight for that, and I did.”
In 1969, this friction came to a head when Betty Friedan infamously warned that lesbians were a “Lavender Menace” who would discredit the feminist movement. In response, Brown co-authored “The Woman-Identified Woman”, a radical manifesto declaring that lesbianism was central to female liberation (“What is a lesbian? A lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion.”), and joined with other queer women to take over the 1970 Second Congress to Unite Women.
Wearing hand-dyed purple shirts emblazoned with “LAVENDER MENACE,” they commandeered the stage and microphones, forcing the conference into hours of discussions about homophobia in its own ranks. (Karla Jay also details this moment in our interview.) A year later, in 1971, NOW passed a resolution officially recognizing lesbian oppression as a legitimate feminist concern.
Brown went on to write the autobiographical novel Rubyfruit Jungle, now considered a foundational classic of queer literature. Originally published at a small press, it became an underground phenomenon, selling 70,000 copies after its release in 1973 and eventually surpassing a million copies sold.
Decades later, Rita Mae Brown hasn’t softened. In our interview, recorded last month, she looks back on those early high-stakes battles and explains why she remains just as sharply critical of today’s LGBTQ rights movement as she was back in the 1970s.
“I was born a second-class citizen, and I will die a second-class citizen. And I hope in the span of my life I’ve made it a little easier for women and others too.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Jeffrey Masters: You went to the University of Florida in the early 1960s and left school early. It’s been reported that you were expelled, but in your memoir you wrote that you chose to leave after the school threatened you. What made them turn on you?
Rita Mae Brown: No, they threw me out, really. But it was just easier for me to go than to protest. I had discovered the administration was making money quite unfairly on the Black community. They had rented them homes, and if they didn’t pay their rent, they took the doors off of the homes. And a couple of us found this out, and I was one of them. I had mentioned it in my sorority. I was a Delta Delta Delta. And I guess the president was worried one way or the other and told the dean of women, and they decided I was probably gay. That was a great way to get rid of me, so they yanked my scholarship.
JM: Why did they think that you were gay?
RMB: Well, because when we’d be in sorority meetings and stuff, I’d say, “I don’t care what people do.” I think some of the girls were having romances. God knows I wasn’t. I didn’t even think like that. But it was enough. It was enough. So I learned. I learned some very hard but very useful lessons about the way the world works.
JM: So many other students saw the way the school was treating Black students and looked the other way. What is it about that made you want to get involved and fight back?
RMB: I haven’t a clue. I just can’t stand to see animals or people mistreated.
JM: So you’ve just been like that your whole life?
RMB: Yeah, pretty much. I was always saving animals as a kid, and I still am. And I don’t think I’m better than anyone else, it’s just I can’t tolerate abuse. And I was raised high church, very high church, and I believed what I was taught.
JM: And what was that?
RMB: That you do unto others as they do unto you, and the Beatitudes, and that the good Lord intends for us to take care of one another.
JM: You said that in terms of romance in your sorority, you didn’t think like that. In terms of sexuality and desire in general, do you think of yourself as a late bloomer in that regard?
RMB: No, I didn’t want to take the time. I saw how everybody changed once they fell in love, and I thought, “Can’t go down that road, I got too much to do.” And as a woman, if I married a man, there’s no way I can do wife stuff, no way. And no man is going to take care of me probably if I don’t do it, and I know for sure no woman is going to. A woman’ll do things for a man she’d never do for another woman. Pretty much, I think, even to this day, in so many ways, because of the way women are raised. So I figured I’m on my own, and let’s just keep it free and loose.
JM: When did you stop thinking like that?
RMB: I don’t know that I ever did. But every now and then somebody would affect me in ways that were marvelous in some ways, but very disquieting in others, because you lose your focus. I’m not very romantic. I think this is pretty obvious.
JM: I know you eventually made your way to New York City. Was it known as a gay haven at that time at that time?
RMB: I wouldn’t say a gay haven. I just knew it was a place for artistic people. The theater was there, the symphonies were there. And people that are in the arts tend to be more open, whether it’s race or gay or whatever. I’m not saying wide open. You can find an anti-Semite anywhere, and you can find an anti-Black person, et cetera. But I just felt it would probably be much more conducive to good work than being in South Florida.
JM: And it seemed like you were proved right.
RMB: I was. I was. I met wonderful people even though I didn’t have a penny to my name. I slept on the floor, slept in a car for a while. But I met wonderful, wonderful people, and I am very happy to say many are still my friends, those that are alive.
