Oral History with Katherine Allen, October 23, 2014 (Ms2015-007)

Laura Keith: Okay. My name is Laura Keith and this is October 23rd 2014, and we are in Wallace Hall and I also have Sara Evenson here with me interviewing. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Katherine Allen: My name is Katherine Allen, and I am a professor of Human Development at Virginia Tech.

KEITH: Great. Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed, we appreciate it.

ALLEN: My pleasure.

KEITH: Alright, to start off, can you tell us your date of birth, your place of birth, a little bit about your family and growing up?

ALLEN: Growing up? Ok, I was born in Baltimore, Maryland on March 9th, 1954. I grew up in a row house with a big alley in the back, so tons of children. I'm a member of the baby boom generation. I have an older sister and three younger brothers, but all five of us were born within an eight year span so I like to call us littermates. And we're still all very close, but our parents are gone. 1:00And so, what else? I'm very tight with my siblings.

KEITH: Ok, that's good. Ok, so do you want to talk a little bit about your undergraduate experience?

ALLEN: Ok. When I was in high school we moved to California so my first year was at San Diego State, and then my parents and family moved to Connecticut so I came in my sophomore year. And I finished my degree in this field (Human Development and Family Studies) at University of Connecticut, and I was an activist there and I actually attended one of the very first Women's Studies classes in San Diego. And then, when I was at University of Connecticut I was active in the Women's Center and we used to wear these buttons that said "Together, Women Together" and most of us at that time were still very involved with men and so, we used to call ourselves 'political lesbians.' And I was also 2:00very involved in the-- it was called Yggdrasil, and it was the center for personal growth. So, that was a time when social activism on college campuses was very, confined, really, to maybe Black Rights groups, Women's Rights, and then personal growth groups.

KEITH: Ok, so, going back in to a little bit of the social activism. When did that, you said that started when you were at undergrad right?

ALLEN: Actually started when I was in high school in southern California. I was a member of the United Methodist Church, and this church was Aldersgate United Methodist Church and they were very active in the California Council when I was in high school. We did this tour all over California of various places for 3:00social activism. Caesar Chavez, Glide Church in San Francisco, which was an openly gay church, Watts, you know they took these white kids and we went all over the place. It was a great experience, really, life-changing.

We used to go to, they didn't have Habitat for Humanity back then, but we would go to the Indian reservations and do work there, so it was a great experience. So my initial activism was really founded in the church, and then it became much more. And that really did have a politicized affiliation. But then when I went to school I was very active in school groups.

And [when] I was 21, we did this thing called (I was at UCONN, so that's in the northeast), but it was called Appalachia Awareness. And so this was spring 4:00break, and it was my 21st birthday, and we went down to someplace in West Virginia, I can't remember, and stayed with some folks and helped to rebuild a house and a barn and, I was there for 10 days. That was another life-changing experience, and who would have thought I would wind up back here. And I study women, older women from Appalachia with cancer now, so it's been a very good, it's just good to know about the history and stuff.

KEITH: Ok. Great. So, why don't we talk a little bit about maybe some of your earliest experiences figuring out your sexuality, maybe when you were coming out?

ALLEN: Yeah. Well, when I was in-- they didn't have a name for bisexuality, you know? But when I was in college, I had a boyfriend and I had a girlfriend [laughter]. But, I did live with my male partner after we graduated from college 5:00and then we lived together. I went to Syracuse University for graduate school, so he came with me and eventually we did get married. But, my college roommate was a woman that I was also involved with and she went to San Francisco and became a lawyer and she's a long time-- always identified as lesbian. But I've been back and forth, always, my whole life between male partners and female partners. Now, I am married, (heterosexually married), I do not consider myself heterosexual, I usually use the term "queer," but you know, a monogamous [laughter] queer person. So, I've never been involved in any polygamist relationships. Yeah, so I'm married to my partner now, my third partner and hopefully we will stay this way. It's exhausting. [laughter] Changing so many times!

But so then after I graduated from graduate school I went to Texas and had my first job and it was a woman's university and I like to say, if you don't go in lesbian, you come out lesbian. So when I was there, even though I was married and I did have a young child, my husband and I were breaking up. And I met a woman there at my university-- all my friends were lesbians, and then we came here together. So my ex-husband, my child, my new partner, who was a woman, and I came here in 1989. And when I got here, there were no out women. I think there was one out woman, I mean, one woman who identified as lesbian, I think she identifies as bisexual, but she was not out.

