Sally Miller Gearhart (April 15, 1931 – July 14, 2021) was an American teacher,
radical feminist
Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical re-ordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts, while recognizing that women's experiences are also affected by other ...
,
science-fiction
Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, sp ...
writer, and
political activist
A political movement is a collective attempt by a group of people to change government policy or social values. Political movements are usually in opposition to an element of the status quo, and are often associated with a certain ideology. Some ...
.
In 1973, she became the first open
lesbian
A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexu ...
to obtain a tenure-track faculty position when she was hired by
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University (San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It was established in 1899 as the San Francisco State Normal School and is ...
, where she helped establish one of the first women and gender study programs in the country.
She later became a nationally known gay rights activist.
Early life
Sally Miller Gearhart was born in Pearisburg, Virginia, in 1931 to Sarah Miller Gearhart and Kyle Montague Gearhart.
Her mother was a secretary, and her father was a dentist. After the pair divorced early in her childhood, Gearhart moved to her maternal grandmother's boarding house. There, she experienced female camaraderie and developed an admiration for "the collective strength of women."
Gearhart attended an all-women's institution,
Sweet Briar College
Sweet Briar College is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's liberal arts college in Sweet Briar, Amherst County, Virginia, Amherst County, Virginia. It was established in 1901 by Indiana Fletcher Williams in ...
, near
Lynchburg, Virginia
Lynchburg is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. First settled in 1757 by ferry owner and Abolitionism, abolitionist John Lynch (1740–1820), J ...
. She graduated with a
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...
in drama and English in 1952. At
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green State University (BGSU) is a Public university, public research university in Bowling Green, Ohio, United States. The main academic and residential campus is south of Toledo, Ohio. The university has nationally recognized progr ...
, she obtained a master's degree in theater and public address in 1953. She continued on at
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United States. Established in 1867, it is the f ...
, getting her
Ph.D. in theater in 1956, with the intent of pursuing a life of academia.
Teaching
Gearhart began teaching speech and theater at
Stephen F. Austin State University
Stephen F. Austin State University (SFASU or SFA) is a public university in Nacogdoches, Texas, in the United States. Named after Stephen F. Austin, one of the founders of Texas, SFA was founded as a teachers college in 1923 and built on part ...
in
Nacogdoches, Texas
Nacogdoches ( ) is a city in East Texas and the county seat of Nacogdoches County, Texas, United States. The 2020 U.S. census recorded the city's population at 32,147. Stephen F. Austin State University is located in Nacogdoches and special ...
,
and later moved to
Texas Lutheran College
Texas Lutheran University (TLU) is a private Evangelical Lutheran university in Seguin, Texas.
History
The university traces its roots back to 1891 with the foundation of an academy, named Evangelical Lutheran College, by the first German Eva ...
(now University) in
Seguin, Texas
Seguin ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Guadalupe County, Texas, Guadalupe County, Texas, United States. The population was 29,433 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, and according to 2023 census estimates, the city is estima ...
.
In both positions, Gearhart lived in the closet and hid her true
sexual identity to fit with the culture of the schools. As a professor, she was incredibly popular and sought-after, but her personal life was full of the struggles of living in the closet.
She found herself subject to blackmail attempts, and as a result, she publicly denied her sexuality.
In 1969, Gearhart followed a lover to
Kansas
Kansas ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named a ...
. The following year, she moved to
San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
with no plan aside from her determination to live openly as a lesbian.
By 1973, Gearhart was employed at San Francisco State University, where she went from teaching speech to teaching
women's studies
Women's studies is an academic field that draws on Feminism, feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining Social constructionism, social and cultural constructs of gender; ...
. There, she was able to develop one of the first women and
gender studies
Gender studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing gender identity and gendered representation. Gender studies originated in the field of women's studies, concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. The field n ...
programs in the United States. With her help, the university was the first to develop a course dealing with sex roles and communications.
She continued at San Francisco State University until her retirement in 1992.
Activism
After Gearhart received tenure from San Francisco State, she became politically active, fighting in particular for
radical feminist
Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical re-ordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts, while recognizing that women's experiences are also affected by other ...
causes.
In 1978, Gearhart fought alongside
Harvey Milk
Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Milk was born and raised i ...
, one of the first openly
gay
''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'.
While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late ...
politicians in the U.S., to defeat
California Proposition 6, known as the "
Briggs Initiative
California Proposition 6, informally known as the Briggs Initiative, was an unsuccessful ballot initiative put to a referendum on the California state ballot in the November 7, 1978 election. It was sponsored by John Briggs, a conservative st ...
". Gearhart famously debated
John Briggs, attacking the initiative to ban homosexuals from academic positions in public schools.
A clip of the debate appeared in the documentary film ''
The Times of Harvey Milk
''The Times of Harvey Milk'' is a 1984 American documentary film that premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and then on November 1, 1984, at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. The film was directed by Rob Epstein ...
'', which also included Gearhart talking about working with Milk against Proposition 6, and reactions in San Francisco in the aftermath of Milk's assassination.