JM: I think you wrote that you came to New York City with $14 in your pocket.
RMB: That was it.
JM: And you ultimately did enroll at NYU. Then you became involved in the Student Homophile League, which was the first gay student organization in the country. This was in 1967. How did you get involved with that organization, though? Because it was a Columbia University group and you were at NYU.
RMB: Yes, but I was in classics, and Columbia had a marvelous classics library. So I would walk…because I didn’t have the money to take the bus or the subway. So I would walk from the Village where I lived all the way up there, which was great, and I would study, and I would come back. So I met some people there. There were a couple people there that were interested in gay rights.
It was the very, very beginning. They were all men [in the Student Homophile League]. I was the only woman. I think there were seven of us or something like that. And we were making real progress. And in about one week, we made the front page of The New York Times, and Columbia lost over a million dollars in alumni funds.
But immediately after that there were the riots, and so we were overshadowed by the riots, which of —
JM: The Stonewall riots?
RMB: No, no, no, the riots about the war.
JM: Oh, at Columbia.
RMB: Yeah. And of course it made sense that we were overshadowed, but it was a very tempestuous time.
JM: You said that the Student Homophile League was starting to make real progress. What were they doing? What was the progress toward?
RMB: Well, they were having meetings and they gave interviews. I don’t know who called the paper, but they gave an interview, and I think it made The New York Times. And then I started it down in NYU, because there was no point going back to Columbia after the war riots. NYU had war protests, but not as destructive, for lack of a better word, as Columbia. So I could get a few things done. It’s good. But I had to make my grades, and I was studying Greek and Latin, so I had to really do that first.
JM: What would you have said the group’s goals were?
RMB: I think just to be accepted. Not to be thrown out or harassed. Which I would say would still be the goals today, in some places. So it was very simple. It wasn’t any sense of entitlement whatsoever. It was just, “Come on, live and let live.”
JM: You ultimately left that group because they were not interested in lesbian rights. Is that right?
RMB: Well, I was only one woman. And the gay men were completely different. Their idea of harassment was getting picked up in a toilet. That’s not my idea of harassment. The men were obsessed with sex. In a sense, it was very adolescent. You tell me I can’t have sex, I’m gonna do it every hour of the day. And I don’t think like that, and I never will, and I think very few women will. So I thought, this is a one-way trip for them, but I can’t get on that bus.
JM: I think you had that same critique about the Gay Liberation Front.
RMB: Yeah, it was all sex-driven. Think about it this way. Let’s say it’s straight people that were treated the way gay people were, and the only straight people you saw were prostitutes and rent boys. Would you want your child to do that? Well, all straight people saw were gay people, and unfortunately, the gay men were confirming the stereotype. I know those are harsh words, but that’s what I saw, and it cost, and it still costs. You have a gay liberation march, and they’re walking down Fifth Avenue with their balls hanging out of their jeans. It’s not a good look, honey.
JM: You were more of the mind of, dress up and look proper?
RMB: You bet. I don’t care who you are. Don’t push the envelope if you have no power, because you’re tolerated, and that’s the way it still is. We’re tolerated. We’re not necessarily accepted. In some places, yes. In most places, I would say tolerance, and you know what? Maybe that’s all we’ll ever get, and I’ll take it.
Let me put it this way. I was born a second-class citizen, and I will die a second-class citizen. And I hope in the span of my life I’ve made it a little easier for women and others too, but I do not expect any gay man to really give a shit about me. How blunt is that?
JM: No, please. Be honest.
RMB: I don’t expect any of them to care about me. No matter what we did during the AIDS crisis, in a lot of ways, and I’m one of them…I feel like a widow. I’ve lost men I loved. I was there when they died. It was really awful. It was heartbreaking, and it’s still heartbreaking. I’ll never forget those men, and I had wonderful friends, but were they gonna march for me? No. They’d stick up for me individually, but would they go out and march? Would they politically organize and do things with us? No. But they expected us to do things for them, which is, of course, the way men think. They wanted to be equal to straight men. You said it, and straight men expect women to do their bidding. And so do gay men.
JM: I think my generation sees this as a different thing, where I see gay men supporting gay women and the trans community…all working together as one community.