And so I came here, just always having been an activist and very outspoken and 7:00attention-grabbing. So I came here out and proud and-- I think there was a gay man who was in a heterosexual relationship. But there were very few, if any, out people. And this was in 1989, and then the '90s was a time of great activism. Cause we said that we had moved here in the 'Great Hate State of Virginia.' Usually they have Virginia is for Lovers, but Virginia is for haters! Until very recently for LGBT people. And this was the time of Sharon Bottoms, and they were a Virginia couple. It was a woman who lost her son to her mother and this was considered just awful because a grandparent is a legal stranger. And so the fact 8:00that the child could be awarded custody to the grandmother and taken away because the daughter was lesbian, really rallied the women that we were close to here. My former partner and I started the Lesbian Mothers Group and we were very active in the lesbian community and we were giving talks all over the place. [laughter] I was in Time magazine, I was on Talk of the Nation. So there was you know, this was a time when there weren't very many out academics. And I made a lot of noise, I would say now, about the personal and professional integration.

So then my partner had a child through alternate insemination. His father is my gay brother's partner. They're now married and they've been together 35 years, and they're married in Connecticut. But we started, we expanded our family and 9:00we had another child, my partner had the child, and the donor was my brother-in-law. And he was born in 1994. This was just back when there were absolutely no rights for us, and you really took your life in your hands. I remember being very scared about being two women with young children, just feeling very vulnerable, even though it's a relatively safe community. And we did everything to fit in, to be like "oh we're no different than you, we're just two moms. You know, we're no different than every other family."

And we used to do things like-- you know those Christmas pictures? I don't know if I have one, somewhere [looks for picture] I'll never find it, but, you put your family's photo on a card and you mail it out. Well we would send out 400 of 10:00those to everyone we knew. Because we were very activist in that sense. We wanted everybody to know a gay couple with children. So we were what they used to call the 'lesbian poster family.' And we were very proud of that. Well, pride goe'th before a fall.

So anyway we had our son-- our second child-- who was born in 1994 and I was a University professor, and she was a teacher outside. She could not be on my health insurance, my biological child could be, but my other child could not be. There was no such thing as, you couldn't have second parent adoption. Obviously couldn't get married, that was just anathema. So I was part of the group that was mostly heterosexual allies, but there were some of us who were lesbian, and 11:00gay, there was a man-- I don't know if you've talked to him, Tom Brobson-- but he worked in the president's office, I think, and he was the out gay person here. He wasn't faculty, but he worked in Development or something and he was very active in that. We were constantly agitating to have meetings with the provost and the president, and the benefits people. And trying to get the health insurance for our dependents, but it was a failing effort, and this was in the 1990s. You guys probably weren't even born yet, right?! [laughter]

So this was like 20 years ago. Then by 2000, then I started doing all my research on LGBT families, and so I was giving talks everywhere on this topic and writing books about it, and my ex-partner and I, we wrote a lot of articles 12:00and books and gave talks on using alternate insemination and growing our family. And then our lives changed when she left me for another woman here. And, she took our-- her biological child, and so the lesbian poster family just got ripped in half. And the ironic thing is right before she left we had gone to Vermont and we were the 30th couple in the state of Vermont to have a civil union. Now this is 2000, the year 2000, and they just got civil unions and it was in one state. So it was very good that we could go do this. And we did it with my brother and his partner.

But our relationship dissolved after that, and it was so difficult. I really had a hard time with it because I was the one who was left, and our family was split 13:00in half and so we had gone from being sort of the activist family to... she joined another family. And that was very hard, because not only if you're gay or lesbian or whatever, and you've built your whole-- I built my whole support system with my colleagues, you know, trying to normalize our family and then it just was torn in half. So I learned some very intensive lessons there, and I eventually wrote a paper about ambiguous loss in LGBT families. I did write about it, and it was about the lack of legal marriage and legal custody for children, having children not having a legal chaperone through the divorce process. You know, just what a travesty that is, because even though we had the civil union it wasn't good anywhere but Vermont. And it could be easily 14:00dissolved and when you don't have custody of your child, you can lose that. I lost complete access to my other child. That was very devastating. So, it is ironic that now, and it's so wonderful that we have these laws that have changed and people can get married. I hope it sticks! And I know the university has changed it so that you can have non-legal dependents on your health insurance. That was the big fight that we were going for. That was something to rally around.