In the mid-1970s, Gearhart was co-chair of The Council On Religion And The Homosexual. This organization offered a variety of speaking events and literature to educate followers on the Judeo-Christian tradition. It also educated legislators about the lifestyles of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.
Gearhart was also featured in several documentaries, including ''
Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives'', released in 1977, and "Last Call at Maud's" released in 1993. She appeared briefly in
Barbara Hammer
Barbara Jean Hammer (May 15, 1939 – March 16, 2019) was an American feminist film director, producer, writer, and cinematographer. She is known for being one of the pioneers of the lesbian film genre, and her career spanned over 50 years. Ham ...
's 1975 short film "Superdyke".
Throughout her career, Gearhart fought for
animal rights
Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all Animal consciousness, sentient animals have Moral patienthood, moral worth independent of their Utilitarianism, utility to humans, and that their most basic interests—such as ...
and became involved with ecologically based causes and the women's spirituality movement.
Gearhart labeled herself "a recovering political activist."
Writing
While living in San Francisco, Gearhart began writing
feminist science-fiction novels and short stories that highlighted her
utopian ideals for a wider lesbian audience. In 1978, her most famous novel, ''
The Wanderground'', was published, exploring themes of
ecofeminism
Ecofeminism integrates feminism and political ecology. Ecofeminist thinkers draw on the concept of gender to analyze relationships between humans and the natural world. The term was coined by the French writer Françoise d'Eaubonne in her 1974 ...
and
lesbian separatism
Feminist separatism or separatist feminism is the theory that feminist opposition to patriarchy can be achieved through women's sex segregation from men.Christine Skelton, Becky Francis, ''Feminism and the Schooling Scandal'', Taylor & Francis, ...
.
She wrote two books as part of the Earthkeep trilogy, ''The Kanshou'', published in 2002, and ''The Magister'', published in 2003. Both stories explore a dystopian world where women outnumber men, and humans are the only beings on the planet.
In 1976, Gearhart co-wrote ''
A Feminist Tarot'' with Susan Rennie. It was published by
Persephone Press and used conventional
Rider–Waite–Smith imagery.
This book was one of several
tarot divination
Tarot card reading is a form of cartomancy whereby practitioners use tarot cards to purportedly gain insight into the past, present or future. The process typically begins with formulation of a question, followed by drawing and interpreting cards ...
books on the market attempting to find alternative meanings within the symbology, the most famous of which is probably
Motherpeace. Unusual for a work of
feminist spirituality
Feminist theology is a movement found in several religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Jainism, Neopaganism, Baháʼí Faith, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and New Thought, to reconsider the traditions, practices, scri ...
at a time of
goddess worship, this book reinterpreted and subverted the stated meanings of the Rider Waite Smith deck.
In 1979, Gearhart published the book "Women’s Studies International Quarterly 2", which included the essay “The Womanization of Rhetoric”, which could be considered the first feminist essay to reject rhetoric’s key principle of persuasion, declaring that “Any intent to persuade is an act of violence” (195). With this, she separated rhetoric from ideas of domination, conquering, and often violence. In the essay, she called this new, domination-free rhetoric "invitational rhetoric".
Of all the human disciplines, hetorichas gone about its task of educating others to violence with the most audacity. The fact that it has done so with language and metalanguage, with refined functions of the mind, instead of with whips or rifles does not excuse it from the mindset of the violent. (195)
She also co-wrote
a book entitled ''Loving Women/Loving Men:
Gay Liberation
The gay liberation movement was a social and political movement of the late 1960s through the mid-1980s in the Western world, that urged lesbians and gay men to engage in radical direct action, and to counter societal shame with gay pride.Hoff ...
and the Church'', which was aimed at the
conservative Christian churches and communities that
barred homosexuals from fellowship. While never fully embracing the Christian faith, Gearhart did acknowledge the parts of it that were meaningful for her own ideals.
She once stated that "love is the universal truth lying at the heart of all creation."
In her early career, Gearhart took part in a series of seminars at San Francisco State University, where feminist scholars were critically discussing issues of rape, slavery, and the possibility of nuclear annihilation. Gearhart outlines a three-step proposal for female-led social change from her essay, "The Future–-If There Is One–-is Female":
:I) Every culture must begin to affirm a female future.
:II) Species responsibility must be returned to women in every culture.
:III) The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race.
Gearhart does not base this radical proposal on the idea that men are innately violent or oppressive, but rather on the "real danger is in the phenomenon of male-bonding, that commitment of groups of men to each other whether in an army, a gang, a service club, a lodge, a monastic order, a corporation, or a competitive sport." Gearhart identifies the self-perpetuating, male-exclusive reinforcement of power within these groups as corrosive to female-led social change. Thus, if "men were reduced in number, the threat would not be so great and the placement of species responsibility with the female would be assured."