RMB: There are a couple of reasons for that, and I agree with you, and I’m thrilled with it, no kidding. Many gay men have children now, and the process of being a parent significantly changes you. And I think it has helped those men with children really understand women in a way they never would have before. And the other thing is the men married to women who want a period to stay home after the baby’s born, who want father privileges, it’s fabulous. It has really changed. My generation, of course, there was no hope of that whatsoever. So I can’t blame men for what they didn’t even realize. I was on the short end of the stick, but I couldn’t be angry for what they didn’t know, and there weren’t enough people to tell them.
JM: When you say that you were born and will die a second-class citizen, would you have expected that to be the outcome in the ’60s, in the ’70s when you were working with the National Organization for Women? Would you have thought we’d make more progress by now?
RMB: No. Remember, I read Latin and Greek, and I start with the “Epic of Gilgamesh”, which isn’t Latin or Greek, but I really start with The Iliad. You’re talking about thousands of years of patriarchy. It is not going to be wiped out in a generation or two. This will be a struggle for centuries. We will get through it, those of us that are Westerners, because our culture is so extraordinary, both good and bad, but extraordinary compared to, say, Asia or Africa, in our attitudes toward women. But again, it will take generations. The same with race. It will take generations. You don’t just wipe it out, and you don’t necessarily wipe it out with ideology. You wipe it out face-to-face.
JM: I’m a little surprised to hear you say that because you were so heavily involved in activism. I guess my thought is, what’s the point in putting in that work if you don’t think it’s gonna move the needle?
RMB: Because two steps forward is better than no steps at all. And I was willing to fight for that, and I did.
JM: When you were at the National Organization for Women, you had an administrative position, I believe. Is that right?
RMB: Well, I worked on the newsletter and tried to deal with Betty [Friedan].
JM: The critique of that wave of feminism is that it was all about expanding the rights of mostly wealthy, mostly white, mostly educated women. You’re educated, but as you said, you were young and living in poverty. Did you feel like you fit into that group?
RMB: Not at all, but it’s all there was. And I was the youngest, on top of everything else. And I don’t want to dump on those women. Thank God they did what they did. They had the time to do it, they had the education to do it, they had the money to do it. I feel like we made great careers for women that wanted to be doctors and lawyers. God bless them, they did. Many of them used it. But Betty got furious with me — first of all, because I was gay and said so. But because I said, “Where are the Black women? Where are the women of color? Where are the Spanish-speaking women, and where are the women working in the supermarket?”
And she blew. Boy, did she blow. So she threw me out. But I knew something Betty didn’t know, and so I was able to really reduce Betty significantly. It took a while. But I knew that just about every family has somebody gay in it, and sooner or later, that message would get across, and it would get across to the women in NOW, and it did.
And she lost her workers, and she went down. And she paid. She paid dearly for her anti-gay activities. And I will give her credit. First of all, she was brilliant. She truly was. She was ugly to me. There was no doubt about it. She called me a redneck and this and that. I remember one time, she was just banging on me about something, and there I was, and what was I, 19 years old. And I turned around and I said, “Betty, this redneck reads and speaks Latin and Greek. Can you?” Shut her right up.
But anyway, once she threw me out, I knew who the gay women were in NOW, and I started talking to them, and I said, “You better protect yourself,” blah, blah, blah. And sure enough, as she would find them out one by one, she turned on them. And so then a large number of people left, but also gay women didn’t go back into NOW. They didn’t go. They started their own groups.
But what Betty did, for which I will always admire her, apart from the fact that she was a brilliant woman — we were in Marin and we were part of a panel up on the stage, and I was on one side of the moderator and she was on the other. Of course, panels are so deadly dull most of the time, but there we were. And somebody from the audience brought up Betty’s anti-gay activities, and Betty did not apologize to me personally. That would’ve been way too much for her. But she did say, “I was wrong.” I give her credit.
JM: Was that after you’d left NOW?
RMB: God, I don’t know, that was like eight or 10 years later. And when she learned, she paid. She knew she paid. But she learned.
JM: Was it an active debate about including lesbians, or was it just understood that it was a non-starter?
RMB: No, it was about getting rid of them. There was no debate.
JM: You left NOW because of this. You left the Red Stockings because of that. You left the Gay Liberation Front. I guess, leaving all these groups that are supposedly making progress, what was your takeaway from all of that?
RMB: They were hypocrites. Why am I gonna waste my time with people that aren’t really gonna work for these things, they’re just gonna say enough to get by, or lie about who they were still, which is the other women’s groups. But some started to come around. And the gay men, could we work with them on certain issues on a political — yes, but I think to this day most older women do not expect anything from gay men.