And I will share with you, (I shared this with David [Cline]). I'm going to read this, because this came from Pat Hyer who was our Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs. And it touched upon something that probably happened maybe fifteen, twenty years ago. And so this just came on October 21st, and it says "Katherine: 15:00The first thing I thought of when I heard about the Supreme Court's decision to let Virginia and other state case rulings on gay marriage stand was the meeting we had so many years ago where you and others brought the issue of health care coverage for same-sex partners and their children to the Virginia Tech administration. I've not forgotten the emotion of that meeting, or the potency of the issues for you and others affected. I have also not forgotten how powerless we were to do anything meaningful about the state's position on marriage and health insurance, and how that exclusionary stance affected our employees. In some ways I have been stunned by the, at long last, rapidity of the changes in Virginia, even at a point in time where our general assembly seems ever more conservative, and determined to legislate their version of morality. But I rejoice at the outcome and hope that the recent momentum will not be seriously undermined by those who feel threatened by such changes." And 16:00she says some other things, and then she ends with "It takes persistent activists to make things happen. I just wanted to let you know about my memory of that long-ago meeting. And thank you for your part in keeping important issues on the table." I mean, you know, I'd almost forgotten about that. And it was a very pivotal time and just to sit there with these administrators and just be talking about the needs for our families and just "there's nothing we can do, our hands are tied." Pat captured the emotions of that.

So even though my family life changed in the 2000s, and eventually I married a very wonderful person, a man, I have always been an activist and always conducted research. Now I'm doing research on children who were born to lesbian, 17:00gay, and bisexual parents and are now adults. And so what are their lives like? And then when they have experienced what we can't call a divorce, we call it relational dissolution. And, unfortunately this same pattern bears out that the biological tie in these relationships is stronger than the social tie to the social parent. But now that we do have legal rulings and people can be married in most states, we'll see if the legal divorce will help chaperone people through this terrible transition that they have to go through.

KEITH: Well, thank you for sharing that. That was, that was great.

ALLEN: You're welcome.

KEITH: So you mention a little bit about identity and that's something that we've talked about a lot in our class and all the different identities that 18:00there are out there. So, if you had to identify yourself now, how would you identify yourself?

ALLEN: Well, like I said, I would identify myself as lesbian, except I'm married to a man and I think that's disrespectful to him. But my politics, my heart, my lifestyle, is a lesbian lifestyle. I'm from the '60s and the '70s, that was the birth of lesbian feminism. That is me. 'Together Women Together.' It's seared on my heart and since I was in college and, you know, you really can't shake that. But I have lived many lives. I have lived as a heterosexually-married person twice, I've lived as a single woman of unknown sexual orientation because I didn't date for a few years after. You know, it's hard to date. Other people 19:00have called me things like bisexual, but I don't mind that. I mean, my niece is, she calls herself 'pansexual.' She's a lot like me. She's had male and female partners. Almost everybody in my family's gay, lesbian, bisexual. We have very few heterosexuals [laughter]. My son was gay, my niece, my two nieces are lesbian or bisexual, my nephew is bisexual. We're just a very open family to this kind of stuff.

KEITH: So going along with that then, and you did touch on this a bit, what communities, then, do you identify with?

ALLEN: Well the sad thing about what happened to me in this town is that because there was a divorce between my partner-- it wasn't legal, but there was an emotional divorce. And we separated our homes. The lesbian community is small 20:00and it's hard to stay in that community, and it's hard for friends 'Who do we pick? Who do we side with?' and so we had many friends say to us, 'I will talk with you about anything you want to talk about, but I won't talk with you about the other person.' So I tried to negotiate the lesbian community for about four years after my partner left, and I found it incredibly, incredibly difficult because it's so small and because my ex-partner and her new partner (well, they've been together fourteen years now), they were very visible. So we went from being the poster family to them, and so it was a very difficult process. But like I said, my brother and his partner are gay, and so you know, they're the closest people to me so I'm very much a part of that world. And my cousin 21:00Kathleen, who's in Boston, she's married to her partner, they've been together almost 40 years. I mean, it's just amazing. So my family life is very-- we say 'we're so gay!' you know.