Gearhart, a dedicated pacifist, recognized that this kind of change could not be achieved through mass violence. On the critical question of how women could achieve this, Gearhart argues that it is by women's own capacity for reproduction that the ratio of men to women can be changed though the technologies of cloning or ovular merging, both of which would only produce female births. She argues that as women take advantage of these reproductive technologies, the sex ratio would change over generations.
[Sally Miller Gearhart, "The Future—If There Is One—Is Female," ''Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence'', New Society Publishers 1982:266–284.]
Daphne Patai in her book ''Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism'' summarizes Gearhart's essay as, "The future must be in female hands, women alone must control the reproduction of species; and only 10% of the population should be allowed to be male".
Mary Daly
Mary Daly (October 16, 1928 – January 3, 2010) was an American radical feminist philosopher and theologian. Daly, who described herself as a "radical lesbian feminist", taught at the Jesuit-run Boston College for 33 years. Once a practicing ...
supported Gearhart's proposals, stating: "I think it's not a bad idea at all. If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males."
Works
* ''Some Modern American Concepts of Tragic Drama as Revealed by the Critical Writings of Twentieth Century American Playwrights'' (1953)
*''Aristotle and Modern Theorists on the Elements of Tragedy.'' (1956)
*''The Lesbian and God-the-Father, or, All the Church Needs Is a Good Lay ... On Its Side'' (1972)
*''Loving Women/Loving Men: Gay Liberation and the Church'' (1974)
* ''
A Feminist Tarot'' (1976)
*''
The Wanderground'' (1978)
* "The Sword and the Vessel Versus the Lake on the Lake" (1979)
* "The Future – If There Is One – Is Female" (1981)
*“Future Visions: Today’s Politics: Feminist Utopias in Review” (1994)
*
The Kanshou' (2002)
*
The Magister' (2003)
Personal life
Gearhart knew from the age of ten that she would have no children, and in college, she discovered that she was a lesbian. She read lesbian novels but destroyed them early in her career as she did not want her sexual identity revealed.
Her partner was Jane Gurko, a fellow professor at San Francisco State University, until the latter's death in 2010.
Gearhart spent her later years in
Willits, a small town situated in the heart of
Mendocino County's "Redwood country" in northern California, before moving to a care home in nearby
Ukiah. After a long illness, she died in Ukiah on July 14, 2021, at the age of 90.
Legacy
The Sally Miller Gearhart Fund for lesbian studies was established by Carla Blumberg, one of Gearhart's former students, in January 2008 at the
University of Oregon
The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a Public university, public research university in Eugene, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1876, the university is organized into nine colleges and schools and offers 420 undergraduate and gra ...
. It was created to promote research and teaching in lesbian studies through an annual lecture series and an endowed professorship at the university. The first lecture was given by Arlene Stein of
Rutgers University
Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...
on May 27, 2009, and it was titled ''The Incredibly Shrinking Lesbian World and Other Queer Conundra''.
[Sally Miller Gearhart Fund for Lesbian Studies , Department of Women's and Gender Studies](_blank)
/ref>
The Sally Miller Gearhart Papers (1956–1999) are held at the Special Collections and University Archives, University of Oregon Libraries.
Gearhart is an entry in the 2003 dictionary-like book ''The A to Z of the Lesbian Liberation Movement: Still the Rage'', by JoAnne Myers.
Gearhart was portrayed by Carrie Preston
Carrie Preston (born June 21, 1967) is an American actress, director, and producer. She is best known for her roles as Arlene Fowler in the HBO fantasy drama series '' True Blood'' (2008–2014) and as Elsbeth Tascioni in the CBS legal drama ...
in the 2017 miniseries
In the United States, a miniseries or mini-series is a television show or series that tells a story in a predetermined, limited number of episodes. Many miniseries can also be referred to, and shown, as a television film. " Limited series" is ...
'' When We Rise'', which dealt with the evolution of the LGBT
LGBTQ people are individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning. Many variants of the initialism are used; LGBTQIA+ people incorporates intersex, asexual, aromantic, agender, and other individuals. The gro ...
community in San Francisco and advancement of LGBT civil rights in America.
A feature documentary about Gearhart directed by documentarian Deborah Craig premiered in June 2024.
References
Further reading
*
External links
Official website
Guide to the Sally Miller Gearhart papers at the University of Oregon.
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gearhart, Sally Miller
1931 births
2021 deaths
20th-century American novelists
21st-century American novelists
Activists from the San Francisco Bay Area
American science fiction writers
American women short story writers
American women novelists
Bowling Green State University alumni
American lesbian writers
American LGBTQ rights activists
LGBTQ people from Virginia
Novelists from Virginia
San Francisco State University faculty
University of Illinois College of Fine and Applied Arts alumni
People from Willits, California
Lesbian feminists
Radical feminists
American women science fiction and fantasy writers
20th-century American women writers
21st-century American women writers
People from Pearisburg, Virginia
Stephen F. Austin State University faculty
Texas Lutheran University faculty
20th-century American short story writers
21st-century American short story writers
Novelists from California
Novelists from Texas
American women academics
American women founders