You expect your friends to love you, but you don’t really expect political — you don’t expect them on the team. Look how simple this is. Again, you’re talking to somebody that’s 81. How hard is it for gay men to march against breast cancer? What the hell does that cost you? After what we did for AIDS, where are they?
I look at the world quite differently than most of you, and I have a lot of experience, and most of it painful, let’s put it that way. And was I ugly to people? Hell, no, I’m Southern. I have really good manners. I was never ugly to anyone. You’re from North Carolina, you know the drill. Didn’t do me a damn bit of good. I think a lot of people liked me. First of all, I have a sense of humor, thank God, and so few did. And I worked with Gloria [Steinem]. Gloria was fabulous. Gloria felt that the gay issue would cost in the beginning, but she could see the long term, and she realized that if she and others mistreated women, how could they men to treat them better? But Gloria is probably the best we’ve ever had in all respects. And do we agree? Most times we do, but Gloria’s much more liberal than I am. I’m really middle of the road. But it was a time when the differences were quite stark. But again, where are the gay men in the marches against breast cancer? How simple is that?
JM: I know you also tried to start your own gay women’s group around this time. Is that right?
RMB: Yeah, we did. It was pretty good, actually. I was surprised at who showed up. Most of them tremendously well-educated, Seven Sisters kind of girls.
JM: And to organize all of these women, I know you put leaflets in bars and the student union. What did that leaflet say?
RMB: Well, it’s very simple stuff: Do you feel we could work together? Do you feel we can accomplish being accepted? Just real basic stuff. And most of those women who actually wound up in Lavender Menace had been thrown out of straight women’s groups, so they had firsthand experience of this kind of mistreatment, and also the hypocrisy of those who stayed in who were gay.
And it was a really very bright group of women, and I can’t tell you their names because they used false names. Like those of us who wrote the Woman-Identified Woman. I don’t really know their names, but I liked them enormously, and they were brilliant women. Oh, God, what a joy to sit and, with your little tablet, scribbling madly.
JM: With “The Woman-Identified Woman” — what should I call it, a pamphlet, a manifesto? What’s the best word to call it?
RMB: I thought it was a turning point in the women’s movement. I thought it was a turning point in any ideology, and the principles can be applied to any oppressed group, which is women identified with men. The point of “The Woman-Identified Woman” is you need to identify with women. I think you can say that in certain segments of the Black community, they identified with white people. You identify with the power structure. I don’t care who you are. And most people do because that’s how you get along. But that’s not how you make changes. Everybody thinks, “Oh, if I get in there and I get some power, I’ll make a change.” Yeah, well, get in the House of Representatives and tell me what you do.
JM: So that is where that title came from.
RMB: Yeah. But that was really one of the most exciting things I ever did in the women’s movement. I don’t like politics. Basically it bores the shit out of me. But I do it because it has to be done. No, the shock is how few people really understand power. It has not changed. It has never changed.
JM: What do people misunderstand about power?
RMB: Well, they think it’s ideology. They think power is about morality. No. It’s about numbers and who you can hurt. If you prove you can hurt people, they tend to leave you alone. It’s real basic. But most people, “Oh, no, if I’m a good person, things will be fine.” Not necessarily. You hope. I think, well, first of all, power is not moral. You hope the people that hold it are moral. I think Eisenhower certainly was. And Teddy Roosevelt, and you go back and you can find faults with them, but they were moral people. What we have now, I think we’ve had 50 years of pretty shaky leadership. Some were more moral than others, but by and large, we have slipped dramatically.
JM: For “The Woman-Identified Woman”, this is a groundbreaking document. How many women wrote it?
RMB: I think there were five of us.
JM: And you were all in a room, brainstorming and working it out?
RMB: Yeah, we would take turns going to one another’s places. But I think there were five of us. I don’t know if the others are still alive or not. I hope so. They were very good people. But there were the other women — we all in our separate ways, which makes sense. You can only live in that kind of fervor but so long. At some point you have to establish your career and eat.
JM: Was it fun to write? I think about that first line, that a lesbian is “the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion”, did you guys write that and hoot and holler and clap?
RMB: No. No. We just did it. It was our job, and we wanted to reach as many people as possible. If we were talking about film, this is front-loading the film. So we front-loaded the document.
JM: To make sure people would keep reading.
RMB: Oh, they did.