But I have many communities. Now one of the most important communities to me as an older professor thinking about retirement are all the graduate students I've taught. I've had so many and I'm like an academic mother and now an academic grandmother, so the community of...and they're all over the place in terms of their orientation. I've supervised very many dissertations and theses that have to do with this topic. So, I'm in a lot of communities.

KEITH: Ok. So, going along with that, who would you consider to be your major allies now, and in the past?

ALLEN: My allies? That's so interesting. Well, I don't really know how to answer 22:00that question, because I feel like I've been a member of the, ally community, and I'm also a member of stigmatized groups. I mean, an invisible identity in the LGBT community is that of a former lesbian, someone who was lesbian. Because lesbian is identified as a sexuality, but not for me. I mean, yes, it incorporated sexuality but it was definitely an identity and a life. And when I give talks or when I write I do not erase that identity from how I describe my life. It's very much there and they have these t-shirts at gay pride--I don't know if you've ever been to pride marches--but my favorite one is 'How dare you assume I'm a heterosexual!' And that's kind of how I feel about that. Not that 23:00there's anything wrong with being heterosexual of course. So, I don't know. What was the question?

KEITH: Just who were your major allies, but, I think you answered it, with you being a part of several different communities.

ALLEN: Yes.

KEITH: That could definitely be seen as allies there. What have been some of your main challenges in your life? I know you've touched on this a little bit.

ALLEN: My second divorce was the first crisis and then, we might not want to put this in the narrative, this is very sad.

EVENSON: Would you like me to stop the tape?

ALLEN: Yeah, But I will tell you, because it is part of the history.

[Interview Part 2]

KEITH: What has been your experience of LGBTQ life at Virginia Tech?

ALLEN: Well, I think that administration has always been well-meaning , but, it 24:00took years to get the Principles of Community through. We've always had racial problems issues at this university, this history of race relations, and racism has always been strong, and then we were a male military academy. And we still have far more male undergraduates than female undergraduates. So we are very atypical from other, most other universities now have more females. And so, being The South, you know, gay people have been invisible, hiding, etc. but the current administration has, you know, been, well Dr. McName, I really credit him, our provost. Has just been extremely open and affirming, and has always put out a welcoming hand to all groups and I really credit him with a lot for this, 25:00but I know he's also been controversial. So maybe we don't want to say this because... have you have talked to Shelli Fowler and Dean DePauw? Are you going to be talking to them?

KEITH: No

ALLEN: They have a very interesting situation where they came, she (Dean DePauw), came as the Graduate Dean and then Shelli was her partner and the administration at that time was... the Board of Visitors, there was a very vocal person that would not allow Shelli to accept a spousal hire. So many of us -- this was in the 2000s-- and I was part of the activist group, we wrote this huge letter for the Chronicle of Higher Education and we gathered thousands of dollars for that. So we had a campaign on campus for that, to do that, to publically humiliate Virginia Tech.

And eventually Shelli persevered and did get appointed. But right now, the climate's good, I think. And we're educated now and they've been educated about 26:00transgender issues, and I think for anyone who's been around a long time it's bittersweet, if I can be really honest about that. Because when you start with almost nothing and you're piggy backing on the oppression of others...we wouldn't be where we are if it wasn't for the Civil Rights movement and if it wasn't for the Women's movement, etc. These people who have pioneered it.

But, you know it's so amazing how things have changed, but we can never forget the difficult pathway to get here. I mean, a lot of broken hearts to get where we are and that's just life, and the homophobia and the heterosexism is not over. You can't forget that either, and we still have to be vigilant of those things. Maybe people aren't overtly discriminating but there are still issues to 27:00deal with. But my very first teaching evaluations-- you know students have to write things about you-- my very first class in 1989, and one of the comments was "too much promotion of lesbianism." I have always held that as a badge of honor. So yeah, so I have been doing this for a long time.

KEITH: So is there anything else you want to touch on? Or anything that I didn't ask that you wanted to talk about,

ALLEN: No, I would like to be on the record of saying you are both very good listeners and interviewers and thank you and this is a very worthy project I am very happy to be a part of it.

KEITH: Good, thank you again.

ALLEN: Thank you.