JM: You distributed the document at the Second Congress to Unite Women. The famous Lavender Menace zap was there. Was the group of women who did that the one you formed after the Gay Liberation Front, or was that a separate group?
RMB: No, that was the one we formed after all that. Those were the women disaffected and thrown out of other groups. And again, everybody was very respectful. There was no harsh language or mistreating others. We just went down the aisles, turned off the lights, and then when the lights came on, there we were with our lavender Menace shirts, and we said… Basically we said, “You can’t treat other women like this.” Couldn’t be more basic.
JM: You said that you were very respectful at this action. Was there a debate about whether you should be more disorderly at all?
RMB: No, because I would’ve left.
JM: Oh, why is that?
RMB: I won’t treat people like that. Even if they have a difference of opinion, I respect that difference of opinion. It comes from some reality in their life. I don’t care where they are. I don’t care if they’re MAGA. I don’t care if they’re straight women in the old days. It comes from something real in their life or some fear, and I respect that. If you don’t, you hurt us all. You treat people the way you wanna be treated, or boy, you’re gonna get it. And if you’re on the short end of the stick, you’ll get it double.
JM: What was the impact of this Second Congress to Unite Women? How did it change the women’s movement, if at all?
RMB: I think it opened it up. I think a lot of women realized in that moment, they’re right. We have been mistreating them or asking them to hide — we can’t do that. They are who they are, and they didn’t ask to be that way. It’s not like we got up in the morning and said, “I can’t wait to be a lesbian.” I think it was the turning point in the women’s movement.
JM: And from there on, Betty Friedan just kind of acquiesced and said, “Fine.”
RMB: No, she didn’t acquiesce. [laughs]
JM: No? Okay.
RMB: She was in difficult territory, which she tried to bluster her way through.
JM: Tell me this: how were you paying rent during this time?
RMB: Oh, I was picking up cans and stuff and turning them in and getting money for it. And I would go into buildings that were being rehabilitated and take out — I know a little bit about architecture — take out doorknobs that had mercury in the middle of it and go down on 7th and 8th Avenue and sell it to the antique dealers. I made enough — I was in a cold water flat, cost me $50 a month. I made enough to pay my rent and to feed my two kitties. Sometimes they could feed me, other times they couldn’t, but I didn’t really care.
I was raised by men who fought in World War I and World War II, and Korea. I saw the people who really paid for us. So what I was doing was not being with my Uncle Ken when the 6th Marine Division hit Okinawa. What I was doing was a hell of a lot easier, and I knew it.
JM: You eventually left movement work and activism, I believe. Were you burnt out? What was that feeling?
RMB: I was bored. I wasn’t burned out, I was bored. How many times can you talk to people who don’t understand power and tell you, “Oh, no, I’m a nurturer”? Jesus Christ. I don’t need to hear it. And I just got tired of it. I thought I did my work, and I wanted to go do what I really love in the world, and I did.
It doesn’t mean I still don’t do odds and ends and — helpful in ways, or give a speech here and then. But I don’t want to be with people that aren’t serious.
JM: Writing something like Rubyfruit Jungle — did you feel like that was continuing your activism in a way?
RMB: Well, it was funny. I thought if a couple people read it, they might begin to figure things out about gay women. But no, I don’t believe in — if somebody wants to see my writing as political, they’re perfectly free to do so, the fiction. The nonfiction, yeah, sure, that’s political. A lot of that is. But to me, fiction is a whole different category, and I want to have fun. I want to have a great time. The English language’s strongest suit is comedy, and so I want to be a comedic writer, but very simple and very understandable. I’m not here to tell you how smart I am. I’m here to tell you how smart you are, because you are. If you’re still surviving and on your feet, you figured something out.
JM: Rubyfruit was a landmark book, but was it also a tremendous seller. Was that purely word of mouth?
RMB: Yeah, it was. I got paid $1,000, which was a fortune to me at the time. Had nothing. And it was a little press called Daughters Press. And the two women that ran it were divine, utterly divine. And then it sold 70,000 copies word of mouth.
JM: That’s absurd.
RMB: Wild. I don’t know if it’s ever happened again. Maybe it happened to John Grisham with his book, because he couldn’t get anyone to publish his book either. And he’s actually not, doesn’t live far from me. We all know one another. Virginia’s full of writers. But at any rate, I don’t know.
And I didn’t know what to do. All of a sudden, people are expecting this big dyke to walk into a room in black leather, having driven up on a motorcycle, and I don’t qualify. That was pretty funny too, the stereotype of what a gay woman was.
Then they sold it to Bantam. The editor who had it, oh, God, her name just went out of my head. She was so crazy funny. I think she’s still alive. I hope she’s still alive. Anyway, they paid $250,000 for it. Well, I had sold the rights. They didn’t have to give me a penny. But the one woman, June Arnold, was the heiress of a large oil fortune in Texas, so she gave me half, and she used the other half to publish more novels. So for the first time in my life, I could actually live in an apartment with heat, and I paid my mother’s needs, because Mom had many needs. Dad had died, and it was very hard times. We lived off $2,000 a year after Daddy died. And so I could take care of Mother.
JM: If I remember correctly, you wrote that you got a check for $125,000.
RMB: Yep, in one day.
JM: That must have been a tremendous mental adjustment, to go from $0 to that many dollars.
RMB: Well, I was smart enough to thank the good Lord. It was as much luck as talent, really. But the first thing I did was write a check for my mother, and that’s when I was happy. That’s when I knew, okay, I really did something.
JM: I think the majority of people who win the lottery end up declaring bankruptcy. This is not the lottery — you obviously worked for it. But was it a huge adjustment in how you move through the world?
RMB: Not really. People who’ve known me since childhood — I have friends from kindergarten — they would all tell you I haven’t changed. I’m the same as I was when I was four and five, and it’s true, I am. But I could buy some nice clothing and shoes, which I very much appreciated. I could get a nice winter coat. But other than that, no.
JM: I’ve seen different interviews with you where you’re wary of labels, and at one point I wasn’t even sure if you identified as a lesbian. Do you use that word for yourself?
RMB: Yeah, I don’t identify as anything. I’m a human being trying to get through life. If you wanna put a label on me, that’s your problem, not mine. But I do think labeling, for instance — you go into a bookstore, there’s Black fiction, there’s gay fiction. I think that’s a way to keep the oppressed oppressed. And so what you’re telling people that walk into the store is, “Oh, you’re not Black, you don’t have to read this. You don’t need to read Toni Morrison. It’s too upsetting.” Or, “You don’t need to read Rita Mae Brown,” or, “You don’t…” Whatever it is. And I think it’s horrific. And Toni and I knew one another, for what it’s worth, and she was very, very good to me.
JM: I understand not wanting to label Rubyfruit as a lesbian book. It’s just a book. But if someone calls you a lesbian, you don’t take issue with that. Is that right?
RMB: They can call me anything they want. Called me a redneck. Call me whatever the hell you want. Says more about you than it does about me.
JM: Can I ask, at the beginning of your memoir, you write, “To the reader, enjoy your body. After all, others have.”
RMB: Right. Your body is your life. Have a good time with it. If that means lots of sex, have lots of sex. If that means riding horses, get on a horse, honey. If that means dancing, do it. But take care of your body. I think things like that are funny. I think people are just too damn serious about this stuff. And they’re in their 30s and they’re worried about their cholesterol. I’m like, “Oh my God, shut up.”
JM: Yeah, I read the “others have” part and was like “Ooo.”
RMB: Yeah, others have enjoyed your body. And in that sense, I think gay men are much smarter than gay women. Sex was their great joy, and, well, also I think sex means different things for men than it does for women for the most part. But they went over the mark with it, again, because it was rebellion, and in many ways I think still is. But I will forever give them credit for figuring that out.
JM: That’s funny. Speaking of bodies, I have to ask — you’re 81, and I believe you’re still working on your farm?
RMB: I don’t have a choice.
JM: What does that work look like?
RMB: Well, you gotta feed horses, you gotta throw hay, you gotta muck a stall, you gotta hopefully mow the grass, which I don’t do. I just don’t have the time to do it. But it’s physical labor. And I think it’s why I can do what I do. I can still jump fences. I can do almost everything I did when I was young, although I’ve got joints that need help. But often I do it more slowly.
JM: That’s incredible.
RMB: Everything takes longer. Do I know how long I live? No. Shit, I could have been dead at 30. I figured they’d kill me before I was 30. But here I am, I’m 81. I love it. Oh, God, I love it.
Click here to listen to the full interview on the LGBTQ&A podcast.
LGBTQ&A features interviews with the most interesting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people in the world. Hosted and produced by Jeffrey Masters. @jeffmasters1
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